Second Week

Back at Longside today.

20 people

Human sensors, asking people to note down the temperature, humidity, atmostpheric pressure and decibels around an oak tree.

Making a stop motion animation based on the data collected from the visitors.

Live data projected from the oak tree. The projection worked really well and looks very interesting when it is changeable weather, it was one of those sunshine and shower days, but with real horizontal rain and wind and then suddenly sunshine and blue skys. At one point the visualisation turned yellow with the sunshine, we’d not seen that before. The temperature as the rain came dropped by the minute and the humidity rose to 99 percent (although we wondered if that was caused by a build up or rain on the sensor).

The activities seemed to work quite well and the animation is building up slowly.

Our ideas are also solidifying. We still have a big gap between the visualisation and the concepts for a physical sculpture, being pulled between the ability to create a dynamic augmented reality on screen and being tied to a physical space when you create a sculptural experience, we’d like to make the augmented space physical… which we did with Chemical Garden, but I am still unsure what materials would create the ethereal experience that the projection is creating.

Have been looking into CO2 as a solid substance and would like to create a tree out of it but it is lethal, can cause frostbite if you touch it and asphysixation in large quantities, sounds worse than the ammonia we used in Chemical Garden to create the salt crystal trees… I like it.

But not for this, I think this is likely to be mechanics and light, but we are thinking this work will evolve and different outcomes, at the tree (the sensors and speakers that enable you to hear a tree in another location), in the forest (tracking your journey through the forest), in the gallery (visualising and interpreting the data as a sculpture).

Our goal for the weekend is to redo the visualisation so that the parameters are more meaningful, to enable people to ‘decode’ the effect of the data on the image and also to enable people standing in front of the visualisation to interact with it.

We will do some tests with audio to see how we can capture audio from the tree and what kind of sounds we can capture.

Going Into the Second Week

Tomorrow we will return to YSP, had a weekend off-ish.

The last 2 days of last week, went well. We had 20 people on Thursday and 32 on Friday. The activities got some really interesting results and some great feedback. The thing that most stood out was a Forester who visited who spoke about the language we were creating through the visualisation of data and said he wanted to be able decode, or understand what the sensor kit was telling us about the tree. Like Carlo, when he saw the visualisations between Sherwood and the Mata Atlantica he said he could tell the health of the tree by the colour, light and it would be great to be able to read the other information too.

This led us to develop an exercise using our bodies as human sensors to decide how we see and percieve the atmosphere, based on our experience or points of reference. We will upload these to the map of the park tomorrow. When doing this exercise another visitor who was a nurse began to talk about some work she had done with patients perception of symptoms and the difference between what they percieve and what they could reveal through medical science. This was really interesting in terms of what we are trying to ‘interpret’ through the artwork as opposed to simply revealing the scientific data… also reflects back to our previous work Heartlands. In a way this project is the opposite of Heartlands, instead of revealing the invisible inner process as we walk through a landscape we are hoping to reveal the invisible external process and our affect as we walk through a landscape.

Next week will be less reflective and more ‘active’. We will start playing with materials, designs, audio, the data…

Day 2

Documentation of the day…
















16 visitors

Narratives and Tree Stories themes
6 stories added
The morning involved discussions around narrative and the external experience.
Walked to the oak and birch woodland area near Longside Studio.
Talked about tracking visitors journeys in the forest area, GPS, audio or not, visual or not.
I had an idea about using a phone around your neck to track your journey, light and colour, sound and GPS, to give you audio feedback based on the data from the trees, where you are (shade or open sky) and how close you get to the trees with the sensors on. Using the technology to create a communication between your sensor data and the trees.

Talked about narratives informing the work. Linear narratives such as stories about trees, wrote stories about tree memories and asked members of the public to tell us or write their stories and added them to the wall.

Stories felt too linear and didn’t really answer our questions about the ‘experience’ but maybe could inform an audio trail. Not abstract enough, but maybe this is something you can whisper into the tree, a memory of a tree from a time gone by?

Was told that the work had charmed one man and had a discussion about the performance of us as artists presenting the ideas of the work, he was very interested in this as an experience rather than just looking at an artwork.

Some of the stories were about smell, particularly interesting when talking about memory.
One couple sat for some time and wrote their stories for us.

At the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The first day of A Conversation Between Trees (pictures to come).

