Here is an interactive installation that I came accross while at Tate Modern some days ago in London.

The concept is that education(art) interface(‘pool tables’, flippers, etc) and games (shooters etc) are combined to an eye candy set of furniture that you simply cant stop playing with. Meanwhile, one can visit Tate Kids  for some online inspiration…

Taking as a starting point a festival that took place a while ago in Amsterdam, called the Mobile Music Workshop

(to read an extensive article, visit we-make- money- not-art)

i am writing about some mobile-music pieces, others directly linked to mobiles, others to education and others to geo-tagging and gps.

01_Gamelan Playtime, by Arlete Castelo & Melissa Mongiat, UK ( http://www.milkandtales.com)

This installation draws in passers-by as they walk along Hungerford terrace on the South Bank. By moving their hands across an invitingly tactile surface pedestrians trigger sensors that release recordings of the Royal Festival Hall’s Gamelan set being played by a group of Lambeth school children. The sounds are made up of the Gamelan instruments themselves, human voices and song. The installation is a 30m long “wall”, bringing about unexpected interaction not only between each individual and the surface but also amongst the all the different groups of people engaging with the installation at the same time. more…

02_PLAY.orchestra, by Arlete Castelo & Melissa Mongiat

Play orchestra, recreates an empty orchestra pit of 60 seats. Passers-by can take the stage and experience a musical piece
from the player’s perspective. By taking a seat, the public triggers a recording of the correspondent musical instrument. As more people sit down, the composition is progressively revealed in its whole. They can further engage with the piece through their mobile phones, by receiving ringtones of the experience they just created, or sending
their own sounds. These will then be part of a new composition to take place within the installation, for other passers-by to discover.’ more…

o3_Net derive, by Atau Tanaka and Petra Gemeinboeck

Participants are given a kind of scarf with a mobile phone in each end and off they go to explore the neighborhood. One of the phones takes pictures every 20 secs and collects sounds, the other talks to the GPS (also in the scarf) and to the server inside the gallery space. On a radar they can see themselves pictured as dots but also the images they’re taking. The sounds and pictures collected in the streets are sampled and mapped to a 3D city map in the gallery. As users are walking they can hear some voice instructions through a pair of headphones. Those comments suggest paths to follow or turns to make, they are generated and heard in a musical fashion.

04_Sonic City, Lalya Gaye, developed by a the Viktoria Institute and RE:form in Sweden, 2004

Sonic city, enables people to compose music in real time by walking through the city, through a mobile wearable interface. The system retrieves information about the environment and user action, and maps it to the audio processing of urban sounds, resulting in music heard through headphones.

–how it works–

Wearing a sensor-equiped jacket, the person can create a personal soundscape co-produced by physical movement, local activity, and urban ambiance.

05_Taking Soundings, by Yolande Harris, KHM

‘Taking soundings is a series of pieces that are emerging from the investigation into landscape and navigation. Taking soundings is a traditional technique of determining the shape and depth of the sea or river-bed by means of a lead and line, and I find an obvious continuity in the gathering of information from satellites via a GPS receiver. Taking soundings of ones position relative to satellites orbiting the earth rather than relative to ones immediate environment, strikes me as a kind of blind guidance, which encourages feelings of security or insecurity. Certainly this giving up of something of ones own intentions and perceptions, being taken by the hand as it were, has parallels with an experience of art. My intentions, rather than taking away peoples ability to act, is to encourage an unfolding of experience, a drift.’ More…

06_Talking cities, Hybrid Space Lab in KHM

The four sculpted audio seating areas are traversed by broad bands, each carrying the audio signal of one of the four radio stations. By means of little cable spools in which loudspeakers are integrated, visitors can go to any point along a band and listen to the programme of that particular radio station in German, or in English. More…

01_Superstar

‘this is a massively multiplayer real-world game, tested at the 2005 Ubicomp conference in Tokyo. The game users Japanese Puri Kura sticker-clubs as a starting point for a playful experiment in social networks, automated phonecam image analysis, and urban visual culture.

The goal of the game is to see and be seen using swarms of microscopic images woven through the complex fabric of Tokyo streetlife. Players use only their phonecam and a sheet of tiny Puri Kura self-portrait stickers.

