i am ai

Catching Up

2011-08-10T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep Watching...

GUANABARA BAY INSTITUTE (IBG)

2010-11-11T00:16:00.001-08:00

Today has been incredibly inspiring as Silvia had organised a visit IGB and Dora Hees who manages the institute and botanical gardens in Niteroi, across the bridge from Rio. This is a residential area, with fishing boats along the coastline, where the white UFO curved modernist modern art museum sits facing back to the view of Rio. Supposedly Carioca’s say the best thing about Niteroi is the view back to Rio. From our 2 short visits (to see Bruno and IBG) I would strongly disagree - although the journey is breathtaking.

Today we had the EME van and so the journey along the bridge to the other side of the bay was by car this time and not ferry. We passed through the docklands, like our own docklands in London they are being transformed for the next Olympic Games after London 2012. Derelict warehouses and shipping yards. Here is an artist occupation that was also involved in one of the previous residencies Siliva has hosted, Flor do asfalto, Zona portuária, Rio. Along the bridge the views of Rio’s skyline, mountains, modernist and colonial buildings, and of course Christ looking down over the city, the bay, the water.

We arrived at IBG and set up, plugging electricity into the institute’s mains, opening the van up as a small installation and learning space. We Both EME and Active Ingredient wait for the stage of the project where we can find alternative energy sources to fuel our interventions with technology and the environment. Until that time comes we follow a fragile line between using these tools that need so much energy and then disappearing into the forest to explore and experience nature unmediated. The energy and mobility issues of the project are uncomfortable (diesel consumption and air travel), but is a process which we hope to resolve and approach as much as possible in an international collaboration such as this with alternative options as appropriate.

We had an hour with a visiting school group. 3 groups of 10 children between 12-14 years old being introduced to the project, the mobile sensor technology, and the visualisation. We then walked with them to a part of the gardens that was a terrace surrounded by forest and ran the human sensor activity. The groups asked really intuitive questions and took their time with the process. The teacher said she was really happy with the project and the educational team filmed the whole process.

As the workshop took place visitors to the gardens walking past the van also stopped to find out what was happening. The van works so well as a new space to present art, a mobile installation, for interventions in public space. It has the potential to be developed in a flexible context. Sylvia talks about the potential for EME (Estudio Movel Experimental) to occur anywhere and with any type of mobility, even inside the fridge where the magnetic EME signs live when they are not on the van!

A teacher from another school who happened to be at IBG chatted to us and was keen to find out if we will return and if her school could take part in the project. The teacher in charge of the group that we worked with took the human sensor activity away with her and we explained the possibilities to develop it with a visualisation activity and she was keen to see how she could integrate it into her own teaching. This is perfect. If we can add a new perspective not just to the children but the teachers too, leave seeds of ideas of a different way of seeing the world and using technology to facilitate this alternative view, then I feel we have done our job as artists, researchers, interventionalists.

CONVERSATIONS AND EXHIBITIONS

2010-11-11T00:13:00.001-08:00

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – it is going so fast and we have got a bit behind on the blog.

We returned to the school on Monday, having finished the data maps, the felt was all glued and the circles framed by an ingenious idea of Silvia’s – hula hoops, that she managed to find in the centre of Rio. As objects, data maps, they are quite beautiful, the colours, layout and style (to use the language of Robin Active Ingredient’s programmer) were simple yet evocative representions of the data they collected as ‘human sensors’.

We went to the school and arrived in the middle of a birthday celebration so we joined in singing Happy Birthday in Portuguese (clapping along) and were treated to some very sticky chocolate cake.

The art teacher Silvia had worked with arrived and took us to set up the exhibition in the entrance to the school. Apart from a small computer room (the size of the one we had in the 1980s in London but of course with up to date computers) there is very little technology in the school and at this time hardly anything on the walls but outside there is forest, a small planted garden that was grown as part of the education programme with the botanical gardens. With 40 children in each class it must be very hard for the teachers, but pretty much all the children we worked with were attentive, focused and thoughtful about their work. Supposedly the school is one of the best state schools in Rio and they certainly have a wonderful resource next door with the botanical gardens.

The kids walking past were very intrigued and the class we seemed quite proud as we attempted to align the 5 data maps on a brick wall. Once we had hung all the data maps and notebooks from the original workshops Sylvia did with them we left, our intervention over - but with plansin place for the longer term exchange project with schools in the UK.

We then went on to the botanical gardens to meet NEA, the education team there in their beautiful resource centre. Carmelita and Marcia showed us the games and activities that they use to introduce the botanical gardens and the biomes of the Mata Atlantica to the groups they work with and then showed us round their inspiring installations about the history of the gardens and botany in Brazil. The gardens themselves are beautifully landscaped and ‘curated’, which is the word they use for the way the plants evolve in the gardens.

After a fantastic conversation with NEA we met Bruno for lunch and were also introduced to Ricardo, the garden’s curator.

And so continues our week of conversation with the people who work with the Mata Atlantica, and with the forest itself through collecting micro data in the locations we visit along our journey in the van.

Despite our growing tiredness, due to the early wake up calls from Luis the fantastic driver and owner of the van, we went out to a launch of a book in a community near the docks.

Walking through the twisted streets with houses built as if they have grown organically interwined and interdependent, up a steep staircase that weaved to the side of the community, to the top of the hill with a large building and watch tower looking over the docks. The group of hackers organising the event are occupying an empty house here and transmitting a pirate radio station over Rio, alongside the launch of their book about their work. The book looks interesting although of course near impossible to read in Portuguese, it will be a good start to improve my vocabulary. They were distributing it as an e-book via pen drives. We met many of Silvia’s peers and collaborators and had some good conversations as people came and went. Standing in the street listening to music from the live radio transmission, drinking beer in the hot sticky night.

Matt ended up doing a DJ slot on the radio and filling Rio’s airways with his own unique DJ ChOw dubstep and two-step sounds of Nottingham.

BRUNO’S BOTANICAL GARDENS

2010-11-11T00:10:00.000-08:00

Active Ingredient are in full effect, well there’s two of us here now so we’re now kind of a force in Rio Today’s journey took us from the lush green hillsides of Santa Teresa across Guanabara bay to Niteroi where we were to meet up with an old friend and associate on the project, Bruno Rezende, botanist from the Botanical Gardens in Rio, who lives and works with the Mata Atlantica (Atlantic Forest).

We managed to jump on board one of the old open air ferries, which I’m informed is a much more pleasant experience than the new enclosed ones that service passengers on a weekday. The expanse of city against jungle is awe inspiring and being out in the bay you can really get a sense of the scale and shape of Rio De Janeiro and it’s huge green nobbly landscape, from the lego bricked communities to the shimmer of the city skyline.

Bruno rolled up and swaggered over from his jeep and we made haste over to his farm, new family home and what we were about to discover was an eden for flora and fauna from all over the world, side by side. He explained energetically en route about his passion as a plant collector and a botanist, detailing the many species he has on the farm. Such is his passion that we even stopped off to pick up a plant from a friend. Bruno is also an artist, experimenting with plantlife and man-made materials, planting germinating bromeliads into glass and cement structures and documenting the seemingly impossible manner in which plants adapt to their new plastic prefabricated environment and as their new home for growth. Some of his creations seemed to mimic the structures they encompass, like the vines growing down against gravity from three showerheads arranged on the exterior wall of his house; Or the huge metal sheeted sculpture which has become home to smaller clusters of plantlife winding their way up the white fragments to the sun and nutrients. There’s a real surreal, Dali-esque quality to the work, but it also stands as solid botanical research and a document to Bruno’s belief in a second nature.

This phase of the project is all about conversations, not between trees but between us and the people who work with the trees and the Mata Atlantica. Bruno has a strong belief that nature can be advanced by technology, he says… “ Technology can make a second nature possible, a balance between what’s been here for millions of years and what’s moving up really fast. There’s lots of technology within my work too, look at the irrigation systems in my sculptures, they’re dealing with engineering problems, self compensating water emissions and pressure rates. Technology can make human life and second nature possible and sustainable.”

The irrigation systems he refers to are there in his latest project, a huge conical cement and marble structure built from found materials on the streets of Rio and plants he has been given or found through his networks. He calls it his nuclear reactor under construction.

We were treated to a delicious lunch spicy shrimps, rice and the traditional manioc sweet fried potatoes I’ve come to know and love. Hats off to the chef (Obrigada Anette.)

It was only when we were invited to take a guided walk through his incredible extensive collection of plantlife and around his sculpture gardens that I realised just how site specific his work is. He has started a life-long piece of work setting up the stage for this diverse range of plantlife and discarded man-made products to flourish in hamony together side by side. He sees his work as nature performing for him and it is very much one huge experiment where he is kind of curating his land and laying the foundations for nature to take root and it truly is a land art installation. It is something that would take 100’s of years in the temperate UK climate, but here in Brazil, such an intense, bright and humid place, you can already begin to see these sculptures come to life. I can see a link to our work on A Conversation Between Trees, as we set up the parameters for our sets of data, if the humidity rises, the image becomes more blurred or if the temperature rises more red hues etc. But we didn’t know what was going to happen when the data from the trees and its surrounding environment slowly fed into the system. It is very much nature performing for us too.

Felt data maps and down at the Cocabana

2010-11-08T05:52:00.000-08:00

Today was another early start. We got to the school sleepy eyed and ready to make the large data maps with the groups. Starting well with the first group (atmospheric pressure) they seemed to get the maps although the concept of interpreting the numbers from the data into felt symbols was a bit confusing for them.

Method of interpretation:
1. Created a scale of 1 – 10 for each dataset (temperature, humidity, decibels, atmospheric pressure, light)
2. Ask 80 children to choose a number on the scale based on their memory, experience, what they see and feel in the forest
3. Add all the numbers together for each dataset
4. Calculate the percentage for each dataset e.g. the children collectively decided that the humidity was 20% in the forest
5. Create a data map interpreting the data calculation, using symbols and colours from work they did with Silvia earlier in the year
6. Layout the symbols on a circle of felt based on the digital visualisation we had created.

The activity reflected the interdisciplinary nature of the project to encourage cross-curriculum learning, working with maths, science, environment and art.

What worked best for me was the way the children worked together in groups, negotiated and led the process. We ended up having all 40 as the they didn’t have a teacher that day and set them up around the van to continue working on the maps as each new group did the introduction.

One of my favourite moments was when I was helping one girl cut leaves out (for the light map), she was watching me to copy what I was doing and I asked her in my terrible Portuguese what size to make it and that it was what she wanted not how I wanted it to be (which involves strange noises, pointing and waving, some Spanish, French and an occasional word of the actual language – which the children found hilarious). She gave me a massive smile and explained how she wanted it to look and said she really liked the leaf I had made with real pride. Another great moment was when some of the other children came up and asked me what the sensor kit in the tree was. I said I was an English artist working in the school but I couldn’t speak Portuguese and some of the children we were working with rushed to explain the whole process to them with incredible enthusiasm, pointing out the visualisation.
Silvia said that some of the other children asked her what was happening and she said that the tree was talking to a tree in England, they all laughed at her so she asked our group if she was telling the truth and they all very seriously nodded their heads and said yes of course with total conviction in the concepts of the project.

