Slides from my presentation for the Institute of Creative Technologies 'Intelligent Media' Tea-time Talks, De Montfort University. 20th October 2010.

1. Pervasive media:
Cultural Engagement and Experience of the Ambulant Landscape.
Jackie Calderwood
INSTITUTE OF CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES, DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY
jacqueline.calderwood@email.dmu.ac.uk
Intelligent Media
@ the IOCT
Wednesday 20th October 2010

2. Image: Something More, 2008
www.jackiecalderwood.com/transitions.php

3. „Communities that thrive in the future will be the ones who can create
new patterns of learning, relationship, and value creation‟.
Andrea Saveri, Foresight consultant, Berkely, California,
discussing the importance of RESILIENCE as keynote speaker for
Amplified Leicester showcase, Phoenix Digital Media Centre,
2010.

4. „Mediascapes infuse the landscape of
our everyday environment with digital
content and services. Screenshot: www.mscapers.com
They deliver compelling user
experiences when the user interacts
with the physical world.‟
StentonSP et.al, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Palo Alto(2007)
Mediascapes: Context-Aware Multimedia Experiences Multimedia,
IEEE Vol. 14 No.3, pp. 98 – 105
Screenshot: www.createascape.org.uk
Screenshot:
mscape software: www.hpl.hp.com/downloads/mediascape/ mapping with mscape software

5. Clodagh and constance quote - scrawling
„Location sensitive media leads us to
„scrawling‟ on our physical environment
as a way of articulating and sharing itineraries and spatial stories
that might otherwise be invisible within that public space.‟
Clodagh Miskelly, Constance Fleuriot(2006)
Layering community media in place. Digital Creativity
Vol.17, No. 3, pp. 163-173

6. In Hear, Out There: Madrid
2008
by Matt Green
Screenshot: http://greensonic.wordpress.com

7. Always Something Somewhere Else
2007
Subtlemob, 2010
by Duncan Speakman
Screenshots: http://duncanspeakman.net/?p=180
http://subtlemob.com/?p=21

8. Clodagh and constance quote - scrawling
„Located media introduces new issues and practices to do with orientation
and the rooting of representations in place.
...different stories appear to emerge from considering maps or being in the
place.‟
Miskelly,C., Cater, K., Fleuriot, C., Williams, M., Wood, L.
Locating Story: collaborative community-based located media production
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit4/papers/miskelly.pdf

9. Ken robinson - creativity
„Creativity is not a single power that people simply have or do not have, but
multidimensional... an attitude. … Creativity is a process of seeing new
possibilities. Realising these capacities relies on being in control
of the medium – on having the necessary skills – combined with
the freedom to take risks.‟
Sir Ken Robinson(2001) p.137.
Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative,
Capstone Publishing, Oxford

10. Ken robinson - creativity
„A common way to describe the pleasures of mobile media applications
was by reference to the idea of Magic Moments, when particular convergences
or overlaps between the media environment and the physical environment
were generated.‟
Dovey, J., Fleuriot, C.,
Towards a Language of Mobile Media
in The Mobile Audience (2010) Ed. Rieser, M. p.107

11. Area of Research:
Authoring
User Generated Content
For pervasive consumption
(collaborative systems)
Subtlety of Interaction owning experience
Sensing for rich interaction
(personal sensors)
extending languages
of communication
Moving Image
& pervasive
computing/delivery Audience
(accessibility) Experience
Community Interaction Underlying Questions
Community imaging
(crowd delivery) Creativity and mobility: author/artist/user
extra-device,
Experienceof Place: Synthesis/paradox?
freedom to experience
Relationship: of individual to collective
Affect/effect of:
*Urban/rural *Time/timelessness *Movement/stillness *Inside/outside *Location/dislocation

