What's new

I’ve been asked by the Centre for Life in Newcastle to create several exhibits for their new gallery Our Future which is opening in Spring 2007. We’re still evolving the design of the exhibits but we’re looking to put a new interactive spin on news feeds. There’s also going to be a fully updatable “Find Out More” exhibit. Last week we spent some time discussing whether it was a good idea to put a picture of Brad Pitt on the attractor screen. Looks like I’m going to have to put more time into reading Heat before this one is done.

I’ve realised that although my installation has been up and running now in Bootham Bar for some time I’ve still not posted a picture of it on this news log. Any one who’s ever tried to take pictures of a projection will tell you that it’s a bit of a pig but luckily John Oxley from York City Council has let me have some good ones – so here it is. As its a multiplayer game, a whole group of people can play at once. I’ve often seen it with a huge crowd of tourists around it so I couldn’t even get near, let alone take a photo. I’m still looking at ways of shrinking the 500MB film of the walls down to something that can be played on the web. When I manage I’ll post it here.

I’ve been invited by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York to create two touchscreen based kiosks to interpret their medieval hall in the centre of York. The kiosks will also be converted to run on the web. The company has a long and fascinating history having been founded around 1356. At the moment we’re trawling through the archives to find some good content. Today I read that in 1472, Marion Kent of York exported two pokes of madder as well as importing one maunde with 22 shocks of trenchers. I suspect this will need some interpretation. Apparently the company was also active in importing large quantities of opium for “medicinal purposes”.

The speeded up film of York Walls is now edited and its looking pretty good. I shot over an hour of HD footage with the help of steadicam operator Andrew Sheard who normally works for Emmerdale and Coronation Street. If you haven’t come across a professional steadicam before they’re very heavy and normally only used for short scenes. We had to split the shoot over two days to give Andrew a chance to rest, but we still ended up shooting on the hottest day of the year so he did well to last the distance. I speeded up the hour of film so it lasts just over 2 minutes and it’s quite intense. I’ve been trying it out on the projector in the tower where it will be installed and found that it looks best on less sunny days when tower is darker inside and the contrast is highest. Still, even when its sunny it still makes quite an impression. The Bootham installation is currently in robustness testing and proving very popular. All we’re waiting for now is a date for the press opening so we can formally open it and finish the project.

Today I went to Manchester Art Gallery, and visited the Clore Interactive Gallery. It’s a fantastic fully interactive gallery about the art collections which is aimed at children but it’s lots of fun for adults as well. There’s some really well thought out exhibits, both computer and physical. I’m told the gallery opened in 2001 and I would say that it’s still at the forefront of interactive interpretation of art. One of my favourite exhibits was the one where you get to dress up and pose like a painting of two people climbing the Jungfraujock. In another where you have to sit very still to understand how it feels to have your portrait painted – move just a little bit and its ruined!

Today I gave a talk at the BIG Event, a conference organised by the British Interactive Group (BIG). BIG is a British organisation for everyone involved in interactive communication but most of its members come from science centres so there’s a lot of science demos. Best demo was definitely the guy who brought two small pipistrelle bats to the conference in a small box. They seemed quite happy in the box and were admired by everyone. My session was called Tools for the job and discussed how you should go about chosing the right type of exhibit for your exhibition. I was lucky to be joined by visitor studies expert Ben Gammon and Steve Pizzey from Science Projects.We had a good attendance and it all went very well.

Today I came across the web site for Accept, an exhibition by artist Perry Hoberman. I’m not normally keen on art about technology but Perry nicely skewers the absurdities of the meaningless messages we get from our computers as well as issues such as trademarks and surveillance. Make sure you try out Your time is valuable and have a look at his older works if you’ve not come across them before.

Today I visited the exhibition Pixar: 20 years of animation at the Science Museum in London and it’s great. Most of the exhibition is made up of concept artwork and development materials from Pixar hits like Monsters Inc and Toy story. As far as I can see the process starts with Pixar artists producing drawings of the main characters and scenes in a number of different styles. These are then assesed and the final design developed from a composite of the elements of each design which seem to work best. Part of the fun is spotting which well known artists and styles the studies are derived from. Here’s a study from Monsters Inc which reminded me of this well known work. See what you think. The exhibition closes on 11th June 2006 so if you want to see it you’ll have to hurry.

More news about the Bootham Bar installation. Part of the project is to shoot a film showing a whole journey around the walls. We haven’t shot the whole film yet, but here’s a demo that we’ve been working with. I shot it by taking 160 separate still pictures with my little Canon Ixus and I’m really pleased with how its turned out.

I’ve been commisioned by York council to build an installation in one of the towers on the walls around York. The plan is to put a projector into the gate tower called “Bootham Bar”. The projector will be mounted in the ceiling and project down onto a table. This will allow a group of people to stand around the table and interact with the installation. It’s a great project and we’re looking to open it around June/July 2006 so look out for more updates.