After we finished we were completely exhausted, we returned to the flat and I spent a lovely couple of hours in the hammock reading whilst Silvia popped to her Dads house. I then began the laborious process of sticking the symbols to the maps.

A wonderful meal across from Copacabana beach with Silvia and her mum, with the smell and sounds of the Atlantic Ocean (with the UK just across the water – and up a bit). Going to Copacabana and Ipanema makes me want to pinch myself, the names evoke such a Hollywood image of fantasy tropical world, I can’t believe I am here and working with such a wonderful project such as EME.

Felt dust and forests

2010-11-05T13:32:00.000-07:00

I didn’t manage to blog yesterday as it was a really long day. Fantastic but packed full.

Morning we went searching for felt for the workshops. Visited Gentil Carioca, an independent gallery where Silvia showed her first set of work with EME. A lovely gallery, we went behind the scenes to see the amazing toilet that is an artwork and had a quick expresso with Incio who works there.

Got the bus to the botanical gardens to meet Bruno and popped into the school so I got an idea about what it was like. So many conversations about British / Brazilian education our experiences with the schools exchange.

Silvia took me on a walk through the botanical gardens showing me the places they took the children and what they did. Stopped for a drink at the cafe to wait for Bruno - my first Pao de Queijo of the trip (bread cheese) and Gaurana.

Had an amazing couple of hours with Bruno and Silvia at the stunning Parque Largo (the art school below the hill with christ on the top). Talked about science, astronomy, he showed us the amazing work he has been doing since last year building a botanical sculpture to regenerate the land (which was once Mata Atlantica) as a kind of surreal second nature.

Today was a 5.30am start to get to the school for 7am. Here the children have morning school or afternoon school and 40 children in a class. We worked with 80 children in 5 hours but in the most peaceful stress free way. Groups of 6-8 children came to our mobile studio in the van and on stools made by Silvia outside in the playground. We introduced the project to the groups we hadn’t worked with before and showed the work from Djanogly to the group who Silvia had worked with earlier in the year.

We did the human sensor activity with the children also using the sensor kits to compare their perception of the forest with the science.

Returned home to cut felt. Felt dust in my mouth. Beautiful circles of coloured felt and symbols to build the visualisation from the human data collected by the children to create a picture of their experience of the forest on the edge of their school.

Didn’t see any monkeys though.

Preparing to go on board the van

2010-11-03T02:33:00.000-07:00

The first day was a research day, preparing for the schools workshops.

I am going to the school that we worked with on the Dark Forest project on Thursday and meeting the young people that Matt and I worked with remotely and through the exchange with Djanogly School in Nottingham. It will be wonderful to finally meet them and the teachers and follow on from the beautitful work that Silvia and Alissa did with the group (see the School’s section)

We have planned to run some sessions that introduces them to the next phase of the project - ‘A Conversation Between Trees’, present the work that Matt and I did with Djanogly in Sherwood Forest and then run an activity from the van in the school playground.

Using eco felt (a sustainable felt material) we will create a visualisation based on the human sensor activity we did at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The young people will collect the data from standing under a tree in their playground (that is surrounded by the forest) and use the data to build an evolving data map made of felt objects. This data map will reflect how they perceive the forest in their playground on that day. It will be like a large fuzzy felt that can be remade and reformed by the group on different days, a way to visualise their perception of the environmental data we are collecting from the forest - based on the data groups they worked with earlier in the year (temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, decibels and light). It is attempt to introduce to the young people the creative process of building a visualisation of scientific data based on their own perceptions of the world. The final artwork they generate together will then work in contrast to the visualisation we have generated digitally using the scientific data. The process will be filmed and recorded as a time lapse animation - as a performance of nature by the children - to investigate the forest environment around their playground.

We are using felt as it is a thermal material, it reminds me of the fuzzy felt toy from when I was a child where you created landscapes by placing different people, trees etc… on a felt board. It comes in bright colours and will be movable using velcro, creating a physical manifestation of the digital visualisation we have created. This morning we are off to buy the felt and later we will create the symbols for each dataset (based on the drawings the group did earlier in the year) for the group to use to build the visualisation.

The visualisation will then travel with us along our journey inside the van - so that we can present the work of the young people to the people we meet along the way and will be presented back to the school on our return.

Second Week

2010-08-24T02:48:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-22T02:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-22T02:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-12-07T03:59:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-12-07T03:18:00.000-08:00

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

2009-05-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T23:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-21T03:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-04-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-02T03:21:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-02-27T08:55:00.000-08:00

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...

2009-01-19T12:02:00.001-08:00

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

2009-01-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

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

2008-10-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-06T23:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-04T09:10:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-22T16:17:00.001-07:00

The Stadium of the gays?!

Aujourd'hui... mangetout mais oui

2008-05-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-21T00:55:00.001-07:00

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

2008-05-21T00:21:00.001-07:00

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...

2008-05-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

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

Dimanche

2008-05-19T02:25:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the exhibition space at 12pm to start setting up as instructed. Unfortunately the technicians decided to arrive at about 3.30pm, and work on installation didn't really begin in earnest until about 5.30pm. So we spent a whole afternoon twiddling our thumbs and getting frustrated in an Anglo-Saxon work obsesssed sort of way.
In some ways it demonstrated stereotypical attitudes of European nations to getting things done. The Germans were in a back room quietly beavering away. The french were smoking fags looking at the problem and saying things like "we'll do that tomorrow", and the British were wandering around looking for something to do while laughing at anything which vaguely sounded like a fart. Specifically the sound in someone else's installation.

In the evening we went to the area around the Pompidou Centre and wandered aimlessly around street after street as tourists do before finally finding a reasonable restaurant near the Bear Bar (it does exactly what it says on the tin, big hairy men drinking wine on the street, arm in arm).

In our moments of vague meandering we came across a shop which look like it dated back to before the revolution with a sign declaring: "destruction des animaux nuisibles". In the window a strange tableaux of stuffed rats in embraces or fights could be seen. This rat catcher was demonstrating his abilty at catching vermin through the number he could exhibit in bizarre poses in his window. Brilliant.

Matt

French Rainbows and Paper Triangles

2008-05-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

In the evening we had a meal with some of the artists where we got quite drunk and challenged each others creativity in an origami tournament. I made a samurai hat, Samuel(pictured) from Montreal made a fox and Matt made an endless stream of tiny triangles!

On the way to the restaurant we also saw a rainbow over Pere La Chaise Cemetery.

good morning from Paris

2008-05-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

It is morning, looking out over the roofs of Paris and eating madelines, coffee brewing. The Matt's are complaining of feeling rough as...

Yesterday was a very excitable day, much random French words and wandering through North East Paris finding the various venues of the festival. The Main's D'Ouevres is in a cool area (quartier) which is the Marchee Au Puces, the flea market lots of winding streets and things to look at. Be fun to play the game there. Set up was fine, although some new problems with the global interface but sure they will be sorted by Tuesday, nothing fatal. The new kit and version is so far so good.

Lots of walking good for my bad knees and the 5 flights of stairs to get to our apartment, pretty much back to normal now which is a big relief.

Went to Christian Nold's launch at Ars Longa, meet with the festival gang, made some new found friends from France, Canada, Germany and Finland (although Juha we had meet before in Bristol last year).

Went for a long meal involving a mixture of alcoholic celebrations of Matt W's birthday involving origami and I don't know what. We deliberated drinking champagne by the canal but stumbled back to the flat.

Weather good, stormy, sunny, view of Sacre Couer from our window perfect.

Rachel

Acid Paris

2008-05-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

So we arrived in Paris last night we've got a great if somewhat small apartment in Paris. Picture shows the view from the window with the Sacre Coeur in the distance. Matt Davenport and I had to share a bed last night. After arriving we went to the venue for the opening party where they had a great acid techno DJ playing (Huoratron), with lots of cool Parisienne's shakin there stuff. I managed to confuse a bar maid with my sub standard CSE french. But a good night was had by all.

This morning we got up on my Birthday(hooray) and me and Rach went and got some supplies from the Boulangerie, Charcuterie, Fromagerie and the a bit like Tesco-erie and had a breakfast of coffee and croissants. Oh c'est tres bon!

We are now off to the venue to set up and get a feel for the festival.

Matt

Them and Us

2008-05-15T06:18:00.000-07:00

photos courtesy of Julian Hughes

May 08

2008-05-14T02:23:00.000-07:00

The last couple of months have been very interesting at ai.

We have been preparing for Them and Us - the work in progress, which happened last week. It was interesting but quite scary to show something at such early stages to an audience and to see how they react, engage and play with the technology. It was a good experience though, hopefully for the people who gave us their time and involvement in our early ideas. The overall response was positive and even quite excited from the majority of the players/participants/audience whatever they were! The main feedback we got was more... we need to be more full on, which is really great.

We have been in residence at the Mixed Reality Lab, at Nottingham University which has been fantastic for us. Playing with the Ubisense technology, an ultra wide band tracking system that tracks distance, proximity, height etc.. of people and objects. We are using this to develop Them and Us (which we are describing as a "mass participation wii game").

The same week we had a visit from Paulo and Marcelo from Mobilefest in Brazil, to discuss the BR163 expedition that is planned now for August 08, although we will try and fundraise to do a reccy this year, although it is very tight for time. We had lots of meetings and organised a network event at Broadway Media Centre to talk about our work, Nottingham Trent Uni and Radiator's Performance Space programme and for Paulo and Marcelo to talk about Mobilefest.

Hopefully even if we don't get to the Amazon this year we will find a way to go back to Mobilefest in the winter and continue our collaboration with them.

The other very exciting thing that is happening is that we are in discussion about a new venture, more about this soon...

We also have a new version of Heartlands which will be launched at the Mal Au Pixel festival in Paris next week... so we are off again on our travels, this time to Paris with Matt Davenport and meeting up with Capra for the final weekend to present Heartlands in the area around the Marchee Du Puce (Flea Market) and the Mains D'ouevre arts space.

Pictures

2008-02-29T04:57:00.001-08:00

AV Festival 2008

Going Live

2008-02-29T04:31:00.000-08:00

We have had a couple of very long days setting up. But it was all worth while, last night
approximately 250 people turned up for the launch at the Hatton Gallery and The Fantasy A-List Generator went down a storm. Once the wine started flowing people piled into the booth, put wigs and disguises on and got broadcasting. The only hiccup was when someone switched the microphone off (which was caught on camera).

The launch went on to several other venues, we finally made out of the gallery and to the Discovery Museum, where we happily discovered Yuko, who we had met and spent several drunken nights with in Tokyo. Neither of us knew the others were showing work at the same festival. Her work was an interesting lo-fi hi-fi installation, that reminded me of 60s gallery happenings with printers. We went on to Alt gallery with a great installation in a cool little gallery space at the back of a very cool record shop. four turntables made sound created by little remote control vans and the walls were covered in radios. (see pictures) then went on to the castle for a video/sound installation that didn't quite do it for me although it had choral music in old castle ruins which is always good.