12. Ambulant Content source: Method of Interaction: Experiential Matrix:
Filmmaking
Mediascapes Role of Audience
MainLocation
e-merge Artist’s response Select music Individual: hand-held on-site
(visual) Walk, collecting video clips [Options to view
Map/Content Regions] Individual displaced: hand-held
St. James’s Commissioning: Choose to stop and watch film on location on
Park, London New and existing work Editor (mediascape) new site
(audio) User (web gallery)
Remote: web gallery
Ambience Public response to Select music
Open Call: Walk, collecting video clips [Options to view Individual: hand-held on-site
Bristol Existing and new work Map/Content Regions]
Harbourside (visual) Choose to stop and watch film on location Communal: big screen on-site
Editor (mediascape)
Invited existing work Performer (walker)
(audio) Audience (big screen)
Soundlines, Collaborative Walk, triggering music live (and animation Individual: hand-held on-site
With Strata interpretation: for displaced mediascape)
Remote: web gallery
Collective New work generated Choose to stop/start new walk
through facilitated Composer/Editor (mediascape) Individual displaced: hand-held
Sand Point, workshop series on new site
North (audio and visual) Sand Point walks filmed for off-site
Somerset documentary screening: Communal displaced: big screen
Minimal post- Performer (big screen) off-site at event
production (audio) Audience (big screen) Communal remote: web gallery
User (web gallery) at event

13. Ambulant Mediascape: Three Projects
•e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape
Commissioned for innovation programme,
Birds Eye View film festival, ICA, March 2009
Funded by ACE (National Lottery),
intro supported by Pervasive Media Studio, The Royal Parks
Public walks in St James‟s Park, films & traces
on web. Toured to Sandpit*10 @ ICA,
Southbank Arts Trail, Wiltshire College, Worle School
• Ambience
Commissioned by Bristol Festival, supported by
Watershed & Pervasive Media Studio, Sept 2009
UGC: Open call for films, mapped into mediascape with
public event (PDAs) and resulting films on location via
large format projection.
• Soundlines
Current educational project with Strata
Collective – Sept 2009 to April 2010
Sonic mediascape, with film and web, as a tool
for engagement with sssi local landscapes and
the human journey through time.

14. E-merge poster

15. e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape, ICA, London

16. e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape, ICA, London
www.e-merge-walks.com

17. www.e-merge-walks.com
www. e-merge-walks.blogspot.com
Screenshots: e-merge Walks and Films Gallery
http://www.e-merge-walks.com/log-displayer/

18. e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape, ICA, London
”The main interest of the mediascape is in the way it explores visual memory.
It implies that the way we build up a mental picture of a place is not topographic but defined by incident.
This is perhaps the overriding impression left by the mediascape:
a confrontation with the total subjectivity of our perception.
Easily acceptable as a philosophical principle, it is much more disconcerting in a practical
demonstration, not least because it highlights the impermanence of our mental picture.
Alexander Starritt, a-n review
It also implies that if we remember a place in terms of the incidental observations made
there, a subsequent absence of those things would make it a different place in our minds.
… that sense of subjectivity, of the fundamental unknowability of a place, which remains even after the park is forgotten.
It is this, combined with the realisation that our places must die with us, that allows Calderwood‟s mediascape to elicit a
feeling of profound transience, a feeling that nothing, nowhere, will ever be the same again.
… a greater temporal dislocation would have been an interesting addition to the mediascape.”
From a review of e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape
byAlexander Starritt, March 2009
Published on artist newsletter interface
www.a-n.co.uk/interface/reviews

20. e-merge_a filmmaking mediascape, on tour…

21. www.ambience2009.blogspot.com
Ambience
Collaborative Filmmaking Mediascape
for the Bristol Festival October 2009
Supported by: Pervasive Media Studio, Watershed, Bristol Festival

22. Ambience, Bristol Community Festival
Ambience at brizfest

23. Soundlines, Sand Point
www.stratacollective.org
Community Participation Project
North Somerset

24. „... digital technologies Roz Hall quote:role indigital technologies
have a democratic developing
democratic forms of cultural participation
through the potential for dialogue about that which is being made…‟
Roz Hall(2005) p.32. The Value of Visual Exploration:
Understanding Cultural Activities with Young People,
The Public, Birmingham

26. Soundlines, Sand Point
www.stratacollective.org
www.stratacollective.blogspot.com
Screenshots: Sand Point Walks Gallery
http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines/playback

