Photos from BEV

Birds Eye View has post-festival news and photos from the festival - with some of the mediascape in use.

e-merge reviewed

A review of e-merge by Alexander Starritt is published on the a-n website's Interface.

sandpit evening

e-merge was one of 8 events at the sandpit evening at the ICA last Wednesday.
It was a buzzing evening, and over 30 people took part in e-merge, with 62 new walks on the website (numbers 102-163).

Thanks to everyone that gave feedback - 64% of those commenting rated the overall experience of e-merge as good or excellent, and 76% said they'd consider playing e-merge again. Great! Good to hear too about the things that didn't work so well, and suggestions for improvement.

Just managed to squeeze in two short interviews - here's one, after dark, with a mystery walker...

Sarah Mosses helped me with ipaqs, forms etc throughout the evening. So I asked her how she'd found the evening - as co-composer of one of the music tracks, innovation programmer and commissioner from BEV ...

Tate chimney scaffold

There should be a picture attached, emailing this post from my phone...

live from london

e-merge was back at the ica last night for the sandpit games night.
with a new mini film version of 70 short clips, all theplayers could watch their films live in st james's park. the park's chaanged a lot over the last month since bev. trees in leaf effected the gps a little bit. flags are out all along the mall, and of course the event ran through dusk and into the night - quite a different ambience to the walks.
62 new walks are up on the website, & i will be emailing individual walkers over the next couple of days with the no. of their unique walk.

e-merge plays well on my new htc touchphone, so i hope to use those devices for another event....
for now i'm still finding new things to do with it - like writing this post whilst sunning on the southbank waiting for the tate to open! (where does this idea that artists arent up before 10 come from?!)

e-merge Workshop Plans

Part of the e-merge project is a workshop with school students in Somerset. I wanted to include this, to bring the project back into the SouthWest region and to share it within an educational context. It will be interesting to see how the content transfers to a very different space, and whether the iconic images of central landscape would have any significance or value to young people who may or may not have visited the capital. I anticipate that it may be a good strating point to consider their own environment, and what features of it they would highlight to share with others. It will also be interesting to potentially map the new journeys and films, and/or create new content for the same structure of filmmaking mediascape.

This is the workshop outline sent to the school I hope to work with.

101 walks on the web

Saturday was lovely and sunny - and time for a leisurely walk around the park! After taking all the remaining logs off the ipaqs, checking them all for software and storage files, and packing up at the ICA, it was great to just go out for a walk and explore parts of the park that other walkers hadn't visited so much.

So the final 4 films of 101 walks on the web are from my walks. There's one walk I have yet to do - a walk avoiding the film regions, to see if I can make a film-less film with the film-making mediascape whilst walking in the park!! (My sense of subversion, pushing the boundaries... or simply bending the rules!) Anyway, that's for next time...

There's lots more documentation, video interviews, and more on the ideas behind the mediascape that I'd like to add to this blog.. so do come back and visit after the festival!

Oh, and if you tried the mediascape (or just watched films on the web), please take a couple of minutes to answer the survey about your experiences, thanks! (You could even win a copy of the limited edition print!)

Thanks to everyone who helped, took part, and told friends...

And watch this space for news of our plans for an e-merge day in the Park in late spring/early summer.

news from BEV

Harriet's video reports are up on the BEV blog - read and watch more about the mscape workshop and e-merge walkers (with me explaining it to them!)

walks & films go live!

The walks and films from Friday, Saturday and Sunday are now live on the website!

Here's the opening scene and trace of the walk by the ladies pictured below.
So, what's the connection with this image - any guesses to what's being planted, why, and how it relates to the park?....

Wo-manning the event

I had to pop back to Somerset & Bristol for a day, missing a couple of sessions. So time to set out a brief for the BEV volunteers wo-manning the table & equipment, who have been great. Over the weekend it was essential for me to be going out with walkers, making sure they were happy with the equipment and seeing how they (and the technology) behaved with e-merge - and therefore what information people need to be given when they first come to the event.

This was the emergent brief...

mscape workshop at Birds Eye View

Yesterday about 22 people, all new to mediascapes, came along to Constance's mscape workshop at the festival. One woman I recognised from e-merge the day before, who took lots of notes and seemed very interested to make her own mediascapes. It was great to have people from different backgrounds there - filmmakers, music composers, directors, editors... And interesting for me to sit in on the workshop and see people go through a rapid learning curve with fun, total engagement and innovation in just 2 hours!

