may you live in interesting times

this weekend saw cardiff's inaugral digital arts festival, may you live in interesting times. co-developed by chapter arts and bloc, the festival also coincides with cardiff's centenary celebrations. across three days, the programme included conferences, artist residencies, exhibitions, interactive multimedia displays, film screenings and social gatherings.

thinking that it would be far more fun to be a part of the festival rather than just visit it, i had emailed chapter applying for a job as a guide. they offered me a job as the festival's photographer. cool.

the past four days have been pretty hectic: running all around the city trying to shoot the different events and going's on - mixed up with a healthy dose of socialising for good measure.

thursday saw the official launch with a film screening at the millennium stadium, and a party at the big sleep hotel. it was awesome to see the stadium empty, and in complete darkness, and i don't recall much about the party except for the free champagne and a fella playing the spoons...then waking up friday morning on alicks' sofa...

friday was nonstop, and i got to photograph the blast theory guys in action, the txtmsg board in the hayes, various street performers, and a couple of the exhibitions at chapter. i also got a free boat trip round the bay, which would have been great had i not fallen asleep. just to make sure i was extra tired for saturday, it seemed wholly appropriate to then go out with joe, liz & lou, dammit.

saturday i spent trying to catch the other major displays, including the festival hubs at g39 and chapter, tenantspin, one of michelle teran's cctv performances, the cardiff constellation display, and of course the festival's party climax at the point. with performances from scanner, the durango's, symbian, and some crazy little frenchman singing about cherry pies, chicken legs and flying rodents; it was a great night to mark the success of the weekend.

and today was spent curing another hangover, catching a few of the smaller displays i hadn't had a chance to shoot earlier, and editing hundreds of bloody photos.

i may not be an art affectionado, and there was a severe bias of the art over the actual technology for my liking, but what fun it's all been! i've met some great people, visited to otherwise restricted events, and got to ponce about with my camera - all whilst being paid to do so!

check out mpeg movieclips of the stadium (11mb) and the point (30mb), and the final photoset on flickr

welsh club

i came across these pix from a few weeks ago, enjoy :)

dfi brief [v] - research presentation

today was the dreaded first presentation of the year.

third year students should be the shizzle at delivering presentations, but seeing as we've all started a new course, its a little unnerving to present in front of people you've only known a month! all the same, i had great fun putting it together last night, and it was good to refamiliarise myself with powerpoint - i love all those animation effects!

i spent a few hours creating the slideshow, and then figured it would be a good idea to hash together some notes to make sure i didn't forget anything. however, seeing as i was one of the first to present and pretty nervous, i totally forgot about them. i think i managed to get through the presentation ok, although stuart hasn't given us the marks back yet - so who knows?

if you're using dirty internet explorer, you can view the presentation online, or if you've ascended to browsing nervana with mozilla or similar, you can download it here

dfi brief [iv] - research review

this brief required a critique of a research paper from HCI2005; this year's human-computer interaction (hci) conference. i chose to study the usability of digital ink technologies for children and teenagers, by janet read; which is an empirical investigation into the usefulness and relevance of digital ink products (digital pens, graphics tablets, tablet pcs etc) as classroom learning resources.

i'm not really sure why i picked this subject, as it isn't something i'm particularly interested in...but all the same, once i'd got my head around the academic language, it turned out to be quite interesting. janet is a senior lecturer in hci for children, and has a thorough background in that aspect of usability. her research concluded that these technologies have great potential to aid children with learning or handwriting difficulties (such as dyslexia, motor function disabilities, or poor presentation), as well as reducing risks of rsi-related injuries. she also commented that the exising products could benefit from ergonomic redesigns for this new target market.

read the full review in all its glory here

dfi brief [iii] - games arcade

uni can be really hard work sometimes. fieldtrips to games arcades are a real chore. and dammit, when you have to get hands on with the machines for, uhh, usability assessment purposes, well then that just sucks.

we went down to the bay for this brief, and the better part of a tenner later, i decided to complete my report on wartran; a four person shoot-em-up based in a military bootcamp. this was a pretty easy assignment, and required a report and poster of our findings. i used alun's wolvesinthewalls blog from last year's dfim group to get an idea of what aspects i should cover, and that was a great help.

