Haphazard Journey by Starlight

Some first impressions having viewed the five selected entry presentations:

It is interesting to see (and I think also good to see), that none of the finalists are professional game designers - there are three new media artists, a graphic designer and a lecturer. OK, so the competition is "exploding narratives" but all but Hazel chose to incorporate an element of competition into their work.

4/5 entrants were male. This surprises me as at the last mscape conference there seemed as many female delegates as there were male.

I wasn't bowled over by the designs. There were lots of nice ideas here and throughout the competition but none of them were especially innovate or made me feel especially excited. None of them challenged my concept of narrative. I feel as if the medium is capable of more.

Finally a big THUMBS UP (and I know I'm always banging on about this but...), all the winners had designed experiences that could be enjoyed by anyone, regardless of their physical ability. Hooray!!!

Posted by Celinelj at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mscape Fest 2007 followed on from a far more low-key, one day event held at HP labs in October 2006, which marked the end of the Mobile Bristol project (funded by Bristol university, Appliance Studio and HP Labs), and the point where HP were looking to the user community (primarily KS2, secondary teachers and artists), for feedback on how to move the project forward.

At this event, following the successful launch of the new Mscaper website in May 07, there was a real buzz about the potential of the new version of the tool, which is significantly more functional and easy to use for developers and players; with wizards, guidelines, dedicated support and a growing user community. The conference had also doubled in size; a 2 day event with 120 participants which quickly sold out. It included evening entertainment, a packed programme and a far more diverse audience than previous events, with attendees from across Europe and the US, (comprising game developers, new businesses, heritage, theatre (including the highly acclaimed Punchdrunk), arts, education at all levels, broadcasters, and others generally interested in locative media).

The primary aim of the conference: to build community, communication share practices, help the medium grow and kick-start the development of a much needed business model for those wishing to make money from the work they’ve up until now only been able to do for free on the educational licence.

I was particuarly heartened to hear about the opening of a Pervasive Media Studio; a cross-disciplinary, cross-community, cross-industry teaching and research studio affiliated to the University of West England, HP and the University of Bristol. Located at the Bristol Watershed it will pioneer new digital media through socially engaged practice and world-class research, providing infrastructure (ipaqs, editing facilities, workshops, work-spaces) and opportunities to apply for small project grants.

Day 1 focussed primarily on the designer and developer community, providing workshops around game, experience, community, content and tool development. In the evening there was a networking event at the Watershed bar and a chance to try out some of the mediascapes in Queen’s Square.

Day 2 comprised a series of presentations from a wide range of experienced locative media designers from around the world including Teri Rueb, a landscape artist whose work engages digital, architectural and traditional media, Jon Williams, Creative Director of Licorice Media, and Steve Coast, Founder and Chairman of theOpenStreetMap Foundation.

The event was enormously enjoyable and I left feeling inspired and excited about the future of locative experience and game design.

Photos of the event can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/mscape/pool/ and the majority of the presentations can be accessed from the Mscape Fest page.

Posted by Ron Edwards at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Celine LJ's biomap tracking levels of arousal during a walk along the ExCel Dock. Just coincidence that it's purple but very apt ;-)

I've always been fascinated by Christian Nolde's BioMaps so I jumped at the chance to have a go at making my own map a couple of weeks ago when I attended the Mapping Change for Sustainable Communities Workshop held on the Sunborn Yacht Hotel, Docklands.

Hooked up to a sensor measuring the moisture given off by my index finger (in other words sweat), I wasn't quite sure what was being tracked and apparently that's just the point - it's impossible to really map emotion or get an exact reading so the best you can do is measure arousal...which might be caused by anger, exertion, excitement, happiness.....and half of the fun is trying to work out afterwards how you were actually feeling! I did the mapping along the dock and for the whole way I chatted to another particpant - Gordon...Comparing visual maps, it's clear that even on the same walk it's impossible to assume the reactions of participants. Our maps were entirely different. Maybe it wasn't the walk at all and just the conversation....

Posted by Celinelj at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is Loki the world's first decent location-based search engine? I'm not sure but I can't wait to try it out in a truly mobile environment.....

Loki is also the mythical being of mischief in Norse mythology....

Posted by Celinelj at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although I recognise the importance of boundaries in creative practice, I'm starting to feel that by reevaluating existing game categories, and our criteria for successful games, we might free ourselves far more able to think of games in new ways and in new situtations. I think we judge computer games in particular far too much by commercial criteria - mass popularity, pace and "realism".

In contrast, where improvements in technology have I feel limited computer game design, GIS and GPS, by popularising map-making and cross-fertilising spatial information with any other kind of data under the sun, is helping to blow apart our understanding of maps as primarily territorial, or for orientation.

Examples: Tom Carden's temporal Tube map (see the image above), the INA's Non-Geographic Mapping project, Memoy and Social mapping projects - I'm thinking Urban Tapestries off the top of my head but I know there are many more.

Maps play a part in all of the location-based games I can think of, they essentially represent the game-board. I can't think of any that don't although I'll keep testing that theory....How can we draw on all these new perspectives to create new games, new connections and alternative learning experiences?

I've ended on a question again.

Posted by Celinelj at 05:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)