If your 2010 resolution is to spend more time with your family and closest friends, you may want to forget your virtual world friends and consider ‘digital suicide’, with help from Suicide Machine. Known as the Digitas of the virtual world, Suicide Machine allows those who are fed up of being poked, tweeted at, and linked to on their social networks to remove all trace of themselves online in just a couple of clicks. The process takes a total of 53 minutes, rather than the 9 hours it would take to do manually. The user is visually navigated through their network to view all traces of their digital self – friends, photos and messages, being erased. Watching the delete process forms the cliché of seeing your ‘digital life’ flash before your own eyes. After that, the only trace of one’s virtual existence is the testimonials on the company’s website. Facebook have banned the use of the service on their site, but Suicide Machine are exploring ways of getting around the blockers and appealing for support from fans of the service. Interestingly, one of the main reasons consumers opt for services such as this is because they grow to despise their digital self.

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One of our favourite graphic artists Anthony Burrill, is exhibiting this month in Shoreditch as part of the annual If You Could Collaborate exhibition. The exhibition aims to provide a platform for the finest creatives from all over the world to work with a partner from any profession and produce something a bit unexpected. There is no brief to answer, or format to honour, and a liberal 12 month deadline. Anthony chose astronomer John Griffiths, and the combination has led to a set of perspex “abstract representations of celestial bodies in conjunction”, or graphical representations of chance encounters in space to you or me. Other collaborations featured in the exhibition include a flatpack rocking chair by Rob Ryan and furniture designer Michael Marriott, and a new world in the form of an oversized flag co-created by Cheap Monday’s Karl Grandin and Dutch fashion designers And Beyond.

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If noughties aesthetics were defined by size zero culture, then we have a theory that the 2010s will be known for ‘eroticised athleticism’. With the onset of obesity, the food crisis, and an ageing population, combined with the impact of the recession, science and the 2012 Olympics, the cult of thin is becoming less desirable and the superhuman, augmented physique of the athlete, the emerging global aesthetic. In other words, Luisel Ramos starved, out, lives-in-the-gym David Gandy, in. It’s no coincidence that Gandy (the muscly hunk from the D&G Light Blue perfume ad) is the world’s most successful male model right now. According to fan Mario Testino, Gandy’s body “radiates health and positivity”, which is exactly right for the times. Fashion is driving this trend by giving sport an image makeover and sex appeal, and no brand has done more than bodycon temple American Apparel. Sports aesthetics are crucial to sports participation, according to the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, which reports that 23% of women say PE at school put them off sport for life and ugly and uncomfortable PE kits are the main culprit. The World Health Organisation’s new stance on tackling the obesity epidemic supports the athletic trend, stating that we should focus less on restricting diet, and more on promoting exercise as a counterbalance. A report by The Future Laboratory, looking back at the world in 2020, brings to life our prediction. It reads: “After Gareth Pugh invited South African Paralympian athlete Oscar Pistorius down his 2020 spring/summer catwalk and People magazine dubbed a bionic Madonna the most beautiful woman alive, superhuman became the new aesthetic. Skinny was out, athletic was in. This had its roots in the ‘bodycon’ effect of the 2012 Olympics and the backlash against skinny models. Teenage girls started to lift weights rather than puke up their lunches. Kate Moss developed a six-pack and revealed her ultimate beauty secret to be high-protein egg whites. Anabolic steroids were the heroin chic of the 2020 fashion industry. Plastic surgeons and personal fitness trainers were the aesthetes and pop stars of the day.”

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Inspired by an imaginary voyage to Shanghai by Coco Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld has written and directed a mythical short film called Paris Shanghai, to showcase her (alleged) unrealised dream to visit China. Lagerfeld supposes that in Shanghai Chanel would have swapped her tweed jacket for a Mao version, gone gambling with the Duchess of Windsor, seen Marlene Dietrich in cabaret, and taken tea with the emperor, as well as make friends with a young Chinese couple and dress them up in her clothes and perfume. The film is being used to promote the Chinese-inspired Métier D’Arts Collection, featuring Chanel interpretations of the Terracotta Army. Lagerfeld unveiled his collection on an 85 metre-long barge on the Huangpu River in Shanghai, appropriately today the site of a new Chanel boutique. This branded content follows a slew of Chanel biopics all extending the Chanel myth and brand world. For Part 2 of the movie, click here.

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To promote their sci-fi re-working of Alice in Wonderland, the Syfy Channel (formerly the Sci-Fi Channel) and Fallon Minneapolis have created a gloriously intriguing campaign that urges people to ‘follow the white rabbit’ on and off line. In their version, Carroll’s fluffy white bunny is reinvented as a dark-suited assassin hired by the Queen of Hearts. The result is an always-on campaign with several touchpoints across the web, social media and out-of home. A Twitter stream led users to mischievous banner ads where visitors were surprised to see the White Rabbit bounding from the confines of his ad space across site content. The curious were then prompted to click and follow him to fake microsites, such as the Happy Hearts Casino and the Wonderland Tea Shop. By night, larger-than-life video projections of White Rabbits mysteriously appeared darting across buildings. The experience culminated with 50 members of White Rabbit Inc. complete with suits and big porcelain rabbit heads, hunting Alice and the Hatter across the New York City, handing out Alice playing cards asking, “Have you seen this pair?” The White Rabbits then marched onto Union Square where they performed a choreographed “step” dance routine. Such a campaign makes the TV show Alice unmissable (it attracted a record 2.5m viewers), as well as taking a great idea as far as possible.

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