News
Just The Beginning | Tarim | Altern8Exhibiting at a showcase event means don't get to see a lot of what other people are doing. (Could the other teams run the event again so I can wander round, please?) We finally settled on Instant Graffiti as the demonstration of PTTP. Instant Graffiti allows the audience to draw in light, etch-a-sketch style, on a building. Richard (who did a great job producing code at short notice and without complaining that I'd just changed the spec … again) even managed to fit a two point perspective scheme in so the lines of light follow the lines of the building. We couldn't find a small building inside the Watershed to project on - so we had to use a back projection to convey the idea.
The PTTP tribute to Friedrich Hundertwasser. I think the idea fits well with his concept of "window rights" - although he might not have been so keen on all the straight lines.
Although this is the end of the Sandbox project - for PTTP it's just the beginning. The next stage is to look at running some Instant Graffiti Parties to encourage people to play and write some interesting games for it. Keep an eye on the Sandbox lists for dates and on www.mediaplaygrounds.co.uk
Many thanks go to all the Media Sandboxers: Clare, Emma, the panels, the other projects and the many people I've talked to - for seeing the potential in PTTP. Without you, it would still just be an idea knocking around in my head that, although clear to me, seemed too difficult to explain. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement. Publicly controllable fountains, and a whole lot more, are now one step closer
What do you do with the protocol that does everything? | Tarim | Altern8What do you do with the protocol that does everything? The answer, "anything you want", is decidedly unhelpful. PTTP is a tool - but how do you present that tool to people? Having been immersed in the design and programming side of things - the temptation is to try to show off all the technical features. But most people aren't really interested in the, "how do I do this with it", especially when they don't know what it is yet. What they want to know is, "what's it for" and, more importantly, "is it any use to me?". (Many thanks to Clare for some useful steering here. And also Dan Efergan, who said something similar to me many months ago - only I'd forgotten.)
In practice, this means we're concentrating on a simple playground, inspired by Etch-a-Sketch, which allows people to draw all over a building. That's drawing in light, with a projector, so it rubs off easily. There are also still many interesting things to look at with Joanie's VJ mapping and Richard is looking at some games that can be played on a projection system.
We're in the fortunate position of having far more ideas than we have time to implement (see http://wiki.mediaplaygrounds.co.uk - so a lot of those will have to wait until after the showcase. We also need a good name for drawing on buildings in light - I bet "digital graffiti" has already been overused.
Projections | Tarim | Altern8Just a quick update. There's so much going on in the PTTP world at the moment - it's hard to find time to blog about it.
Jon has been really busy on other projects (which I really wish I had time to play!) So, although we have every hope of having a 3D cube to play with in the final showcase, we are going to make our primary demonstration a projection playground.
Richard has joined the team and is writing the drivers for the projection and also working on a controllable "video identikit" playground. This allows people to mix different gurning faces on a projection. More on this later…
The advantage of a projection playground is that, time permitting, we can easily drop in other things to play with. Currently under investigation we have an animated collage, a visual consequences game and the possibility for you to play with some of Joanie's VJ mapping.
We have a test harness for the projection playground up and running. So, if you fancy writing a quick playground then get in touch. (Technically, the projection playground is driven by Flash through its XML socket interface which are controlled from HTML forms.)
Cubism | Tarim | Altern8The PTTP Sandbox project is intended to prove a concept, initially by controlling a LED light matrix. As Chris, who's providing some great assistance to the project, pointed out - you can't actually prove a queuing system if people don't think your demo is worth queuing for. And that's the problem - LED light matrices are boring.
Or they were until I had a conversation with Jon (Licorice Film). Jon is interested in building 3D LED cubes. This gives LED matrices a whole new dimension! (sorry). People have made some really interesting light cubes - but none have been controlled by the public - yet.
Here are a few videos of cubes in action, to give you an idea of the possibilities.
A simple 8×8x8 LED cube:
The Yacht box:
And for the really over the top, Cubatron:
The next question is, where can I buy one? (Or do I have to dig my soldering iron out?)
Power To The People Needs You | Tarim | Altern8Power To The People has been given full status as one of the six Media Sandbox projects - so now it's full steam ahead.
Have you ever thought about the engineering and design involved in creating a Lego brick? Do you know the tolerance required for the injection mould used to make a brick? (One thousandth of a millimeter.) Do you care? The vast majority of people would rather just play with Lego.
So how does this relate to PTTP? The engineering and design for PTTP is well under way. What the project needs; is someone to join the team to let people know what it's about without boring the pants off them with the precision engineering behind it. Someone to describe what its benefits are, without all the detail about how it does it.
The whole philosophy behind the project is one of sharing and enabling people to be creative - are you interested in being a part of that?
