Spanish, Open Source, Spanish, Citilab

My head is still ringing from yesterdays onslaught of Spanish. The conference has no translation although Flavio and Alberto have made a big effort to sit next to us and translate but I have a feeling we have missed quite a bit.

Citilab is pretty impressive, a large old factory made into a technology lab that has as its remit a commitment to work with local citzens (that seems to much more of an empowering word than "community" which feels spoilt by years of soft touch community arts in the UK), conduct research, a conference programme, workshops and a huge amount of resources including large touch screens and arduino and lego mindstorm robot areas to play and develop. They seem very well funded and have only been going a year which explains some of the lack of organisation i have experienced and also the small audience yesterday.

The event is interesting (what I understand of it) and as often with these gatherings is held together by the high qaulity of the speakers. Flavio from Ars Games (I am learning not to giggle like only the english seem to at bottom, fart and poo references) and Alberto from Movilfest (a mobile phone film festival) are really interesting and knowledgable and are leading some very exciting stuff here in Spain. I didn't realise Spain spends the least money on culture in Europe and Barcelona the least of the Spanish cities, not what you would expect from a city full of sculpture, architecture and renowned for its beauty, music and well culture...

It seems the games industry in Spain has been stopped just as it was starting due to the economic situtation but investments such as Citilab must have great potential to support a new generation of innovators, artists and developers.

The speakers included Hernan from "the industry", who created a virtual world KTK with Telefonica, very early on. He has a Uruguyaun accent and speaks very fast and heated and i can't understand a word he says but he is also the vitality of the event. Yesterday evening involved pizza and a huge shouting rotating arguement about open source versus commercial enterprise, it was hilarious despite only understanding 20%, Leia kindly translated the key shouting matches and I attempted to throw some things into the bag, all in good humour. Being in Spain reminds me of my family and Jewish tempermants, the loud politicial shouting matches i grew up with so I am right at home.

Next was an interesting psychologist who is looking at game players behaviour, he did touch on gender but I felt he needed to make the gender issue much clearer from the start as you can't make general statements about gaming behaviour without taking on board who the majority of (video) gamers tend to be, mind you I was only cathcing 75% of this talk so maybe I missed this. One interesting point he made was about men's identity (and maybe more so in Spain) and the ability for men to define their identity in society is much more limited than for women, therefore they respond to the profiling, pretending you are something else, role play, play within games as a release of this constraint they have.

I was next and it seemed to go ok although my laptop failed me and crashed hopelessly half way through which made me speed through some of our projects in a vain attempt to get my flow back. So I think people were a little confused, i think it was brought back by questions and Matt Davenport joined in to save the day which was really good and nice to have a fresh view as ever of our work.

The final speaker was Joan Leandre who I know from the really inspiring Velvet Strike he comes from an old school hacker (although he says hacker has now been assimilated by the main stream) open source activist tradition but his research and work with shoot em up / war games is still or even more so incredibly valid and interesting. Had some ideas for education games based on real world events as a response to the horrifyingly cynical Kuma reality war games.

The day ended with a networked wine tasting event upstairs as part of an Innovate Camp for the Mediterranean. This is how I like my technology. Lots of very good expensive wine to taste, cameras streaming the event and laptops to twitter your views... and lots of delicious smelly local cheese. Heaven.

Matt D was exhausted as Kat had kept him up all night talking so he returned to Barca and Maria and Flavio kindly offered to pay for me to have another night in the hotel so I didn't need to cart my bags across town. They have offered to try and change my flights so I dont miss the conference this afternoon and I really want to hear Rebecca Cannon, creator of Killing Yourself and Artbase in Melbourne talk.

day 1

The hotel here is smart, with a pool and large bathrooms. We dropped our bags off and headed back to town to meet Kat and her dog Wimbo. We walked through old streets looking for a restaurant terrace that would accomodate a vegetarian, a vegan, a non veg and a vegan dog. eventually convinced a particularly narky pizza restaurant owner to give us a table and avoid little Wimbo getting eaten by a very large terrotorial dog. Had amazing pizza and wandered back to flat.

Mobile Cell, Barcelona

I am amazingly off again. This time we are in Barcelona, although Matt is back at HQ, left in the on/off Spring of the UK whilst Matt the 2nd (Davenport) and I are living it up in one of the most beautiful cities of Europe... and my is it pretty and hot. I am a little confused about the conference where I am due to talk and was told the wrong dates which has happily given us a day off in the sun, to be tourists and go to the beach! Finally we get the day on the beach promised to us in Brazil and never realised!