click here for the report, and click the thumbnail below for the poster

dfi brief [ii] - techniquest

techniquest is a science discovery centre in cardiff bay offering over 150 hands-on displays, designed to engage people of all ages in science through interactive exhibits and live demonstrations

this was a great assignment, and an even better fieldtrip! i haven't been to a science museum since primary school, and techniquest more than lives up to it's reputation for being fantastic fun. this was also our first outing as a group, and i think it did well to smash some ice, and certainly got people to relax and enjoy themselves. we must have spent a good few hours in there, and attracted more than a few odd glances for getting more excited than the kids. although i suspect stuart took us there for malicious reasons, as he seemed to find it hilarious that numerous degree students couldn't figure out how to open a garden gate (one of the brainteaser exhibits!), and even funnier when he called his dfim group to packed lunch in the canteen.

i went for an exhibit demonstrating the interesting principles of electric motors and dynamos, which had absolutely nothing to do with the display being a scalectrix course. read the assignment here

www.tquest.org.uk

dfi brief [i] - yp-u1 review

first assignment proper. as an introduction to the design for interaction module, we had to do an critique of the usability of a piece of technology from home. i analysed my mp3 player, a lovely little ishuffle ripoff from samsung. ironically, this model has had better reviews than the ishuffle, but there was still a few areas that are open to improvement. my product design background from the last two year's came in pretty useful, but then we still haven't had back the marks yet(!) read it here

top trumps

during fresher's week, we were tasked to create a set of top trumps cards. an odd way to begin your final year of university, but none the less, lighthearted and sociable. we split into groups of five, and each group produced five cards. i decided to play around with the template we'd been given, and put these together in photoshop...

the pop factory

over the summer, i got wind that the pop factory in porth were offering a year's placement to one lucky applicant. thinking what the hell, i applied for the placement, and was offered an interview. i produced a gig review, a promo flyer and a critique of their website, doned shirt and tie, and headed off. i was pretty chuffed when they offered me a second interview, and quite suprised when they offered me the placement! i go up every thursday, and until the new year should be working on their website, and putting together a proposal for a new one. i'm also helping out on the pop factory music awards, coming up in december. it's really exciting up there, and i'm having a great time on the project's i've got. its the first time i've had a real outlet for the things i seem to potter about with at home :)

hopefully it shouldn't clash with the course, and i'm hoping it'll be a great piece of experience ready for when i graduate next summer! x

summer project

before the course kicked in, we were set two briefs to complete over the summer. the first being to write a short article based on the question 'are tools and toys or film and television new media's closest living relations?', and the second was to produce three postcards inspired by our adventures over the holidays.

my article is intended for publication on the technology section of the bbc's news website, and a copy along with a critique can be downloaded in pdf format from here.

following my travels through cambodia in august, i decided that i wanted to use some of the photographs which i took for the postcards. i wanted the three to be connected with a common theme, and chose the ‘tuol sleng’ series as i found the place deeply profound. tuol sleng is a former cambodia school, in the capital of phnom penh. it was converted into an interrogation and death camp by the khmer rouge “government”, and since cambodia’s recovery just a few decades ago, has been converted into a genocide museum and national memorial.

the khmer rouge, or ‘red khmer’, was a communist regime that arose during the cold war, at the same time as neighbouring vietnam was deeply buried in conflict. they believed in a classless, aggregarian society, where all were required to til the land, and took control of the capital city in 1975. the khmer rouge regime is remembered mainly for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, through execution, starvation and forced labour. it was one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century, often compared with the regimes of hitler, stalin and mao tse tong. in terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population of the country it ruled and time in power, it was probably the most lethal regime of the 20th century.

i wanted the words on the rear of the postcards to tell a story, but one which is merely stating facts and not revealing the whole picture. i wanted the photographs to then show the reality of the subject matter.

• postcard 1 | tuolsleng – verbal communication


• postcard 2 | internment – symbolic communication


• postcard 3 | torture – visual communication

tap tap...is this thing on?

this is the home of my journal for the next nine months, as i stumble my way through Design for Interactive Media (BA)

big up to stuart for the extra work ;)