Players place their stickers wherever they want, and then “collect” the stickers of other players by shooting them with phonecams. Mobot technology automatically recognizes the sticker from the image, and assigns points to the player on the sticker and the player who shoots the sticker. Though the game, players become tiny pop icons and attention is refocused on this parallel sticker population, an echo of the crowds around us. ‘

02_Sopranos

The Sopranos A&E Connection game was designed for the premiere of the Sopranos on A&E TV. Using cell phones to collect pieces,(heroes pictures from posters on the street for example) players composed an online gameboard to anticipate what might happen that night on the Sopranos, much like Fantasy Football works with sports.

When the episode premieres on A&E, the players’ online gameboards come to life and animate synchronously to the TV signal. As the characters, settings and objects of the Sopranos appear on TV, the corresponding pieces animate and score points. (Therefore when tony appears on the screen, tony’s pictures on the gameboard match and give points to the player)
03_ConQwest,

Designed for Qwest Wireless in 2003, this was the first ever use of semacode, optic codes scanned by phonecams. A city-wide treasure-hunt designed for high school students, players went through the city “shooting treasure” with Qwest phonecams and moving their totem pieces to capture territory. The winning team won a $5,000 scholarship for their school. Online, a web site showed the players’ locations and game progress, turning it into a spectacular audience-facing event.

01_Dial Elbarrio, Stephanie Owens, Parsons

DIALelbarrio is an “embedded” documentary in the streets of Spanish Harlem. By making the stories, images, and videos accessible to anyone with a cell phone, the project seeks to establish an ongoing, street-accessible narrative of its people and history. DIALelbarrio makes contributing information about the neighborhood, its people, places and histories as convenient as making a phone call.

—how it works—

‘SUBSCRIBE

Send a text message to “24442″ with the word “startDIAL” or comienzaDIAL as the message. The message “comienzaDIAL” will send information in Spanish and “startDIAL” will send information in English.

REQUEST CONTENT BASED ON YOUR LOCATION

Start by standing in front of the James de la Vega mural on 106th street, between Lexington and 3rd Avenues. Text “24442″ with this message: “mural lex.106.3″ (without the quotation marks). You will receive an MMS message in your phone inbox that includes an image of the mural and related information. If there is more than one mural in the nearby area, you will receive multiple MMS messages.

RETRIEVE CONTENT ON YOUR COMPUTER (OPTIONAL)

Once the mural image is retrieved, you can view a larger image and read more detailed information about the mural from your desktop computer later. Enter your mobile phone number at the top of the website and all the images that you saw on your phone as thumbnails will be displayed in large format. You can also contribute to what is known about the murals in this section. ‘ More…

02_Dial A chawl, Mobile Geographies@Parsons, Charles Broskoski,Eric Nunez,Emilia Wiles

This is a mobile audio-blog develloped in the Mobile Geographies Collaboration studio for the Girangaon Mil area in Mumbai.(see earlier posts) Following a voice menu, users can upload a story, listen to other entries, answer questions about their neighborhood and vote for the best entry so far. Here is a user test

Good and FREE technologies to use, are

gabcast or g-cast are free podcasting services that allow you to upload recordings from your mobile phone to a podcast and embed that in your blog and so on.

cafe bevocal – voice xml service

03_Call a diva, Zoe Irvine

To be part of DIAL-A-DIVA all you need to do is sing or talk into a telephone, or use your phone as a microphone wherever singing or vocal performance happens. Dial-a-Diva call centre will link as many different types of singing, from as many locations as possible to a wide international audience of telephone listeners. Whether at home, in a concert hall or bar, whether professionally or just for fun, whether accompanied or solo, whatever the vocal performace Dial-a-Diva would love to have you taking part. Sign up, we’ll arrange a slot in the schedule and call you at the time of your concert wherever you are – world wide participation is free.more…

01_AudioBored, by Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Stefan Agamanolis

is a public online audio messaging board that allows for anyone to call in, record a message, and post it to the server. Simply dial the free 1-800 number from the website and record your note. Visitors to the board can click on the sound clips and listen to all the recordings collected. Like an online bulletin board, AudioBored allows for candid opinions, thoughts, ideas, exclamations, etc… to be posted live in a shared online space as recorded audio through a phone interface.