Woke up to a perfect day. Slept at Matt's friends house in end last night as I missed the last train back to the hotel. Sitting on balcony watching seagulls swarm around an ancient church tower. the bell ringing every 15minutes. Waiting for Kat and Matt to return with a Spanish breakfast of tomatos, garlic olive oil on toast. There the bell goes again, the seagulls respond with their calls and swallows have now began to swarm. Like our Mudlark logo. They are beautiful and simple and they sqwark in tuneful rounds competing with the reggae playing in the flat, the TVs and music from the many balconies surrounding the yard below.

Yesterday we arrived to sun and warmth. In his excitement Matt decided we should tour the centre with luggage in tow. Was beautiful but hot work with wheelie case and heavy bags. Drunk cerveza and milk shake at the harbour and then found the metro to Playmobile ville, an appropriate vista for an event called Mobile Cell. Complete with sticklebrick style trees and boxes made of ticky tacky. this new urban sprawl is in complete contrast to the old centre of Barcelona with it's ornate decorative iron work, magnificant art deco, gaudi mosica, sculptural gargoyle laden edifices. Modern art, graffiti, bikes, skateboards, old wealth, new punk feel.

Cornella feels like America as new towns do. Since Parralelo I have been noticing more clearly the emergence of the Next Nature concept. The metro hear plays bird song piped into the artificially lit air of the train. As you become older does the present become more like science fiction? Are we preparing ourelves for a time when only artificial birds swarm overhead as we eat processed food supplements for breakfast grown from GM crops?

Running Rings - The Squnkey

While listening to the talks at the Paralelo conference, Brazil. I started to draw these little figures, which refers to a mobile game project that I have been thinking about over the last few weeks. The premis of the game is about creating rings. So I started to think about circles and then an avatar came to mind that is composed of circles and moves in circular way. This made me think of the loping rounded walk of apes. So a sort of ape came about, but then I developed it further and it also started to take on undersea elements. Like a sort of squid, with a bit of monkey in it - A squnkey.

Week 1 - Sao Paulo (Brazil)

Last Day At Paralelo

After the dinner at the house of the head of the British Council here in Sao Paulo we went in search of a night club. after some group mind discussions our splinter group (the rowdy ones as someone named us) discovered a samba club playing live samba and we danced the night away. Again we returned to the hotel and some of us went to the pool and ended up in the sauna. we attempted to watch the sunrise over the skyscrapers but got too tired and in the morning realised we were facing the wrong way anyway.

The next morning was a round up of the workshop and the beginning of the goodbyes with the wonderful group of people that made up paralelo. Lots of collaborations and new ideas have been discussed and good friends made which I hope will continue in the virtual world. I hope that Paralelo can continue as a way for artists around the world to meet to discuss environmental change and the way artists approach, intervene and respond to these changes. It feels very important and a real priveledge to be part of this community and certainly given us a deeper level of understanding of what we can achieve with our work.

I am sure Matt will write about the crazy interview for a brazilian online tv channel, the impromptu visit to the cartoon house and our day with our friend (ex colleague) Capra who somehow manages to turn up wherever we go in the world - so far he has turned up in Singapore, Paris, Cambridge and came with us to San Francisco and Finland… things are always hilarious when he’s around. Him and Matt are swimming in the pool now as I type.

(Rachel)

Days in Pictures

due to lack of sleep caused by trying to watch the sunrise over the sci-fi skyline of sao paulo and more late night swimming on the roof.. i will just upload some photos from last night, the dinner at the head of the British Council which was like a ferraro rocher advert and then samba dancing all night.

Presentations and Caiprinhas

Paralelo has been very intensive and exciting. Full of heated discussions, fascinating presentations and giving us a big leap forward with ideas for the Dark Forest.

I haven’t written for 2 days and so will try and catch up. On Sunday we were introduced to the open workshop process, it is quite basic and in some ways a bit too “free” as some things dont ever happen or get missed out, but in fact it has provided fantasic opportunities to hear about the other projects and artists work as well as discuss some key topics. I kicked off by joining the “How to Love the Future” discussion about what positive approaches artists can have for the future and how maybe it doesn’t need to be all doom and gloom. The is quite a challenging view amongst people here, of accepting were we are and how the environment will be destroyed and looking towards creating “new nature”, how we live in this changed place. It is interesting and fits into the way people appropriate technology to work around changes but I am not ready to admit defeat for nature as it should be as opposed to how we have changed it and I also feel it is difficult in some ways to discuss without ecologists and I am slightly surprised about how few artists are here from a more rural background, particularly amongst the brazilian artists and think these discussions are difficult without this representation.