We then were all quite worse for wear and desperate for food, missed the VIP pizza party with DJs so found our way to an amazing Japanese restaurant with Sarah, Laura and Pete and ate and ate, Matt was pleased with his beef in a box.

Today we are just tweaking things and feeling a bit hungover, more events tonight.
Watch the A-List on www.make-tv.net
Favourite moments so far are the little girl, the full band and the security gaurd who did a secret broadcast before the gallery opened this morning, although tragically it was before we discovered the mike had been switched off so know one will ever know what he said.

First day in the windy city

2008-02-26T14:21:00.000-08:00

Big winds in Newcastle, lucky we got here last night as they closed all the bridges and trucks have been turning over. I had fun shopping for last minute props, the wind caught a bag and broke a picture frame, not quite as scary as a truck turning over mind you

Set up today started frustrating, the internet wasn't working (as ever on at least one day of a set up) the microphone doesn't work on the computers that we are using... but by the afternoon most things were sorted out, the webcam and Matt's special red button are now all fitted thanks to Jem and Pete, the video booth looks nice and cosy, with a particularly fetching Wilkos curtain on the back wall and most importantly the interface works fine (only a little bit of tweaking required tomorrow) although Robin is unwell in bed in Nottingham and we are still in need for the uptodate live player, hope he's better tomorrow!

It will all go live Thursday afternoon in time for the launch.

Left the gallery about 7pm and got locked out the flat so waited for Matt in a bar, we are staying in China Town which is great until this time of night when hoards of drunken Jordies swarm past the bedroom window, shouting and puking. It's a great area despite this, really old cobbled streets. Although confirms all my doubts about this contemporary modern living thing.

Went on to a Chinese restuarant with huge portions, i ordered a strawberry pearl for experiment sake, it's a strawberry milkshake with sweets in the bottom that, as you suck through the straw shoot like bullets into your mouth. I enjoyed it very much.

last night we met Sarah the curator and got whisked off to a bar and then Wagamama's where we met most of the AV festival team, was nice to meet everyone some familiar faces and many new, should be a good festival.

AI off to Newcastle

2008-02-24T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Fantasy A-List Generator

Broadcast Yourself, AV Festival 08

Watch Live Online at: www.make-tv.net

Hatton Gallery, Newcastle

28th Feb - 8th March

Active Ingredient have been commissioned to bring back MakeTV (the live broadcasting project) for the AV Festival.

They have created the Fantasy A-List Generator, a live video booth were members of the public are invited to take on the personality of a randomly generated celebrity and be interviewed live on the internet.

We all have answers to the big questions in our heads. Now is the time to take over from the world's celebrities and go live on the Internet with your own answers.

Broadcast Yourself will also be showing at the Cornerhouse, Manchester 13th June - 10th August.
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We are off to Newcastle tomorrow to set up for the AV Festival. It's a great opportunity to be able to revisit an old project that I suppose we thought was thrown out by YouTube. Broadcast Yourself is celebrating artists contribution to internet video and so it is very exciting that Sarah Cook and Kathy Rae Huffman (the curators) wanted to include us because of Moon Radio webTV and MakeTV.

We have 6 days in Newcastle, they are putting us up in a flat which will be nice, the launch is on Thursday evening. AV Festival looks massive, a huge programme around broadcast. http://www.avfestival.co.uk

AI in Cologne (Koln)

2008-02-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday night we got back from a brief visit to Cologne. We were invited to present our work with mobile technology and do a demonstration of Heartlands (as a single player game) to the students of the Mobile Animation Content programme at IFS (a film school).

Thursday night coincidently our Gob Squad friends happened to also be there, staying around the corner developing one of their shows so we met up at a traditional German brewery that replaced Kulch the local beer with one beer after an other until you put the beer mat over your empty glass. They were only small glasses (slightly unnerving to be drinking German beer from a glass your gran would use for a small tipple) but it all adds up and we didn't know about the beer matt rule until it was too late. The brewery served traditional German fare which involved many types of pig and large sausages for Matt, strange looking cheese and the largest gherkin I ever did see for me... to our delight!

Great to catch up with old college friends who now live in Germany and meet some of the additions to the Gob Squad and their friend Christian a genuine resident of Cologne.

We then went on to a trendy kitch bar with a statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by a mound of spirit bottles. I forgot about the German Gin portions and accidently had a massive gin and tonic to top the night off, which didn't help my ability to do a demonstration the next day.

Heard a presentation by an expert on Pervasive Games from Fraunhofer Insititute and then Matt presented our work. After lunch I presented Heartlands in more detail and ran a couple of games with the students. A really interesting mix of people.

We had an hour to wander into Cologne, and see the Cathedral, which glowed golden as the sun went down, walked down to the Rhine, to see a new European river that we had never seen before. Matt bought some of the unnervingly small Kulsch glasses and I looked for presents for my neice-to-be but could only find art books and thought would be not suitable for a baby not yet born, plenty of time for that.

The journey home was hell. Dusseldorf airport security is the most idiotic thing I have ever seen at an airport. Then getting back from Birmingham involved a long time in the pub waiting and a very long journey for a not so long distance...

last day

2007-12-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

Pictures: graffitti at Vila Madelena, a dalek disguised as a very large christmas tree, bananas at the market, a fortune telling parrot in the Japanese Barrio

I am back now in freezing england.

on the last day Paulo took me to the Japanese barrio, where we wandered around shops and stalls and watched some Taiko/samba drumming. we found more graffitti.. We then went to meet Marcelo for lunch and talk about some future collaborations, ideas and work. Lots of things to think about on the plane. Then got driven to the airport in a bullet proof taxi, which was a wierd, I couldn't take photos as wasn't allowed to open the windows as I got to see more of endless Sao Paulo...

my sister in law met me at heathrow and her and my brother looked after me until I got over the tiredness, what a treat!

I am looking forward to going back soon and trying to keep some of the Sao Paulo summer in my mind...

A day off

2007-12-09T04:49:00.000-08:00

Once i had recovered from my hangover yesterday, I walked to SESC and set up the final exhibition will stay here for a couple of weeks more. Paulo drove me to the centre of Sao Paulo where we were all meeting for lunch. Unfortunately the car broke down on the way, we dumped it in a car park and jumped in a taxi (there is a car park nearly every other building as there are so many cars on the road).

Went to a great restuarant in the centre of Sao Paulo, traditional food and live samba, everyone dancing around the tables, feishoja (i think it is called) beans, rice, deep fried banana, orange (meat for meat eaters) and this powdery stuff which was all delicious, my sides hurt from eating so much. Marina explained it comes from slave food and has all the key ingredients in it. I could eat it everyday.

Marina offered to take me to some different places in the afternoon and I had a fantastic time, she reminds me of my family and can talk as much as I can, so we spent the most lovely afternoon chatting about everything, exploring and shopping. She took me to the artist area that is covered with really cool graffiti that changes daily. Then nearby to a street market that has all kinds of hand made things, really beautiful stuff i bought hundreds of christmas presents.

Had a celebrity moment at the market I heard my name being called out, it was a woman who has seen my talk. She is a clothes designer and had a stall there, she makes amazing clothes and I was attempted to by this really cool tartan dress, but was determined to stay focused on the christmas shopping list. did buy myself a couple of things though (:

We then drove to Paulo and Marina's studio/house. It is stunning. It is on a small mews and was owned by Paulo's grandparents, the front garden is full of tropical flowers with a jasmine tree twisted around the door and my favourite red heart shaped flowers with the strange yellow sticky out bits.

We stopped for a drink and chatted about Ali G, Doctor Who and all kinds of things. Marina lived in England for many years. We then went to their favourite Italian restaurant (Marina comes from an Italian background) where we had the most amazing deep fried courgettes and aubergines with mint, the best olives i have had in years, i had proper spaghetti peas and mushrooms in white sauce, and then for dessert fresh fruit to die for.

Paulo then took me back to the artist area where a happening/event was going on. His friend is involved in it who is an artist activist, it was great to meet him. He has been doing interventions between artists, the favelas, occupying buildings and worked with wives of criminals in the favelas to stop them from being evicted. All as art interventions. He is sending my a DVD of his film to show people in the UK. The event was in the garden and out buildings of a house in this area that had a great feel, you could sense the community just from walking down the graffitti painted streets. We unfortunately had missed the performance art, although there were still some performers asleep on a balcony.

Today I woke up early having had a proper night's sleep finally and went to find a super market, I also found a fruit and food market with stalls and stalls of bananas!

Off to the Japanese area to lunch with Paulo and Marina and then my flight home... I hope that I have made great friends here with Paulo and Marina and hope to be able to get back here soon, and collaborate in the future. Back to blighty and the cold.

No pictures yet it is taking forever to upload from here for some reason, will add them on my return.

Day 5 - talking and dancing

2007-12-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

Pictures:
me with our video, Marcelo, Martin and Paulo at Lov.e and the burlesque dancer

yesterday i woke up with a hangover as I have done today too. just recovering now!

remembered that it was the day of the talk and spent the morning preparing. I got to SESC about midday and Marcelo took me to the Japanese restaurant for lunch and I managed to be a little less of a pig this time.

The Art and Technology session that i was in was pretty amazing. All the artists were so exciting and such high quality work and great ideas. Then there was a video conference with ITP in New York and again some really cool presentations. Then we all sat on stage and had a discussion with the guys in New York, each other and the audience. It was great, talked about some fantastic things that I can't remember about now, too little sleep I think.

The audience was really interesting. There were alot of teachers and academics of course. After the discussion a woman (a teacher and speech therapist I think) came up to me and said I love you! How amazing. It feels like people here are crying out for exciting ideas. I also spoke to a teacher who works in the north with young kids and orphans, mainly from native brazilian backgrounds. She wants us to do a project with her! Wow. So I might have got us a gig in the Bahia.

Went back to the hotel for a quick rest and then out again, found a lebanese restuarant with Gabe and Martin, luckily I only had starters (which seemed to really confuse the overly attentive waiter, who insisted on dishing out portions). Then we went off to Lov.e for the "party". We went into the pre-club bar which was completly mad. A burlesque suicide girls bar. All the waiters had tatoos and there was a semi naked burlesque dancer. Rich Paulistas at play! Sat drinking Caiprinhas and Caiprirushkas (with vodka), the alcohol measures here are frightening. Had a vodka and coke that was in a long glass and was 3/4 vodka. It was a sponsored free bar in the bar and club ALL NIGHT. mmmm.

We then went to the club next door, which was pretty good. A dj/vj from the festival was playing some good techno and had good visuals, we danced until 6am. Which explains how I feel now after 4 hours sleep. Off for lunch in a minute. Don't want to miss anything.