After a great introduction from Constance, and an experience of a basic mscape outside the ICA, I showed a bit of the 'behind the scenes' workings of e-merge.

Harriet's got some video interviews that should be up on the BEV blog shortly, and Constance has written a post on the PMStudio blog too.

inside and out, Sunday

The BEV info stand at the ICA box office (spot the e-merge poster in the background!). It's near the cinema entrances, which is difficult when there's a huge queue waiting to go in (as for the premiere of wonderful The Time of Their Lives today - with Wiltshire guests!); but also great to catch people who've come out after other films - like the lovely ladies below!

Online survey

Everyone who asked to be emailed with their unique walk numbers from the website was asked to complete an online survey, with links from the website feedback page too.

Here are the questions:

1. Have you tried the e-merge mediascape?

2. How did you hear about e-merge?

3. Have you experienced a mediascape before e-merge?

4. Would you describe e-merge as any of the following?

Film; Game; Tour; Walk; Mobile media; Pervasive media; Art; Narrative

5. Did you encounter difficulties with the ipaq/ technology?

6. How did the mediascape alter your experience of the park?

7. Have you watched any of the e-merge walks-films on the website?

8. Would you prefer to watch your film?

In the park; Anywhere; On the website; In the gallery (ICA); Other

9. Please rate the project / your experience:

Very poor; Poor; Average; Good; Very good; Other

10. Please add any other comments, feedback, development suggestions.

Enter your e-mail address if you would like a reply, and for a chance to win a limited edition (1/10) e-merge print.

Thankyou!

How was your walk?

The mediascape goes live today...
add comments here to tell us how you got on, what you thought of e-merge, how you heard about it, development ideas and all your feedback!

e-merge live all week

creativite consultation & synchronicities...

Today was fun - I went to visit 2nd year digital media students who are making interpretation for a local museum. They've already filmed some beautiful footage of the Wiltshire landscape - Stonehenge, Avebury in the snow - as well as using images of artefacts and other info on finds from our rich heritage.

And we got onto talking about mediascapes as a tool to take the content back out into the location... bluetooth downloads, podcasts & all sorts of fun ideas. (Sounds a familiar connection...)

Afterwards I went to the Wiltshire Community Arts Network meeting in Devizes, to get the latest on the changes to Unitary authority, and what that means for the arts. I spoke about thevery successful Dads Matter Too film and media arts project, as one of several examples of the arts in Wiltshire. The host for the evening told us about a great film showing this Sunday by a Wiltshire colleague at the ICA for Birds Eye View.... small world!!

for the walls...

Part of the funding from the Arts Council covers my design & printing of the postcards and some large format print - to entice people new to mscape to have a go!

The poster's to put up in the ICA during e-merge sessions and encourage new audiences to book out an ipaq and try the walks.

sneaking a peep

at film playback for the website... work in progress.


Tricky stuff, as there's a lot of possible video clips that the film could comprise, in any sequence; plus long audio tracks that form the soundtrack - but don't start from the beginning.

... and that's after getting all the information about the walks out of the mediascape!

I'm glad I'm not the one making it...... ...thanks Ben!

Tracing the Park

'Tests and traces' was yesterday's theme in the park... look out for some video snippets of the first e-merge walkers at http://www.e-merge-walks.com/ when the festival starts. It was great to see the images playing in the location they're made for, and some useful feedback from the Zeph & Alex, thanks.




Pretty quickly the walks were up on a test-site on the web (with wifi & hot chocolate at the ICA cafe), so thankyou to Ben who is busy on the web side of the film-making, right now!

The Royal Parks have kindly agreed to use of their illustrated map in e-merge, so the first task was to walk around the park marking where I was on the map at various points, so mscape could turn the image into a 'real' map.. clever stuff.. 50 points later, and there's a bit of give, but pretty accurate for the central area of the park, so walkers will be able to view their journey on the map if they want to.

Then checking precise location of 'no-go' areas (like the new dredging site, and the park police station) so that the content regions will be in just the right places.

Interesting observation: mscape logs a trace for every map in the mediascape, so as I had Bristol still in there from Friday, as well as the illustrated map I was testing out, it recorded 3 traces...

creating a 5.5mb file for a 95 minute walk, and a trace overlay that made me gasp for a moment!!

Fortunately it was all salvageable with a few tweaks in excel (thanks for the tips, Zeph!) - so my legs didn't ache in vain!

testing time

... there's a lot about time in e-merge, but that's for another post.


Postcard 2 is ready for print.

