mE-Games

Quiz – A pictorial book that presents facts and information and asks questions about the content and gives feedback. This will be the main source of information.
may include Story with lessons on Recycling, waste and energy deduction, effects on environment.

Junk Destroyer – a rehash of my asteroids game but instead of a spaceship shooting rocks you’re a child blasting rubbish with green loaded super gun of moral justice

Rubbish sorting – Given a pile of household rubbish, user must put into correct bins, paper, glass, plastic, compost and waste.
BinMan – pacman style game playing as a bin man cleaning up the streets

Printable posters and downloads

mE-Project

rather strife for innovation i want to take games and ideas that exist but do it well with a professional quality, good interaction and stylized graphics kids will find appealing, making it more fun and engaging, artistic and acknowledged than any other example.

the idea is to create a Flash built animated environment that looks like a naturalistic country landscape with depth of field, colourful features with interactive life and creatures.
growing in the fields there will be a tree that has links to multiple short games that will teach and be fun. also by playing all the games they can then gain access to the factory which is polluting the environment in the background
I hope to include Music and sounds to make the experience deeper and more engaging plus other recycling games don’t have sound.

alittle research

there are alot of organizations and groups out there dedicated to a greener world, through recycling and deduction waste and energy but online interactive resources especially for kids are lame.

http://www.durham.gov.uk/kids/usp.nsf/pws/dcc+kids+-+games+-+recycle+fun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/barnabybear/games/recycle.shtml
http://www.devon.gov.uk/recyclinggames

qca

there are a few recycling games around, but is are un-engaging with poor interaction, and don’t really teach much and they all look rubbish

Apart from one -
http://www.funnygames.co.uk/recycling.htm

E-learning Concept

I aim to create a gaming environment for children that will instil some moral economic responsibility for the next generation, to increase recycling and reduce Energy consumption.

I aim to teach the Methods and lessons of green living by creatively building the stories and tasks of different fun games and interactions around recycling.

My target audience will be 6-8 year olds so I’ll use stylized cartoon graphics and very little easy to understand text if any at all. Children learn best when physically active, given time to explore and are intrigued by subject so i’ll be Promoting Intrinsic motivation which includes methods like

Arouse curiosity
Challenge the learner
Exploratory environments
Help learner make connections between concepts
Make expectations clear
Provide opportunities for success
Provide opportunities to apply learning

Portfolio & CV

I’m finally ready to get on the placement band wagon having just finished my portfolio and CV, rather than pay money for web space and stress about creating a standard web page (which I’ve somehow avoided while at uni), I’ve simply made a interactive flash application showing off my work. For this i made original backgrounds and navigation system. The site includes my downloadable CV, contact details, art gallery, gaming arcade and project portfolio.

HERE

Project notes

this project is rather ambitious and technically challenging as jitter is software i still need to learn, but the programming suite is very intuitive and i think even in the 3 weeks given to do this project i consider it achievable, with the help of jitter tutorials and the expertise of Dan Livingston. My essay “collaborative culture” addressed issues surrounding the VJing scene, so i think my project should ignore these aspects, so the video library and animations should be entirely original, or the correct permissions should be gained for any sampled footage. To help build an original library i intend to seek help form a local talented VJ friend. I hope to have the basic jitter app, with some clips and a camera mapping a area within two weeks, then that will give be over a week to expand the project video and animation librarys and test in different environments before hand in.

HERE is a diagram showing technically how it will work and the battle stations setup.

Battle Stations

Battle Stations is a monthly hip hop night at the Voodoo lounge, Plymouth, combining  the cultures different elements  which are DJing,  MCing, Breakdancing, and Graffiti. There are battles relating to each element, plus the bonus of a bake off where tow competitors bake cakes in a battle to win the audiences votes. I aim as a final show of my proposed project to incorporate my interactive VJ software at battle stations. The venue has a circular floor where the breakdancers battle the opposing team one at a time, this situation is perfect for my project ideas. I think it would work better if the camera was focused on a individual so not to get confused by multiple inputs and variables.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNVEFKgp7yo&feature=related

video of breakers at battlestations

The Project

I aim to create a VJ installation where the content  is triggered / controlled by human interaction. Using sensors/ video mapping to detect the audience and generate parameter values for software. I want the audience to intuitively understand the interface and their control of the live visuals thus effecting their movement within the space. So if they are using the space correctly and are in time with the music the visuals should intuitively follow that rhythm.

Using max msp jitter processing software i want a web camera capable of mapping a dance floor into a grid, and then different grid sections and variables triggered would relate to a video clip library, effects, and particle animations which automatically effects the VJ projection in time with the dancers and so the music, creating a standalone VJ application that relies on audience participation.

Godfathers of the Genre

VJ Culture:
Design Takes Center Stage
By Momus
Ask today’s VJs who inspires them, and UK-based Coldcut is likely to be at the top of the list. Matt Black and Jonathan More of Coldcut simultaneously DJ and VJ and play their own music. Their instruments are synthesizers, laptops for music, laptops for video, and turntables. In 1997, Robert Pepperwell created special customized visual software for Coldcut’s performance at Sonar, an “advanced music and multimedia art” festival held in Barcelona. This software formed the basis for VJamm, a program released in 1999 through the website of Coldcut’s label Ninja Tune. Vjamm integrates video and sound, allowing Coldcut’s video clips to be triggered and scratched. In their song “Timber”, for example, they use video clips of axes, chainsaws, bulldozers, and other thematically appropriate subject matter. They even play a chainsaw solo just by scratching the video.

he history of Coldcut is exemplary in the development of VJing. In 1990, Coldcut’s More and Black teamed up with video graphic artists Hardwire (Robert Pepperell and Miles Visman) to form Hex, a research and development lab for CD-ROMs, videos, computer games, club visuals and interactive mixing. The first fruits of the collaboration appeared in the form of “Coldcut’s Christmas Break,” a 1990 pop video made entirely on Amiga, Archimedes and Macintosh home computers. Long-form videos were made the same year for Coldcut’s album, “Some Like It Cold.” 1993’s CDI release “Escape” (a collection of techno tracks accompanied by interactive visuals users could control with the CDI joystick) introduced a kind of “home nightclub” concept, a mixture of computer game, music album, and light show. Following the very New Age “Digital Love” CDROM—in which an animated figure demonstrated yoga positions, chanted in Sanskrit, and administered color therapy using Buddhist chakras—Hex released “AntiStatic,” “headCrash,” and “Let Us Play,” CD-ROMs which used fractals to generate new landscapes each time the music was played.

interaction

“Itsuo Sakane, the Japanese journalist and curator, suggests that interactive art is simply art that involves the participation of the viewer. However, he goes on to remark, “all arts can be called interactive in a deep sense if we consider viewing and interpreting a work of art as a kind of participation.” An echo of Marcel Duchamp’s famous declaration: “The spectator makes the picture.”

How can VJs cultivate the gap between art and audience?
At what level do VJs give up their control over material, and how can the audience participate in this?

For many people, interaction has come to mean ‘control’. People look to interactive technology for ‘empowerment’, and such technologies can certainly give the user a strong sense of power. This is clearly the attraction of video games. Interaction is about encounter rather than control. The interactive artist must counter the video-game-induced expectations that the user often brings to interaction.