cliffs tea rooms

Good place for a Soundlines meeting. Wind howling, choppy waters, Sand Point across the bay in bright March sunlight.

Talking about interpretation, and transformation. Artist / content / user / place.

Initially you have artist, user, place. (a)
Finally, you still have artist, user, place. (b)

We assume that artist and user can but need not meet.

We also suppose (?) that place is not altered.

The interface (intervention) between (a) and (b) is pervasive media.

This interface becomes a tool for the interpretation process.
This interpretation is either created by the artist or by the user with guidance from the artist.
We need to prove that transformation occurs through the interpretation.We also need a definition of transformation, and to consider whether it applies both to user and artist.

unusually similar but strangely different

http://www.ralphhoyte.net/
has asked us to come and play music for his Cristabel event at Halsway Manor.
significant?

traces in the wind and rain

Here are a couple of gps traces from Whitesheet Hill - the bottom one was yesterday's visit, you can see the centre circular ditches as I walked round them a couple of times.
This top trace was today, in a storm, with 3 short films made through walking. The trace to the left is driving back down the track afterwards...

One of the idea's we want to explore through Soundlines is having the trace appear (animation) whilst the soundscape composition plays, as re-presentation on the web. I imagine those traces will be very different as the incentive to move around the landscape will be very different too.

Magic moments?

I went up Whitesheet Hill to try my Something More mediascape out in the blustery winter weather today. When I got to the very centre of the ring fort ditches the music made a perfect 2 second loop and the ipaq displayed a message about low memory (but failed to respond to my input) and then a perfect white square (above!).

Standing in the middle of the centre camp, wind gusting, beat reverberating, screen displaying this 'alien' communication, was an incredible experience! Way beyond linear time the beats were perfect, looping as though designed just for this experience; emotions powerful - excitement, fear, curiosity, stunned, compassion, interest, confusion, mystery, infinite, stunned, earth-body-sky connection, transpotative, awakened. I was fascinated enough to try and film it - but you had to be there to feel the full effect! (And the sound doesn't capture on the video at all...)

As I left the centre circle and walked back around it, a double-take, exactly the same piece of bird-like plastic was making exactly the same shape as it landed in exactly the same place as some unmeasurable time earlier when I'd first entered the circle... Circles within circles within wheels of time.

Perhaps we could use deliberate audio loops for centres of significance in the Soundlines landscape?

Strata at Sandbox

Thought it'd be good to post a reminder from Jane & Jackie's visit to the media sandbox launch at Watershed on Monday, of some of the things that may be relevent to prototyping Sightlines....

The top 5 golden rules (we preferred to call them 'platinum TIPS') to consider when setting out on your innovative multi-platform pervasive media project..... (as voted by attendees)

• What’s the point?
• Know your target audience
• Know your platforms and their features and constraints
• Identify a desire/need that this product is filling
• A single/simple idea

Some of our favourites were also:

• Innovate or improve
• Consider potentials, adaptability, flexibility, extendability of your concept
• There are no rules
• Expect the unexpected
• Keep communication simple
• Develop/have a strong idea and stick to it (we thought: stay flexible & responsive at the same time as not being sucked into other agendas/doing things just because you could!)
• Interdependence of platform, content, audience

We also found these 'scenario' questions interesting..

• What dimensions are valuable to people as they go about their everyday lives? How can those dimensions be sensed and presented?
• How would we go about engaging with Bristol people to start re-using public drinking fountains instead of buying YAPB (yet another plastic bottle)?

And we realised that innovative multi-platform projects have 90% same requirements as any other creative/arts/education project, so we've already got a lot to give!
- oh yes, and it's great to have different coloured pens when writing on a flip-pad. And much easier to draw/spatialise/visualise as you talk (for Jackie, anyway!).
- aha, and very important to illuminate the stereotype that grannies don't get out mapping on their bike with their pda - they DO!