Today was a baptism of fire but a good one. Thanks to all the visitors to the park who came and visited us at the Longside Studios, we meet some really interesting people who engaged with the ideas through talking to us, took the flyers to take photos and map the locations where they found trees and made photographic evidence of the things you don’t normally see in the park, the temperature, humidity, sound, light etc…

We had some great drawings done today, a family spent some time escaping the drizzle and making some beautiful drawings and mapping the trees they could see and imaginary trees based on the themes of the project. We will add these to the map in the morning.

We placed the sensor kit in an old oak tree next to the visitors centre but showed the recorded data from our exhibition in Brazil when we linked a tree in the UK to one in Brazil, as this was a good place to start the project. To see the data collected from the tree click here

Tonight after some drinks in a local pub with the technicians who have been alot of support today and a rather dubious plate of stodgy pub food we spent quite a while playing a not very delibrate game of find the big ASDA in the countryside using the GPS on our iphone and half remembered directions from the technicians.

Having stocked up for the week we went back to the idyllic B&B were I am now - to take over their front room and discuss the schedule for the week and begin to really get our heads around what we want to acheive in terms of developing the new artwork, experiments with the public and on site and also activities for the public. It is strange that it was really hard to get any real ideas of how this would evolve before we arrived, now we are here on site and in the environment with the weather and the quiet and the mix of sculptures, woodland and park we are beginning to really get a grip on what this project could be.

Ideas:
We have been talking tonight about the imaginary space that we want to create both externally in the woodland area and internally in the gallery space. This is potentially a set of narrative clues whilst you are out in the environment that are controlled by the data, and a visual, physical installation that is an imaginary world created by the data.

How this will look and be experienced will be revealed over the next few days.

Planned Schedule (likely to change):
Wednesday - starting a chalk animation that visitors can add to and change, visualising how our bodies can act as a sensor, collecting memories of trees and tree landmarks from ourselves and visitors to begin to plan the narrative and adding them to Google Maps, working on visualising the ‘imaginary space’ created by the data. What could this look like, what would the experience feel like? Adding photos and drawings to the map of the park. Live link to a tree close to the Longside Studio.

Thursday - thinking about the indoor experience, what materials we might use and how it might work, continuing the chalk animation with visitors, drawing imaginary spaces and forests, taking photos of things that look fantastical, magical or unreal in the park. Live link to the old oak next to the visitors centre.

Friday - thinking about the outdoor experience, what will the sensor look like in the tree, how can people interact with it? Designing the new sensor kit, writing narratives and designing how this will evolve. Asking visitors for stories, fairy tales, myths and legends they know about forests. Adding these to the map of the park and other places on google maps where they think they could come from.

more information about the project at: www.thedarkforest.tv

Atenir - Greece

The conference has been a good if not a slightly random one.

The panels I attended were really fascinating on the whole with such diverse subjects as the history of the Black Arts Council in the US, Screenplay methods (Jools from Nottingham), lots about practice research which is really good for my PhD arguments and the wierdest last one that I attended because it sounded completely crazy and involved a huge attractive Texan Professor talking about Sky Diving, Scuba Diving and the sublime, referencing Jonathan Living Seagull. I thought i'd gone into the wrong conference and ended up in a marine equipment convention, which was fine by me...

Our session on Tuesday went well I think, lots of good feedback although I was terrified of how to merge my normal presentation style of talking generally, however it comes based on my chosen selection of pretty pictures and the seemingly accepted style of reading from the paper. I attempted to merge the two and after two minutes when I thought I was going to choke and the audience die of boredom I managed to get into the swing of it. People said it worked well so i'll trust it did and lots of people came up and talked about the project, was very interested in the climate change stuff and generally met a bunch of really lovely, interesting people from it.

The rest of the panel was great, although a wierd selection of digital arts type stuff. Una was fantastic, talking about her project with Marina involving posting animals (particularly Raccoons) into Google Street View, looking at how animals are reinhabiting cities. It was humourous and interesting to find out more about her work looking at animals.

Kathy (who I had great chats with yesterday) from Philidelphia presented some really cool software that she is using to teach about fashion design, costume and textiles, she is a wonderfully interesting person and I really enjoyed sitting in the bar and chatting with her on the greek islands yesterday, comparing corporate horror stories and chatting about romance, life, being one of so few woman in a world of male geeks.

After the panel me, Una and Shonu (Una's daughter) went to the roof lounge and celebrated with extra large gin and tonics overlooking the Pantheon at midday, bliss. We then returned to the hotel for a sleep and I had a wander round.

