Catching Up

It has been some time since we updated our AI blog as most of our activity this year is focused on http://hello-tree.com/news/

Things in the AI office are quiet... Matt Watkins has been focusing much of his time on Mudlark activities and Chromaroma in particular, from the Big Smoke (which is a little bit literal at the moment after this crazy weekend of rioting on the streets of London) although keeps the vision and ideas true to Active Ingredient's aesthetic and conceptual form. I share my time between AI's office and the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham where I am also doing a PhD.

Rebecca Lee, artist, consultant and educator who has shared our office with us for several years has now officially come on board to support project management, public engagement and generally keep us all sane. Robin Shackford still makes it all happen with his amazing creative and technical brain power.

Silvia Leal is working with us from Rio and London, bridging and creating dialogues as well as adding her own artistic conceptual and strongly aesthetic ideas into the Active Ingredient mix.

Through my work now at the University of Nottingham I have linked up with Mark Selby and Mike Golembowski who are supporting A Conversation Between Trees, helping out with building our C02 scorching machine and new sensors to put in trees in UK and Brazil forests.

This period of time has become very much about dialogues with people and locations... ongoing conversations happening not only between the data collected from forests but also with scientists, Carlo Buontempo from the UK Met office; other artists; young people and teachers and visitors to our exhibitions.

Exploding Places is still on the back burner. Matt is keeping the ideas and funding opportunities ticking over in the hope that we can develop the game... it seems now a bit prophetic and all the more important to keep exploring the ideas around communities, their survival, their tipping points at this time.

Keep Watching...