Days 4 - At the festival

2007-12-08T05:15:00.000-08:00

Pictures: The British Consulate, Carla and Alberto, Adriana and Gabe, Paulo and Marina

I have been all caught up the festival and having fun.

Before the pizza place on Wednesday we started talking to guys showing an interactive video. When Bush came to Brazil and Argentina they made banners and posters and did some interventions, the imagery was beautiful. Their studio was in the area cornered off by the police but as they worked there they were able to do some really protests as Bush drove past.

Mobilefest is a very good festival. It has managed to bring together some really good themes, it is also so well organised, the exhibition has been supported by some really good people and technically it has worked really smoothly. Details like simultanous translation, although slightly confusing really helps. I have been having good fun with the exibition team, they have helped explaining everything to the public and with the demos, they have also had a bit of a battle of their hearts, with playing the game. I have to say I have never experienced such totally enthusiastic reaction.

So much to write! Thursday I was mainly demonstrating. At lunch time I had a little adventure to the British Consulate to meet with the UK trade and investment officer for "creative industries". Simone and Jaquelina took me to lunch in a beautiful restuarant that had a mini jungle in the middle (no snakes luckily). The food here is amazing. The big restuarants seem to mainly do buffets, a whole area of salads of all kind, potato, rice, green, Japanese style, italian, buffola mozzarella, I ate a plate of this and then they took me back for hot food. A moussaka style thing, traditional Brazilian beans (like baked beans but really tasty) veg. Then back for dessert. Proper choice that I couldn't decide, a syrupy pumpkin fruit salad. wow that was good. A dulce de leche cake AND a doughnut type thing made of bread and dulce de leche. I only had a small portion of each, but what a pig! I couldn't finish it mind you - total sugar overload.

The meeting was interesting, they are trying to change perceptions of Sao Paulo in the UK, as a good place for people to come and work make partnerships and of course invest. It is very trade orientated (well I suppose it is the DTI) but was interesting to talk about this in terms of what we do, what Mobilefest is about and the possible types of partnerships. The big interesting thing for Sao Paulo, unique from most cities in the world is because advertising hoardings and large shop signs are banned there is a whole gap for innovative marketing, which means companies (like the mobile phone companies) have to get their brand out in interesting ways. Russ and Leanna (two of the artist/designers from Rio) have done amazing stuff in the public arena but commercially to promote companies, really hi tech but accessible and beautiful work, because companies need to get their names across in different kind of ways and not rely on the obvious. The kind of work we dream of in the UK. Maybe we are looking in the wrong places but it just doesn't seem the same, although our ideas, methods and experiences are all very similar.

Russ and Leanna, like all the artists I met have been so lovely. They invited me to spend my last night in Rio and show me round. What a temptation, but unfortunately when I looked at the flights (only an hour from SP) they were all wrong times and too risky (but also so tempting) to miss my flight home!

Back at the gallery I demonstrated the game to a curator of an art gallery in SP who seemed quite interested in trying to get us out to do some work. Also met a really interesting guy, a film maker who is now working for the Brazilian government to decide on policy on how to invest in mobile technology and interactive media. I talked about the UK, and gave him Simone's details, could be an interesting link up.

In the evening, Paulo and Marcelo the organisers took us to Japanese restuarants, like the ones we went to in Japan. Huge platters of Sushi, Carla the producer of the festival ordered me a special vegetarian dish, a plate of noodles arrived, then a plate of rice and vegetables, and then a plate of tofu. all for me. after the lunch I had already eaten. needless to say I struggled to get half way through the noodles, what a waste. I will be dreaming of this when I get back home. It was great to talk properly with Paulo and Marcelo and also meet Paulo's wife Marina who was so sweet and lovely to talk to.

Went on to another bar with Alborto (from Spain/Italy), Carla, Gabe (a really cool artist from Canada) and Adriana, in a interesting part of town, Vila Madalena. The bar was so good for people watching. We drunk alot of beer, before you knew it another one appeared in front of you! it was 4am when Carla drove us home.

picture

2007-12-06T04:56:00.000-08:00

1. a billboard with the advertising screen removed
2. one of the posters in the gallery
3. beautiful christmas decorations
3 the tall building is SESC where the gallery is

Day 3 - Mobilefest

2007-12-06T04:01:00.000-08:00

Pictures: The exhibition at SESC, one of the posters, Alborto, Martin and some of the guys from Bijari at the pizza place

Yesterday the festival began. It is a really great festival and I am falling in love with sao paulo. I still haven't seen that much, but everyone here is totally charming and beautiful (as brazilians seem to say alot in english) and i am liking the area we are in, although it is very posh and safe, so I have not really seen sao paulo yet. It feels though that everyone is very nice to each other and look out for each other. There is someone to do everything for you, open the door, park your car. The contrast to what I know about much of brasil, the city of god, the instructions about safety... is unbelievable, but then this is the posh area. At the end of the day though everyone seems so much smilier and polite than in england.

The conference is very interesting too. yesterday was about education and the environment, some fascinating talks about $100 laptops that are being distributed to schools around the world and some specific projects using them in Sao Paulo and Porto Alegre. A TV presenter that uses television as a learning tool in brazil and then takes projects from this programme into schools in small villages in the north of brazil, Acre, where the attendance in schools have increased dramatically. A ngo that works in the amazon and also has a programme to collect mobile phone batteries. Martin is very much from the world where I work and knows alot of the same people. The audience seems to be teachers, game designers and artists from all over Brasil which is really interesting, it is so refreshing to not be in arts context but with wider discussions.

I got asked to do a 15 minute talk as part of the education theme, at the last meeting. It was a bit unplanned but people seemed really interested in our work. The woman who works with the $100 laptops said she loved the idea of what we were doing and thought it was all totally "Crazy" and great for children.

The exhibition has really good work. These great posters by designers showing all views of mobile technology, pro and cons. Spent yesterday evening drinking and eating with some of the other participants including an artist collective that do activist art and have similar approach to us and have also been going the same length of time. They cross art/commercial work in the same way we do (but with more emphasis on the commercial as there is less government money here) it is great to go across the world and meet people trying to do the same thing. Paulo and Marcelo are lovely, Marcelo took me to lunch to a Japanese restuarant that had an amazing buffet. The evening was spent in a pizza restuarant in the most glamerous part of town, drinking beer and caiprinhas.

Have come across a new technical hitch. There are major power problems in the gallery and 2 computer blew yesterday that were meant to be showing our dvd. This is causing some delays, again this morning all the power had been switched off. For once it is not the complicated technology but the simplest thing!

This morning I woke up and had a swim in the pool on the 14th floor of the hotel overlooking the view of sao paulo. What heaven! I feel very spoilt and love it here.

Pictures

2007-12-05T02:37:00.000-08:00

Day 2 - Mobilefest set up

2007-12-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday after breakfast (beautiful orange juicy papaya), avoided the choice of Japanese pickles as stomach not so strong in the mornings. i love south american breakfasts, tropical fruit, cake and cheese! I feel like Marie Antoinette.

I then worked all morning, setting up the kit. Though there seems to be anti GPS windows in the hotel and I wasn't too keen on loitering outside in the street.

We meet Paulo in the lobby and Gabe, a Canadian artist and Adriana who was volunteering. Gabe is showing a project called Murmur where he collects stories from people about their memories/feelings of locations in a place and then puts posters up in that location with a phone number that you can ring to hear the story. He does it quite guerrilla style, apart from in the UK where he had to get permission... which caused a huge comparitive discussion about the world of health and safety.

We got driven to a restaurant not far away but experienced a Sao Paulo traffic jam first hand. The drive was meant to be 20 minutes but took much much longer. The streets are mixed with warehouses, large houses, tall tall gated flats, dress shops. There are lots of father christmas decorations, the favourite being santa with a sack, on a ladder breaking in a window. They don't have chimneys (too hot for fires). Santa looks pretty stupid with a woolly red hat with a white bobble in 32 degress. sweaty santa.

Had a lovely meal in a trendy restaurant. Palm hearts are a speciality and they are great.mmm. had them and haloumi type cheese grilled and salad and gauva. again pink, juicy. doesn't taste like soap like gauvas do once they go through whatever process needed to fly to the UK.

Went on to the venue. SESC is a cultural institution, a large high storey building. The exhibition is in the gallery area next to the foyer and looks like it is going to be good. Got GPS in the foyer, phew. We checked out the route, which goes out the door, into a secure rose garden next door which is a little city oasis, round the block which has a security guard on everydoor of every building. I think it should be safe enough to wander with kit and it is a varied walk, with steep bits, calm bits, loud busy bits.

The roof garden at SESC is amazing. A view of Sao Paulo which is totally futuristic. Tall high rise buildings with these huge aerials pointing at the sky that look like they are receiving not transmitting. No adverts or screens. The opposite of Tokyo. The hoardings are bare, no visual pollution. The mayor has banned advertising (although there is some small adverts above shops still) supposedly people really support this. It is eerie, a visual quietness. To put a large screen in Sao Paulo as part of a project (like Love City) would now have the most amazing impact, it would mean something. The city itself is at the forefront.

Had a bit of a crap meal for dinner. Searched for restaurants and ended up in a bad food court, and again couldn't make it clear that I wanted food without meat, so had to fish bacon bits (what is is with the bacon bits?) out of a bland stuffed ricotta in cheese sauce dish. I need to find out how to say "I am a vegetarian, please no meat or fish, and definately no bacon bits". On the way back found about 10 great looking restaurants that we had passed by somehow. Had a drink with Martin in a lanchonette that smelt of mens armpits and looked like a woman hadn't entered it since 1970.

Day 1 - Sao Paulo

2007-12-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

I am in Brazil!
The flight felt very long, thought I was going to miss my connection in Amsterdam when I discovered it was on the other side of the airport. About 8 hours into the flight I discovered Martin Owens, also going to the festival, was sitting across the aisle from me, and it was great to break up films and the world of JPOD (Douglas Coupland's view of life as a games developer) with chatting about the world of pervasive media. We both settled down to a language course on the inflight entertainment screen and attempted to learn portuguese. me falo pequeno portuguese. It is a lie because that is about all I can say and I am not even sure if it is right, but I am sure I will improve as the week goes on. Armed with some knowledge of Spanish and French seems to be helping.

Lorenco met us at the airport and helped us with the first moments of aclimitazing. Wierd travelling in a day, somehow it doesn't feel like you have gone anywhere because there was no night time in between, and Sao Paulo only 2 hours behind the UK so no jet lag, but I was very tired having got up at 3am. Kept on thinking about Victorian travel and how long it used to take and probably should considering the carbon I am personally guzzling through all this travel.

We were taken to the hotel which is very cool, will add a picture if I can get the bluetooth to work on my laptop. Strangely it is a Japanese hotel (Sao Paulo has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, although I am sure San Francisco lay claim to this too). I am travelling the world and keep ending back in Japan, which is fine by me.