I wont describe too much more of the discussions as they will be documented elsewhere.

In the evening at the last minute Paulo invited us to go to a launch of the Insitituto Claro. A very strange experience. Me and Dominic went and Matt stayed for the the talks at Paralelo. I was totally under dressed and unprepared for this incredibly smart event in the new museum in the train station, a museum of the Portuguese Language. We walked in and it felt like the scene from Batman when Bruce Wayne hosts a civic event for all the rich people of Gotham City. I kept on expecting the joker to appear, although felt like maybe that was me, standing in the middle of this elegant place in jeans and flip flops. The Minister for Art, Technology and Culture and the Mayor of Sao Paulo were there. We were introduced to lots of important people (including the Minister) and by coincidence had our sensor kit with us so we tested it there and also showed people the funny prototype in a box file (as it is now). Everyone infact appeared very excited about the project and we have 2 meetings next week to present the project in more detail.

Yesterday was mainly spent preparing for our presentation in the evening in the public programme. I took part in one workshop based on the Dutch artists Edo and Luna’s ideas they call conditional design. Their work looks very beautiful and the practical activity was good fun.

The presentation went pretty well I think, although with a restriction of 8 minutes it was hard to talk about anything in any depth. Dominic did a very concise presentation about MRL’s collaborations with artists and then we presented Heartlands in terms of how we work with the academic partners and then build towards engaging public audiences.

After the presentation our exhaustion was transformed by a VJ mix by a Brazilian performer/VJ that was great and firmly put me back into the real world with some banging techno and hilarious mixes about british people celebrating climate change because it will give us a warmer climate, soft porn, pac man, a mix for cockroaches and germany in 1945, random and funny.

We went to a bar and found all the other artists there, ate a vegetable salad full of Palmitos (palm hearts…mmm) and then began a Caiprinha marathon which ended with several of us stripping to our underwear and jumping in the pool on the roof of the hotel (under the stars) and then spending a drunken hour in the sauna. Lots of networking with new people, in the best possible way and some important research into the different types of Caiprinha available… coconut, passion fruit, pineapple, strawberry and melon. Which we shared round each other to the background of samba.

Unsurprisingly, today i’ve been useless although still managed to see Esther’s performance tracking cows and cowboys, which was really nice and also we hosted a session on sensors and interpreting data which sounds dry but wasnt at all mainly because Gisella, Fillipe and Wapke were good fun and had some great ideas. And I drunk Horse Milk!!! Wapke Feenstra’s work looks at farming and villages and her family have a farm producing horse milk that is meant to be good for health, so she gave me some to drink to help my hangover. Strange, a bit like chewing on a piece of grass.

Our first day in Sao Paulo (going back a bit already) was a fantastic Sao Paulo day. It pissed down with tropical rain and so Paulo and Marina decided to take us to a restaurant for feijoada in the rain and enjoy Paulista life with food and many Caiprinhas. We sat and talked in the restaurant on the corner, opposite an empty Starbucks (supposedly it hasn’t taken on here which is good to know) it was a busy busy day. The food was amazing as I remembered, black beans, deep friend banana, manioc flour (farofa), rice, hot chilli sauce. As ever the company was great, and lovely to see Marina again.

We finished the day off (after many caiprinhas) with a drive through Sao Paulo at night, which was exciting, but such an endless city of tall buildings and small buildings and Padarias (cafes on street corners that are more like greasy caffs with lots of people sitting eating and drinking inside and out on the streets). Old men on chairs sitting on the street watching the world, graffiti, traffic jams…

By the time we got back to the hotel and found the other artists that had arrived during the day we were drunk and sleepy, meet up with Dominic (Mixed Reality Lab) and had a sleepy coffee before going to bed. despite the short time difference we are all confused by time, particularly with the onset of british summer time back home.

Next day was an easy-ish 10.30 start with a bus drive (like a school bus) to the museum of image and sound. A beautiful minimal white modern building housing screen based and interactive artworks. we began with an elegant looking brunch (no vegetarian food but im having a break from pure vegetarianism and eating fish with some difficulty) and chatting to people. some really interesting artists from brazil and holland and the uk, some uk people i have wanted to meet for a long time.

after an exercise finding out how we are all connected we returned to the small no vegetarian buffet. Marcelo arrived back from his trip with Esther, tracking cows and cowboys with gps in the centre of brazil.

Paralelo kicked off with a panel discussing environmental arts activity in brazil, quite theoretical to start but a good grounding for the context of the workshop, some interesting debates touching on the indigenous cultures of the Amazon and Mata Atlantica and some potential conflict about difference, across Europe and Brazil as well as internally. It felt quite an urban centric discussion, looking out at nature as opposed to from it. Maybe most artists are working from the cities?

