- Amon Tobin—Supermodified
- Moby: Body Rock
- The Peppermint Lounge
- The Last Word
The Peppermint Lounge
Created as a promotional gimmick for the Altoids site, the Peppermint Lounge adds images to the mix (literally) for an even more immersive interactive experience. You have less control at the Peppermint Lounge than at either of the previously mentioned sites, but the interface is much more abstract and intuitive. Once you've gotten all the required plug-ins (be patient, young Skywalker), you are presented with a collage of images from, you guessed it, a lounge. Six sliders beneath the collage add various sound embellishments to the mix as well as superimposing floating graphics on the collage. But forget the sliders; they are mere icing.
The main audio mix is tweaked by clicking the images in the collage itself. Each image has an audio loop associated with it, and, when clicked, the collage remixes itself, always retaining the clicked image and its associated audio loop. As the collage mutates, so does the audio mix. Images in the collage are often transparent and overlapping, thus mirroring the audio loops they represent. If you get bored, just hit the Randomizer button, and the collage restarts itself with a fresh combination of images. Begin clicking on the new collage, and off you go again. It is a truly synesthetic experience.
This piece would be interesting enough if it were just a collage. The images are blurry abstract photos of groovy '50s lounge lights, furniture, cocktail glasses, shag carpet, and so on. The rest of the images are close-cropped, off-angle shots of twenty-somethingslaughing, talking, mixing, and generally "living large" in this virtual retro-environment.
Add to those images several trip-hop lounge loops, salsa rhythms, phat vibraphone and wah-wah pedal licks, mad horn riffs, and the occasional vocal chanteuse, and you've got a pretty darned immersive multimedia experience. The Peppermint Lounge's stroke of genius is, you are not just passively watching this environment. With each click, you modify it. As the site itself proclaims, it's "a hi-fi experience."