Posts Tagged mobile media

Date: February 28th, 2011
Cate: Mobile Media

Sound Walks

Today I dragged my boyfriend on a walk into town and back to do my “sound walks” assignment. For each task I recorded about three minutes of what I felt would be the richest environment – this happened to be in the town centre, on the high street – we encountered some good trolley noises outside Tesco!

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/11249442"]

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/11249443"]

Date: February 28th, 2011
Cate: Mobile Media

Dead Drops

Missed last week’s Mobile Media lecture as I was in Edinburgh pitching for £10,000 for my company (I know, it’s a tough life) so my Mobile Media thoughts are well overdue an update.

ASSIGN EX3A: Choose a public space media project (by an artist or designer other than yourself) to look at in class next week. It can be in any domain (public art, gaming, mobile services) but must use technology and take place in urban space and involve the general public.

I know I’ve really missed the boat with this one, but I wanted to do it anyway. I want to talk about Dead Drops, a project started by Aram Barthall. Full documentation is available on the deaddrops.com website.

Why do I like it? Well, I suppose I like it because it’s making interaction/something which is traditionally digital (traditionally digital is a bit of an oxymoron, perhaps “conventionally digital” is a better way of putting it) such as peer-to-peer file sharing about the physical engagement again. I also love adventuring and looking for things (hence my love for Geocaching) so the concept of actually having to SEARCH for it really appeals to me. Plus, the fact that so many people will just be walking past these things all the time without knowing they’re even there, or what they are, just makes it seem even more exciting to me. I love how it’s stripped technology right back to something so basic as actually plugging in your laptop.
Date: February 19th, 2011
Cate: Mobile Media

Lordenshaw Rock Art Trip

On Sunday, Adrian, Sanjay, Joe P and I travelled to just outside Rothbury to take a look at the “cup and ring” markings that could be found there.

Luckily, Adrian had both the info for the Sat-Nav and a map of the area, as finding the site resulted in heading down a very modest looking road track, upon which my poor car greatly suffered. Once we found the carpark, we were in a valley between two hills – only the map told us which side to head up. (Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Sanjay and Joe, who arrived briefly after us, and set off up the significantly steeper one!).

We headed to what we now know is called “main rock” where we found our first cup and ring markings. There was a sign informing us the rock was protected, but no other information was given. Joe profoundly said he felt “confused rather than satisfied” which I actually thought summed the experience up quite well. We knew what we’d been looking for, we knew we’d found them… but once we were actually there, we didn’t feel very, I dunno, rewarded? in any way. I suppose this was emphasised by the fact there wasn’t really anything to let us know that we HAD succeeded in finding them. For Adrian and I, this was one of the key moments in terms of the development of our idea.

The weather was very bleak. It was raining on and off and was bitterly cold with a wind that was cutting right through us. I’d gone from enjoying splashing around in my wellies, to wanting to die, in the space of about half an hour. In an attempt to power through, I cracked out my iPhone and started up my Geocaching app. I was in luck – we were less than 200 feet from a Geocache! With Adrian still slightly confused as to what was going on, I lead us (or rather, my phone’s GPS did) to an unsuspecting looking pile of rocks. Within the rocks was a tupperware box full of goodies and I think Adrian suddenly realised how exciting it all is. We left his Valberg ski pass in the cache. Being ubergeeks, we also did another 2 caches on the way home (Adrian is now fully addicted). This was also something that greatly contributed to our final idea.

Unfortunately, when I got home I discovered that my camera had kindly saved my photos in some stupid format so I couldn’t open them. I’ve managed to salvage a couple, but it’s a bit disappointing to have so few after the 50+ I managed to take whilst bearing that horrid weather!