On March 31st, the six Media Sandbox projects came together at the Midway Showcase to present their progress to an audience. Within a ten minute timeframe, each group gave a whistle-stop tour of their project's concept, research approach and learnings so far.
What came across clearly was the distinct character of each project, so that even within similar subject matter, the content and approach could differ substantially. Take Harmonize and Swarm, for example, both multiplayer, event-based street games. Harmonise is driven by Licorice Film's trademark fantastical, narrative-driven plots, as developed from previous ARGs Meigeist and The Sky Remains. Swarm is born from a theory based approach, putting into practice existing academic theory on the nature of human collaborations and interaction.
Each project was candid about how their research has informed their end product, explaining the often unexpected findings had offered potential for new directions. Happy Towns found that canvassing Bristolians' opinion to attitudes to digital media has lead to them to take a gentle approach to delivery of pervasive media, with content acting as prompts, rather than bombarding users. Power to the People was initially conceived of as public control of the city centre fountains, but within the practicalities of budget and timescale, the final demonstration is likely to be a proof of concept piece - potentially a bespoke LED cube.
The first inklings as to what the final projects might look like were unveiled with demonstration pieces. HMC & Aardman revealed a two-way mirror which uses iris tracking to superimpose an Aardman character onto the reflection of the observer. Thought Pie took the opportunity to test their Happy Packages SMS moodmatcher service on the audience, delivering event suggestions from Venue Magazine directly to your phone.
Listen in on the evening with this podcast, or check out the individual presentations at the links below:
Happy Packages | Thought Pie
Happy Towns | Plot London & BDH
Power to the People | Tarim
Harmonize| Licorice Film
Swarm | Simon Evans and Simon Johnson
Physical Cartooning | Aardman & HMC
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