More…

Crickets, by Mitchel Resnick Natalie Rusk Brian Silverman Robbie Berg

Crickets are small programmable devices that can make things spin, light up, and play music. You can plug lights, motors, and sensors into a Cricket, then write computer programs to tell them how to react and behave. With Crickets, you can create musical sculptures, interactive jewelry, dancing creatures, and other artistic inventions — and learn important math, science, and engineering ideas in the process.

Crickets are based on more than a decade of NSF-funded educational research. Lifelong Kindergarten researchers collaborated with the LEGO company to create the first “programmable bricks,” squeezing computational power into LEGO bricks. This research led to the LEGO MindStorms robotics kits, now used by millions of people around the world. While LEGO MindStorms is designed especially for making robots, Crickets are designed especially for making artistic creations. Crickets were refined in collaboration with the Playful Invention and Exploration (PIE) museum network, and are now sold as a product through the Playful Invention Company (PICO).’ More…

Scratch is a new (open source) programming language, by the LifeLong Kindergarden@MIT media lab, that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web. Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design, more…

Urbantells, by James Rouvelle

‘In a public location a simple kiosk labeled URBANtells will be set up. A participant will provide their cell phone and email address to an attendant. In return, they will receive a handheld device (working title: “digi-diviner”)and instructions to walk and explore the neighborhood. A minute after they go outside, they will begin to hear a real time mix of sound art and verbal information triggered by their location from a speaker on the diviner. The content will come from interviews and research we will undertake in the months preceding the conference, as well as input uploaded from actual users. The information will address the complex layers of histories that comprise the urban experience and the degrees to which these histories intersect to inform our concept of location and how these understandings influence our behaviors. The verbal content of the audio stream will be a mix of the languages spoken in the neighborhood. Upon returning to the kiosk, participants will receive an interactive google map of their specific walk via email, containing buttons to play sounds and view images and sounds they may have uploaded during their trip.’ More…
Zero one,San Jose

different visualisations of geotagged maps….

http://www.girardin.org/fabien/blog/2007/04/30/imaging-the-city-workshop-at-chi/

http://biomapping.net/new.htm

this is funny, check the video on how to unconnect from all locative and other media or friends, from GlowLab….
More…

for more fun, check also cellbooth 

Here are two projects by Newish media, Scoot-team in Australia, to be launched 2007

01_ Cipher Cities

This is a Digital Social Network with simple web tools for individuals and groups to create their own mobile events and event journals. More…

02_MiLK

Inspired by SCOOT,(see previous post) the MiLK system is custom made for schools. MiLK is basically a set of simple web interfaces that enable individuals (teachers and students) to design and populate there very own mobile games. The milk-building interfaces are designed to work like a simple series of storyboards with areas to upload images and write SMS text. Once the game designers have submitted their final designs, the storyboard content is dynamically sent to registered users mobile phones in a sequence and style the designers have planned. All communications are then stored and displayed on the students milk-journal for later reflection. The milk-journal is a web page generated by the Milk system and password protected. Students can add comments, upload images, send it SMS and MMS messages and share it with other group members. The teachers are also able to track these activities and set some specific assessment tasks.

Revolution (MIT) is the Education Arcade’s multi-player, American Revolution-themed role-playing game based on historical events in the town of colonial Williamsburg. By allowing role-play from one of seven social perspectives — from an upper class lawyer, to a patriotic blacksmith, to an African American house slave — Revolution places students in a situated learning context about their neighborhood. More…

01_WorlWithoutOil

I was first going to write about the 42 entertainment I love bees project, and the vanishing point
but apparently, there are many schools participating in this one, so here ya go, since the first of May 2007, there is World without Oil going on (great use of any kind of online networking tools):

• Find your city on a map and check resources, prices and so on on that spot
• Once you’ve seen the prices, and the news reports, and other people’s stories about their experiences of the new reality, tell us how the oil shortfall is affecting you, your family, and your school. Are there things that you are doing differently? Or can no longer do? What is happening to the quality of your life? How do you expect things to change in the future? What things can your class do as a group to help?
• To document your report you can use any medium- post your report online in a blog or MySpace page, or upload it to a photo service such as Flickr or a video service such as YouTube. The easiest ways to prepare your report are to write an email or to call our number and leave a message, or upload from you-tube, blogging, podcasts, and your MOBILE.
• The more effort you put in your report, e.g. a group report or a news-like video the more influence you get in the WWO panel
• Moreover, you can create missions for other groups to fulfill or participate in them, more…
• Rewarding comes from voting, as in most social network platforms.

