The Nokia owned festival Nokia Trends in Hamburg 2006 featuring luminary artists such as Kelis, Razorlight and Art Brut coincided with the release of Nokia’s new generation of mobile computers, the so-called Nseries. Nokia’s German BTL agency Bureau.FJM (now Nest One) was posed with the challenge of staging a professional festival event for a mass audience that basically just wants to have a swell raving time, while at the same time engaging consumers intensely with the new products.

They turned to PIECE OF CAKE founder Kim Pörksen and in collaboration with visomat a strategic solution was found, namely the integration of a second festival area, the Nseries house, that officially hosted the festival’s electronic dance floor.

Yet the Nseries house was a lot more. One might describe it as a multimedia fun park resembling the fusion of a bar, a lounging area and a media art exhibition, the latter ingredient making this product presentation so relevant. Five different and individual media art installations involving Nokia’s then star models N73, N91 and N93 each dedicated themselves to presenting the special features of these mobile computers in an entertaining, interactive, experiential and low threshold manner. All this was located in a derelict house begging to be explored by the audience.

The installation “Ascii Mirror” for example highlighted the N93′s video recording feature by using it as a live cam that translated the recorded image of the guests into digital numbers and figures thus creating a digital code portray. In another N93 installation titled “Sequence Box” the guests were able to record a short film sequence that was artistically altered by a computer and stored in a database which the VJ of the electronic dance floor had access to to implement the clips into his VJ set.

The installation “Wall of Fame” pointed at the N73′s photo camera quality and connectivity functions, inviting guests into a photo studio like situation, where they could design their own environments with physical graphical elements. A by standing promoter would take a photo with the N73 which not only would be printed out for the guests as a souvenir, but also immediately uploaded to Flickr.

The “AV chandelier”, consisting of eleven N91′s, highlighted the fantastic sound quality of this device’s speakers by functioning as a sequencer on which every phone resembled a single audio/video track of a composition that could be triggered by the users by simply calling the phone. Another highlight of the N91 is the great hard disc space which was visualized in the installation “Mobile Jukebox” by showing visuals of all 1000 songs that fit the phone in expansive projections. On browsing through the song library of the exhibited N91 the projection showed the corresponding selections live on the screen.

Needless to mention that the DJs hosting the electronic dance floor played with Nokia N91′s instead of conventional decks and media players. A groovy way of spotlighting the device’s immense memory space for 1000 songs if there ever was one. At the Nokia Nseries house, brand, products and people truly got connected.

Photos: Frank Becker