The next panel was lighter but still quite intense, with artist presenting a diverse case study of work, including Koert’s theory on Next Nature, Janet Prophet’s beautiful interactive work and 2 very interesting eco artists residency and living projects in Brazil, from Flavia and Alexander. Also Rombaud’s amazing energy neutral alternative to using lifts in high rise buildings.

A semiconducter film ended the session and a long discussion about where to go for food, the guys getting very desperate to eat immediatly. We were sent off on a strange bus with curtains hiding the driver and in fact got locked in. Finally arrived at a restaurant and squeezed 20 of us in. the waiter was the most effecient calm waiter i have ever seen and managed us all and got food to us in no time, including the biggest salad i have ever seen.

a good meal. nice chance to talk to new people.

Day 1

We are here. It is hot, finally after that big cold winter we have had in the UK! It is familiar here for me as I have been before, but that doesn’t make it any less exciting.

The journey was long and boring. Iberia is not the best airline ive ever flown on, a bit like time travelling rather than world travelling, back to 1992. a flickering telly that i could only just see above the seat in front (and i sat on a cushion) played Australia and Happy Go lucky and the sound crackled in and out. Was happily consoled by Gin and Tonics and Matt was equally happy with his flight ritual vodka and coke. Gave us some time to think a bit clever about our work that is something we have needed to do for awhile, rethink our presentation and prepare for the coming 5 days of arts speak which feels so exciting since we have been working more and more in the “media” and games world. Nice to be able to wear our artists hats firmly on our heads and have time to reflect.

Last night we were picked up from the airport by Rodirigo, he found us (!) and also met with Orla from Probocis. The journey through to Sao Paulo was long, and Rodirigo go a little lost in the endless traffic. We seem to be in quite a cool district, not quite as posh as where I was last time, lots of bars nightclubs and also endless tall apartment buildings with secure gates and palm trees, mixed up with older Sao Paulo buildings.

The hotel room attempts to be more like a flat, with a kitchen, living room and bathroom in one, i could live here… although it is mainly a largish room STUFFED with furniture that you have to squeeze round. I am not complaining though it is luxury and I cant wait to discover the swimming pool and sauna on the roof. I love it here!

Last night we wandered down the road for food and an attempt to use our brazilian portuguese which after only 2 lessons is very shaky. The Waiter insisted on talking English, and 3 large bottles of beer later we weren’t sure what we were speaking. (Rachel)

Playing Together -Thoughts on Them & Us Workshop

On Friday we spent a day at the MRL(Mixed Reality Lab) using the Ubisense location technology to explore the potential of game play and interactive experience for a group of people in one internal space.

We looked at how to create the desire to play, at how to make the user interact with both real space and virtual(screen based) space. We wanted to build a dynamic of interaction between the negotiation of real space and how this conflicts with the requirements of the digital space. Where do these distinctions become blurred. This first video shows us playing a simple game on screen of herding virtual objects around on screen.




The second video shows us (the players) trying to get the objects. You can see we are constantly trying to move things on screen but having to be aware of the objects in a lab crowded by chairs tables wires and computers.




We wanted to look at how to encourage group and individual play so we also added the feature of the players on screen appearing to "blob" together when very close creating a sort of visual bond between the players encouraging them to explore their proximity to each other. How close would they want to be to each other? Maybe if there was an incentive they would cooperate as a group.

Brazilians, old oaks and geeks at play...

Its been a long but exciting week here at AI HQ.

Paulo and Marcelo from Mobilefest / newTV came over from Sao Paulo to begin work on the Dark Forest project, and plan our visit to Sao Paulo next month that will also include taking part in the Paralelo workshop - a British Council and research council exchange event, all very exciting with artists from the UK, Brazil and Holland coming together to look at international exchanges and artists working with the environment.



Lots of talking and planning and i think the highlight for us all (apart from pancake day party at my house and the making of over 60 pancakes with the help of Janet from mm...deli - thanks!) was a trip to Sherwood Forest to meet the top ranger (Site Manager) who seems very excited about the project. She took us on a tour through the birch and oak forest, and showed us the heathlands and work they are doing there. I think we all fell in love with a particular oak tree (as most of them over 800 years old) called twister. Which will be spot where we aim to put our forest probe and to connect old twister up to a tree in the tropical atlantic forest outside Sao Paulo.