28. Soundlines, Sand Point

29. siegler
„Reality is conjunctive, a complex movement where each one
tries to “find one‟s place.”
….I must have intelligence about it, that is, be in excess of it,
and by that same fact already be, in advance, inventive.‟
Bernard Stiegler(2008) p.73. Trans: Barison, D.
Acting Out, Stanford University Press

30. „…understanding the links between the emergence of new things
and the effort to achieve permanence.‟
Hallam, E., Ingold, T.,(Eds.) (2007) p.31. Creativity
and Cultural Improvisation, Berg, Oxford

31. Soundlines Video Intro

32. Emerge worle help
Practice-based research: seeking a place for improvisation and experimentality.
Challenge:
How do we balance Experimentality with Notation and Understanding?

33. Aim: Explore the potential of pervasive media and site-specific music to facilitate
strengthened awareness of connection with place and significance of the
human journey.
Values / Objectives ……..
1. Participatory process
2. Fluid interaction of individual and „whole‟
3. Explicit and iterative process

35. Introductory Workshop.. Stories of Sand Point:
VOLCANO
Long ago when all the hills were being formed, a crack appeared in the sea floor.
A volcano erupted and spilled hot ash and lava over Sand Point.
This happened several times, with times in between when the sea, full of strange
creatures, came back and covered the new volcanic rocks.
Finally, hot lava poured out and turned into huge lumps of rock.
You are the volcano – and the sea!

36. Field trip to Sand Point

37. Music Improvisation & Recording Workshops

38. „Boiling Landscapes‟ Animation Workshops

39. Community outreach, mentoring for media diploma students and eShed volunteers

40. Mscape workshop for Primary students with Constance Fleuriot

41. Soundlines, Sand Point
Field trip 2: music and mediascape on Sand Point

42. Watching individual walks on the web.

43. Reflection and writing text for walk gallery.

44. Community Premiere
Community Premiere at Café Willow, Worle School
Mediascapes, Film Screening, Website Launch, Photographic Displays,
Animations, Refreshments, Maps, Stories, Walking Groups, Healthy Living…

45. Soundlines, Sand Point
www.stratacollective.org
www.stratacollective.blogspot.com
Screenshots: Sand Point Walks Gallery
http://www.stratacollective.org/soundlines/playback

48. “This has been an amazing opportunity for my daughter, she has really enjoyed
being a part of it. It was great to be invited this evening having heard so much
about it and not really understanding! A truly creative use of technology – well
done to all of you!”
“It was great to see the students so interested. I am also inspired to try to make
some animations myself – theirs were so beautiful. Good luck with future
projects.”
“Absolutely brilliant. The children here worked very hard putting all this together
and its very educational and interesting.”
“I often take visitors up to Sand Point, I‟d like to share these stories with them.”
- Comments from Guests at Soundlines Community Premiere

49. Practice-based research: seeking a place for improvisation and experimentality.
Inherent Values…….. Attributes for an Experimental Society?
1. Participatory process:
Engagement, authentic expression and „ownership‟ of the creative process.
++variety of creative methods and tools.
-- tensions between artist and participant.
…the relationship of author as „end user‟.
2. Fluid interaction of individual and „whole‟:
++mixed age-groups, sharing skills,
personal, peer-to-peer, private-public:
experience, reflection, re-presentation.
--tensions between structure (project) and improvisation.
…towards community.
3. Explicit and iterative process:
Material process, reflective practice, communication
++creative empowerment: „in the element‟,
technicity embraced: „find one‟s place‟
--data mining, surveillance, sustainability, boredom
…paying attention,
awareness/ownership of experience AND experiment….

50. Example: „place‟ in menu
region, showing the current
(consecrated) and demolished
(unconsecrated) chapels.
Touch screen interface
for menu-driven
„MapDisplayer‟. Map of cemetery content region.
paths with colour-coded audio
region locations, visible to walkers
using the tour, augmented by a
pin figure displaying their
live position.
Milton Cemetery Audio Tour

51. Example: Grave locator map: Henry Butt

52. Experimental Walks

53. www.walksontheweb.
blogspot.com

54. jacqueline.calderwood@email.dmu.ac.uk
www.stratacollective.org/soundlines
www.e-merge-walks.com
www.ambience2009.blogspot.com