Space Chair

November 18, 2009 12:43 AM

Armchair Viewing
posted by vronsky (30 comments total)

Nice ad. Sucks for whoever got hit with bit bits of chair hurtling from 98,268 feet, though.
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 12:51 AM on November 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

(bit bits are similar to regular bits, only chair-ier and more deadly)
posted by Captain Cardanthian! at 12:52 AM on November 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Making of vid. It's a balsa chair weighing less than four pounds coming down in the desert, so not too dangerous. I'm wondering what kind of chair they mocked up. It looks a bit like a dux chair.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:06 AM on November 18, 2009

I can see the strings.
posted by GavinR at 1:36 AM on November 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Thank you for advertising on Metafilter. Invoice to follow.
posted by Muirwylde at 2:01 AM on November 18, 2009

Perfect for the armchair traveller.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:03 AM on November 18, 2009

That Toshiba ad looked almost as awesome on my Dell™ 24" monitor as it did on my Sony™ 22" monitor*.
*monitors powered by NVidia GForce 9500GT - Windows® Vista® Ulimate™
posted by mattoxic at 3:10 AM on November 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

credit where it’s due : Simon Faithfull, escape vehicle number 6
posted by silence at 3:12 AM on November 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

According to mefi's own dabitch, he actually got paid to work on this ad.
posted by idiopath at 3:18 AM on November 18, 2009

err. I meant dabitch
posted by idiopath at 3:20 AM on November 18, 2009

weird... http://adland.tv/ works in preview but keeps failing to link.
posted by idiopath at 3:22 AM on November 18, 2009

... took just 24 minutes to fall back down to earth with the rig.

So that's how long it would take you or I to fall from a height of 98,000 feet: a half hour of soaring, tumbling, skylarking, mid-air somersaults, landscape admiring and stratospheric woolgathering, time to contemplate the narrowness of our trajectory and the immensity of the view, before time rushed back, and we were dashed to droplets on the hard pan of the desert. Time: the length of a sitcom or the average commute.
posted by Faze at 3:44 AM on November 18, 2009 [4 favorites]

bit bits of chair

I saw them open for Sigue Sigue Sputnik in London back in '87.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 3:51 AM on November 18, 2009

and we were dashed to droplets on the hard pan of the desert.

Due to the sparseness of air up there, we'd likely have passed out or died before we even started our descent. However, assuming that we don't need to breathe, terminal velocity (about 120 mph) in Earth's atmosphere can be reached in roughly 6 seconds. While that still means certain death, aside from 1-2 freak cases where people survived falling out of planes, the extra height won't contribute to a human splashing/vaporizing/cratering upon impact any more than falling from a bridge or skyscraper.

In fact, if it weren't for that pesky "breathing" thing, an ant or mouse might even survive the fall. Air resistance and terminal velocity are neat things.
posted by explosion at 4:14 AM on November 18, 2009

At that height, every velocity is terminal.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:37 AM on November 18, 2009

But 33,000 feet might not be.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:27 AM on November 18, 2009

Hey, Toshiba, there is this cool software thingy that all the kids are using these days called "Photoshop" and you can use it to make a chair look like it is in space without the space balloon rig or $4000 fake chair! It's awesome!
posted by Pollomacho at 5:44 AM on November 18, 2009

Hey, Toshiba, there is this cool software thingy that all the kids are using these days called "Photoshop" and you can use it to make a chair look like it is in space without the space balloon rig or $4000 fake chair! It's awesome!

Making a cool Photoshop is less likely to get you on Metafilter, Reddit, BoingBoing, etc.
posted by explosion at 5:58 AM on November 18, 2009

Hey, Toshiba, there is this cool software thingy that all the kids are using these days called "Photoshop" and you can use it to make a chair look like it is in space without the space balloon rig or $4000 fake chair! It's awesome!

But not as awesome as, you know, actually floating a chair and camera rig to the edge of space.
posted by spikeleemajortomdickandharryconnickjrmints at 5:58 AM on November 18, 2009 [3 favorites]

That was no Leonid meteor shower last night. It was a chair.
posted by Xurando at 6:00 AM on November 18, 2009

Thanks idiopath for trying to get that link to stick (#perma)... Youknow, I'm not even sure, this is what Toshiba says;
....Grey London collaborated with a number of talented individuals, including British artist Simon Faithfull, to re-create the concept of launching a generic chair into space....
So it does sound like Simon got paid for the gig and was well aware of his art going commercial, but then they only said that after people prompted the question by accusing them of stealing the idea - it was not mentioned in the release posted Nov 16 at all. And in that making of video, they start out by saying that they're "trying something that's never been done before"...
I think Simon got paid, but it also looks like they didn't want to share credit where it was due, which seems rather silly.
posted by dabitch at 6:07 AM on November 18, 2009

Pepsi Blue Planet
posted by ymgve at 7:02 AM on November 18, 2009

I always knew Burning Man would go commercial.
posted by mrgrimm at 8:14 AM on November 18, 2009

Wow. All that was missing from this were the wings on the chair.
posted by bearwife at 10:05 AM on November 18, 2009

What I find interesting in this piece is the way that the chair, released from the bonds gravity, and from the constraints of its earthly context, transforms into the Platonic ideal of "chair" as it hovers at the edge of space. And while it is obvious that the Faithfull piece was an inspiration for the work, there may have been others. Lawnchair Larry for instance.
posted by vronsky at 10:10 AM on November 18, 2009

I didn't think of the Plato reference. There's a sort of decent summary of the Theory of Forms here.
posted by bearwife at 10:52 AM on November 18, 2009

According to mefi's own dabitch, he actually got paid to work on this ad.

Dabitch commented on the stunt here. But she doesn't say she actually worked on it. She thinks Simon Faithfull might have gotten paid.
posted by beagle at 12:36 PM on November 18, 2009

So that's how long it would take you or I to fall from a height of 98,000 feet: a half hour of soaring, tumbling, skylarking, mid-air somersaults, landscape admiring and stratospheric woolgathering, time to contemplate the narrowness of our trajectory and the immensity of the view, before time rushed back, and we were dashed to droplets deployed our black and sliver parachutes in time to slow our mad descent to the gentle drift of a feather and so set our boots on the hard pan of the desert, jump into our awaiting Bugatti, where our lovely girlfriend (or boyfriend) is waiting with a glass of very rare and very delightful Champagne, and we will drive across that forsaken desert at 200 MPH looking longingly at one another and the credits begin to roll and *TV EYE* by the Stooges plays on the car stereo system.


Fade to black.
posted by Skygazer at 12:37 PM on November 18, 2009

More info: via pocket-lint

"Simon was absolutely part of the team. We were obviously inspired by what he had done", answered McDowell when questioned about the 2004 recording, but how does a company which prides itself on innovation align its slogan with a project that is clearly a near copy of something done 5 years ago?

"We weren't saying that the innovation was sending the balloon up. No one had done it in HD before and not as an advert before. We didn't use a music sound track or any celebrity voices. That's the innovation. The fact that we created it as an advert".

posted by dabitch at 2:40 AM on November 20, 2009 [1 favorite]

Five thousand bucks for a balsawood chair? Apparently Toshiba knows more bankers than prop masters.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:27 PM on November 29, 2009