Today we ended the week back with Them and Us, preparing for our workshop at Kingston University, now postponed until June. Geeks at play we have finally managed to get the technology to work well enough to be able to play a new social game, a bit like people snooker... where you use your body to herd virtual objects into a box... watch this space, its actually really fun but current prototype involves wearing a computerised tag on your forehead so you tend to look like a right knob/tag head. Got alot of work to go but we had an afternoon of sneaking around the Mixed Reality Lab with tags on our head trying to capture red dots and move them into the big green blob...

Done...

Today was C4 day. Started with a cup of tea at the pret a manger across the road from the flat, a quick chat about questions they may ask us and then over to C4 HQ and the 4IP floor to set up and do some final runs... all appeared to be working fine...

We had lunch in the cool and cheap C4 canteen, great building although supposedly very leaky. Had carribbean stew as Gok Kwan and various other slightly familiar media-y TV types sat down to their own media lunch.

At 2pm 3 members of the committee arrived excited and it seemed quite nervous about plugging in, sadly Claire was poorly and so wasnt there. We set them up with our prototype kit in all it's glory and clunkyness and took them out. Little did we know that 2 of them were marathon runners and the other equally as fit, they had to work really hard to get their heart rates into optimum but it was a close game, pictures will come along soon.

They returned without a hitch and seemed to enjoy themselves and the game, despite the low heart rates between them. We discussed the issues around it, the hardware and the possibilities of building new heart rate monitors or plugging into existing proprietry hardware and talked about the opportunities for development.

The result of the demo is still quite vague and we are left with no idea when we might hear... but as far as we could see it went as well as we hoped and the rain missed us, despite the dark thundery clouds that gathered as we were setting the game up.

So fingers crossed all round...

We're Back... at Channel 4

Think it is time we did a new blog entry.

It's been awhile as last year involved alot of development work and not so much travelling and exciting things.

Today we are in London, in my aunt and uncle's flat near Channel 4's HQ, preparing to show Heartlands to Channel 4 people, as part of Mudlark, our new company, in an attempt to get investment in the game to take it to market. Tomorrow is the big day and we have spent the afternoon checking the map works in the area (the heart of London, Westminster - round the corner from the houses of parliament) and sorting out what we thought was the cold affecting the heart rate monitors but was something way more easy to sort out. Sods law that no matter how much the game is sorted out the last time we looked at it there is always something new that arises! But playing today round the streets of power in London is the best we have ever seen it. S fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Aside from this, things are going well with AI, we are pleased and excited to announce we have received funding from the Arts Council to work on the Dark Forest, a project in collaboration with Mobilefest in Brazil, a cultural exchange and artwork between Sherwood Forest and the Amazon Rainforest that will result in an expedition along the BR 163 road through the Amazon this summer.

So, today we worked on the game and finished early and amazingly chilled out, having wandered the streets between the flat and Horseferry Road, we then went looking for food, and found a great Turkish Restuarant where we are Meze and the best Haloumi i've ever had ( a plateful of haloumi kebab mmm...), Matt had some meat thing he was much impressed with.

Day 4 - Ageing It

today things got easier and people are relaxing and getting into things. this morning we had to pitch our science ideas, which is wierd for me as we have already worked for the sci-art wellcome trust projects and pitched this kind of thing. The whole pitching ideas for the sake of pitching is hard to get your head round and i am learning alot but also not sure about it... particularly when it is something close to my heart and i know good ideas and the magic of them can't come in half an hour with a bunch of people who you don't know well.

but everyone is pretty inspiring..and somehow each time has had it's own excitment.

Today we had to decide which project to properly pitch and i am working with Lucy and Tassos and Nick on a pitch about an intergenerational TV doc, web project, roadshow and game about ageing. testing the uk on how old they really are based on phyisical, psychological, and emotional age. playing games and looking at what ageing really means. pitching people against each other in an age faking it "like who wants to be a millionaire". in some ways the whole tv thing is so dumbed down and deritvative, in others the people here are amazing and skilled and great tv makers who have gone against the grain... which makes you realise that it doesn't have to be, and i am not saying any other media is any different. the feeling is though, or difference is that tv is so personality led. not that art isn't but it is something that has probably attracted me and us (AI) to interactive media... which is the collaborative nature of it all.

anyway tonight was dinner at Devonshire Fell (the duke of devonshire's restaurant) have managed to avoid risotto for a very creamy gnocchi (when will high class cooks learn to cook GOOD vegetarian food???) all i can say is if i had paid for my meal tonight i would have asked for my money back or to cook for myself... i bet it cost about £50 a head...

then g+t at bar with brief conversation about muppets... not having time for work catch up will have to get up in the morning for that...

