Punchdrunk Media lab Project Update 2

How do I write this update without revealing too much?

Since our last blog we’ve been working hard to develop the narrative of the piece and the spaces within the piece. We have treated the creation of this very much like the creation of a Punchdrunk production. Developing character and a through-line libretto style narrative.  This has begun to frame the nature of the relationship between the online and the real world participant.

We have been trying to develop something that will complement the real world experience and also create something compelling for the online participant and viewers. The key is to develop something that feels exciting for an online participant and draws them into the experience. This has been the real nut to crack, both PD creatives and Media Lab team have very much been leaning towards creating the real world aspects. The real challenge is of course not this at all, but in creating an exciting online experience. Felix our artistic director has just returned from a trip to the production in NYC (Sleep No More http://sleepnomorenyc.com/) and after meeting with Akito, a student from the Media Lab, has seemingly made a break through on this front.  We are learning that face to face communication is key and relish the moments when we can get in the room with Media Lab.

Things we’ve been exploring and are interested in:

Portals- How do the online and the real world communicate?

Aesthetic- How do we capture the set and the action, is it live, rendered, filmed or photographed?

Navigation- Related closely to the above, what does it feel and look to explore the online space?

Contact- Is this constant or fragmented. Is their freedom for both particpant’s or are they unified?

Interest- Can we maintain a level of interest for an online player over a long period of time? Do they need extra activity to hold them?

Feedback- how can the actions of both participants impact on one another’s environment or experience?

In other news, our research team completed their first trips to the production. It has been interesting to hear their findings and their interpretation of our work.  Their insights will prove invaluable to the development of the piece, and also give us a unique understanding of audience’s response to our work.

Social Interpretation: SOPA, not so good

Sharing, at the heart of socialising objects in this project, is under threat from SOPA. Clay Shirky sensibly unpacks the issues in this TED talk. It is scary stuff.

“TimeWarner has called and they want us all back on the couch. Just consuming. Not producing. Not sharing. And we should say no. ”

How to say no: http://americancensorship.org/

Jane Audas

DigiDickens – where we’re at

Background

In July 2011, Exhibition Road Cultural Group (ERCG) – on behalf of the London Cultural Quarters (LCQ) forum – successfully applied for NESTA funding to develop a digital platform to support the delivery of cultural trails across London. The platform launches in April with DigiDickens, a celebration of the life, work and ideas of author Charles Dickens whose bicentenary is in London’s Olympic year.

The ambition is to create a digital platform that is flexible enough to respond to different types of content as required by the broader cultural sector – from public sculpture trails to science trails, walking tours to exhibitions. There is also an interest from the project team in: building collaboration across the city’s cultural sector; influencing general audiences’ perceptions of the city’s cultural offer and connectivity; encouraging arts and cultural organisations to share their copyrighted material and intellectual property to enhance the public’s understanding of culture.

To our knowledge, no digital platform has attempted to link together such diverse assets from so many stakeholders and content partners across the city and make it available for free to audiences. This is both the challenge and the opportunity and has been at the heart of our development and (sometimes confused!) thinking since securing funding.

Stage 1 October-December 2011

We have been working closely with our technology and research partners – Seren and MTM – to map the direction of travel. Critical to this has been the development of a stakeholder team comprising representatives of the LCQ as well as some of their individual members and other interested parties such as the City Read project. All have an interest in digital technology and cultural apps to engage with new and existing audiences and a number have invested their own resources in developing ideas for site-specific apps on the Dickens theme.

It has been important for us to emphasise that the DigiDickens tool is complementary to rather than competing with individual ideas and digital offers that may emerge, which was a concern of other colleagues in the London cultural sector who are developing or have launched their own Dickens-related apps. What is critical is that we are able to map the Dickens-related content being showcased in 2012 and capture it in some way via DigiDickens – be it through simple listings (in the case of exhibitions and film screenings for example) or more detailed geo-specific exploratory content around Dickens objects and places of association.

This remains a potential area of conflict between different interest groups and we are working hard to ensure all interested parties are invited to meetings, have access to research findings and meeting minutes etc.

Stage 2 – December 2011

The wealth of potential content and the amount of activity already scheduled for 2012 and the Dickens Bicentenary felt overwhelming initially. However, we have benefited hugely from MTM’s excellent initial report on the general market for digital technology as well as from Seren Partners’ expertise in visual design for urban environments. This has clarified the core project team’s thinking considerably.

