Submitting Institution
Arts University BournemouthUnit of Assessment
Art and Design: History, Practice and TheorySummary Impact Type
CulturalResearch Subject Area(s)
Information and Computing Sciences: Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, Information Systems
Studies In Creative Arts and Writing: Film, Television and Digital Media
Summary of the impact
The project impacts by connecting people with technology through an
interactive art project. Portable equipment ensures wide participation:
people respond to, and interact with, virtual living creatures in an
entertaining but instructive context. Bringing together human participants
(able to intervene in the environment) with the virtual bugs (responsive
to stimuli/their environment), people are challenged to consider cause and
effect in the physical environment as well as their own inter-social
relations. The impact which is cultural, imaginative and pedagogic is
achieved through touch rather than via the normal emphasis on the
communicated world.
Underpinning research
Since 2007, Liam Birtles (Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Production at
AUB) has been a member of the four-strong Squidsoup, an international
group of artists, researchers and designers working with digital and
interactive media experiences. Squidsoup was founded in 1999 by Anthony
Rowe (now Associate Professor, Interaction Design at Oslo School of
Architecture and Design); Rowe led the research that resulted in Glowing
Pathfinder Bugs (henceforth GPB) At the time Rowe was Senior
Lecturer at AUB (2005-2008); as holder of an AUB Research Fellowship
(2007-8) he was able to purchase a Point Grey Bumble-Bee 2 Stereo camera
which was used to devise GPB. Birtles was the key collaborator in
furthering the research and targeting it to more ambitious outputs and
greater impact. He remains a central member of Squidsoup and the only one
working in a UK HEI. Recent research has led to the replacement of the
earlier technology through the use of Microsoft Kinects; this has led to
new and more sophisticated outputs and wider research, as evidenced by Living
Timeline, an interactive evolutionary timeline (shown at
At-Bristol from April 2012 to date).
The research question asked how to create a transportable environment
where participants might collaboratively engage with (and attempt to
control) responsive elements in a highly tactile, multisensory, spatial
environment. Sand, a malleable material that most children are familiar
with, was selected as the interface for GPB, because it fulfils a vital
role in harnessing kinaesthetic intelligence, thus allowing for creative,
dynamic, spatial interaction. While The Tangible Media Group at MIT had
also explored the use of malleable materials like sand as interface, their
application and technical methods are different from GPB. Other digital
art installations such as Dew Harrison's Shift-Life, a modelled
Darwinian eco-system, also focuses on emergence but through illustrating
evolutionary, artificially intelligent processes that take account only of
pre-defined meta-interactions rather than direct interaction with, and
responses from, individual creatures. GPB is unique in using sand as the
primary mode of synchronous communication between participants and virtual
creatures. This creates a direct and understandable, though somewhat
unpredictable, form of interaction. Furthermore, the research directly
maps the real and virtual worlds onto each other: this is in stark
contrast to the majority of augmented reality or even general
metaphor-based interfaces, where a positional jump is required.
The nature of this research is that it evolved developmentally from
previous projects authored by Squidsoup (see below) drawing in particular
on Freq2 (2006), where participants' silhouettes are used to
define the leading edge of an extruding virtual landscape. In GPB,
however, the physical landscape is mapped directly into virtual space; any
changes to the physical topography of the sandpit are immediately mirrored
in the virtual environment. This research continues to evolve; for example
in iterations such as Pest Control (2010); and Living Walls
(shown at the RSC 2012) and therefore has future potential for further
significant impact.
References to the research
References not available online can be supplied by Arts University
Bournemouth on request.
1. Randell, C. and Rowe, A. (2006). Come closer: encouraging
collaborative behaviour in a multimedia environment. Interactive
technologies and sociotechnical systems; 13th International
Conference. Vol. 4270 pp. 281-9.
www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Publications/Papers/2000601.pdf
(DOI 10.1007/11890881_31)
Details of the impact
Without the underpinning research, undertaken at AUB in the mid-2000s,
GPB would never have come about and there would have been no impact. The
significance and reach of the impact are evidenced as follows: GPB was
commissioned in 2008 by Folly, a leading digital arts organisation, for
Portable Pixel Playground supported by the Lottery Fund and other arts
organisations. It encouraged young people to use everyday technologies in
new and creative ways and helped to combat the stereotype that playing
with technology is a solitary experience.
At time of writing, GPB remains the lead activity shown on their website
and includes interviews with children and adults. Portable Pixel
Playground travelled round North West England developing a digital
audience and `exceeding expectations and targets'. The research was
validated professionally when GPB was accepted by Siggraph for the 37th
convention and exhibition on computer graphics and interactive technology
in 2010.