How do you get one?

Come and try the mediascape!

Today was test-time for e-merge at the Pervasive Media Studio, with a rough version mapped into the pedestrian area at the head of the waterside and horseshoe area. Several people from UWE and the studio tried it out and gave useful feedback from their perspectives of games designers, interactive arts, IT, photography and media. Thanks!

Tomorrow's test-time in the park with a trip to London to finalise maps, regions, active areas and where the content will be 'hidden' as well as test out and document a few other bits & pieces.

print

postcard design 1

Bingo!

We got all the regions today - some more than once. 23 minutes and a pretty efficient route!

The dogs think this is a great project - lots of extra walks, perfect for the border collie nature - 'random' twists and turns, not following the usual trampled path !

I found myself thinking about gaming as I walked. Mscapes, interactive and mobile technologies are used a lot for gaming, and whilst it's not something I spend my time doing, I've enjoyed and learnt a lot from the few games I have tried out - especially live real & virtual games, like the Come Out & Play urban games festival in Amsterdam I went to a couple of years ago. But I also find games a bit too prescriptive. It's more fun when you can change the rules and try your own version - do you get £400 for landing on go? Does all the cash really go into 'free parking'?!

So is there a game element to e-merge?

What interests me more than creating plots and puzzles is to provide a rich environment and then see what happens. More of a creative play I suppose - if you want to play with e-merge, you can make different walks, you could walk in circles (which someone did with the sister mediascape Something More), you could run backwards and forwards, try and 'catch' all the content regions - and see what happens if you catch them in different sequences or more than once. Or just explore the park - on and off the trodden pathways. You could arrange to walk with a friend, start together, go different routes and then meet again at a 'viewing' point. Or experiment with the same small area but choosing different music for your walk; maybe play with where and when you watch your film, the synchronicites with the surroundings that that could present. Or anything else to find out what's possible...

So I hope e-merge will have a light, fun, playful element for those who want it, and encourage the walkers to be adventurous and experiment. To me that's a bit like switching off the TV and going out to play with your own video camera instead....

samples

Two versions of the same clip - dusk at the west of the park.

Low quality then medium quality (although both then recompressed by blogger).

I'm editing in Final Cut, which then goes into flash as the mscape needs swfs and the web will need flvs. Size versus quality... or shorter edits!

growing

Here's the best test yet - now with real video and slideshow content from the park. The ipaq performed well, and the screen was very visible in the dusk! The battery seems to have held up fine, and even with a lot of media playing there were no real problems. That's a very happy feeling after the last couple of days of systematically figuring out some niggling playlist errors - which ones were bugs, new features in 2.5, quirks of my method, errors with the device, or inconsistencies within the programme.

The walk starts at the top (near the lane) and snakes around to end about a third of the way down the left side. It lasted 21 minutes, and then the film lasted for 15 minutes. The park is a lot bigger, so the scale of regions will be different as well as the layout, so the relative length of films will be much shorter.

With this walk I was watching my position on this map showing all the content regions and trying to walk through as many as possible. That's harder than you may think, in a bumpy muddy field on a slope, with no obvious physical mark of where the regions are!

It's interesting how different the route of my walk was because of this. I haven't decided yet whether to show people in the park where the regions are, or just show them the map of the park. They don't have to look at the map - just walk and enjoy the sight without needing to watch the screen.

lots of strands...

... these 2 shown below are from 10 second and 30 second traces of the same walk made thismorning and used to test the website bits that will go live next week... thanks Ben!

... there's also some background to the project on the BEV blog , and a page up on the e-merge walks website (where the films/walks will be shown during and after the festival).

... content-wise, it's coming together well, informed by the mscape region layout as well as the music, park layout and the footage captured.

... organisation also involves things like booking forms for equipment, checking logos, making sure the correct software's installed on ipaqs, user-testing and another visit to the Park etc... so quite a lot of strands to weave together into one!

step by step

Once again, trying to fix a couple of unlikely scenarios ended up making things that worked go a little peculiar... So enough fiddling around.. here's another walk made thismorning.

I do like the images traces make!
(The scribble at the top is when the device lost fix for a bit, and tried to work out where it was.)

Making and posting them here is a welcome little break - bit of a visual treat and tiny celebration or waymarker - whether it's successful or not, it's still a step closer to the destination.

