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.
