From scratch: phygital facade makes user the film-maker

Design studio Iregular teamed up with animator and designer Théodore Ushev to celebrate McLaren's legacy on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Their installation, Diagonales, transformed the wall of the National Library and Archive of Quebec into an interactive digital display which allows passers-by to make their own films from the raw material of McLaren's work.

The phygital facade was linked to a striking steel monolith inspired by the one in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, on which people could scratch with various objects. The installation reproduced the noise of the scratches as digital beeps, while using the patterns to remix the images from three of McLaren’s films – Lines: Vertical (1960), Lines: Horizontal (1962), and Synchromy (1971) – into original animated films.

This is a great illustration of the way in which sectors and media are blurring beyond recognition. For more on this modern day mash-up, read our macrotrend The Convergence Economy.