Day Two - NonStop Media

a day in my life

The day began with a beautiful breakfast and a discussion about sensors, wii remotes and Them and Us, found myself on a table with like minded people who also had an interest in live gaming.

Launched straight into an overwhelming set of presentations from the 30 people (approx) here who all consume media nonstop throughout the day, multi tasking and facebooking along with all the other widgets gadgets and geek worlds that they keep one finger in as they work - with media.
The whole thing is making me feel a bit on a tilt.

The rest of the day worked at the speed of light. Moving from one task to another, working with new people, crossing over tasks, to the point that we were walking into rooms and not knowing who we had been talking to and frankly what we were doing there. But meeting the most amazing people and learning alot about the media world.

The hotel is elegant and full of rich retired people sitting on sofas covered in expensive jewellery, it's won an award for best small hotel in the uk and has a helipad for rich people to pop in. The Duke chooses all the paintings individually for each room, with all that time on his hands, he should get a proper job. like in the media or something.

The afternoon caused a major slump with no break all day from talking and thinking of ideas with so many people. I had a bit of a majr questioning as the 30s-40s white middle class london-ness (and it takes one to know one) of it all hit me and thinking about the Equal project and attempts to widen the amount of people from different cultures and backgrounds into the industry suddenly felt like even more of an impossible task than it ever did, i feel the ideas (as with TV) reflects this. we did a map of the uk at one point where everyone had to stand in the field with the helicopter and group depending on location. the wall was hadrian's wall and so scotland wasn't even allowed. i was alone in the midlands, sole representative a few from Sheffield (seeing as it is an event as part of a sheffield festival) and one from Manchester.

the meal was a bus ride away like a school trip to the duke's restaurant. Today's risotto was butter nut squash (i am not kidding risotto for a week). had some really great chats with a documentary film maker who has worked in the amazon, and the guy from res fest and ended the evening with a gin and tonic in the bar with Mike a consultant, project manager.

No time apart from morning and late night for work catching up or keeping in contact, it is delibrate on their part but is hard work to be cut off from my world. particularly at this point when lots of things are happening at the moment and i feel like i'm missing stuff (and not getting things done) and being in such an alien environment is hard to keep my head on, not the only one feeling this i know. somehow feels different from going abroad, i think because i love the making and the doing and what i do. talking about it is much more frustrating and confusing.

Day One - Crossover Labs Yorkshire

Arrived early and confused taxi driver who was waiting for some different people, finally got a taxi with one of the other participants and was driven through skipton to the hotel nestled in the moors, a 17th century hotel that is owned as part of the duke of devonshire estate, like staying in one of the big estates that my mum used to take us to on grandmother days out. have a lovely room with chintz arm chairs and a view on the moors. what wierd places this work takes me to.

thought i had ended up on a media lab with no internet but tech guy sorted us out. went down to the drinks and managed to gulp down a much needed gin and tonic before introducing myself to all the other participants, whats your name, what do you do, are you old or new media?! (TV or other stuff it seems) are you from london, etc...

was announced that after dinner we would have a task, to map our media consumption throughout the day (and therefore reveal our personalities - MAYBE?) , we had to pair up with someone who does different media stuff so i got talking to some tv, old media people as they owned up. i don't know i like to dance maybe i could be old media. but here to be new ideas person so jumped on the interactive media band wagon whilst trying to think of ways to describe what we do in one succinct commercially viable sentence, as normal. Mudlark helps and now it seems to make a very convincing story.

sat next to a fellow vegetarian (old media) and discussed the possibility of eating risotto for the rest of the week, got served risotto, then very nice chocolate mousse, raspberries and ice cream that made up for it. was advised by chef to ring other restaurants we are going to for rest of the week to ask them not to make risotto. fellow vegetarian was very nice and discussed possibility of radio show to link into amazon project, sounds good.

after food (and wine and gin oops) work began. more like play school but had to start day in the life of media tart. got quite into it in the end and partnered up with a tv woman who does documentaries. don't know how she is going to work out my day in the life, i certainly can't. will take pics but realised have forgotten adapter and my bluetooth annoyingly doesn't work on laptop, hows that for a media know it all?

Summer/Autumn

It has been a quiet summer at AI. Fantasy A-List had a succesful run at the Cornerhouse in Manchester and we have been doing alot of development work on new projects. Planning the Dark Forest (a project between us and Mobilefest) due to happen in Sherwood Forest and the Amazon rainforest and continuing work on Them and Us, due to go to a residency at Kingston University in the next couple of months.

