There are many ways a company can promote its products, though arguably the best way is to show them in action. In the case of this joint venture between Nokia, Microsoft and filmaker Paul Trillo, we get to see the Lumia 1020 and Surface playing nice with each other, the result being the above video of, uh, art in motion. Oh, and a giant half-ring of many, many smartphones strapped together to form something called the “Arc Of Wonder”.
The “Arc” is made up of 50 Lumia 1020s, controlled wirelessly via a Surface tablet running a custom controller application on Windows 8. The contraption was delivered to the streets of New York to both terrify and amaze photogenic bystanders, with Trillo stating that some 30,000 still images were taken and then combined to create a “bullet-effect” (which I’m guessing means bullet-time).
Is it an interesting experiment? Sure. Does it make me feel dizzy and slightly nauseous? Yep. It doesn’t help that the quality of the shots isn’t great, with the motion looking fairly muddy (most notably during the start of the clip).
One comment on YouTube described the effort as a “clever way to sell 50 phones to a single costumer [sic]”, though considering it’s essentially an advertisement, I doubt anyone actually bought any phones.
Arc of wonder: bullet-effect photoshoot with 50 Lumias [Nokia]