My team and I opened the Google I/O Worldwide Developer conference on June 25th.
My crew, consisting of Paul Thompson, Steve Lassovzsky, TJ Lewis, Eric Mesple and Trevor Yamamoto, kicked off the keynote session with a live audience of about 5000, with a couple of million viewers via global simulcast.
The full installation was a large scale rube goldberg machine that began with a 10 foot tall mechanical clock counting down from the opening of the doors to the beginning of the keynote. We collaborated with AV Concepts to merge the physical components with video sequences that were shot in our shop.
Every minute, the clock released a steel ball that rolled down a track. Each ball tripped a gate that incrementally released a bowling ball down its own track (and also laid down a piece of track for the next ball to roll over).
The ensuing machine included a giant hammer, a trebuchet launching a basketball 40 feet to land in a 3 foot square net, and a wheel of sledgehammers spinning to smash a hunk of bulletproof glass. This is Google’s feed of the event, of which the first 1:20 is the machine:
The clock, based on my original concept and design, was built by Steve Lassovzsky, Eric Mesple, and Paul Thompson, and is installed permanently at Google HQ in Mountainview CA.
