"From a digital route planner that avoids hills and rough surfaces, to a sculpture made entirely of scent and games that give players' superpowers as their heart rate start pumping, this year's Media Sandbox projects give a new meaning to the phrase 'pushing the boundaries.'
Join us to celebrate the pioneering Media Sandbox scheme at the end of its third year. In September 2010, seven companies were commissioned to develop projects under two strands, B-Open and Pervasive Experiences. This event will feature video documentation of the seven projects; reflections on successes and key areas of learning; and panel sessions with practitioners and advisory board members. Followed by drinks, a chance to try out project demos and informally network with participants."
With great short films by Geoff @ wideeyed I thought this was by far the best sandbox showcase yet. Two panels presented informative discussion with representatives from all of the projects, and the subsequent displays let us interact with most of the prototypes and talk with the other guests and participants.
Particularly like the Hills are Evil project for it's open ethos inviting people to add to data about the surfaces of Bristol's route-ways, and commitment to enable other people and platforms to make more with what they've started. Also the way it lends itself to adaptation - motivated by a need for wheel chair users to know where safe routes are with suitable kerb drops, avoiding cobbles, etc, it's also been tested with cyclists looking for a route (hill/no hill) according to exercise, and could be useful for people with pushchairs, feeding back info on the state of surfaces to the council, and lots more.
And of course smell is an interesting sense - one I'm familiar with in terms of aromatherapy/medicinal properties of plants and incenses - and very good to see it being explored in this way as part of a narrative installation, poetic, inspired by cinema.... as an installation I thought the objects worked really well, although still prototypes (and apparently larger than they intend the finial pieces), the hand-held 'pebbles' that light up in turn, cable mechanism and sound and image and gallery environment offered a refined, quality merging of design, writing and technology. Not 100% sure about all the scents... but it was harder to really 'get' that with queues of people bustling round and picking things up at the 'wrong' moment! Perhaps smell should be more of a solo experience...
No comments:
Post a Comment