Minimum wage in the United States is recognized as a sign of financial instability, but it is rarely understood exactly how incredibly draining minimum wage labor actually is.

Blake Fall-Conroy, an artist who strives to create “socially-conscious” pieces, has conceptualized an ingenious way to demonstrate the frustrating, monotonous, and often demeaning plight of minimum-wage worker.

Fall-Conroy invented the “minimum wage machine,” a device with a hand-crank that the user turns continuously, and dispenses a penny every 4.5 seconds. An hour will earn you $8 in pennies, which until eight months ago was the minimum wage in the state of New York.

The artist hopes that the machine will help people understand the amount of work that goes into making just $8/hour, and perhaps inspire sympathy for those who work minimum-wage jobs or provoke change in legislation that will raise the minimum wage (the minimum wage in New York is now $8.75).

What Sparks Our Fire: Art that serves a purpose and sparks social awareness.

“Living Things

The exhibit, which features a kitchen, living room, and a dining room, envisions a future in which the designers, Jacob Douenias and Ethan Frier, envision “photosynthetic furniture,” or pieces that contain glass vessels of algae. These vessels are wired to heat and light, which causes the algae to grow, making them a source of oxygen.

This living, breathing display is not the first that has used algae as a material; however, the designers say it could become more common in the future, because the liquid suspension of the organism makes it malleable and therefore easy to manipulate.

What Sparks Our Fire: Designers harnessing the power of nature to create homes that homes that boast both aesthetics and sustainability.

Everbright is a wall-sized mood board composed of 464 dials, and is reminiscent of the popular Light-Brite toy. The dials act as the pegs you’d plug into the Light-Brite, and by turning the dials, participants can pick any color in the rainbow to make pictures, patterns, or any other visual their heart desires. The Everbright board acts as a creative game for the office– Hero Design even points out it’s benefits over a typical ping pong table found in break rooms. One person or an entire team can work together to create the designs.

Office “toys,” such as the Everbright board, emphasize the importance of breaking up the work day with creative activities that inspire outstanding work, especially in creative fields like Marketing. Learn more on Hero Design’s website, and take a look at the video below.

Everbright from Romy Randev on Vimeo.

What Sparks Our Fire: Flexing our creative muscles in the office

What would your dog take a picture of, if he could use a camera? In an attempt to answer this question, Nikon Asia devised a clever way for Grizzler to take a photo (without even lifting a paw) in their latest video that’s gone viral. Nikon strapped a camera connected to a heart-rate monitor onto Grizzler, and designed a shutter that automatically closed when Grizzler’s heart-rate increased.

Grizzler the “phodographer” took some excellent photos of plants, sandals, eggs, a turtle, and, of course, some other dog and cat friends.

People have been strapping GoPros onto their dogs for a while now, but that mostly gives owners an idea of how their pet spends their day, with no regard to the pet’s preferences. Nikon offers a glimpse into what dogs might actually be excited by. As the centerpiece of Nikon Asia’s Heartography campaign, the video does an excellent job showing how photography comes from the heart– especially in Grizzler’s case, where this is more than metaphorical.

Watch the full video here.

What Sparks Our Fire: A viral brand video that gives us an excuse to watch a cute dog take photos

Creating awareness for health issues often relies on the visibility of the issue in public life. While Alzheimer’s is normally shown in the media as an old-age disease, the movie ‘Still Alice’ took on the nearly unimaginable task of depicting the early onset Alzheimer’s disease of a vibrant 50 year old woman. Starring Julianne Moore as Alice, the film created a great PR push for Alzheimer’s by showing rather than telling. The audience watches as Alice, a Type-A Columbia professor, slowly loses her ability to function on her own.

By making the film authentic and relatable, and casting the inimitable Julianne Moore, the movie was able to bring public awareness to Alzheimer’s disease. After the release of the film, there were many conversations about Alzheimer’s on all social media platforms, and continued press (print, TV, online, etc.) furthered the conversation about the disease. Non-profit organizations that support Alzheimer’s disease gained more traction, creating a win-win for everyone. Films that help bring visibility and empathy to diseases are incredibly powerful, and we can always use more movies like this in the world.

Who would’ve thought that the best depiction of the startup world would come in the form of an HBO comedy? But according to many insiders, ‘Silicon Valley’ is just that. ‘Silicon Valley’ follows the trials and tribulations of fictional Pied Piper, a small startup with a killer algorithm for data compression, as it competes head-to-head with a mega-company looking to do the same thing. Relying on a real life group of friends and comedians as it’s stars, ‘Silicon Valley’ is not only interesting and accurate, but really, really funny.

I love the show because it takes concepts I understand from work and school, and depicts them in the most hilarious settings. For instance, Sunday night’s episode began with the CFO teaching the team about SWOT analyses for business decision making. The team later uses the concept for a personal situation so insane I’ll just have to recommend watching it for yourself.

This weekend I took my grandson to see Disney’s ‘Monkey Kingdom,’ a nature documentary that follows a mother and her newborn baby monkey as they fight the fight to survive within their own social hierarchy and from attacking monkey forces from the outside. These ever resourceful monkeys come up with all sorts clever ways to fight the fight…they lose their kingdom, retreat to the city to heal their wounds and come back to win and move on to another day.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it? An unintended, but powerful reaffirmation of what we do every day in the agency world. Thanks for reminding me of our madness in your own clever way, monkeys.

Nothing can ruin a morning as quickly as a rain storm. Fortunately, Peregrine Church thought of a clever way to get rain to make people smile instead. The Seattle based artist created rain-activated street art (or, to be specific, ground art) that can only be seen after the rain has soaked into the ground, and named it Rainworks!

After watching Youtube videos that showed red wine rolling straight down a person’s white clothes, Peregrine found out that this was possible because of a super hydrophobic coating that prevented the absorption of liquids. Inspired, Peregrine decided to take some stencils to the street and test out his bio-degradable and environmentally safe hydrophobic coating spray. The formula sat invisibly on top of the concrete during dry weather, and prevented the ground from absorbing water during rain storms.

Much like the recent appearance of moss graffiti, Peregrine’s Rainworks! uses (mostly) natural elements to create art in unexpected places. And while this street art is only legal in because it is not used for advertising, we think brands can find inspiration in the way Peregrine innovated on existing technology and used it in the most creative possible way.

What Sparks Our Fire: Repurposing existing technology in new and creative ways