Meanwhile me and Matt are working on various individual projects and are setting up a new company Mudlark alongside continuing our work with Active Ingredient. This is with Toby Barnes and Charles Hunter. Looking at ways of commercialising our interactive media projects.

As part of this I am off on a week lab at a very fancy hotel in Skipton, called Crossover Labs. With a load of media types. Will keep a blog while I am there, should be interesting and a bit different from doing our art stuff.

Rachel

Stuck indoors when the sun is shining

I am writing from a small room, behind a booth, in the corner of the cornerhouse, Manchester. The sun is shining through a door and we are sitting getting stuffy setting up for the Fantasy A-List Generator as part of the Broadcast Yourself which was on in Newcastle and is now touring to Manchester.

It brings back good memories and we are missing Zini and Gareth even more than normal as this is where our first big show was in 2001 with Chemical Garden, we are even in the same gallery space and I keep hearing the sound track from the installation in my head, this small cupboard where we are working from is creating a wierd time warp. I seem to remember spending most of the set up for Chemical Garden in the shed with a computer, some things never change!

Set up was going well until we decided to delete parts of the database and stop everything working, so now we are time wasting and catching up on emails until the server is restored and we can try again.

We have a very fancy apartment opposite Canal Street which I am looking forward to crashing in after not much sleep over the weekend and a day of gardening!

Samedi Matin

Today is going to be a busy day, Matt is off to La Cantine to present at a seminar about public space and we have an afternoon / evening of Heartlands back at the Main Egg as Matt is calling it.

The last couple of days have become a bit of a blur of French speaking, quiches and hanging out at the Egg.

I left the Matts to roam free in the Jardins de Luxembourg, more likely chasing innocent French girls, I went to try to resolve the audio issues on the french version of the sound track. Spent the afternoon in the artists atelier (geek man pit) and then set the game up, had 8 players, they went well. Met some guys who are setting up a pervasive game company and have made a heart rate mobile phone game which sounds interesting. I was interviewed for a Canadian radio station and also (in French) for the film about the festival. We have French telly coming today.

Capra came in the evening and we saw a bit of the music programmed at the festival. Electro kids swerving between glitchy sounds and 80s singing, with bowl haircuts and semi-tektonic dancing.

The artworks in the exhibition are really interesting although the layout of the space somehow doesn't do it justice. The Optokopter installation is a simple yet engaging concept of typing your name onto a screen - that amusingly emerges from a suitcase, throwing a ball against the wall and your name (or whatever word you type in) appears on the wall.

There is a really lovely, tactile installation called Akousmaflore by Scenocosme, hanging plants that sing and make sounds when you touch the leaves, it is impossible to walk past without stroking them, each plant has it's own song.

Kit Collaboration is Toby's collaborative work about viruses, he has only brought his hooded tops with virus names on them but I am intrigued to know more, and like the idea of doing an exhibition that involves hanging some hoodies on a clothes rack. No tweaking.

Samuel St-Aubin and Sofian Audry's sensor triggered electronic objects are like little animals waiting to come alive in corners of the Mains D'Ouevres. The most beautiful is outside on a tree, you press a red button on the trunk and the tree wakes up with birds singing and chirping. I wonder how the real birds feel when they take refuge there. The solar powered insect UFO in the gallery makes cricket noises in response to it's solar powered head.

There is also an interface that determines your mental health problems and types out a prescription, i got a prescription for valium (always useful); a wearable coat with a camera on the back collar and a video screen in the arm so you can always see what is going on behind you, commentating on CCTV and surveillance. I think the French are worried they will go the way of us English, being watched constantly but no-one ever seeing.

Found Outside Girabaldi Metro Station

The Stadium of the gays?!

Aujourd'hui... mangetout mais oui

The day of aggro was upon us, after escaping the grasps of the French room inspectors, I made my way into the picturesque bustling streets of Jaures to buy the one thing I always forget... a towel! With a couple of baguettes under one arm and the inevitable cheese and sausage in the other I queued up at our local monoprix only to be held by the police as one young guy thought that shoplifting was an easy way out, au contraire think again when the local gendarm have baton power. Needless to say my man wasn't getting out of the shop and neither did we for what seemed like an age whilst I tried to engage in my best French with the old man next to me.

It was the kids workshop day down at good old Mains D'oeuvres, so after tarte de jour it was pandimonium as 50 children descended upon the gallery space. They had a game at the beginning where the object was to find clues hidden around the space. Although a treasure hunt amongst expensive equipment and technology didnt prove to be a great idea, as clues were hiding behind carefully balanced monitors!

