Sightings: Exploring Community + Arts + Internet

Sightings is a website that documents research into the possibilities for using the Internet or other communications networks in community arts contexts.

It includes interviews with:

Mike Ananny

Mike Annany (TexTales) talks about his experience working on a community history project, using mobile phones, photographs and projections. He talks about participation and the need to keep the project on course while being flexible to the needs and interests of the group.

Curt Cloninger

Curt Cloninger writes link-rich responses to questions about what the boundaries of net art are, and what communications networks offer art.

Lowell Monke

Lowell Monke feels that now that the ‘genie is out of the bottle’ the onus is on us to make the best we can of technology, while being ever critical and watchful of its effects on our everyday lives and our communities.

Bong Ramilo

Bong Ramilo shares his experience of working on a website that supports community cultural development, and highlights the need for focusing on open source software.

Helen Simondson

Helen Simondson talks about running digital storytelling projects with a range of partners. She also touches on issues relating to these projects, such as release forms and digital storage.

Barrie Stephenson

Barrie Stephenson offers practical details about running a digital storytelling which includes writing, photography and publishing outcomes online.

Media Lab Europe

Media Lab Europe’s mission was to expand human potential through invention. Between 2000 and 2005 Media Lab Europe generated a range of research activities. Of note are the projects of the Everyday Learning Group (principal investigator Carol Strohecker) looking at “technology-supported intergenerational, intercultural constructivity”

TexTales:

Mike Ananny, Carol Strohecker

This large-scale installation is an exploration of public collaborative publishing. We display a 3-by-3 grid of photos and associated captions on a building wall. Anyone viewing the wall can choose a photo for which they would like to create a caption, send a SMS text message with their caption and, after a delay of about 10 seconds, see their caption added to the wall. For each photo, TexTales displays the 3 most recent SMS captions.

Papervision3D

Papervision3D is a open source high performance 3D engine for Flash. It uses triangle tesselation to distort textures. Now one can render complex objects in “real 3D”! Click here for project home.

Examples: Robbie William’s Rudebox site, Room demo, Pioneer, or see further examples at the Papervision3D blog

view their showreel below

Adobe Creativity Conducted

Adobe Creativity Conducted Interactive Wall Experience features a holographic-like projection system on which you can paint images and designs using a Nintendo Wii remote control.

This full screen Flash application runs in HD resolution, and was premiered during the primary Adobe party of the MAX 07 Conference in Chicago. The experience ran uninterrupted for the duration of the party (4 hours), and received nonstop foot traffic resulting in 68 artistic creations submitted as images to a Flickr account.