Good news from 2.5 - it remembers the logger configuration!

x 30 x 3 = 2.5

... or something more even! 30 content region pairs, each with video, slideshow, state and scripts. Moved into mscape experimental 2.5, and everything's going well except that the playlist seems to behave differently to 2.1 (probably doesn't need the workarounds I'd built in to it before any more!) so there's still a few bugs to iron out, but this is pretty much what will transfer to the Park. So it's over to Ben to add in the flash parts and extract data to recreate the films on the web. Exciting stuff!

Why is there no red trace (showing my walk)? Every time the mscape gets saved as a new version it needs the logger re-configuring, and in my excitement to run round the field again I forgot! Maybe tomorrow...

wild geese

Friday was a bit of a wild goose chase - I got carried away with trying to

pre-empt any kind of user action that would cause the mediascape to work differently from planned. Eventually I got to the point where building in lots of precautions was starting to 'break' it for ordinary use... A few steps forward, a couple back again.. in both the muddy field and on the computer!

The things that happen in the tester or on a micro-walk are less likely to happen in the Park-scale version.

Setting expectations and introducing the context of the experience is really important for walkers, and that will happen through the intro. narrative, instructions on screen, as well as giving any advice needed when they book out their ipaq at the ICA. Those bits are missing from the sketch at the moment, so it's easy to get over-vigilant about what people may do! There's also a fine balance between wanting it to be robust for public use, but also being a piece of innovative development, part of ongoing r&d - without the commercial end product that (should) necessitate a further level of usability. - and there's also the reality of one person's time!

So the latest stage has been adapting the local test to a sensible scale and making sure it works for the kind of scenario I want to create in the Park. That's the first trace below.

I will be extending the regions over the next few days so I can try out how the content runs together, and check performance of the ipaq once it's got a lot more imagery loaded. So the second trace shows the edge of an easily walkable area of the field - without falling into hedges, boggy land, or the neighbouring building site!

Looking SSE across the field-test...

A different blog..

Harriet asked me to write an article for the BEV blog about making e-merge... after having a look at some of their other recent articles, it seemed the chatty, easily explained style would work best.

‘e-merge’ _ A film-making mediascape by Jackie Calderwood

Interactive exploration of landscape through walking, music, artist’s moving image and mobile technology.

I’m making a mediascape for the festival.. with media drawn from and linked to the landscape, and experienced by walking around.

How does that work? Easy! Collect an i-paq (hand-held computer) from the ICA , plug in headphones, and listen to the instructions... you’ll be asked to choose some music, made especially for e-merge by three different women composers/bands. Then it’s over to you for a walk in the park. St James’ Park is right opposite the ICA and perfect for a stroll, run, or to meet the wildlife – from pelicans to squirrels that’ll take nuts from your hand! – you choose where to walk, how far, how fast – the music may encourage you to twist and turn as you meander the paths around the lakeside. When you’re ready, find a comfy place to watch your film – with images taken from the places you’ve walked, you may find a few surprises too! Make one long film, or several short films, and when you’ve finished we’ll upload a selection of films to the e-merge website so you can watch again, show your friends, and compare films!

The making process has been ticking away since November when I met Sarah Mosses, BEV’s innovation programmer, whilst visiting another interactive project. In one of those synchronistic conversations where I told her about my work using mscape to make short films, she told she was looking for a woman mscaper to create a piece for the film festival! Discovering the festival base would be at the ICA was a real bonus – with St James’ Park on the doorstep, perfect for a film-making walk. I’d made a similar mediascape last summer[www.jackiecalderwood.com/transitions.php] as part of extended practice completing my MA Media (Interactive Arts) at UWE, so would base e-merge on that, and create new content from and for the park.

How did I get involved with mediascapes?

I started working with moving image 12 years ago within a sculptural environment, moving into short film and community media arts facilitation. 2 years ago, during my MA, I began to work with HP’s mscape software and love the freedom to make work that moves people in an outdoor environment, placing the user, context, work and artist in dynamic equilibrium.

Mediascape offers an exciting new medium to explore my interests of contrasting relationships: movement & stillness, audio & visual, time & timelessness, limitation & choice, ultimately the way we respond to choice, how we interact with the world around us.

The commission for BEV is a great way to bring mediascape to a new audience, and for me to contrast rural and urban environments, and contribute to the discussion about film and mobile technology. Mediascapes often seem to be used for gaming, information, and education. So bringing e-merge for women in film, and the general public, feels very enjoyable! As part of ongoing research, it’s just fun to have the opportunity to work alongside more creative people, develop ideas and test out work in new situations – and hopefully get some interesting and useful feedback!

Making it...