We decided to be adventurous and have a wander to find a restaurant, we went around a couple of blocks, the hotel is off Ave Paulista the main modern street, with the SESC gallery a few blocks down. There were Lanchonete on nearly every street corner filled with kids smoking and drinking, they are a bar, tabac (like french bars) and canteen in one. We found one that looked cleanish and busy and sat down for beers, rice and chips, beans and I had an omeleto, which came first with bacon bits - nao comer carne didn't seem to work... maybe it means I love bacon bits? but the waiter was happy and understanding enough to exchange it for a cheese omelette when I finally managed to articulate myself.

Was a nice evening with Martin, good to have someone to chat to, I was dreading the loneliness of arriving in a strange place, eating in the hotel restuarant on my own and spending the evening watching crazy brazilian Tv until I could sleep. So much more relaxing to venture out and see where I am. Missing Matt though, we have travelled together so much the last couple of years with Dragons that it feels unbalanced and not so fair that I pulled the long straw (not that I am complaining). Hope all ok back in blighty Matt!

Despite all the warnings and pessimism it doesn't feel dangerous or intimidating in the area around the hotel, not that this will make me less cautious, mind you. And it is hot. It is nearly mid summer and so nice to feel warm again, after windy, rainy London this weekend.
Better get ready for breakfast. Hope i don't get faced with wierd Japanese gluey poached eggs that still makes me nauseas thinking about it. Meeting Paulo and some of the other people who are staying at the hotel too at 1pm. They have organised a vegetarian restaurant to sponsor the festival, which is great, and it looks like there is going to be a party in the Lov.e club which i read was where quite alot of Brazil's underground drum and bass and techno scene goes on. mind you that was in the rough guide so maybe not so underground...

Have to pay for internet in the hotel, though not that much, but will check my mail and stuff morning and evening.

AI Does Brazil

2007-12-01T04:02:00.000-08:00

I am off to Sao Paulo on Monday morning for Mobilefest http://www.mobilefest.com.br I am off on my own to present Heartlands, Love City and our new project Them and Us at the symposium and do some demonstrations and show a video at the exhibition in a gallery on Ave Paulista. Quite excited and nervous about going on my own.
Matt and Robin are unfortunately staying in our cold studio to keep things going in the run up to Christmas. The good news at home is that we have received confirmation of funding for Them and Us and so will be working in residence at MRL (University of Nottingham) from January - April creating a new performance/game/event/workshop... more to come on this.

Active Ingredient gets in the press and other stuff

2007-10-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

Since getting the Nokia award I have been feverishly sending out press releases and attempting to get information out about Heartlands (which is the newest version of 'Ere Be Dragons). It is working and so far we have featured in:

Independent on Sunday Review (21/10/07) p.8 Trends

Pocket Gamer

BBC Nottingham online

We are also writing a feature for The Broadsheet, a Nottingham website.

A copy of the press release can be found on at http://www.i-am-ai.net/ in the YOU section.

Other than awards, press and admin, things are relatively slow here. We started work on our new project Them and Us, working with (the also award winning) Michael Pinchbeck, writer of the play the "White Album". This development work will soon be online on our new website Active Imagination, which will track our ideas, be a place for people to be able collaborate with us and add their ideas, and generally play a bit more...

Winners Nokia Mindtrek Award

2007-10-05T05:00:00.001-07:00

Award Winning Team
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient

On Wednesday we received first prize in the Nokia Mindtrek Awards for Ubi-Media (meaning media embedded into everyday objects and activities). Cheesy grins for everyone. The event was held at the Hotel Scandic Rosendahl in Tampere, Finland. the second largest city in Finland and very close to the town of Nokia!
We had a great time and particularly enjoyed the little medieval trumpet blast that accompanied every winners announcement.
Our last day was spent site seeing. We visited the Lenin Museum ( huge building ,very small exhibition) and the Moomin Valley Museum which was great and brought back many happy memories of childhood. The adventures of MoominTroll , Snufkin and the scary Hattifatteners were all shown in original ink drawings and little dioramas of their adventures. Great. The only low point was as I was taking a picture of a Bronze statue of MoominTroll outside the museum a man attempted to beat me up. Thinking I was taking pictures of him ( although the camera was right in front of the statue).

Moomin Troll on a petrified log
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient

I missed a slap but he got a glancing kick to my arm. For a brief few seconds I thought he was an undercover cop and I had broken a sacred law regarding taking pictures of Moomins. Were they worshipped like gods? Was I stealing their soul with my spirit catcher? Then I realised I was hungover and he was clearly just a mentalist, not a guardian of Moomins.

Matt

Misty day in Finland

2007-10-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

It is morning in Finland. I am looking out of my window at the mist, and autumnal trees. Rumour has it there is a lake next to the hotel, but the mist is hiding any water. So far Finland seems to be mainly water and trees, although I haven't actually left the hotel yet.

Matt and Capra are out playing, testing GPS. Infact they just got back. Capra reckons he won, but he is so competitive he always thinks he's won. Supposedly the lake is beautiful, will go out once this is all done. Robin is asleep as normal, supposedly Matt snored all night and kept him awake. Leif is working as normal, in his room, keeping out of the way.

I have been named the queen of the geeks, being one of two women at breakfast. hopefully there will be other women at the conference, not that I am really complaining, in fact I am enjoying myself very much...

we are doing a demo this afternoon and then this evening the award party is happening at the hotel night club. woohoo. we have no idea what to expect. The hysteria has already started, me, matt, capra and robin all holed up in my hotel room winding each other up, matt farting... need to get out in the mist and get some fresh air.

Offload Festival

2007-09-17T04:33:00.000-07:00

We got back from Bristol and a short break in wales to recover, yesterday.

Offload was a really interesting festival and was good to be part of a festival that looked beyond the arts debates and the detail of location based gaming, locative arts, digital arts etc... and was more about wider issues of health, wealth and the environment. It somehow felt more in touch with how we work as artists. Our interest in ideas as opposed to an obsession in defining what we do.

The festival opened with a very interesting talk by John Thackera who has written a book about design and gave 5 issues for working with design and new media in the context of environmental change, looking at qaulity of life and economy. It was very interesting and good to have a theoritical approach to the context in which many of us artists are working.

The first day we were setting up and testing for the workshops at Create (a Bristol council based environmental centre on the island in a huge old warehouse). Nottingham seems so un-ambitious after you see Create, Arnolfini, Spike Island, Watershed, all close together. Nottingham could be like this, it has the people, the interest, the audiences. HOpefully the new contemporary arts centre will begin to change things.

The evening we were kindly invited to Maarten's house, one of the organisers for dinner with some of the other artists, this was great and always good to all meet up. Although we got very lost getting there, Matt trying to google earth the way with a postcode i wrote down wrong. Me, Matt and Robin stumbling around bristol in the dark.

The workshop day went really well. Had 15 eleven year olds, from a school in Wells. We collaborated with the Participate (BBC project) group to combine both our workshops which seemed to work really well. giving a chance for the kids to experience the game and creative side of the technology and health, alongside getting a more details bolts and bits insight into sensing yourself and the environment from Participate. They loved the monster that they named fluffy. one girl became a little obsessed...

That night we were pretty knackered from chasing hyper 11 year olds round the field so we had a meal (me, Matt and Robin) and then went to the screening of Silent Running in the Euroland ampitheatre on the dock, very strange experience. we were staying just across from there and spent alot of time feeling freaked out by the Euroland style of development, that we keep encountering. not made for humans.

Saturday was watershed day. went well on the whole. not a large audience but the feedback Lizzie got(who was doing evaluation for us) was very interesting and on the whole positive. had issues with the network caused by it being a massively busy day in bristol (carnival, several festivals and a march!) this messed up some of the multi-player game experience.

but overall the audience returned from playing looking healthier and smiling, which is the aim of the game...

The monster had a hard time, some kids got a bit excited and stole it's tail and then a drunken bristolian decided to strangle it...

at the end of the day we went off to Wales to see our friends Stuart and Nicola, have a walk in the hills, eat pub food and recover.

Thanks to Offload team and particularly Connor and Ira, the monsters!!

off to Bristol

2007-09-12T04:46:00.000-07:00

The spider robot as featured in Chemical Garden in 2000

Today we are off to Bristol, in fact we should be on our way but getting together arts council applications etc... boring stuff, so late leaving.

I haven't added anything to the blog for a while as couldn't find the password, but ai are on the move again. This time to the Offload festival in bristol where we are doing a school's workshop with a Bristol primary school on Friday, designing mobile games that involve exercise and different sensors, we are taking down our spider robots, webcams, pedometers and heart rate monitors to get their imaginations excited and maybe they will design some cool games.

On Saturday we are running Dragons at the Watershed, so if you are down in Bristol and want to plug your heart in and explore come to the Watershed 10am-4pm

Should all be fun, we met the organisers Teresa and Kathy in Cambridge, more than an arts festival, see the web address www.offloadfestival.org

last day in Tokyo

2007-08-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

Last night we had a curry and a drink in Shimoda by the sea. We had booked into an expensive but crap hotel, because there was nowhere else to go, fag burns on the duvet...mmm... then wandered around, and discovered many many traditional drummers (called Taiko) all practising for the festival next week, was great, must have been what the drummers had been doing the night before when I got lost trying to find the launderette.

Found a bar called jahjah that had a dj booth and lots of kids trying out their dj and MC skills, was fun, like dj karaoke.

got up early this morning and returned to the hecticness of Tokyo, shopping and trying to find Emma with out bag of our equipment. Home tomorrow, feels like we`ve been away for months...

Shimoda bichi(beach)

2007-08-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

Today we did the classic tourist thing of going to the beach after sorting out a slightly dodgy hotel for tonight and havig breakfast. Rachel had the biggest cheeese on toast we have ever seen. The bread was less of a doorstop more of a door to bank vault
It was overcast but it's still a balmy steamy heat so heading to the beach seemed fitting. Japan has it's fair share of beach posers and surf dudes blaring hip-hop from their suped up toyota's and suburu's as we discovered on arriving at Kisumi beach.

We had a great swim in the pacific which to our pleasant surprise was quit cold. I did a bit of body surfing but the waves weren't up to much.

This evening we stumbled on a ritual tuna cook off in the town centre. Quite something to see 6 men lifting a fish the size of a pig.

the fundamentals including personal hygeine (not for the faint hearted)

2007-08-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

As Matt has described we have been to one of the most beautiful places in the world. Mount Fuji is everything expected and more, it looks like two strokes of a japanese paintbrush with a small hat on the top, stroked by clouds. I maybe a cynical old cow but I have had a very zen time. we walked along a ridge on the hills opposite fuji that just rose from nowhere covered in green green trees. below fuji-san is the sea of trees, we were told about this when we made chemical garden (an art installation of thousands of salt crystal trees in front of a video of mount fuji to celebrate the millenium). it is a true to premieval forest growing on a sea of lava from the volcano, feels spooky, the light, you could get very very lost there.

anyway. personal hygeine. me and matt have had fun getting some of the basics these last couple of days. a bath or shower. well trying to understand onsen and communal baths has been fun, time limited and potentially shared with anyone, i went in the mens! here by the sea it is proper onsen (hotspring) how hot??? when it is already sweaty so you are in a pool of water - hot humidity outside, how hot can you be??? included in this I have a fever from a bad cold and cough.

the toilet are fun, they are either ancient hole in the grounds (which I am sure are good for you) or high tech service washes (which are also great, if not slightly too nice) better when you know where the stop button is, once you get cleaned for a while you begin to want to start the whole process again.

and finally, even the tampons are hi-tech, i am too embarrased to ask anyone how to use them, the adaptors are a feat of engineering that goes beyond my simple knowledge, I was stuck in the toilet for half an hour getting through half a pack trying to work out what that was about...

but the sea is beautiful, mountains, city, mountains. and I haven't started on the adventure to wash our clothes, which resulted in me getting sprited away by some guys playing the ancient japanese drums...

