University of Reading Workshop cont Power Wall demos

Below are images and video clips from demos using the power wall. The images look a bit blurred as they are for viewing in stereo. We had a good discussion and lots of helpful responses to the demos suggesting what to do next, unfortunatly my camera battery ran out half way so I didn't record the discussion.

From my note book, sound of the voices were really powerful and made the navigation much more intuitive. Really enjoyed seeing feltip drawings mapped on the objects will use this more. Also maps made from bike tracks worked well.

People often got lost navigating request for a panic button to restore oringnal/starting view point. I really enjoyed the physicality of sticking your head in the sphere and being immersed in the sound of one voice and the cacophony slowly growing as you moved outside it.

Discussion about route planing Duncan was concerned that the viewer need to have some route /path to follow, what form would it take could it be done using rankings, could the view rank the sound. Navigation needs to be slower design moments where view would want to dwell in one place. Fixed paths with selected viewpoints could be followed?Personally I like randomness too....

Could there be some kind of task the viewer must achieve, detection, discovery. What controls limits do we set. How much sense should it make. As Jonathan said " they are all design choices" We want to let the view write virtual graffiti on the wall, leaving their mark, they could also leave a recording?

The use of layering is important the idea of finding your in a layer you didn't know exsited. The layers could move from minimal info for the view to being able to access the whole archive. I thought the three could be abstract soundscape, journey through image scape and a landscape created by the archive data. Alan mention 3D GPS maping would like to find out more. Could put links to web based stuff Duncan is creating?

Sketches from Second Life

Some very initial ideas:Second Life could be an interesting place to set up a replay event of Rider Spoke. If we bought an island we could build a city/environment and invite participants to cycle finding audio embedded in objects. The island could be set to only allow participants with an invitation. Its possible to control the light so it could always be dusk. I built a version that was like the box of a cave thinking about the data produced by the finger printing as a journey shape we could follow. Would like to have an immersive version of SL in the CAVE. It would be great if the journey could work in SL on a power wall and in a CAVE.

Thinking of how to show different versions of the data, thinking of the diagrams lief showed us of the fingerprinting positions. Also of the surfaces of the road potholes the city as skin, and the glow of street lights. Underpass and google maps sometimes otherworldly, changes of focus. Cluster points would act as places where the audio would be triggered and a question is answered.