The afternoon involved a wonderful walk round the Pantheon, we explored the ruins and laughed at the rusty engineering littered about and admired the AMAZING views. They felt practically religous but not quite, you could see what the Ancient Greeks were trying to. We've had lots of talks about Atheism, Communism and Richard Dawkins over the last couple of days.

The evening ended with Retsina (fizzy red wine, whats that about??) and a meal in a taverna where my vegetarian option never came.

Yesterday was heaven, a cruise around 3 islands Hydra, Aegina and cant remember the name of the first one. Lots of sea, sun, rocks, pistachio trees, olive trees, bars, Ouzo, seafood, pina coladas, Ouzo, mythos beer, Jools Ska dancing to Greek Music, greek elvis, dancing greek man with a strange foot fetish, lounging on deck and talking incessantly about stuff, great chat about performance with Kevin and Suzanna from Philidelphia, good talks about Prussia with Ana from Riga, such lovely people. The day ended with a takeout from the vegetarian restaurant eating on the roof with one last pina colada overlooking the Acropylis with Jools, Una and Shonu. A great day.

On the way home we walked past the Bank of Greece as a van of riot police was emptying out, there was hardly anyone there, but it's definately a reminder that all is not heaven and bliss here or in the world.

Time to come home.

AI on their travels again...

mm

It's been awhile since we have blogged and as normal I'm taking advantage of the being on the move to write and contemplate. AI Hq these days is pretty hectic, with lots of changes occurring and us all in and out all the time, what with my PhD at Nottingham University and Matt working alot of the time in Birmingham with Mudlark.

Anyhow i have the pleasure of sitting on a balcony in Athens, overlooking one of the main streets, and if I stand up the Acropylis and Pantheon. Its amazing, and hot (despite the BBCs warnings of rain). Im at an art and creativity conference organised by Atenir. After months of computer science, engineering and geospatial engineering studies (or avoidance of studies!) it is a relief to be back where my heart is, in intense art discussions.

I arrived last night to a a chaotic city, no demonstrations, all seems calm and where I am staying not very skint at all. I am sure away from the main streets and amazing array of posh and high street shops it is a completely different story. The rich continue to shop whereever you are in the world in these days of global captialism.

I had a report to finish for uni last night so stayed in the hotel, couldn't find much more than cheese on toast, so got drunk on the free very potent spirit left in the room and then tried to write stuff. It was lovely when I went to the rooftop bar and sat facing the Acropylis all lit up at night, drinking G+T and working on my laptop. I am one of those sad workaholic world travellers sitting with their laptop for company... like an arts carpet salesman... The life of a mobile artist, I have been thinking alot about the discussions at the Tracing Mobility event last week, and this new world that is part of our locative practice where artists, fly around the world talking, meeting each other and living partly in transit, part virtually, bridging virtual collaborations such as the one with Silvia Leal and part at home in Nottingham with my friends, never mind the travel to and from London. It often feels so disconnected. Technology and connectivity definately makes you more disconnected until you get txts from friends wherever you are in the world.

Today I went to the conference, finally finding Una who is also staying at the hotel with her daughter, she is chairing the panel I am presenting in and has been in email contact through Gabriella who led the paper and is sadly not able to come becuase of the BA strikes.

The conference is really interesting although the panels are huge and strangely diverse (not well curated), I am unsure about this arts academic practice of reading the paper out loud as a presentation and am very surprised that artists would do this. I am thinking about how to give that paper justice and feel comfortable with reading the paper.

I am presenting a paper written by Gabriella, Myself and Steve Benford about the Dark Forest project in context of other performances of nature, within nature, about nature...
www.thedarkforest.tv . Una is presenting about represtentations of climate change which I am really looking forward to hearing.

Found an old friend here, Jools from Nottingham Trent so it all feels a little less lonely and im looking to the Greek Night tonight, whatever that is, should be fun. Hopefully I will get more than cheese and bread (there is a theme to my travels). Eat pig by accident again in the vegetarian pizza things at lunch (another theme of these travels) although managed to gracefully spit it into a serviette without too much drama. Found an amazing vegetarian greek cafe across the road from the conference venue, bought a delicous vegetarian slice of yummy stuff, spilt water all over it, accidently dropped it in the bin and am therefore starving... gonna lose some weight this trip I think if things carry on like this!

Woolwich Workshops

A couple of weeks ago we went down to London again to run some workshops at Woolwich Poly and continue our research for the game.

We are working with a really inspiring art teacher at the Poly called David Fischer who has alot of interest and excitement in citzenship, community and also gaming. A perfect match for us.