So, in brief, the process to date has included meeting BEV and working out logistics of equipment, audiences, and all those things... a successful application to the Arts Council to support e-merge, commissioning music, meeting with the Royal Parks and photographing and filming in the park, researching historical images, editing still and moving images, building and adapting a structure for the mediascape with hp labs’ mscape[www.mscapers.com] software –( imagine it like a map of time and place, with media content dropped in.)Testing and more testing, ‘iterative’ is the essential-word for this kind of work! Coming from a fine art and community media practice background, I think it’s really important for innovative work to be well documented, accessible to the general public, and visually presented, so I’m keeping a project blog [www.e-merge-walks.blogspot.com] and designing postcards to promote the website which will go live with films made during the festival [www.e-merge-walks.com].

Challenges? Inherent in using a mobile device is the small screen and small quantity of film that it can play, so it’s a constant balance of what’s going to work well within the technology. Also how to be interesting and engaging to a wide audience, and the good old question of interactive design – how much freedom and choice can the end-user really have? Let me know when you’ve tried it!

field test = in the field

It's a long way to London, so field tests are needed closer to home. Hopefully we'll be at a stage to test the structure and content with some experienced mscape-users in Bristol by the end of next. Meanwhile it's a muddy field in Somerset for wellies and walks!

This is the structure mentioned in the previous post, but mapped into a nearby field. It's shown up a couple of things already that didn't happen when tested on the office computer... proving once again that regular field visits (& therefore local as well as located) - iterative testing - are essential for any development with pervasive media. The worst bit was while I was chasing satellites, my dog was free to roll in something very,very smelly!

sketches in time

Building the mediascape structure...
Following on the theme of change and archive, it was time to move on from using Something More as the structure to develop e-merge. I suppose one of the things with moving image of any kind is that you have to sketch it out in time. With locative media the dimension of space needs sketching out too (topography or place at least - height/volume doesn't feature much yet).
What happens when someone moves outside the 'active' space? What happens when their device doesn't recognise the place? To what extent do they need to see their journey as part of the mapped landscape, or does that detract from the experience of landscape, or experience of the piece?

My use of mscape explores ways to use pervasive media in harmony with an unencumbered direct experience of place. When you go to a beautiful place, is it really enhanced by looking at a screen or listening to a commentary? Is there a way to use the technology to enhance experience that both adds to the occasion and evokes a memorable artistic experience? And of course there are all the concerns of interactive media design about meaningful user input - to what extent can, or would we want to, control our choices and the freedom we offer to others?

Those are the indulgent philosophical thoughts of the morning, reflecting after the midnight hours that birthed a working sketch (of time and space) unique to e-merge.
It has a beginning, middle and end! It knows where it is and what to do if it doesn't; it can choose music; doesn't drift (too much); knows when to play the film and is even polite enough to ask if you'd like different music or another walk!

Now back to the finer details - timers and finding the most reliable way of logging are the tasks for thismorning. [Note: sketch including timers & log here]

change and archive

There will be visible changes in the park by the time the mediascape's completed..
As well as the budding spring, the lake's going through a big change - being drained and dredged for it's 20+yearly clean-out, as I discovered on my visit last week! How different will it look when people are walking with e-merge?...

Here's a previous change - in 1940 there was a suspenson bridge across the lake:


This is one of the archive images, as shown in the Royal Parks Historical Survey: St James Park by LUC, 1981. Thankyou to Land Use Consultants and to the Royal Parks for permission to use some of those images in e-merge. Look out for a few surprises when the first walks are made and first films go online...

Drifting

One of the 'upgrades' planned from Something More was to add a buffer around each zone to minimise the effect of drift on the end film - so that if you're drifting on the edge of a zone you only get that content once, but equally you can walk in and out of the same area lots of times and that will be reflected in your film by repeated sequences.
Here's a test for a single zone:
http://www.mscapers.com/mediascapes/558

Mapping & first traces

Here's the traces from parts of my walks whilst filming etc.

OpenStreetMap seems to give the best (gps-accurate) visuals for the Park (as below). There's quite an interesting mix of maps and images out there including aerial photo and road layout, street maps, showing different interpretations of the park. Royal Parks have kindly given permission for me to use their illustrated map of the park in the mediascape, so that may feature too...

There are 3 ways maps will be used in e-merge:

• as a maplib in mscape to create the mediascape
• for map display to the walker while they're e-merge-ing in the park
• on the e-merge walks website to show the routes of the walks with the films generated