Get Out & Explore!!

"Interact with the world in a whole new way".
Experience sounds and images linked to the landscape.
Discover a rush of info as you turn a corner!
There could be a challenge awaiting you.
Imagine the games you can build...
The stories you can tell....

Welcome to Mediascape!
Immersive media — games, guides, stories — woven into the landscape.

For information about how to employ Mediascape check out the press kit giving you video links and useful technical descriptions.

Biking Dynasty ::: Looking to 2012!!

The YouTube online-TV soap that features video taken from the renown sporting dynasty: The Athertons. The video series gives a behind the scenes view of three of the most successful cycling siblings in Downhill Mountain Biking, what makes them tick and what motivates them and the various races....

NY Bicycle Film Festival

The New York Bicycle Film Festival took place in June, 2009. Its remit is celebrating the bicycle!! The idea is to engage with the lifestyle of cycling through art, film, music and performance and to advocate the bike as formidable transport device!

The programme is filled with action-based film footage shot by a variety of cycle enthusiast:

1) DRAG RACE NYC
City bike race between cars (caution this is risky business)



2) LONDON CALLING
Mad Skills - London's finest doing the High Tech Weave (HTW) in this high speed alleycat:

Cool Bike Design for 2012

Ludus Dance : Text Messaging and Choreography

During the f.city Festival in Lancaster 2006, the public were invited to take part in Ludus Dance activities receiving dance instruction and directions via text messaging and video podcasts! Via online video, people were able to learn simple dance steps and receive tuition and instructions before dancing live in the city.

Ludus Dance based in Lancaster and is Britain's leading dance in education company. They produce issue-based dance theatre performances that tour to schools and theatres across the UK and internationally.

online video people could view before the big performance

Rider Spoke: Urban explorations

"Rider Spoke is a work for cyclists combining theatre with game play and state of the art technology."

Rider Spoke is an artwork by Blast Theory investigating how games and emergent communication technologies can bring together new social encounters both on and offline.

The work invites people to cycle through the city in search of interesting, secluded places and to record a short message there. Equipped with a handheld mobile phone people leave messages but also cycle in search of other peoples hidden messages.

Songbike

"Come out for a ride + make a bicycle soundscape"

Songbike is a sound-based project by artist; Kelly Andres. Installed on a bike, is a mobile sound lab, which records and automatically uploads audio to a website. Songbike connects people with shared interest in community and aurality; allowing them to self author and self-produced content and social interaction.

Mobile Sound :: Sonic City

Sonic City is a project that presents the city as a musical instrument. The project imagines the city in terms of a sound and music space, giving the people in those urban spaces the ability to create sound and experience musical compositions. The city becomes an interactive musical interface.


Sonic City enabled people to create music by walking through a city. By using wearable mobile computer technology - the perception of place, time and the activity applied to exploration the urban sapces turns into personal audio creation.

"We explore the use of public space and everyday behaviours for creative purposes, in particular the city as an interface and mobility as an interaction model for electronic music making."

The city becomes an interactive and physical interface. The architecture and urban surrounding provide a built infrastructure to use creatively. The everyday activity of walking or cycling through the urban space can be translated into movement and choreography and captured by the city interface. Through the use of mobile and wireless tools this movement can be translated into narrative and creative feedback.

Sonic City was created by Ramia Mazé, Play Studio, Lars Erik Holmquist, Future Applications Lab and Lalya Gaye, Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute.

Mobile Sound: Walking and Listen

AURA, is project by artist Steve Symons, which allows people leave a digital audio trail as they move and walk through their physical surrounding.


People take a backpack and headphones on a walk and in a defined radius the walker experiences sounds at specific areas anchored by GPS points.

Sound to drive a narrative journey

Artist are using mobile and wireless technologies to overlay digital information onto real spaces.
Audio sounds can be embedded at a certain location and information triggered to which it refers.

Imagine walking or cycling along the water front and as you pass certain digital makers, you will be able to hear sounds, music or a narrative...

Walking & Drawing: Mapping your journey

Jeremy Wood is an artist who uses GPS navigational technologies to map out his journeys as a drawing. The line drawings become a personal document of the playful; walks he creates. Part of this physical map making, Jeremy designed the biggest IF and other fun words.
Snapshot of walks created by Jeremy:

Landlines: Mobile GPS drawing tool

Landlines software was developed by artists Jen Hamilton & Jen Southern in conjunction with ONTECA Ltd to gather live GPS data. The unique tools becomes an interactive vehicles for people to learn and talk about the nature of a place, and its meaning to local people. These projects can be seen at portable TV.

>> your journey outlined on google maps <<

Landlines is a multi-user drawing tool for mobile phone and bluetooth GPS, that allows users to draw by moving in real space. As you walk through the city with Landlines your latitude and longitude is periodically sent via mobile phone to a database. A website then displays your live tracks.

