Media Sandbox projects' progress

As ever, you can read each project’s journal on the Media Sandbox website, but here’s a round up of their progress over the last month.

Three months into the Media Sandbox scheme and the projects are really taking shape: a solid and supportive project community has sprung up – aided by a majority of the projects working from the same space at the Pervasive Media Studio and by regular meet ups. Some exciting common ground between the projects has emerged through an interesting discussion at one of our evening salon dinner catch ups.

Thought Pie are pursuing four products with their Happy Packages project, all centred around pushing content relating to the concept of happiness to mobile phone users. Their dilemma is negotiating a balance between unsolicited but smile-enducing surprise packages and bombarding unsuspecting users to the point of Pervasive Fatigue.

This concern over the turn-off that is spamming has also been preoccupying Plot London and BDH, who have completed their Happy Towns research into what makes Bristolians happy – geeks and technophobes alike. They are similarly juggling the complexities between pushy advertising and surprise content which gets the conversation going.

Aardman and HMC are exploiting the idea of the ‘surprise attack’ and are researching magic mirrors to bring Aardman’s characters to life in the real world. Who knows what reflection you might see when you pass a shop window soon… Having been researching iris tracking and lip synching Processing techniques they couldn’t help but put some of Simon Evans and Simon Johnson’s swarm theories to the test.

Swarm have been trialling their game concepts on the Pervasive Media Studio residents and at iglab, and have been discovering how physical games can unlock the urban environment. Watch this video to see the city centre invaded by HollaLuLu players.

All useful research for Altern8 who is exploring the public’s interaction with public art installations to enable the city’s potential as a playground. Jon from Licorice Film has been working with Tarim to realise a concept for the demonstration piece. For a really impressive example of their LED cube inspiration click here.

Licorice Film have fleshed out the concept for their multiplayer game Harmonize - an intricate plot involving dreams escaping into the real world. You will be able to play the game at Watershed in May – more details to follow.

Midway Showcase Event
You are invited to hear from each of the projects and ask your questions at the midway showcase event. Each project will be speaking about their experience and findings to date, and it will be a great opportunity to meet up with others interested in pervasive media. Book your place now.

31 March | 6 - 7.30 pm | Watershed
Also, make a note in your diary of the Final Showcase event where you will have a chance to see the results of the scheme.
6 May | 6pm | Watershed

Your input
As well as reading the journals online we would encourage you to add your suggestions and thoughts. This is not a closed research process and the projects will respond to your comments.

We have set up a tag for delicious so if you see a useful website, please include the tag 'mediasandbox'. There is also a flickr group and a youtube channel to add pictures or video. This will help build a body of knowledge from which everyone can benefit.

The next newsletter will be in a month, bringing you updates from the next journal entries and more news about the events.

All the best,
Emma Scott and the Media Sandbox team
http://www.mediasandbox.co.uk