News
Comfort of Strangers in NYC | Clare | NewsSimon Evans and Simon Johnson took Comfort of Strangers, a street game using wifi and handheld devices developed as part of Media Sandbox, to Come out and Play Festival in New York City this month. Read their blog of the visit here, or watch the film:
March Media Sandbox Newsletter | Clare | NewsMedia Sandbox projects' progress
As ever, you can read each project’s journal on the Media Sandbox website, but here’s a round up of their progress over the last month.
Three months into the Media Sandbox scheme and the projects are really taking shape: a solid and supportive project community has sprung up – aided by a majority of the projects working from the same space at the Pervasive Media Studio and by regular meet ups. Some exciting common ground between the projects has emerged through an interesting discussion at one of our evening salon dinner catch ups.
Thought Pie are pursuing four products with their Happy Packages project, all centred around pushing content relating to the concept of happiness to mobile phone users. Their dilemma is negotiating a balance between unsolicited but smile-enducing surprise packages and bombarding unsuspecting users to the point of Pervasive Fatigue.
This concern over the turn-off that is spamming has also been preoccupying Plot London and BDH, who have completed their Happy Towns research into what makes Bristolians happy – geeks and technophobes alike. They are similarly juggling the complexities between pushy advertising and surprise content which gets the conversation going.
Aardman and HMC are exploiting the idea of the ‘surprise attack’ and are researching magic mirrors to bring Aardman’s characters to life in the real world. Who knows what reflection you might see when you pass a shop window soon… Having been researching iris tracking and lip synching Processing techniques they couldn’t help but put some of Simon Evans and Simon Johnson’s swarm theories to the test.
Swarm have been trialling their game concepts on the Pervasive Media Studio residents and at iglab, and have been discovering how physical games can unlock the urban environment. Watch this video to see the city centre invaded by HollaLuLu players.
All useful research for Altern8 who is exploring the public’s interaction with public art installations to enable the city’s potential as a playground. Jon from Licorice Film has been working with Tarim to realise a concept for the demonstration piece. For a really impressive example of their LED cube inspiration click here.
Licorice Film have fleshed out the concept for their multiplayer game Harmonize - an intricate plot involving dreams escaping into the real world. You will be able to play the game at Watershed in May – more details to follow.
Midway Showcase Event
You are invited to hear from each of the projects and ask your questions at the midway showcase event. Each project will be speaking about their experience and findings to date, and it will be a great opportunity to meet up with others interested in pervasive media. Book your place now.31 March | 6 - 7.30 pm | Watershed
Also, make a note in your diary of the Final Showcase event where you will have a chance to see the results of the scheme.
6 May | 6pm | WatershedYour input
As well as reading the journals online we would encourage you to add your suggestions and thoughts. This is not a closed research process and the projects will respond to your comments.We have set up a tag for delicious so if you see a useful website, please include the tag 'mediasandbox'. There is also a flickr group and a youtube channel to add pictures or video. This will help build a body of knowledge from which everyone can benefit.
The next newsletter will be in a month, bringing you updates from the next journal entries and more news about the events.
All the best,
Emma Scott and the Media Sandbox team
http://www.mediasandbox.co.ukMedia Sandbox is managed by iShed working with South West Screen with support from South West Regional Development Agency, Business Link and Watershed.
Media Sandbox final showcase | Clare | NewsMedia Sandbox 2008 wrapped up on Tuesday 6 May, bringing the fruits of the projects' labour over the last six months to an audience including funders, press, academics and creative and technology industry professionals.
With the projects' prototypes on show, it was clear that products and opportunities are far-ranging in the emerging realm of pervasive media. Each project reinforced the idea that pervasive media offers an opportunity for the user to be in control, accessing information when they want to, how they want to and where they want to.
Happy Towns' research lead them to the idea of 'slow technology'. Subtle, personalised and an antidote to indescriminate spam marketing, their prototype wearables work like interactive charm bracelets reacting only when they come into contact with a known friends'. At the other end of the spectrum, Swarms' urban game, The Comfort of Strangers, uses pervasive media to connect people who don't know each other.
Power to the People also took to the streets, aiming to make public art installations accessible to the public: PTTP's proof of concept was an 'etch-a-sketch' projection with which the public could use a variety of platforms (mobile, web browser etc) to 'draw' on a building. Aardman and HMC created a "magic mirror", through which a 3D world of Chop Socky Chooks was revealed, moving to align with the audiences' viewing position. And Licorice Film offered a tantalising alternative vision of urban reality in their game Harmonise which will be held at Watershed 17-19 May.
At the end of the event, industry panel judges Paul Appleby (BBC), Sam Ingleby (Intellect) and Dan Sutch (Futurelab) awarded Thought Pie a further £8,000 to take forward the Happy Packages project to develop their four strand approach to bring happy mobile 'gifts' to Bristolians.
There was a further award of £1,000 and a month residency at the Pervasive Media Studio to Wonky, who were judged by the present Media Sandbox participants to have the best new pervasive media idea in a heated Pecha Kucha competition. Wonky will investigate the viability of SSTV - using CCTV footage to make a map of Bristol's Street Sports available via mobile phones.
Congratulations to all the projects on their hardwork and creativity.
If you couldn't make the Showcase, we're currently editing a video from interviews caught at the event, which we will soon make available on our website.
Sign up now to play Harmonize | Clare | NewsHave you been chatting to giant snowmen in college green? Or chasing robots around Bristol centre recently? No? Then you’ve not yet played Harmonise…
Harmonise is an experimental GPS-based team game which has been created by Licorice as part of Media Sandbox. Teams must work together in a race against the clock, harmonising virtual and physical actions to overcome the challenges of the environment. Once the time is up, the team’s score is recorded and posted to an online league table for all to see. It is free to play and will take about an hour to experience.
For more info or to register a team to play at Watershed, Bristol UK between 17th and 19th of May 2008, visit www.harmonise-game.co.uk/
Midway Event - Review and sound files | Emma | NewsOn 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