The children loved the game as they sprinted off around the marketplace eating up territories fueled by chocolate tucked inside baguettes. I even got so immersed in the game that I managed to run off the map and ended up on a tube back to base all kitted up to the bemusement of the passengers.

An exhausting afternoon was followed by some light entertainment in the evening as we headed into town for a rendezvous avec our fellow artists. We were warned in the usual French manner that there may be a strike on the metro, but everything seemed fine apart from the slower speed that the trains moved at (maybe it was a minor dispute?) We watched Man Utd take the European cup whilst biting our nails as Rachel read intently under the vigour of the Parisian football chants.

The walk home was a long and winding route that took us back along the canal to the point ephemere where it all started for us. The aggro continued as one French guy intent on causing a rukus followed us asking all the time if we would like to engage in some man love with him. Matt seemed game for a second, but we then quickly realised he simply wanted to fight so we made a sharp exit.

After collapsing in a huddle back at the pad, we were a little rusty to start with this morning, apart from Rachel, who once again came to our rescue with petit dejeuner. We decided to head out and make like tourists this morning, so obligatory sunglasses on, we headed off to Sacre Cours for a croque monsieur and a wander. We bumped into the Moulin Rouge on the way, as I noted the word poisson rouge to add to my ever increasing and annoying random French vocab. Amongst the usual people sculpture things and souvenirs there was a guy drawing a portrait of a lady in the usual way, only to our amuse/bemusement somehow he was making her look unmistakably like Parkinson of BBC chat show fame, nice.

Due to a lack of internet cables and anyone assuming responsibility, we ploughed on with Heartlands today dipping in and out of weak wi-fi connections. But the game was fine and dragged in spectators from all nationalities over the buidling as the spray shapes unfolded.
We're heading off to see some of the festival's experimental music this evening after planning our trip to Rex Club this weekend. Mais oui mais oui

A Rude Awakening

This morning we were woken up by some particularly rude french building inspectors (In fact I am writing this now because they have denied me my lie in!) 3 people barged in this morning ranting about "Salle des Bains", scaring Rachel and generally stomping round the flat as if they owned it.

Anyway yesterday we got Heartlands working properly and 8 people played the game and it was well received. We also had an interview from a French Journalist for a magazine called TelePop and apparently there was an article on us in Liberation.

We had one guy called Pierre who played and on returning to the space he looked as if he had been taken round an assault course by a drill sergeant. He was dripping sweat and claiming that we had tried to kill him! After he had calmed down we realised that he had really enjoyed it but perhaps engaged in the experience beyond the call of duty.

We had a boring early night last night. Which was probably a good thing as far as the first part of this post is concerned.

more pictures

Sam making a pancake face















Matt D making pancake triangles
















Matt and Matt making fart jokes during the set up at the Mains D'ouevres



















petit dejeuner














looking for a restuarant in beaubourg and finding notre dame

lundi mardi...

Set up finally happened in time for the launch at 7pm Monday. We weren't quite sure if the launch happened, but got a meal of big quiche with the other artists and ended up all sitting in the workshop that is a bit of a man geek pit full of toys and electronics from Sofian and Sam, and Christophe and Jonathan (Optokopter) fixing their electronic balls and playing chess, eating cakes, cold pancakes and passing round cheap wine. Met Lucy a textile artist who had also found herself drinking wine in the pit. The picture looks like a technology self help meeting. Eventually got home about 2am again.

Yesterday we attempted to get to the Mains D'ouevres early, finding our area of the gallery covered in mud and a strange mannequin that looked like it had been badly abused.

Set up got complicated by the computer we had been given not working, but finally resolved it by the skin of our teeth in time for several games to run at our alloted time. A really great second game (which was good cos the press were there to interview us) with Pierre setting the highest score at 1183, we thought we might need to call an ambulance though, he came back sweating and breathing hard, needing water...

We managed to get back to the flat for an early night-ish in bed before 2am missing the contemporary dance show in order to recuperate. Ate the best pizza ever from round the corner from Point Ephermere. Matt's french word of the day remains "aujourd'hui" despite our pleas to find a new word to say every 5 minutes. He is making us laugh constantly with his "Pahs", "Bofs" and "Pouffs" particularly when he trys them out on French people. My brain is fried by speaking french, explaining the game to the visitors and players and the long french lessons with Laura to make the voice over. Laura was very amused by trying to make me make all kinds of wierd french sounds so that people could understand what the hell the game was about. Sat in workshop making strange french faces whilst shouting oouuu and rrrrr down a microphone, think i have turned the game into comedy.

Heartlands has featured in Liberation the french newspaper. Now we are famous.

Rachel