Media Arts Education

Archive for April, 2006

Mapchester

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

Mapping as a didactic strategy is currently a big issue in art education. However, here is an invitation to an open source mapping project:

“Mapchester: Making an open-source map for Manchester

Download this invite: http://10.futuresonic.com/download/mapchester_invite.pdf

INVITATION
Mapping Weekend
Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th May, 2006

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapchester

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** When bands like the Happy Mondays stalked the Hacienda, Manchester was dubbed ‘Madchester’; now, a new generation of phreaks are in town, renaming the city ‘Mapchester’, showing that it isn’t just music that puts the city on the map. **
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Mapchester is a collaborative ‘wikimap’ project, generated and maintained by users in the same way as Wikipedia. It kicks off with a Mapping Weekend, when Manchester is mapped in a weekend! A number of spin off projects will then take place during the PLAN exhibition at the Futuresonic festival, 20-23 July 2006, and the data generated will be used in a test-case festival guide.

Mapchester will generate a new kind map of Manchester – produced by collective, community effort that will be completely copyright-free. Mapchester was first proposed at the PLAN workshop (http://www.open-plan.org), as a test-case for how a city could be mapped and a guide for a festival created on collaborative and open principles.

Mapping Weekend invitation: We are seeking map hackers and citizen cartographers to participate in mapping the city for free. Our goal is to bring together as wide an array of different people who are interested in mapping and get them to walk / cycle / drive / bus / train / skate / etc / along city streets recording GPS tracks and noting down road names. These tracks will then be put online in the OpenStreetMap database and edited into map features. We hope that collectively people will work to completely map whole quarters of the city over the weekend.

Please spread the word about Mapchester and forward this invitation to come and map Manchester to other people who might be interested.

Getting involved:

|||| How: Just come along and choose an area of central Manchester to map. Head out with a GPS device (Global Positioning System, which monitors signals from satellites to record location) and notepad to record street names and other notable features. You can map for the whole day or just for a few hours. No prior mapping experience needed – intro briefings and equipment training will be provided.
|||| When: Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th May, 2006. Welcome briefings held at 10am and 2pm both days.
|||| Where: Mapchester HQ, Lower Ground Floor, 117-119 Portland Street, Manchester M1 6ED, see http://manchesterdda.com/article/12/ . (The space has been generously provided by the Manchester Digital Development Agency and they are also helping in signing people up to take part.)
|||| Registering: if you are interested in participating please send an email: mapchester@manchesterdda.com or call Jo Blackwell on tele: 0161 255 8111. (Please indicate on what days you want to participate and whether you have your own GPS / laptop.)
|||| Refreshments: Drinks and a sandwich lunch will be provided for participants.
|||| What to bring: If you have it please bring your own mapping equipment (GPS, laptop, camera, notepad + pencil, etc). If you don’t have a GPS receiver, don’t worry, there will be a number of extra units available on each day. If you have never used a GPS receiver, don’t worry either, hands on training will be provided.
|||| Further questions: please contact Martin Dodge (m.dodge@manchester.ac.uk).

Some background:

Mapchester is an experiment in ‘citizen cartography’ that we hope will make a significant contribution to wider efforts in so-called ‘open-source’ mapping. This an emerging and rapidly growing cartographic activity, driven in part by technology (cheap GPS equipment and online collaboration tools, like OpenStreetMap.org), but also by a very different ethos to knowledge production. Under open-source models the right of authorship are de-centred and the ownership of knowledge is seen as a common resource that can be distributed and re-used without restriction or license. As such ‘opening’ up mapmaking has real potential to empower people to create their own knowledge and encourages re-use of cartographic resources in novel, creative ways.

The map data produced for central Manchester will contribute to OpenStreetMap.org, one of the leading projects in the open-source mapping field. Currently, OpenStreetMap has mapped 25,000 kilometres of roads in the UK, including all motorways. However, thus far the majority of this data is for London and Birmingham and many other major cities are hardly mapped at all. It is hoped that an intensive effort to build a map of the whole of a city in a weekend will inspire others and be important to build momentum across the country.

All the map data generated for Mapchester will be free to view, edit and use via the OpenStreetMap platform. An editable map will also be created and used as a test-case festival guide for the Futuresonic International Festival, held in Manchester 20-23 July 2006.