Fuji to the coast

2007-08-03T03:29:00.000-07:00

It's been sometime since we have been able to add to the blog. We are now in Shimoda a little fishing village 50km from Tokyo. It's very relaxing, a bit like Padstow or Abersoch, Japan style. I am siting in a western style bar listening to funk and sipping on a Kirin in front of the largest Mac screen I ever seen.

We spent 2 nights in Fuji Kawaguchi-ko. The Lake district of Japan. We spent an amazing but sweaty day hiking in the mountains around Fuji-san. We didn't bother with cliumbing Fuji as the main reason for going there is to see Fuji not climb up up miles of volcanic sand. Call me lazy but that's my excuse.

We saw an ancient cave full of Shinto prayer flags and offerings and walked through "the sea of trees" which is an amazing forest around fuji which stretches forever. Japan has some really beautiful country side. Because it is either city or countryside you get the best of both. The cities are huge and dense and the country is endless and empty.

Shimodo is great. We are here for 2 nights then back to Tokyo for shopping and then home. Hopefully get some swimming and beach life (although it's raining at the moment but humid as hell).

I have included the weirdest advert. I have no idea what it means. But it's great.

off to the mountains

2007-07-31T19:39:00.000-07:00

just getting ready to go off to see Fuji. have booked a ryotan which is a tradional japanese inn with a view of fuji over the lake.
we stayed in an inn here in kyoto, was great, just like in karate kid when Ralph Macchio went to Japan. a mat on the floor, a table with tea all layed out, all feng shui and stuff.

yesterday went to the most beautiful calm place either of us had ever been to, a temple, with this rock layout of 15 rocks that you can:t see all at once but had to try and see all together in your mind. the trees, and moss and lakes, and bridges jsut made your head clear. we going all buddhist.

then went all seady went to gion where the geishas are, didn`t see any but lots of things going on behind wooden slats in traditional houses by the river, and lots of bars that we couldn@t quite get. ended up in a really horrible english/american bar and got pissed and ranted about facism and psychopaths.

then went back to the quiet calm of the ryotan.

Kyoto is a great place. will try and find internet in the mountains, but may jsut go very zen and forget all about technology and modern life.

Kyoto - Space and Sunshine

2007-07-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

Arrived In Kyoto last night about 7pm and missed the Tourist info centre. So we had to wander the streets with our bags looking for a hotel. But being Japan, we found a cheap business hotel which was cleaner than most 5 star hotels in the UK.

We then headed out into Kyoto for a meal. It is a much more relaxing place than Tokyo there is more space, walks by the river, canals and tiny streets with amazing little restaurants. We stopped in one and had Sushi (Well I did, Rachel had tempura veg). I think Rachel was little put off when the chef dipped a net in the fish tank next to us to get my dinner. But the Sushi was great not fussy, just rice with big slices of raw fish. Delicious.

After dinner we went to the river and the police were getting a DJ on the river bank to turn down his music. So we listened to him mix house at pin drop volume for a few minutes. We then headed to a huge Pachinko parlour and Rachel tried her luck with the falling balls of chance.
We really had no idea what was going on and no-one could really explaiin what we should do. But we enjoyed the noise and the buzz. An old lady sat watching us, obviously we were ripe for the taking. She pounced on our machine after we had left, to reap the rewards.

We are now off to take in the cultural sites. The Imperial Palace and the Zen Rock Garden.

More pictures soon.

Matt

end of the festival

2007-07-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

The last two days have been great. Full on, and full of conference stuff. Have began to get to know the group of artists that are attending the conference, it has worked out more like a lab really as there isn't much of a bigger audience, but that has been great, some very cool people, from Korea, Japan, England, Canada, Australia, German, Serbian...

Alot of talking, although I have spent most of the time running the demo of Dragons which went really well, although not many people, but the people who came where just off the street, spending their weekend at an arts festival, some young couples, a chinese business man, some of the festival people. Most of the time I didn't have an interpreter and most people speak only a little more English than I speak Japanese (and I can only really say three words, hello thankyou and desert) but have managed to communicate and people seem to have enjoyed it so that is ok. One person didn't understand wait a moment and ran off in excitement, ending up playing the game whilst looking at the set up screen which couldn't have been very exciting but apart from that it seems surprisingly easy for people to play here. Probably helps that games consoles are massive here and then graphics are quite cutesy which is the big thing here.

Two amazing nights. Saturday night a group of us headed off across Tokyo to a massive fireworks festival, which we missed, but got to see the people, millions of people in kimonos and cool cutesy clothes, a fair, a temple, a thing that tells your fortune involving chopsticks in silver boxes, and fortunes in a chest of draws.

Last night involved getting very pissed, laughing at the phrase books interpretation on how to chat people up shag them (it's ok I can help myself??) (particularly the English and Koreans) and eating a 10 course meal and getting back to the hotel at 4pm.

Today we are going to start our adventures. Not sure where we are heading. The sea, the mountains and Kyoto is far as we have got.

Off to say goodbye to InYong who we have been hanging out with, and then off we go.

Day 2 in Japan - The Heat Closes In

2007-07-26T02:35:00.000-07:00

Today it just seems to get hotter and hotter. The humidity must be up above the 80% percent mark - phew!!! I woke up late nearly missing the hotel breakfast. Jet lag just wont let me out of bed.

We went off this morning to Yokohama to check if the co-ordinates for the game were correct by playing it around Yokohama Baseball stadium. It was hot, too hot to be walking around in the midday sun.

In the afternoon we went to the ICC. The japanese gallery for interactive artwork. As you can imagine there were some amazing examples of work. From lo-tech stuff like an anoechoic room (the opposite of an echo chamber). Your voice seems to die inches from your mouth. And even if you shout, it sounds like a mere whisper. Also a sculpture of a man juggling weird items which rotates in a room with a strobe light. Each portion of the sculpture is like a separate frame of an animation. The strobe light creates the zoetrope effect of making the rotating objects come alive.

To the most beautiful hi-tech work like a series of taps which when turned on water pours from them into a bowl. A projector overhead beams little images into the stream of water depending on the speed of the flow. Using a big spoon you can actually pick the digital objects out of the water. Amazing.

In the evening we went to shibuya to meet a Japanese friend: Keiko. There we went around some shops and she showed us her favourite shop. A cut price dept. store. Which sells everything a sort of Wilko's of everything useful and useless.

We then went and had a meal of Hokkaido style food including a jacket potato covered in pickled squid. Yum. I mean it! Lovely.

Rachel's first day blog

2007-07-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

Photos: Matt tired on the metro, hotel room, in the restuarant, in the bar, Matt, Sasha and Christian.

A day of travelling, three films - walk the line for the second time, a slushy american one and Factory Girl, lots of cabin fever on a BA flight (how little room, and i'm already little).
Met Christian (one of the other artists) at customs, he was on the same flight, and we all took the train to Tokyo (lots of rice fields, industrial buildings and tons and tons of houses most wth curvy rooves, some bright blue, glistening in the sunshine).
It's hot, very hot, makes you sweat. No rain, which is amazing, just hot and blue sky, although hazy.
We are in a very posh hotel. small rooms, but you get your own house slippers and night shirts and it is all very Japanese and beautiful details.
We walked to the Imperial Palace (round the corner from the hotel) and then got too hungry so found a canteen and very bravely chose a picture of random looking food, luckily one of the dishes was vegetarian (as far as I could tell). I have decided to eat seafood if I have no choice while I am here, although I am not sure how much I can stomach. Then found a place to have a coffee that made no difference to the intense tiredness.
All the devices are charging and I am going to have a sleep and try not to dream of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation with a red mohican, which is a recurring dream I am having at the moment.
Went for a meal in Ginza with Emma (the festival organiser), the other artists and the gallery curator. Was in a rabbit warren of a restaurant, with sitting down in an alcove seats (matt sat crossed legged for ages before he realised there was a pit underneath the table to hang your legs down. With Emma being vegan, they managed to order vegetarian and vegan food, silken tofu with spice and ice, egg that was sweet and savoury in only the way an egg can be.
Popped into Ginza art lab on the way, the smallest gallery in the world, about as big as my bathroom. But in Ginza and very contemporary. I sat next to the curators who were very interesting, the main guy Ken studied at Nottingham Trent!
Went to a bar afterwards for a very sleepy final drink of the night.
Dreamt all night of wierd things, proper jet lagged sleep, I killed a person and made them into sushi and was found out when a dog found their scalp, arghhh, feel very strange now, time for breakfast.

The Dragons arrive in the Land of the Rising Sun

2007-07-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

We have just arrived to start exhibiting 'Ere be Dragons at the Dislocate festival. We are both feeling a bit jet-lagged and out of sorts. I was wedged in the central seats for the 11 hour flight and had continuous cramp most of the way. Anyway, self pity aside, we have checked into our hotel. I have tried the automated toilets of japanese reknown and can report that the service wash delivered to my backside, was curious, to say the least.

I have also discovered that smoking is only permitted in certain parts of the street. So I joined a huddle of salary men for a crafty fag next to a set of vending machines and an ashtray with this strange inscription. (You may have to click it and make it large to read it.)

If you still can't read it it says:

"Inhaled. Burned. Thrown Away. If it were anything other than a cigarette it would surely be crying.
Meet. Love. The End."

What does it all mean. I must rest to gather strength for social event this evening and stop puzzling over love affairs with giant cigarettes.

Matt

an alpine view and a trip to Japan

2007-07-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

These are exciting times at AI.

We have now moved into a studio with a view... see the Alpine scene, with a secret door that leads to the world beyond the mountains... or Caroline's room.

We are preparing for our trip to Japan, flying out on Tuesday 24th (for me after a weekend at a festival in Wales, I will be glad for the 12hour flight!)

We are taking the single player version of 'Ere Be Dragons to Dislocate in Tokyo and Yokohama. We are hoping to add a system to play back people's games so that they can see the re-run in real time when they return.

We are also showing our new Dragons film (still being filmed) at a gallery in Ginza and will be playing the games on the streets of Yokohama.

...then we are off on a holiday to Kyoto, Fuji (what a dream!) and maybe even an island to a beach for a couple of days if we have time.

We will try and BLOG along the way...