For stage 2 of the project, Paul Cutts (chief exec of ERCG and project director) joined MTM and its researchers for two consumer focus groups. The findings from the groups were encouraging, particularly in relation to the enthusiasm for cultural apps, a general sense of this being an under-exploited market and a willingness on the part of users to experiment with (and sometimes pay for) such digital experiences.

Six things resonated strongly:

1)     the central role that engaging and deep content plays in encouraging users to continue with an app (an the cost implications of developing such content)

2)     providing an ‘experience’ users would not be able to have otherwise (the need to think more creatively about shared resources and how to develop coherent curatorial narratives around diverse assets; treasure hunt ideas were very popular and are likely to influence our thinking moving forward)

3)     the enthusiasm for seemingly accidental encounters with interesting cultural facts (which we now look to embed in the app – ‘accelerated serendipity’)

4)      the added-value element of apps (such as discounts to local cultural or commercial offers, free coffees at museum shops etc)

5)     the opportunity for commercial sponsorship for thematic trails (enabling the app to be delivered free at point of use but supporting richer content and development)

6)     the relatively low visibility of specifically cultural apps (an opportunity to work with iTunes to create a dedicated ‘Culture’ category on the iTunes app store – providing brilliantly simple but hugely effective marketing collateral for DigiDickens and others)

In order to move forward on these, Seren – together with ERCG – convened a content meeting at Seren’s offices on 6 December. We invited numerous representatives from stakeholder groups, including the LCQ forum, local government, museums etc. Whilst conversation was limited to two hours – and raised in some ways as many questions as it answered – we did begin to form a consensus on target audiences, how content should be layered, and who should be involved.

Some of the key content hotspots in the city have now been plotted on a Google map, which we’ll be circulating to all participants and more widely. This will go a long way to helping us define the type of user experience we can create and also identify any obvious geographical gaps we need to consider plugging. We are now waiting for Seren’s analytical findings to be shared with us to begin physically collating content and defining user journeys by theme and location.

Stage 3 – January-February 2012

We see Stage 3 as the beginning of the practical realisation of our distilled ideas and content. ERCG is now exploring potential commercial sponsors to help support the delivery of the app. We have appointed a freelance fundraising consultant part time from January to support our corporate fundraising initiatives and are investing  £10k (scrimped and saved from our own budget) for this. Whilst the fundraising will be primarily focused on delivering results for ERCG, there is an expectation that our fundraiser will identify potential corporate sponsors for the DigiDickens tool, as this is a headline project for us this year. We are also exploring with Seren Partners the commercial exploitation of the digital tool and I’ve been given an inroad to two global corporates. If we weree able to sign up either of them, it would be a massive coup for ERCG and potentially enable us to support a whole series of other cultural trails based on thematic content. Which, after all, was the ambition of our NESTA application in the first place…

More soon!

Social Interpretation: The QR and/or Code Conundrum

QR Codes are the cause of much debate / argument / kitten killing, both in and outside of Social Interpretation. But why do we need them? What are the different options? And if using QR, what can one do to make them as usable as possible?

Which would do you prefer?

Why this debate at all?

To put it simply, because we want to enable people to use objects (or anything physical) as keys into more information. This might be info about an object, a theme, or maybe a discussion or piece of media. To do this, we need some way to bridge the physical/digital divide.

So what’re our options?

Happenstance Project launched

Happenstance aims to change the way arts organisations relate to technology. In 2012, we will host six technology residencies at three of the UK’s most vibrant arts organisations: Site Gallery in Sheffield, Lighthouse in Brighton and the newly announced Spike Island in Bristol. The project is being run with technology partner Caper and research partner of the University of Warwick.

The search is now on for some amazing technologists to apply for the residencies. Applicants have until 10am on Monday 30th January 2012 to get their applications in. Each residency will be an opportunity to think, make and prototype digital projects and products as part of a small creative team. We’re looking for people who are creative thinkers, don’t mind getting their hands dirty (!), can communicate well and share their processes and thinking and can work in an Agile way. Find out more of the new website >> http://happenstanceproject.com

We’ve been talking about ‘agile project management’ – a common practice in technology development teams but less so in the arts. Developing an agile approach to technology, and making digital products in the way we would usually make art, is one of the things we want to experiment with, so the process of making will be just as important as the things we make.  You’ll hear much more from us on this as we begin the activity but the basics –  making, talking, trying things out – the process has equal weighting to the finished product. You can follow the project as it progresses on our blog >>http://happenstanceproject.com

Dero project – December update

Welcome to the Dero monthly blog

This is our first blog post for the Dero project.