There followed in 2011 exhibitions at the Dowse Gallery (New Zealand);
Maker Faire, Newcastle; Art Rock, St Brieuc; and Scopitone, Nantes.
Scopitone is a trans disciplinary festival mounted by Stereolux and
appealing to a large eclectic audience. GPB attracted a YouTube audience
and was a great hit, described online as: `Une Installation vraiment
marrante — un gros bac à sable avec des bestioles dedans — et qui stupéfie
les petits enfants !!'
The varied locations from techno-fairs and arts centres to rock and film
festivals and from theatres to children's play areas, has resulted in
considerable impact. Whereas the piece was originally researched and
designed specifically to engage children with technologies, its popularity
is connected to its playfulness, relative low cost and simplicity of
installation, combined with its versatility. Science and technology
centres like At-Bristol where a more sophisticated iteration of GPB opened
in 2012 as `Living Timeline', are part of the growing investment in
science and technology learning through participants' direct experience
and entertainment.
The At-Bristol piece exemplifies the impact of the GPB technology and
builds on it to create a 4.6 m physical timeline at the main entrance to
the Museum that combines a long table/timeline containing objects relevant
to the environment, augmented with projected interactive creatures that
will respond to being petted, picked up and splatted. It brings the last
460 million years of evolutionary development to life, with creatures
ranging from spiders and snails, through ammonites and trilobites to
dinosaurs inhabiting a Mixed Reality ecosystem. It is part of a permanent
exhibition `Our world — no more waste' explores the Earth's systems
and history and finds ways to make the incredible information accessible
to visitors from two to eighty. The creatures are projected onto a
physical 3D landscape. As with GPB, creatures sense the presence of
visitors through the use of Kinect stereo camera sensors, and they respond
accordingly by disappearing, running away, or crawling up your arm. In a
sense, therefore, the impact of the entire museum experience will be
preluded by this interactive piece.
Impact at these events is enhanced by the researchers' direct engagement
with the users in discussion sessions as at Dowse Gallery (where they were
described as `ingenious and imaginative artists'). Squidsoup's 2012
commission for the RSC builds further on the GPB research to produce walls
alive with a living wallpaper of animated texts which when touched will
scuttle off like insects engaging participants in the ephemerality and the
eternal presence of Shakespeare's work. The work was seen by an estimated
25,000 members of the public.
The beneficiaries of the research undertaken by Birtles as part of
Squidsoup are: adults, children and anyone with an interest in discovering
more about spatial relations, socialisation, ecology, cultural engagement,
and science and technology in a digital age. The potential for this kind
of approach to physical interface design is huge. The use of 3D cameras in
computer interfaces is expanding, though current usage generally focuses
on tracking and analysis of body movement and gesture. The research
undertaken for GPB opens up possibilities for using similar technologies
for analysing topography / surface shape. The organisations that have
commissioned and exhibited GPB and related pieces have extended their
audiences and been endowed with new ways of outreach and communication.
The works impact through being immersive and interactive, family-friendly
and playful, sociable and generative of communication; all the video
footage of GPF indicates high levels of visual focus, manual engagement
and verbal communication.
Sources to corroborate the impact
(i) Sita Trust. (2012). Annual report 2012: a year to celebrate. p.24/25.
[online].
Available from http://www.sitatrust.org.uk/documents
Corroborates claims for engagement from a wide demographic and learning
through participants' direct experience and entertainment
(ii) The Folly Trust, Trustees' report and financial statements for the
year ended 5 April 2009 and for year ended 5 April 2010.
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends32/0000328232_AC_20090405_E_C.PDF
Corroborates claim for audience engagement in North West England;
development of digital audience; exceeding expectations and targets.
(iii) Ecotec Research and Consulting Ltd. (2010). Playful ideas research
summary.
Big Lottery Fund Research. No. 59. pp.10-11.
www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/research/-/media/.../playful_ideas_eval.ashx
Corroborates claim for new and unique play opportunities; new ways of
outreach and communication; high levels of visual focus, manual engagement
and verbal communication.
(iv) Statement from Head of Audience Insight, RSC
Corroborates claim for audience viewing exhibition, which in turn supports
claim for diverse audience and new ways of outreach.
(v) You Tube clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaykKzI8XzE
Corroborates claim for development of You Tube audience; video footage
indicates high levels of visual focus, manual engagement and verbal
communication; amazing the grandchildren quote.
(vi) At-Bristol website http://www.at-bristol.org.uk/1493.html
Includes statement from Dan Bird, At-Bristol's Exhibition Director, which
corroborates claims for extending audiences; new ways of outreach and
communication; and growing investment in science and technology learning
through participants' direct experience and entertainment.