The first session was run by Matt with BTEC students. The aim of this workshop was to introduce our work and the game and begin to look at developing art games, based on location. The idea was to introduce the concept of locative art games to the students, begin to get them thinking playfully about where they live and who they are, and to work with them on some game ideas.

For us it supports our understanding of the area, build and test some ideas and as we develop our ideas hopefully the students will develop their own, eventually they will test the game for us.

The second session was with Key Stage 3 students, this concentrated on location and identity. Using maps of the area we slowly worked with the students to create maps of the area based on their perspectives, the locations that were important to them, their journeys, their territories. Places they liked or avoided. Eventually we ended up with a set of maps of the area around Woolwich for each individual student and a shared map built up in Google Earth in the interactive screen, that showed the key areas for the whole group and the connections between the locations.

The final session went back to the BTEC students to begin to build 2 board games based on Woolwich. Looking at games like Ludo and Monopoly to create a playful set of rules, scoring points and the board design. This brought up alot of issues of territory and the ongoing issues of gangs in the area. They are now developing two games that are looking really great, telling interesting stories about the area that we would have never discovered from just wandering about and reading research.

As a final session for this stage we met with Said from the Somalia Parents Network to talk about involving this group in the project and to find out a bit more about some of the current issues facing the biggest immigrant community that now lives in Woolwich. It was a very interesting chat and we very much appreciated him taking time out from dealing with the pressing issues that face the community on a daily basis. We hope that the young people he works with and the families take part in the development of the game, and play when the game is finally built.

The Woolwich Game

In the summer we were commissioned to develop a new mobile phone art game for a Greenwich based arts organisation Stream Arts

A couple of weeks ago we went down to London to start work in Woolwich and work with Woolwich Poly art department, working with Key Stage 3 and BTEC students.

One of the reasons we are excited about this project is that I have my own personal connection to Woolwich. It has always been part of my family's story that once upon a time my family lived over the river (I was brought up in North London). The myth was that my great grandfather lived in the Woolwich Arsenal and was rich enough to buy shares in the original Arsenal football team.

Some years ago, these Arsenal shares revealed themselves, my great Aunt Pearl was found to be in possesion of the shares and finally they were indeed shared out amongst my family members. Triggering family reunions (and some debate) and a growing interest for my father in the family tree.

Since then my father has followed many of his generation in their retirement years, to explore the family tree. A connection to the Grodzinskis family, who own a famous Jewish Bakery chain in London, revealed more about the family history, chased back to the days in Woolwich.

Between my Dad and his fellow investigator they discovered a large family that lived in Woolwich from 1895. The family owned a fruit and vegetable shop on Thomas Street, one of the main high streets in the centre. A beautiful old photograph we have shows a wedding party in the back yard of a Victorian building. The wedding is of my Dad's great uncle Velvel. My grandfather is probably the moving child on the left hand side, his many sisters are sitting crossed legged on the floor and my great grandparents are at the end of the second row to the right.

Our first step to begin the research involved my Father and I taking a trip to the Heritage Centre to follow up these leads. With our Arsenal shares documents, this photograph and the Census research with details of the roads, dates and where in Poland my family had come from, clasped in our hands we met with with the wonderful Francis at the Heritage Centre.

After trawling through documents, books and the small folder about the Jewish community of Woolwich we found some amazing things. Firstly, we found records of my great grandfather's tailor business. Maximillian Jacobvitch was a master tailor for the Arsenal. We think we have discovered why the family came to this small area on the edge of London rather than the East End, where the rest of the family and the majority of other Jews went to when they arrived from the East.

The small file Francis had been building up contained a gem that began to set the ball rolling... a newspaper clipping from 1905 described the first Jewish wedding to take place in Woolwich, it was the wedding from our photograph with the names of my family, describing the ceremony and party afterwards at the fruit and veg shop on Thomas Street, where the photograph was taken. The myth was beginning to come alive!

...and so begins the story.

Rachel

Active Ingredient goes to Brazil, this time Rio too...

Rachel and Matt Davenport went to Brazil in November as part of the Dark Forest Project. Another amazing trip, involving the first exhibition of the Dark Forest which is an ongoing collaboration between Active Ingredient, Mobilefest, the Mixed Reality Lab and the collaboration has now extended to working with the artist Silvia Leal and the botanist Bruno . It has been written up on the Dark Forest website: http://www.thedarkforest.tv/?page_id=387

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.