Background to the Project

The Arts Council and NESTA have launched a Digital Access Fund designed to increase audiences and participation with cultural venues through the use of digital technology. The DERO project has adopted a cross platform approach to performance which would explore these relationships through a live project.

The DERO project explores extending the audiences for Orchestral and Ensemble projects using simulcasts, nearcasts, livestreams and downloads through partners including regional venues, the Guardian online, and the partners Websites.

Project description

The DERO project will see a series of concerts performed live to dispersed audiences and then publicised and made available to buy and/or download after the event.

A concert performed would be:

• Recorded and stored by VideoJuicer and Aframe
• Webcast and nearcast live to rural cultural venues including The Maltings, Alnwick Playhouse and The Gala Durham
• Streamed live on both a free and/or a pay per view basis online, from the Guardian online

Project outcomes

The project will explore:

• How a concert can be enjoyed by new and different audiences using different channels and media
• Revenue share relationships for content published by multiple partners through multiple portals
• The income potential of such an approach for the partners involved
• Rights issues surrounding such an approach

Schedule update

After quite a lot of debate, we have settled on a schedule as follows:

Reverb: Love Song for the City : Aurora Orchestra25 February 2012 7:30pm Camden Roundhouse Programme: R Strauss Metamorphosen Michael Gordon Gotham Bernstein (arr. Iain Farrington) Symphonic Dances from West Side Story Featuring Nicholas Collon (conductor) As part of the Camden Roundhouse’s 2012 Reverb Festival, Aurora presents Love Song for the City, a characteristically eclectic programme charting a course from violence and destruction to rebirth and the vibrancy of urban life. The desolate post-war German cities of Strauss’ Metamorphosen give way to the dizzying growth of modern New York as imagined by Michael Gordon in Gotham, Bill Morrison’s breathtaking black-and-white film enriching a visceral contemporary classic. The programme is completed by the Symphonic Dances from Bernstein’s West Side Story in a virtuosic new chamber arrangement by Iain Farrington evoking the flavour of the original West End pit-band instrumentation.	LIVE for Maltings / Gala Nearcast on 21 April at Alnwick
Portrait of Love28 April 2012 7:30 pm RNCM Concert Hall, Manchester Programme: Webern       Langsamer Satz (Slow Movement) Brahms arr. Herman         Liebeslieder Waltzes Op. 52 Dvorak arr. Matthews         Love Songs Op. 83 Tchaikovsky        Souvenir de Florence A portrait of works by composers struck by the love bug including Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky.	LIVE for Gala / Maltings.Nearcast Alnwick on date TBC
Northern Sinfonia with Christian Vasquez6 May 7:30 pm The Sage Gateshead Programme: Prokofiev Classical Symphony Shostakovich Piano Concerto no.1 Rachmaninov Vocalise Bizet Symphony no.1 in C When someone stumbled upon the score for Bizet’s Symphony in C in a dusty attic in 1935, the composer’s reputation changed forever. Contained within these long-forgotten pages was an endless flow of singable melodies and a stream of joyous and impulsive rhythms all orchestrated with unmatched charm. In its elegance, Bizet’s Symphony is the perfect foil to the gags and japes of Shostakovich’s riotous Concerto.	LIVE for  Alnwick / MaltingsNearcast on 12 May for Gala.

Technical update

The concerts will be streamed live into the Venues. VideoJuicer has erected a test page which Venues can use to test their own set-ups with some instructions.

The Sage Gateshead has provided onsite technical assistance to sort out any particular issues.

So far, these include:

• Network Speed issues for Alnwick Playhouse
• Cabling issues for The Maltings Berwick
• Kit and network issues for The Gala Durham

We hope to make headway with these for our next project call on 16 December 2011. We have some budget to cover technical set up.

PR and marketing update

We have approach the Guardian online as a partner to:

• Livestream the concerts
• Publicise the live events, simulcasts and nearcasts around the country
• Make a paid download available for Northern Sinfonica concert, and a free download available for the Aurora and Manchester Camerata concerts

We are now working on how the partner Venues and Orchestras will publicise the events.