02_42 entertainment

Vanishing point, i m pretty sure everyone knows about this project so i ll be short- what is great is that in a way- you have puzzle capsules, boxes,( tool-kits? ) that you have to unlock in order to move further in the game and locate the games main character. more…

01_TXTualhealing-Paul Notzold

An SMS Enabled Interactive Street Performance, were participants can text each other

or simply post a message on projected bubbles. more…

this is also Paul’s me and my mobile class blog at Parsons

02_ Simple Text by Jonah Brucker-Cohen,

SimpleTEXT is a collaborative audio/visual public performance that relies on audience participation through input from mobile devices such as phones, PDAs or laptops. SimpleTEXT focuses on dynamic input from participants as essential to the overall output. The performance creates a dialogue between participants who submit messages which control the audiovisual output of the installation. These messages are first parsed according to a code that dictates how the music is created, and then rhythmically drive a speech synthesizer and a picture synthesizer in order to create a compelling, collaborative audiovisual performance.More…

03_Usman Haque, Sky Ear

Sky Ear is a one-night event in which a glowing “cloud” of mobile phones and helium balloons is released into the air so that people can dial into the cloud and listen to the sounds of the sky. More…

04 _Tactical Cartography Command Centre (2004), Marc Tuters, Jaanis Garancs

Multi-screen interactive installation, that consists of a space with several display areas, presenting several locative media projects and free GIS applications . The mock military-style command-and-control center engages people in a technically stimulating environment to discover “locative space”, depicting the relationship between the wireless mapping technologies on offer and issues of surveillance and control. More…

05_Graffiti Research Lab, Evan Roth

Interactive Architecture

 (more to come) http://www.destinatortechnologies.net/uk/products/

 01_MSDM- Here is Paula Roush’s blog on locative media and toolkits, i m shortly presenting her project

NONONO iPOD VO.2-  NO OFFICIAL BUILDINGS NO LOCAL PEOPLE NO OIL FACILITIES
Saudi Arabia, London: msdm, 2007

Upload photos of public spaces, people and oil facilities from Saudi arabia on your i-pod, where a ban on photography in public areas has recently been lifted, but where tourists are still not allowed to photograph official buildings, local people nor oil facilities. More…

 02_The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit, Mark Shepard,

is an open source software platform for cultivating public “sound gardens” in contemporary cities. It draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment where new spatial practices and social interactions within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. Addressing the impact of mobile audio devices like the iPod, the project explores gradients of privacy and publicity in developing a platform for public collaboration in shaping the sonic topography of urban public space.

user scenario

1. Upon entering a sound garden, participants connect to a TSG server using a web browser, create a profile, and download a small software application along with a library of sounds and environmental variables to their mobile device.

2. As one moves through the sound garden, the software periodically identifies the participant’s position within the geographic limits of the physical location. This positioning information is fed to a 3D audio engine, which subsequently outputs a real-time audio mix of the sounds in the garden specific to the current location of the listener.

3. To plant sounds, the participant uploads sounds recorded or stored on her/his device or selects from pre-existing sounds in the library. S/he then sets parameters for volume, loop, and schedule for playback. This sound, its parameters, and the current location of the planter are subsequently broadcast to all participants currently in the garden.

4. To prune sounds, the participant selects a sound within close proximity to where s/he is standing, modifies any of the parameters of that sound, and attaches a short message to be sent to the planter of that sound. These modifications are then broadcast to all participants currently in the garden. The planter then receives a message that the pruner has modified their sound, along with any message the pruner has provided.

‘The Area code team showed off a little of that magic recently at the Where 2.0 conference where they announced that they would be bringing pirate-themed game Plundr to the DS, hopefully within the next year. In the game you sail from island to island a ship, buying, selling and fighting for goods. But to sail around the uncharted seas you’ll need to get up, get outside and travel. The game will use a special form of positioning software that will rely on the Wi-Fi built into the DS.’ (kotaku)

Plundr is designed to be played on DS  by players who are navigating through real-world space. The gameplay takes place on Islands where you can buy and sell goods, prey on Merchant Ships, and battle other nearby players. Each Island corresponds to a real-world location.MORE…

Scoot, Created by Debra Polson, Melbourne

SCOOT is a treasure hunt using SMS to help guide as you seek out clues, games and creatures across some Melbourne sites. In the (lovely) Scoot world, there are three groups of creatures the s’avatars, the pesky ones and the ghost agents.

