This programme ran from 2008-2010 at the Pervasive Media Studio. For more projects like these please visit the Studio website.

Projects 2008

Still from Power to the People by Altern8

Power To The People

by Altern8 Ltd

Power To The People (PTTP) is a series of playful interventions for public spaces; Instant Graffiti was the first. Like a giant Etch–A-Sketch, a ‘live drawing’ is projected onto the facade of a building and controlled by the public using a mobile device.

PTTP evolved from Altern8’s belief that any outdoor space can become a space for play. In today’s urban environments - where public spaces are often owned by corporations and consumers are bombarded by media based advertising - Altern8 use playful interventions (sound, image and even fountains) to reclaim public space, foster human connection and remind people that sometimes the greatest things are free.

Journal Entries

Just The Beginning

Wed 7 May, 2008

Exhibiting at a showcase event means don't get to see a lot of what other people are doing. (Could the other teams run the event again so I can wander round, please?) We finally settled on Instant Graffiti as the demonstration of PTTP. Instant Graffiti allows the audience to draw in light, etch-a-sketch style, on a building. Richard (who did a great job producing code at short notice and without complaining that I'd just changed the spec … again) even managed to fit a two point perspective scheme in so the lines of light follow the lines of the building.

What do you do with the protocol that does everything?

Wed 23 Apr, 2008

What do you do with the protocol that does everything? The answer, "anything you want", is decidedly unhelpful. PTTP is a tool - but how do you present that tool to people? Having been immersed in the design and programming side of things - the temptation is to try to show off all the technical features. But most people aren't really interested in the, "how do I do this with it", especially when they don't know what it is yet. What they want to know is, "what's it for" and, more importantly, "is it any use to me?". (Many thanks to Clare for some useful steering here.

Projections

Wed 9 Apr, 2008

Just a quick update. There's so much going on in the PTTP world at the moment - it's hard to find time to blog about it. Jon has been really busy on other projects (which I really wish I had time to play!) So, although we have every hope of having a 3D cube to play with in the final showcase, we are going to make our primary demonstration a projection playground.

Cubism

Wed 19 Mar, 2008

The PTTP Sandbox project is intended to prove a concept, initially by controlling a LED light matrix. As Chris, who's providing some great assistance to the project, pointed out - you can't actually prove a queuing system if people don't think your demo is worth queuing for. And that's the problem - LED light matrices are boring.