Rights and revenues update

• The project has a relatively high profile within the Classical world, and payments made within this project may be used as a precedent for other similar experiments. Discussions are scheduled to create parity between the Orchestras.
• The project will use a 50:50 box office split between Venue / Orchestras on a £5 ticket sale. As VideoJuicer and Aframe’s costs have been covered by NESTA/ACE, they will not see a share of this revenue, although the project will seek to understand the basis that they might be rewarded for future projects and/or venues

Research update

• We had the kick off with Cambridge University / Fusion Analytics at The Sage on 1 December 2011. Becky Schutz and Matthew Petrie have been invited to present their approach to the general project group at the next project call. Hasan Bakhshi and Angela Pugh from NESTA have also been invited.
• A research structure will be pulled together as an output from that call

Project Management

Overall the project is working very well. We have set up a virtual structure with fortnightly calls. We tried Skype chat – but this didn’t work for everyone, so we have settled on good old email and phone calls.

Contractual update

The contract has been signed and The Sage are reworking out the payment schedule.

New Art Exchange – birth of an idea part 2

Quick on heals of the first part, part 2 of the New Art Exchange’s jouney is equally interesting. I reposted it below or you can check it out on their main site.

 

The Birth of the idea Part 2

Returning from MAC (Midlands Art Centre) I distributed the notes I had collected between a team of NAE staff we had chosen to work on the cloud project. We had Andy Lindley our Technical Manager, Skinder Hundal our chief executive, Ravi Abbott (Me) project Assistant and Islam Muhammad EVS Volunteer. We sat around a table and started discussing what we thought the aims of the project would be and what NESTA would want. We found three very important points that would change our direction of thinking thus changing the project outcomes. The first point was that they were not focusing on new methods of creating interactive art and displaying it. This meant that the idea of interactive screens or robotic heads was not viable.  The Second important point was that they wanted a testable proposition, this meant that we could not make it over complex and it had to be created with current technology. The final important point was that they wanted control to be in the hands of the audience, this would mean it needed to be interactive but that interactivity must count towards something.

We became more focused on the cloud idea, this seems to be the idea that could be made less complicated. With making it a testable proposition we could achieve it by doing it on a much smaller scale then the initial idea. We could simply have one initial cloud based around the NAE area. We could allow artists to upload and share work. We decided to choose visual arts as an initial platform as arts as a subject matter is so wide spread it would be very complex to organise it and pointless for a trail.

We still did not have a name. We were coming up with different ideas, combinations of cloud and community. After jokingly suggesting Boy George’s ‘Culture Club’ we simple swapped the club for cloud. This seemed to fit and roll off the tongue well.

We still needed to define the idea, we had a good base for an online community but how do we bring this community into the gallery space (this is the whole aim of the project). We came up with lots of ideas such as interactive boards, displaying art works on the tram, projection on the side of the NAE. Eventually Andy Lindley suggested we simply made a box in the gallery space. This box would display the works digitally and people could come and see their work displayed in the gallery space.  This box would contain a Pc with a high quality screen or projector. We named this simply ‘media box’

This idea was strong but we felt it would not appeal to people who were not used to or unsure of visiting an art space. We needed something extra to pull them in. Skinder decided to get some advice from art companies and contacts he knew. 

Part 3 Coming soon

by Ravi James Abbott Project Assistant

Social Interpretation

The Imperial War Museum has just kicked off its digital R+D project. It’s my job, as their project manager, to put some structure around a big idea that has been sitting, in the main, in the heads of the project partners. To pull the significant deliverables out of the winning proposal and stack them up as milestones in a (hopefully) impressive looking Gantt chart. No one is ever as interested in Gantt charts as project managers are, so I’ll spare you that. But we are going to blog the process over on the IWM website. Sharing the ideas, processes, successes, surprises, pain and (we promise) deliverables that come out of this project.

Group get together

We had our first group get together for the Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture on Thursday the 27th October 2011, kindly hosted by the Battersea Arts Centre. All 8 projects were in the room artists, techies and the newly appointed research teams.  The whole room was buzzing and it was a great chance for people to get to know one another better and share about their projects. 

Post-it notes were out in full force with an excerise looking at projet timelines and milestones.  There was plenty of group discussion and a bit of develing into the individual projects with everyone keen to share as much as possible both in the group and without.  

Some photos from the night:

Enjoying a cup of tea

fun with post-its

more fun...

post post-it note chat

Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture

After a busy summer of digital days and a sea of applications (495!) the Digital R&D Fund for Arts and Culture selected 8 digital R&D projects that will run over the course of the year from October 2011 – October 2012.

This blog will be updated regularly by the projects however it’s not meant to last forever.  It is though a chance for you to hear directly from the 8 projects – the ups and the downs of their foray into innovation and hopefully take some of their learning back into your own organisations.