Mapchester mapping weekend is supported by:

|||| Future Everything / Futuresonic International Festival
(http://www.futureeverything.org/)
|||| University of Manchester, School of Environment and Development
(http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/geography/)
|||| Manchester Geographical Society (http://www.mangeogsoc.org.uk/)
|||| Manchester Digital Development Agency (http://www.manchesterdda.com/)

Mapchester organising committee:

Steve Coast (OpenStreetMap.org); Drew Hemment (Future Everything); Mick Lockwood (Salford University); Martin Dodge & Chris Perkins (Geography, University of Manchester).

Thanks to:

Mikel Maron (WorldKIT), Libby Miller (FOAF), Ben Russell (PLAN), Steve Benford (Mixedreality Lab) and all others supporting this project.

PLAN is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Please spread the word about Mapchester and forward this invitation to come and map Manchester to other people who might be interested.” via PLAN

Posted in Conferences and events, Mobile computing, locative media, Projects, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Acoustic turn

Sunday, April 30th, 2006

This year the interdisciplinary symposium of the FORUM for Interdisciplinary Studies at the Muthesius Academy of Arts in Kiel is addressing the Acoustic Turn. For the programm (in German) see here.

Posted in Conferences and events, Interdiciplinary Arts Education, Music, Uncategorized | No Comments »

European Media Art Festival recommendations

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

EMAF

Here is some updated information for the students who join the excursion to EMAF //SMART ART including the recommendations of the festival organiser.

Friday, 12th May (meeting at 1pm)
â€¢ Exhibition //Smart Art at the Dominikaner Kirche
“The exhibition at the European Media Art Festival presents art with video, robots and computers. In their latest installations and kinetic objects international artists develop new positions with regard to contemporary media art. Sometimes playful, sometimes provocative, and always clever â€“ SMART ART in other words, the motto of the exhibition. It asks how open and venturesome media art is today, whether it offers relevant stimuli for society and individuals and how cheeky and critically it behaves towards traditional codes and content-related habits.”

â€¢ Installations of the Student Forum
“In addiction to this years EMAF programme the StudentForum presents a worthwhile election of students from all over the world which gives insight in current ways in media art. ”

â€¢ Film/Video program
â€¢ Party Student Forum

Saturday (congress, â€žFrom Paik to iPodâ€œ, Haus der Jugend)

â€¢ lecture by Ingo Linde “Machinima” on Saturday 2 pm
â€¢ lecture by Com + Com/
â€¢ lecture by Wulf Herzogenrath

â€¢ Video program: Indian film entitled John und Jane, dealing with Mixed Realities in globalised economy, at the Cinema Arthouse

â€¢ Drawing Restraint 9 (22:30) / Performance referring to “Der Mann mit der Kamera”
â€¢ EMAF-Party!

Sunday (for those who stay): Europe in Shorts for Kids

// Haus der Jugend / Sun May 14th, 2006 / 15:00 h

Parties and catalogue included!
Development of your aesthetic EMAF-festival diary.

www.emaf.de

Posted in Aesthetic experiences, Conferences and events, Learning cultures, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Night out

Friday, April 21st, 2006

LÃ¸ser will be live on stage tonight Fr. 21st April 06, at the Prinz Willy in Kiel at 8 pm, see here Check it out on The ologie-concerts 2006 Electronic Ambient/Lounge . (Via Prinzwilly.de)

For Willy’s art works see here

Posted in Music, Projects, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tactical Sound Garden

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

Tactical Sound Garden

The Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit is linking locative media, physical and virtual space to music and play in the context of an environment for exploration.

“Given a ubiquity of mobile devices and wireless networks, and their proliferation throughout increasingly diverse and sometimes unexpected urban sites, what opportunities – and dilemmas – emerge for the design of public space in contemporary cities?

The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit is a vehicle for exploring this via the design of an infrastructure: an open source software platform for cultivating public “sound gardens” within contemporary cities. It draws on the culture and ethic of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment where new spatial practices for social interaction within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. Addressing the impact of mobile audio devices like the iPod, the project examines gradations of privacy and publicity within contemporary public space.

The Toolkit enables anyone living within dense 802.11 wireless (WiFi) “hot zones” to install a “sound garden” for public use. Using a WiFi enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants “plant” sounds within a positional audio environment. These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3D audio engine common to gaming environments – overlaying a publicly constructed soundscape onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a WiFi enabled device, participants drift though virtual sound gardens planted by others as they move throughout the city.
Scenario