The S’Avatars once lived in SCOOT World in peace until the Pesky Ones arrived with their dodgy carnival games. Now the Pesky Ones are planning to come to our World through the Ghost Tunnels. This can only mean trouble. As an Agent of SCOOT, you will collaborate with the S’Avatars to find their carnival games and foil their Pesky plans. Moreover you will have to collaborate with the ghost agents; these are Agents that have helped the Savatars in the past. You may need their help along the way. This is not the first time the Pesky Ones have tried to bring their dodgy Carnival to your World. There is evidence that long ago in the history of your world, others like you have been trapped in the Mid World by the Pesky Ones. This will not happen again as you have improved technologies (your mobile phone) to communicate with us without going into the Ghost tunnels.

Each creature has special features. A reputation, a favorite friend, whereabouts and a special feature, e.g. can be in one or more places in the Mid world. This will influence strategy while you move forward into the game. As an Agent of SCOOT, you will…

1) Play games in SCOOT World (a computer game) where you can also chat with other Agents and customise your own S’Avatar disguise…
2)Go on a SMS treasure hunt that leads you to interactive games in Melbourne Museums and Galleries…
3)Learn lots of interesting facts about the sites and the wonderful treasures there…
4)Encounter stories of SCOOT creatures displayed on lots of screens along the way.

Ghost Tunnels: they are the links between SCOOT World and Your world. The Pesky Ones have used them to travel between worlds. But the tunnels are very unstable and are causing damage to the worlds they connect.

The Mid World: this is the middle place between SCOOT and our world. Some of the Agents are waiting there to help you. But is also where the Pesky Ones are hiding. You will find many windows to the Mid World in your world. They may look like TVs, plasma, computers etc! Watch out for them!

World Windows: Some screens in your world act as windows to the Mid World. In these windows you will find Agents, Pesky Ones, and messages from the Savatars.

Agents of SCOOT: If you register, you will become a special Agent of SCOOT. You may encounter other Agents along the way that have just joined the Mission.

The SBN: the SCOOT Broadband Network. This is the special channel that the Savatars may use to send you informations on various objects… including World Windows, carnival boxes and your mobile phone

….learn more

how to play

creatures

Here are two projects from futurelab (again), that dont have any mobiles or maps,

01_Ecolibrium

Ecolibrium is a vast internet-based virtual world containing an ecosystem of thousands of semi intelligent artificial life forms. Children can create their own creatures and release them into the world to observe their creature’s behaviour and success within the ecosystem. The project is aimed at worldwide school and home use, and investigates cross-curricular activity. Children will be able to create their own creatures and let them loose in this world. They can study their creature’s progress in order to learn about ecology, creature behaviour and other biological topics, while at the same time strengthening their ability to reason scientifically and gaining experience in modern ‘systems’ concepts such as Complexity and Chaos. Children will be able to enter the world in school, as part of a lesson facilitated by a teacher, and at home as a location for play and experimentation. more…

02_Adventure Author,

I was somehow even thinking of this related to a sophie-book map (?) somehow…

Adventure Author has been developed as a means to guide the young people (10-14 year-olds) through a series of steps, via ‘wizards’, which are aimed at supporting thinking about character and storyline development on a scene-by-scene basis. In addition, an overall map easily allows users to arrange and link scenes to support nonlinear storytelling. Having authored their own game, the young people can then play this and share it with others. Through this process of play and critical feedback from peers, young people are offered the opportunity to improve their game design and storytelling techniques.

03_Size Matters- building worlds

The Size Matters prototype was designed to act as an interactive exhibit in science
centres to be used alongside a range of hands-on activities, for children aged 11-
14. The prototype was developed to explore whether an engaging series of simulations, that showed hamsters being enlarged to the size of a moon, and elephants ranging from pocket sized to ‘ginormous’, would trigger children to ask questions about how size affects structure. Rather than ‘telling’ children about how gravity and centrifugal force play a role in these processes, the prototype provides a series of simulations and ‘thought experiments’ intended to trigger discussion amongst users, encouraging further experimentation with other resources along the same themes.

from GameLoft- Crazy Campus, a mobile phone game….