Lift Off

2007-04-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

Walked past the Pitt Building where our Dreaming of the Future installation is. Funny to think of Thomas Thomas sleeping up there amongst the debris as we walk past. If you look at the left hand window of the tower there is a light on, that's out installation. On the Dreaming of the Future website you can zoom the camera out the window and maybe see us walking past!

The Domes in Parkers Piece lit at night, the central point of the festival.

We have all had the lurgy this week. Robin fell asleep on the job.

Today we start in Cambridge. We are all set, I wont say everything is working because I am getting superstitious about Dragons (as you should be when messing with myths!) but the set up has gone well and all our tests have been pretty succesful.

The venue is ok, certainly will get alot of interest as right next to the student union at Anglia Ruskin. We have a really enthusiastic volunteer working with us, Window he's called (well Chris) who looks great in the Monster costume as he is about 7ft tall!

Last night was the launch night and was nice to catch up with all the people we know and have met from our previous workings in Cambridge, and met some very interesting artists from Bristol who also work with MRL and do pervasive stuff. Polar they are called.

The launch had a good night of Cornish Rave performance, was funny and odd interactive music making installations. Saw a cool acid techno drummer, who had set up a laptop to a drum kit and made live techno by drumming, was itching to have a go. Getting a wah wah wah by banging away, cool.

ENTER Cambridge

2007-04-24T01:00:00.000-07:00

Today we are in Cambridge. We have a fancy flat next door to the venue. Meeting Chris at 10am to see the venue, check out if the big projector we have brought will work there and do some tests. GPS is fixed and everything is working.

Cambridge is so cool, feel like I'm in a Merchant Ivory film or Chariots of Fire, lots of posh boys with the flapping hair playing rugby and football on Parkers Piece (a park full of excited students and where the main bit of the festival is happening), opposite our city living flat.

Off to find croissants for breakfast for Matt and Robin.

What next?

2007-04-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

Well we have been off on holidays and got back and are now off to Cambridge ENTER_unknown territories festival next week, showing Dragons, the mutli-player game. Will try and blog from there and link with festival blog too.

More information: ENTER website

more pictures

2007-04-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

The view from the hotel

The team in Matt's hotel room

Divers swimming out to Alcatraz
Robin in the bar where we drank many Tequila's and met a guy who works with Python, and drank more tequilas...

Capra, escape from Alcatraz!

The docks and looking out to Golden Gate Bridge

Leif in a bar, again

A crazy mural outside the bar
Another Tram
Alcatraz
The choclate factory across from Alcatraz, now that is torture!

pictures

2007-04-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

Pictures:
Lombard Street, where Bullet was filmed - our taxi driver did a very scary impression of the car chase down here!
Museum of Modern Art - me and Robin sneaked off on the last day to get away from games and look at fine art, bliss, my centre of worship. Lichenstein, Picasso...
Leif at the Nokia Ngage party, free bar (really... even the champagne), Leif got very drunk, well we all did, lots of cool geeks there! and we all got a free Nokia blow up sofa that supposedly Capra took to Yosemite and blew up and sat amongst the trees on it (this is a second hand story)
Out and about round Union Square, a tram turning on it's turning thing.
A fire engine (how old fashioned is that? I thought America was a futuristic society)
Houses like in all the films.
Capra - King of the World! He came from the jungle and now look at him in the Hilton hotel, San Francisco negotiating contracts with Hewlett Packard (his words)
Big bus - another example of the futuristic look of America!
What we were really doing there - sitting a computers in a hotel room.

Final photos from San Francisco

2007-04-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

Although it was over a month ago and we became incredibly slack at doing any blogging, here are the final pictures of San Francisco.

The workload took over from blogging and all that fun stuff and we got absorbed by the games developers conference. Overall it was a wonderful challenging experience. We were put in the centre of the Hewlett Packard Booth, to showcase their new Mediascape application through our game.

We ended up showing the single player game as it is the most robust version and after some issues with networks it felt like the most appropriate in that environment. It complimented well with Tom's presentations on how Mediascape worked and from our evaluation that took place afterwards it appeared that it was very well received. Certainly lots of exhilarated smiley faces returned from playing in the streets around the Moscone Centre, many "awesomes" (although it seemed a often repeated response all around the trade fair). Being squashed between Nintendo and Nokia Ngage was a good buzz, particularly when people pointed out that our game was one of the only innovative and new things there. Finally and probably most importantly for us, Hewlett Packard's commercial side response was very positive and interested.

Here is a BLOG response and video from one of the testers from the development test prior to the demo at GDC.
Alex Vorbau's HP blog

After the long week of testing and demo-ing our gang got pretty close from hanging out in the Hilton.

We had a last day of relaxing, cycled all the way to some Redwood trees, over the Golden Gate bridge, to Sausalito and then off to some surburban park with some redwood trees, we got lost too many times to get to the real forest. I was on the back of a tandem with Capra which was quite amusing / scary...

Saturday in San Fran

2007-03-04T07:43:00.000-08:00

Saturday was also a long day, but some real moments of success and getting used to the city and seeing more tourist style little insights into San Francisco's America...

Spent most of the day in the hotel working. Mainly in Leif and Tom's rooms, which have great views across the city to remind us that we aren't still at Nottingham University or our office.

The GPRS problem got resolved at 1pm in a frenzy of excitment, when the SIM cards we had suddenly started working, Leif and Capra accidently used one thinking it was one of the SIMs that did work and we were on... All six of us jumping around the room setting up PDAs. Sounds very sad when written down but after a day or tearing our hair out it was very exciting.

Did our first full test with the new version. Several issues now being sorted out, the heart rate monitors and GPS are acting strange now, just to wind us up some more on a sunny sunday morning...

Worked until late and split up to focus on what we needed to do. Me, Matt and Robin ended up roaming the streets late into the night, caught the end of the Chinese New Year parade in Union Square, which was exicting although only really got to see the SFPD strutting their stuff.

Completely forgot to watch the red eclipse which was a real shame, but heads were down at the screens!

Found a great Turkish restaurant a bit further out from the downtown area we have been in so far, really busy. Had a shocking walk back, the streets where lined with homeless people, so obviously with no health care as many of them were severly disabled and hardly any of them were white. We've seen loads of begging and homeless people, at times it feels like India, it was like the area around the hotel I stayed in, in Mumbai. People living on a square of pavement each. Proper Skid Row, in one of the richest cities in the world. It makes you sick.

Maybe I just don't see it in England, I know it was getting more like this in the 90s in the UK but not on this scale, and I have never had this feeling of such obvious apartheid in the UK.

Anyway, it is Sunday 8am so back to work on the heart rate monitors, hopefully today will be a bit easier and involve lots of running around testing in the streets.

Pictures to come... and there will be some of me (Rachel) for my Mum and Dad who have complained it is just pictures of the geek boys - sorry guys I will stop calling you that soon and it has been agreed that Matt is a nerd not a geek (:

second day in San Francisco

2007-03-02T23:06:00.000-08:00

Matt and Robin at Snap Fish's office, The Bay Bridge, the Hyatt Hotel (my camera phone doesn't do this justice!), the team in Union Square and the skyscrapers.

The evening ended in a chinese meal in China Town which was great and a bar tour of downtown, ending at the Hyatt Hotel which looks like the senate in Star Wars, the most amazing architecture. The guys had a right laugh at me as I had to hold on to them all to look up and was getting really bad vertigo wondering around the streets of the financial district with all the skyscrapers towering over us - I am like Vitalstatistix from Asterix, I have told them they have to carry me around on a shield. Having to survive being the only girl in a group of geeky men warrants this I think!

A long day in San Francisco

2007-03-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

Breakfast in the 50s diner - I ate all that!!!, Hilton lobby

It is 10.56pm, everyone in England must be just getting up. I am ready for sleep.

Today has been the difficult day, there is always one with these kind of projects. Lots of Good News Bad News. The bad news being that GPRS to set up the multi player game is not as simple as the research that was done for us before we arrived. We can't access the internet from the PDAs without paying for a full years contract (total costs would be around £1000) for 10 players and we can't even buy this because we don't have social security numbers in the US. Not enough time really to sort it out through HP. Also the heart rate monitors got stuck in customs and wont be here until Tuesday, the day we go live.

The good news is there are other options, maybe wifi, maybe use our UK sim cards as it still will be cheaper.

The day started well, meeting in the lobby of the Hilton and off for the largest breakfast known to mankind, disgusting but oh so nice. Fiddling with sim cards for me, Tom and Capra and sorting out some of the new version of the game for Matt, Robin and Leif. They got stuck in the hotel room all day, great view though.

The day has ended in exhaustion and with a huge mexican meal. I can feel my stomach stretching everytime I eat, it's scary how easy it is to expand to the food. Tomorrow I am getting up to do exercises and I am eating fruit and salad all day!

Everyone has worked so hard today and is so commited, it is really amazing to be working with such a brilliant team of people, with usch difficult technology that just hasn't been used in this way very much before. Leif and Robin are still working at the hotel back on Love City which of course is still going on back in Blighty...

first day in San Francisco

2007-03-01T13:30:00.000-08:00

Robin and Matt outside the hotel on Ellis St, Matt and Tom at the Park where people will be playing Dragons.

We got here yesterday afternoon and meet Tom from HP at the airport. He had managed to hire the smallest car in the US (and the cars are here are so BIG) so all four of us squashed in with our equipment and bags and drove into downtown San Fran. WOW. It looks like the films... as everyone has always said about the states. So familiar, unreal and also so strange. Wierd to travel all this way and everyone still speaks English.

Lots to say about first impressions of America, I have been trying to keep my big lefty gob shut as much as possible. Then again lots of surprises, it feels like a developing country, one of the richest cities in the world yet it feels quite poor. Big buildings, big sandwiches, big bridges, big people (as expected)...

Last night we wandered around the Chinese and Italian area, had some sushi and some drinks caught up with Tom about what needs doing.

Today so far we have wandered around the area near the conference centre, Tom has taken us and sent us up at an office near the conference centre or a subsidary company of HP called Snap Fish (they do photo uploading stuff), they've been really helpful and friendly and we have tons of desk space at our disposal in a big open plan office. Matt and Robin are working there now, I am back at the hotel because the internet isn't working yet at the office. We had proper BIG bagels for lunch from a great deli with every type of food you would ever want for lunch in it. Sushi, chinese, sandwiches... mmm, i'm going to go to the hotel gym so that I don't come back looking like a big bagel.

I am off now to check out the GPS in the area where people are playing Dragons. Tom has gone off to HP headquarters (Silicon Valley!!!) to pick up the rest of the kit and sort out the T-shirts we hope are going to be made for us, and Leif and Capra (from MRL) are probably going through customs as I write.

All is go for AI

2007-02-24T01:18:00.000-08:00

These last two months have been madness in our office, where we are working away at Love City, 'Ere Be Dragons and the other stuff we have on.

