Creative
Technology Team
This
installation for ‘Village Screen Glastonbury 2009’
has been developed by Manchester based artists and academics
Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon, who are both full members
of the Creative Technology Research Group at the University
of Salford. This Creative Technology duo has collaborated
on numerous public video installations and bring together
twenty years of experience of interactive media arts.
Conceptual
Project Statement
This
particular project combines current interactive ludic interface
work that Charlotte Gould has been developing, with Paul Sermon's
long established practice and research into telepresent environments.
Our collaborative partnership has resulted in an interactive
ludic interface that has been site-specifically developed
for the ‘Village Screen’ at Glastonbury 2009.
This work explores the creative potential of the Glastonbury
audience as performers that have the capacity to create improvised
narrative sequence through the ‘Village Screen’
as a communications portal. This work is designed for large
format public video screens and explores their creative and
cultural potential. It offers an opportunity to be involved
in the development of innovative ways of engaging with the
pubic in a festival context using digital technology. Through
the augmentation of the virtual and the real, users can explore
alternative telepresent spaces and develop unique playful
narrative events. ‘Picnic on the Screen’ explores
social play and the way fun and enjoyment interact with and
enhance new media content and technologies, through its design,
creative development, everyday uses and discursive articulations.
This is an area of research that has had little exploration;
the interactions between technological developments and the
pleasures described as 'fun', are few and far between. There
are a number of permutations we have develop during the festival
week, concerning placement of surfaces, objects, digital content
and the location of public interaction, which are all possible
under the theme of 'Picnic on the Screen'.
Technical
Project Description
The
installation consists of two blue picnic blankets in front
of the Village Screen. The audience groups sitting on these
blankets are captured on camera and brought together through
a system of live chorma-keying, and placed on a computer illustrated
background, and behind computer animated elements that are
triggered and controlled by the audience through a unique
motion tracking interface that is integrated in the installation.
The two blankets were placed as far apart as possible not
to disclose the location of the two groups and encourage the
audience to explore the telepresent communication. When the
audience member discovers their image on screen they immediately
enter the telepresent space, watching a live image of themselves
sat on picnic rug next to another person. They soon start
to explore the space and understand they are now in complete
physical control of a telepresent body that can interact with
another person in an illustrated enchanted ludic scene, complete
with animated characters that respond to the their movement
and actions. |
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