1. Upon entering a sound garden, participants connect to a local TSG server and download a small client application along with a library of sounds to their device.
2. As one moves through the sound garden, the client application periodically identifies the participant’s position within the geographic limits of the physical location. This positioning information is fed to the 3D audio engine running on the client, which subsequently outputs a real-time audio mix specific to the current location of the listener.
3. To plant sounds, the participant either uploads sounds recorded or stored on their device, or selects from existing sounds in the library. Participants then set parameters for sound playback. The TSG client identifies the current position of the participant, and sends this information along with their sound file and playback parameters to the TSG server. This sound and its parameters are subsequently broadcast to all participants currently in the garden.
4. To prune sounds, the participant selects a sound in the garden and subsequently modifies any of the parameters of that sound. These modifications are sent to the server, which in turns broadcasts these modifications to all participants currently in the garden.”
source
(via New Art)

Posted in Games, Mixed Reality game design, Mobile computing, locative media, Music, Projects, Uncategorized, Urban space | No Comments »

Kids as designers

Saturday, April 15th, 2006

On Wired it was reported about a third grader who had written a letter to Apple suggesting improvements to the ipod nano â€“ she got an unwelcome reply telling her the company does not accept unsolicited product ideasâ€¦it ended up with Apple apologizing to the girl and Apple contemplating a different policy in its responses to letters from children. See here for the article.
Interesting to me, because in our projects we aim to bring together the school kidsâ€™ and software developers to make the pupils test the software and report back their experiences to the computer scientists. Thatâ€™s the very aim of media labs at school and university which attempt to put in practice the shaping of technology by the users themselves.

Posted in Interdiciplinary Arts Education, Learning cultures, People, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Data high way

Saturday, April 15th, 2006

Futurezone reports on the Austrian pilot project supporting WLAN connection on the motorway â€“ that will change the meaning of the term of the â€œdata highwayâ€. See here for the project (in German) by ASFINAG. That seems to be the applied term of the German â€œDatenautobahnâ€ introduced in the Mid 90ies. Bit like the changing meaning of the term of the cyberspace in the context of the technological developments such as ambient media and pervasive computing, similar to what Matt Jones pointed out the other day.

Posted in Projects, Uncategorized, Urban space | No Comments »

Academic misconceptions

Tuesday, April 11th, 2006

I am thinking, reading and writing about the misconceptions of intelligence and creativity taken for granted in education and research. There is a paper in progress on such issues in the context of media arts education scenarios. The split of academic and scientific skills on the one side and artistic abilities on the other side which hampers non-hierarchical interdisciplinary education processes can be seen as a sort of applied academic illusion.
In this context it is interesting to look at the decisions of ministries, such as the current developments in Bavaria, where the mobile phones got banned from schools. It was reported by futurezone that there is thought about banning mp3 players as well â€“ as an act of protection of minors. Unfortunately the critique on the decision was not so much in terms of addressing the opportunities opening up for pedagogy and learning using such media for creative education scenarios with extended communication spaces, podcast projects etc.
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Posted in Current debate, Interdiciplinary Arts Education, Learning cultures, Teaching & Learning, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Digital Shadows

Saturday, April 8th, 2006

Digital Shadows

Yesterday I missed the interactive installation Digital Shadows in the Steintorviertel in Bremen, where I have been living for some years some time agoâ€¦
The project is part of the it is part of the master project THE AUGMENTED CITY at the University of the Arts in Bremen:
â€œOur virtual counterparts, our personal Â»databodiesÂ« in digital space, are running out of control and are collected, alienated or sold by others.
The project Â»Digital ShadowsÂ« has created an interactive installation. Through the user actions correlations between real and digital identities are displayed and have an impact on life in the urban environment, forming a Â»recursiveÂ« feedback.
What if your shadow suddenly started to rebell, to refuse following you? What if it started to mimic you, if it would change your silhouette and movements so that it becomes impossible to recognize yourself? What if such an digital shadow of yourself already exited and in this second influenced your life?
Our physical body has a virtual counterpiece in the digital space, a digital shadow. This shadow consists of the totallity of digital data, which is connected to ourself. But not all of this data is in our control. Personal data is collected, saved, changed/alienated and sold unnoticed. The project DIGITAL SHADOWS address the relationship between â€œrealâ€ and â€œdigitalâ€ identies, it offers a provocative metapher.”
source http://www.digitalshadows.de/
via rohrpost

Posted in Aesthetic experiences, Projects, Reality-Virtuality Continuum, Uncategorized, Urban space | No Comments »

Personal Area Networks (PAN)

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Personal Area Networks (PAN) use the natural electrical conductivity of the human body to transmit electronic data. (via futurezone, 29 March 06) introduced by MIT and IBM in 1996.
like exchanging cards through hand shake.
see also for the Skinplex-Smartphone

Posted in Interface cultures, Mobile computing, locative media, Uncategorized | No Comments »