We’re often asked where our ideas come from. The closest answer I have is a pattern we’ve learned to trust: choose an impossible goal, build experiments around it, surround yourself with curious, talented people, and leave enough room to act on the accidents.
One early project cemented this for us. It was when UrbanDaddy asked us to create something unforgettable for a Hamptons pool party. The budget was tight, there was a vibe to hit, but they gave us one weird detail: people dressed nicely for these evening events and generally didn’t swim.
We do love a good challenge.
The impossible goal: What if we created a visual performance people could swim through? Basically: Busby Berkeley + technology art + night swimming with your friends.
But we needed a screen. Swimmable screens don’t exist of course, so we investigated. Water-mist screens. Underwater fiber-optic gardens. Draining the pool and projecting onto the bottom. Our thoughts turned to how to project animations on the surface of the water.
Half serious, I said what about ping pong balls?
Surely not, but then someone asked how many we’d need to cover the pool, which became a math problem, which became an experiment. And once we dumped ping-pong balls into water, we discovered something we hadn’t anticipated.
The accident: The balls naturally organized themselves into constantly shifting geometric patterns. They created a strangely satisfying, clicky, tactile surface that rearranged itself around swimmers. And when we projected onto them, the movement of the balls distorted the imagery in ways we never would have designed intentionally.
A small discovery that changed the feel, the visual direction, and how people interacted.
At a time before ballpits were commonplace at events, before the term experiential took hold, our idea sounded insane. “Let’s pour 65,000 ping pong balls into the pool to turn the water into a projection surface for visual art inspired by vintage Hamptons… Creating artwork people can swim through, at a party where, apparently, no one swims.”
Our client paused and memorably bought in with: “100,000 has a nicer ring to it.”
Three weeks later, we were filling a pool in the Hamptons. When the moment came, people in full dress actually jumped in. The balls gave way completely beneath them, creating this Scrooge McDuck sensation of diving into what looked like a solid surface. People swam, threw balls, made patterns, and watched light emanate around their bodies.
It transported everyone to childhood.
An encore performance saw synchronized swimmers emerge reminiscent of our first moodboards. Videos of the event spread online and led to versions for various events, Sony, and eventually an exhibition in Doha – each time we added new features.
What mattered in the long run wasn’t the idea for a ping pong ball pool. We had figured out the conditions for that idea to appear.
Since then we’ve set out to animate sunlight and discovered how to make moving stained glass. We set out to visualize how speakers fill a room with sound using projection and discovered immersive for ourselves before we heard the term. The process has allowed us to realize making portraits with swords, bikes that ride through endless landscapes, typography that forms from your mind, and so much more.
Innovation starts with turning briefs into impossible goals, wish fulfillment made possible with experiments of technology and art.
Related Projects:
https://redpaperheart.com/work/ping-pong-pool-party
https://redpaperheart.com/work/play-pit
Leave a Reply