Official Vibram Five Fingers Bikila Microsite: You Are the Technology dot com

By Justin Owings on Jul 26, 2010 | In general | 18 comments »

Vibram has just (via an 8AM press release today, July 26, 2010) launched a Vibram Five Fingers Bikila micro-site at the domain YouAreTheTechnology.com! I didn't make that link active for a reason:

Before you go madly rushing off to YouAreTheTechnology.com, let me tell you just a wee bit more!

I'll be "brief:" it's an awesomely provocative website: bold, brazen, edgy, and bare. For you office dwellers: it's NSFW (Hence, the warning). I'll show what I mean via a screencap of what you'll find at YouAreTheTechnology.com after the jump!

Note: The screencap is also NSFW, but at least a little smaller, so office dwellers proceed with caution!

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A screen capture from Vibram's micro-site for the Five Fingers Bikila running shoe, YouAreTheTechnology.com.

Birthday suits and birthday shoes — it was bound to happen eventually, I suppose!

So what do we have here? Or what don't we have? Once you head over to YouAreTheTechnology.com and load the site (Be patient on the loading, the Flash requires a decent Internet connection), you'll see Adam and Eve here, standing against a black backdrop, periodically fidgeting a bit and stealing the occasional glance at each other.

They aren't wearing any clothes, obviously — well, except for the toe shoes, which are the Five Fingers Bikilas, of course! More tellingly, once you get over the nudity, what you'll find at YouAreTheTechnology.com is a narrative about natural running. The narrative, which is the same on both the man and the woman (though it's got some nuances for each), starts simply enough:

"You know how to run just like you know how to sneeze, how to chew — you know how to run."

There's a lot more to be found at the microsite. Just a few pointers on the interactive-ness of it all:

From the main splash page (as in the screen capture above), you can click on the male or female to zoom in and read the writing.
Once zoomed in, you can scroll up and down.
As you're scrolling, you might notice your cursor turn into a finger-pointing cursor — that means you can click. Clicks will then reveal more narrative by spinning Adam or Eve around to some other part of the story.

Just as an example, once in the site, look for "soft things that make you soft" and click, but remember: NSFW!
Once at these sub-narratives, click again to zoom back to the super-narrative.
To zoom out to the topmost level, just tap the "Vibram fivefingers" stamp in the bottom left corner.

So go poke around YouAreTheTechnology.com and then come back here and let's talk about it.

I'll kick it off. I dig what Vibram has done with this site. You have to appreciate just how different this is from just about everything else out there. Surf around to some mainstream running shoe websites and you'll find a bunch of shoes. Comparatively, here the Bikila is downplayed — after all, you are the technology, right? Sure, it's the punchline as you scroll down the nude narrative, but on pure screen real estate alone, it's almost an afterthought. It's also significant that, Vibram logo and "loading screen aside," the site employs no fonts whatsoever. Everything is handwritten or painted on the naked canvas of the human figure. When you think about it, the juxtaposition sets in contrast the bare human body against the one article of clothing that is present — the shoes. The very thing the site is promoting.

A thought provoking mash-up, no?

What do you think? Let's hear it: Love it? Hate it? What other stuff did you find by clicking around?

Sound off below in the comments!

About the Author — I founded BirthdayShoes.com in April 2009 on realizing just how much I enjoyed having "free feet" - I mostly wanted to use them for weights, sprints, and plyometrics (I'm not much of a runner!). I'm a Googler by day and minimalist footwear aficionado by night; you can find me 'round Atlanta. If you want to catch up with what I'm doing outside of the site here, follow me on twitter @bdayshoes or @justinno or check out my personal site JustinOwings.com.
Justin Owings+ has written 712 articles and 260 comments.