Mobile exploration of location & place - NW

The artwork of Jen Hamilton, Jen Southern & St Amand investigate social and tactile approaches to technology and work with audiences to explore location and sense of place. Their projects explore how new technologies influence the way we inhabit an environment and collaborate with industry on the development of new tools for creating collaborative maps.

Distance Made Good: Flow Lines (2004), Hamilton and Southern worked with local people to make a new map of Lancaster and Morecambe, UK, by using the Landlines system based on the lives of the people living and working there, and of the places.

The walkers (a group of local residence) were invited to make journeys that in some way represent who they are in conjunction with being a landmark for the city they live in (e.g. A participant in Morecambe took us for a walk along the seafront, as for him the seafront represented Morecambe, and it was a route he regularly took when walking his dog).

Thirty four walks were recorded using a GPS device, and were represented together in the gallery on two map like screens folded into the space.

In their project: Running Stitch (2006) the artists gave exhibition visitors a GPS-enabled mobile phone to track their journeys through the city centre. These walks created GPS line drawings of the walker's movements projected live in the gallery to disclose hidden aspects of the city. Each line drawing was sewn in real time into a large 5m x5m hanging fabric to show an evolving tapestry that revealed a sense of place and interconnection between the walkers and the city. (re:blogged from their respective websites)

Question >>

What are the transformative qualities of digital technology - specifically those of mobile and wireless media - and how do these new channels of communication inform and inspire young people to think and act creatively?

Mapping & Community Engagement - Liverpool

Liverpool-based artist Alan Dunn worked in collaboration with Re-Dock throughout 2009 to develop a series of creative consultations, inviting communities from North Liverpool to put forward imaginative ideas for the future of Leeds-Liverpool canal.

Cultural mapping projects and working in situ with communities is becoming a strong methodology for creating interactive and participatory projects involving mobile and wireless technologies. Through the use of location aware media mobile technolgies (these include GPS location devices) audiences are given tools to author or input their own information about where they are or what they find important in their surroundings at any given moment.

Mobile technolgies are tools that can inspire >> real world << interventions as well as allow people to network between each other sending and sharing creative content including photos and videos.

Short Shap Shorts - NW of England

Short Shap Shorts was a ground breaking mobile phone film making competition commissioned by North West Vision+Media in 2007. The competition was open to 18-24 year olds to create stand alone films by just using the video function on their mobile phones. The idea for Short Shap Shorts was for the NW screen agency to identify, meet and support hot new young talent in the region and to engage them in the latest of film making techniques - using mobile media devices!

To see the selction of winning flims please visit the short sharp shots myspace site.

This project followed a growing trend for exploring new broadcasting models to reach new audiences especially those of younger people. Example of film festivals exclusively for mobile film content are now creating a new strand of digital entertainment and creative talent forums all over the world.

MOBI FEST
made for mobile movies

Mini Series
Experience the visual seduction stories told for the mobile generation.

The Burgess Project - Manchester

The Burgess Project was an exciting project produced by the-phone-book Limited, exploring new technologies, new modes of writing and engagement with new audiences. It was launched during the innovative freeplay strand of the inaugural Manchester Literature Festival, in October 2006, where Literature, Technology & Media came together.

Through the use of Bluetooth and mobile phone media, the public were able to par-take in the Burgess narrative whilst taken on a grant tour, a promenade performance through Manchester that linked several venues across various city centre venues. A full story line and project description can be found online with a link to a video screening.

How Will It Happen

From 2009, young people from across Lancashire and the Fylde Coast will be making, researching and discussing art, culture, and sport and deciding on the best digital platforms to be able to share experiences and opportunities and to direct people to make new cultural journeys. Young people will be our guides through this new digital world that is forming around us.

Ruth Raban, Director of Creative Lancashire says:

Technologies revolutionise how we communicate with each other, with virtual worlds, mobile gaming and augmented reality technology, and who better to pioneer new uses of the technology than young people? They 'get it' and can see the possibilities. As future innovators young people will shape the way we work, play and create to 2012 and beyond.

New Cultural Journeys will be created and developed by the young people in Lancashire and the Fylde Coast and will offer a range of ways in which people and organisations can get involved. The programme will excite, surprise and engage residents and visitors in the area and beyond.

The journey is beginning and the possibilities are endless.

New Cultural Journeys

A major youth led culture and sport programme for Lancashire and the Fylde Coast which empowers young people as dynamic participants and creators, engaging them in active lifestyles and place shaping.

By 2012, the people of the North West will be taken on voyages of discovery both outdoor and online. New connections between people and places, sport and art and physical and virtual worlds will be created.

The programme will be led by young people in Lancashire and they will be creating, commissioning and sharing their engagement with new events and activities.

Lancashire County Council, the Fylde Coast authorities and Creative Lancashire have come together to create this ambitious programme that puts young people at the heart of the project. The decisions, the ideas and the vision will be theirs, the enjoyment and the experience will be for everyone.