Love City is now live and messages of love are flying between the cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham as we speak... all live at www.lovecity.tv

Wednesday we are off to San Francisco to make our fortunes, with a stick and a handkercheif full of PDA's and heart rate monitors. We are taking 'Ere Be Dragons to the Games Development Conference, representing Hewlett Packards mediascape tool at the conference. We are off for 10 days so will keep track here on the BLOG.

Other things going on alongside all the two big projects, finishing off the Equal project, John Ross and Jim Boxall are editing the films so that we can get them set up on the PDA's and let people loose in Belgrave (Leicester, UK) watching the films as they walk about.

'Ere Be Dragons is also going to Cambridge in April as part of the _ENTER festival. And Dreaming of the Future is still live http://www.i-am-ai.net/cup/cupData/www/

So I'm back to testing our new bluetooth heart rate monitors

See you in San Fran...

Matt's Christmas Party

2006-12-21T03:49:00.000-08:00

We had a visit from Santa Claus. He was quite frightening.
...and the pleasure of Leif and Tanya's company.

Getting ready for Christmas

2006-12-21T03:16:00.000-08:00

So one more day to go, of our 10th year at ai, my 34th year on the earth (my birthday tomorrow) and breaking up for Christmas.

Matt is off to Cornwall to visit friends and family, I'm going to celebrate my birthday for a couple of days then go home to London and we are just tidying things up all round.

Me and Matt will keep blogging over Christmas, send photos of drunk uncles and walks in the forest, and on the beach for Matt.

project updates...
The Equal project is nearly all filmed, just Bhanu's last bit of filming to be done in the New Year, then Jim will do the editing and we will put everything onto the mobile phones so that can be seen on location around Leicester.

Dreaming of the Future is finally finished... the project that never ends. Well thats web projects for you. The prize is a book from Cambridge University Press and the game is to find clues in a room in a tower in the old press building in cambridge, and keep watch for the ghost. It is there, and it keeps messing with teh camera and getting up to all sorts, watch the video to find out more.

Love City is beginning to take shape. We need people to help us build it. TEXT 07785 200 350 to sign up. Fall in love with a stranger. Create a new world.

The most exciting thing is on the cards for next year, still to be confirmed but it looks like we may be going to the Games Developers Conference in San Francisco with Hewlett Packard in March next year... we will keep you posted...

So i've got presents to finish making and wrapping, and projects to finish off... but we will keep the BLOG updated with a varying degress of sobriety until the new year.

more scribbling

2006-12-14T05:06:00.000-08:00

12122006016
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient.

Chaos turns to structure.

Scribblings from Love City

2006-12-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

12122006015
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient.

As we gear up to launch love city in february of next year. We have had to start planning how the whole thing is going to work. SMS messaging, web tools, server side stuff.

I had a brief panic trying to understand what we need to do in terms of structure. So I started scribbling down little charts to undestand the process. Here is the result of my planning.

Matt

AI is clearing out 10 years of stuff.

2006-11-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

If there is widgit, a cable, a camera or office furniture that you are searching for it may just be in the pile of stuff we are getting rid of. Email us at info@i-am-ai.net if you are interested...

The list includes...
A PA
A walkman
Computer monitors and bits
3 bags of AV cables
2 Ikea high stools
3 large wooden desks (made from fire doors)
3 mike stands
a digital 8 camera and posh camera bag
an old Kodak digital camera
an LED display screen
a star wars puzzle
a small IKEA sofa
a coffee table
shelving...

Please email us if you want to have a look through and see what bargains you can pick up.
Please pass this on to anyone you think may be looking for this kind of stuff...

Nearly all moved

2006-11-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

The server at our secret location.

We have nearly moved all our stuff from our office in the Fashion Design Studios to a secret location in Nottingham.

Our base will be in Broadway which is our official postal address and no doubt we will be found lurking in the corridors there... but our admin base is moving to a secret location.

Meanwhile, we start filming for the Equal Project on Saturday with our trusty team from Leicester (the original Peepul in the Making group) - Bhanu Mistry, Ken Hugget, Stuart Corley and the new member of the group Neeta Chohan. With the help of Jim Boxall and John Ross, the film makers.

Love City testing starts next week too, where we will be sending students from Derby, Leicester and Nottingham out to test the prototype of the game, should be fun...

Taiwan appears to be postponed, which gives us time to properly evaluate Dragons and make a new video about Berlin and the game... and put together our plans for UK domination, or a tour.

Back in Blighty

2006-11-06T06:32:00.000-08:00

So now we are back, we've had a couple of weeks to recover and prepare for the next big thing.

We are waiting with baited breath to receive confirmation of our proposed trip to Taiwan, planned for December to show Dragons at the Third Pblic Art Festival in Taipai. We are getting somewhere towards a bluetooth heart rate monitor with a smart phone and are simplifying the whole project, so we hope we get a chance to try it out underneath the tallest building in the world (with extreme GPS shadow to interrupt the game play no doubt!)

We are looking closer to home and are moving... more to come on this but lets just say it is getting quite exciting as we plan to go back to our artist roots, spend more time away from the computer - planning Love City, Dragons for touring and some new projects that are even more interactive, performative, cinematic and whatever else takes our fancy.

Sadly Zini will be leaving AI in January, just as we hit our 10th birthday! So me and Matt will be busy keeping it all going in a more artistic direction - of course with the help of Robin who is a permanent, associate member of AI, Leif and the rest of the Mixed Reality Lab guys at Nottingham Uni, and all the other lovely people we work with and drag into our wierd world.

We still do commercial design stuff but Matt is the man to speak to about that...

10th annivisary ideas are being pushed around, we've got to celebrate having survived the world of art, new media and all that for this long and still trying... party ideas welcome on a postcard (or posted comment)!

... so where will we go next?

It all ran away with us!

2006-10-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

After the first day of Dragons at Hau 2 in Berlin we didn't stop, running up and down the stairs backstage, taking players out to walk the streets of Berlin, discover the dragons and monsters out there and in their own hearts...

It went well, we had about 50 players in the end, which considering we were limited to 4 an hour was pretty good going, lots of interesting people had a go, some kids cam for their birthday treat, lots of clever art bods, a couple discovered an Indian restuarant they had been looking for for years and we got our highest score yet, from Hans the technician at Hau - over 3000 points.

We also met lots of cool people from Berlin, the Trampoline team out there where great, we had a good meal at Hau on the second night, and even managed to sneak off to see a little of the Pictoplasma conference going on at the same time (that Ellie and John from Nottingham where at), and we did make it to a cool bar on the last night for tequilas... until I fell asleep in a drunken tired stupor, still haven't made it to a night of hard techno in Berlin!

2006-10-13T04:45:00.000-07:00

We are just recovering from the chaos of the first night of Trampoline. Everything went well and it was well recieved by about 80% of the audience. Well as they say you can only please all of the people some of the time.

We set up a reception in the main auditorium which was interesting as I was competing with all the other events that were going on as part of the opening night.
Also because I was sat behind a desk everybody assumed I was the info desk for Trampoline. So I felt like I had created an artistic role where I felt like a clerk sat in the middle of a rock concert, processing people and answering questions about things I know nothing about in a language I can barely speak.

I didn´t see much of the other work. But I got to see thelast event: Heidi Mortensen a one woman band. That Berlin thing of girl with mic and laptop, Peaches style. Good entertainment, topped off with a last song where she handed out sparklers to the audience which were immediately grabbed by a particulary officious technician patrolling the audience. It was the highlight watching him wander off with a fistful of thirty burning spears muttering to himself about health and safety. Well that´s what I thought in my no sprackenzie deutsch imagination.
Like Coca Cola, one thing you can rely on - technicians are the same the world over.

Matt

Pictures

2006-10-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

Here is Frank with the advert for the festival, Matt and the monster working at the computer and the tree at Checkpoint Charlie

Second Day in Berlin

2006-10-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

We are all here and setting up at the theatre. As ever we have had frustrating times with GPS / GPRS and happy times with the monster and generaly buzzing around Berlin. What a great city. Full of waste lands and graffitti and anarchy and new euroland type developments that can't be filled with people...

Our hotel is one of those boutique hotels with designer art and rose petals everywhere, and great breakfast, cheese, pickles, boiled eggs. There is the whole team here, me, Matt, Robin and Leif. We have Fabian who is helping us and the whole Trampoline team. Frank is also here in his wellies, recreating his garden in Nottingham in the HAU2 theatre auditorium. (see his BLOG)

Last night we went to Checkpoint charlie where one of the artworks from the festival is being projected on a wall behind the picture of the soldier. It is beautiful it blows in the wind and drops leaves effected by sensors. We drunk beer, gin and schnapps with the trampoline crew, spent some time with Miles and Annette who seem ok despite the burden on the festival on them.

Today we are doing tests with the multiplayer game, getting the global interface ready and sorting out the layout of the "medical room" where players relax and the theatre space... tomorrow night we launch.

Dragons in Berlin... nearly there

2006-10-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

This weekend we have made the introductory film for Dragons, are tweaking code and graphics and testing equipment.

Various issues have hindered us, noteably the government making a new policy for surfing the internet on mobile phones which resulted in all the mobile networks implementing under 18 safeguards for everyone that in Orange's case is very hard to have removed. Involving showing photo ID to prove my age (unfortunately way beyond 18) and having to wait several days, it appears this still hasn't worked to enable us to send and receive data to our game via GPRS so we are now working with the guys at Mixed Reality Lab on a work around. Much time wasted at the Orange shop arguing about my rights as an older person to play my own game!

Filming in Sherwood forest was fun, and thanks to Stuart and Steven for their help. Strange things appearing in the trees...

We are off tomorrow to berlin and will keep in touch throughout the week.
Rachel (AI)

Rachel in Leicester

2006-10-08T09:18:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks I have been juggling all our developments with my part-time job in leicester at Phoenix Arts. D-Day finally arrived and I have launched two out of three of the commissions I have been overseeing.
Friday was the launch at BBC Leicester (Emma Bateman's Outside In) and the week before was at LCB Depot (Low Brow Trash's GOSSIP) it all seems to be going smoothly and hopefully will carry on smoothly while I am away in berlin.
Phoenix Digital in Leicester

Flesh Eating Monster! It's alive

2006-10-06T07:36:00.000-07:00

Flesh Eating Monster! It's alive
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient.

Ere be Dragons at Frist Play in Berlin approachs and little do they realise what is in store for them.
The official costume for the Ere be Dragons tour of Germany & Taiwan is here. Designed by Val Burrell. I think they will be quaking in their boots!

Welcome back year 2 HND

2006-09-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

20092006119
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient.

Ready and fresh. Looking forward to absorbing new ideas

Jason the Usher

2006-09-12T06:38:00.000-07:00

Jason "jimi hendrix" Kendrick
Originally uploaded by Active Ingredient.

On a stranger note. This is one of the ushers at the wedding. Undecided on what to wear for the big day, he almost opted for this strange look. He thought he looked like Jimi Hendrix. We thought he looked more sinister. Sort of camp as row of Al Quaeda tents.