One of the things that we are committed to doing is putting b.TWEEN at the intersection between commercial creativity and the experimental creativity happening on the blurred edges of commercial world. After all , most of the companies that this event is aimed at hail more from arts backgroud than a business one. As such, though all things business are doubtlessly crucial if small companies are to stay afloat in an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is creative inspiration that separates our products from those of our competitors. To get your creative juices flowing, we like to add plenty garnish to our bread and butter, and this year some of this inspiration will come to you in the form of a public facing interactive showcase
Two works will take pride of place in this showcase, the first two b.TWEEN commissions
The first of these is b.TWEEN 2 cultures, a collaboration between internationally renowned creative technologists Soda Creative and Chinese media artist Yang Lei. Provoked by fragments of text, b.TWEEN2cultures juxtaposes tagged culturally relevant images from Chinese and UK cultures that suggest shared meaning
You can contribute to the project by uploading images at Flickr.com. If you have photographs relating to Chinese culture then simply add the tag btweenchina, if you have photographs relating to UK culture then tag them with btweenuk. Continue to identify any of these images with additional tags that express their specific meaning to you. Tag your images at Flickr.com to join the conversation and explore the results at b.tween2cultures.net. Get uploading!
The second is by Someth;ng, a talented, emerging and ambitious creative technology collective based in the North of London. They develop innovative concepts that exploit the potential of interactive media; generating new experiences and engaging audiences in unique ways.
Their work, b.TWEEN Timelines is a world first interactive application and will equip each delegate with a smart RFID tag, allowing tracking of movements and interactions between delegates. It will invite ‘temporal bookmarking’ and providing data to create an online visualisation. It will allow delegates to locate other attendees with shared interests and provide a searchable archive of the two-day event. Something have been on a steep learning curve working with this pioneering technology, and have successfully managed to stretch their commission budget through attracting sponsors left right and centre. They will beta test the application at Cybersonica this weekend - can’t wait to see how the visual interface has panned out.
we’ll also be showing a SCAN commission by Igloo: Summerbranch- fab dance technology company that we have known and loved for some time - their work has continuted to push boundaries over the years
Last but definitely not least, two of the cybersonica commissions will feature at the event, Fijuu by Julian Oliver and Steven Pickles and Freq 2 by Squidsoup
Steve Benford will talk about his locative and pervasive work at Mixed Reality Lab. He has collaborated with artists and practitioners for years in projects that explore links between the virtual and the real. They take day-to-day experience of city streets and overlay them with a virtual layer of information, augmenting reality, layering the ordinary with the extraordinary. One of the first pioneering projects to come out of this academic/ practitioner collaboration was the impressive and memorable Can U see Me Now by Blast Theory (www.canyouseemenow.co.uk ), which we are proud to have supported through the first round of Shooting Live Artist funding (www.bbc.co.uk/shootinglive) and was first showcased at one of our earlier events, b.tv 01
Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory’s runners appear as avatars on a map of the host city. Each player has an avatar and the task is to avoid the Blast Theory runners for as long as possible. 20 people can play online at a time, exchanging tactics and sending messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream allows online players to eavesdrop on their pursuers, getting lost, cold, breathless and narrowly avoiding traffic on the city streets.
Their next project, Uncle Roy All Around You, took the original concept one step further by allowing players onto the streets themselves, interfacing with performers and collaborating with online helpers to find Uncle Roy’s office.
Since then, they have been invited to present their work in across the world. Their work combines virtual environments, live interventions, interactivity, and risk to explore and challenge what we perceive our increasing dependence on technology, social implications and political realities.
Though their work cannot be seen entirely as an ARG, there are obvious relationships and lessons to be learned.
Steve will be joined by Adrian Hon is Europe’s foremost Alternate Reality Game ( ARG) designer and the Director of Play at Mind Candy. Simlarly, their best known project Perpex City, involves a cross over between the vitual (dozens of websites with thousands of pages) and the real ( puzzle cards and live events involving hundreds of players, skywriting over Manchester, black helicopters in London). Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are beginning to explore the web as not just another way of watching content made for other media ( TV programme, films) but as an intergral part of new forms of cross-media entertainment. They intend to infiltrate all sectors of the media offer, including traditional medias TV and radio.