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Shadowplay - Bubbles
We've always loved the immersive shadow installations of artists such as Wolfgang Muench and Kiyoshi Furukawa and we've been inspired to create our own version. When you stand in front of the light, your body casts a shadow and the bubbles then bounce off this and sometimes burst. Of course any part of your body can create a shadow so the bubbles can bounce off your head, your arms, your fingertips and the whole thing is quite magical. We see this as very much the first step in developing these ideas further so watch this space...
Watch us play with bubbles.

Keeping it simple
Many successful organisations such as Google and Apple have a strong Keep it simple ethos. I've written a document looking at why keeping it simple is important for museum exhibits and how to stop them becoming over complicated. Read KISS chase - How to keep your exhibit simple.

The Science of Survival
The Science of Survival exhibition has now opened at the Science Museum in London. We provided consultancy to create the "Oyster card" like visitor tracking system. This uses RfID technology to create an individual record of each person's visit. The system is fast, easy to to use and fits in well with the "futuristic" feel of the exhibition. Find out more

Ants game
Joe's niece received an interesting toy for Christmas. It was a small plastic car which would follow any line that you drew on a piece of paper. After spending a while playing with this we were inspired to create a game based on the same idea. In Ants you have to guide a small group of er, ants by drawing a trail for them to follow. The little creatures are pretty obedient but as the levels progress it gets much trickier than you'd think. Play Ants

Dave joins the company
This week was pretty exciting for me as I gained my first employee in the shape of Dave Wainfor. Dave's just finished his degree in Cybernetics and Virtual worlds during which he's spent a lot of time building robots out of lego. Right now he's getting up to speed with the specifics of computer exhibits but having him helping out means we can take on bigger projects which will be great.

Portfolio update
I mentioned in a previous post that I'll be updating the portfolio page with some recent projects. I've finally managed to get round to it and have added the Climate change weather studio, three Find out more exhibits, the Science news quiz and Wasted - The recycling game. This is making the portfolio page look pretty long so I'm going to have to start thinking about ways to make it easier to find what you want. The question is what criteria do people use when looking through it? Are they looking for particular subjects (science or art?), types of interaction (games, browsing or immersive?), or form factor (touchscreens or projections?). Hmm, I suspect a mixture of all three and a few more besides.

Science news quiz
The Centre for Life were looking for an exhibit to display the latest science news feeds from the internet. The problem is this isn't really new any more. My local Sainsbury's has a newsfeed display and so do some of the bus stops here in York. Nobody takes any notice of them. So we came up with the idea of turning those news headlines into a simple Have I got news for you style missing words quiz. The one in the Centre for Life is displayed on a huge 55 inch screen, complete with thumpable push buttons and "uhh-ohh" noises. Needless to say its a great hit with visitors and who leave knowing far more about what's happening in science than they ever expected.

Play the Science news quiz

Wasted - The recycling game
Some of you will have noticed that this news column went a bit quiet during the last few months. This wasn't because nothing's happened - more the opposite really. I've been so busy I haven't had time to keep it updated. Things are a little calmer now and I'll be gradually posting reports of what I've been doing. The first of these is a game about recycling for the Science Museum in London. In Wasted you have to recycle as much rubbish as possible before it fills up your bedroom. To make matters worse your mum and dad are out shopping for more stuff - you need to give them the right advice to avoid getting even more rubbish. The only good news is that you're being helped by your two pet mice. Yes, it's going to be one of those days...

Play Wasted

Programming job
It's reached that stage when I've got far, far too much to do and I need to employ someone to do programming. Of course that's just the start, I'm looking for someone keen to learn and try new things and I'll be looking to train you up on projectors, physical interfaces, graphics and everything else I do. If you're interested here are some more details. The closing date for applications is 31st July 2007.

New office (again)
I spent most of last week moving office and sorting out things like broadband. I had to move out of the old one as York Council have decided to knock it down and build a home for the homeless there instead. My new address is 35 Hospital Fields Road, York, YO10 4DZ. Phone number and email address stay the same. The new office is still only about 100 metres from the river and about 10 minutes walk from my house. There's also a few extra facilities that the old one didn't have such as an entryphone and heating.

Find out more about Merchant Adventurers
I've put some more information about the Find out more exhibit that I made for the Company of Merchant Adventurers on the web. The exhibit contains the complete story of the hall as well as 3D reconstructions, a timeline and a quiz. Building the 3D model was no easy task as the hall is over 650 years old and there's almost no right-angle joints in the whole structure. You can see a sample of the 3D reconstruction of the hall here and some screen shots from the exhibit here.

A detail from the reconstruction of the Hall

Be a merchant game on the web
I've finally got round to putting the Be a Merchant game I made for the Company of Merchant Adventurers on the web. This is one of two kiosks which I created for the 'Meet the Merchants' exhibition which opened in December 2006. You take the role of a medieval trader and have to sail all over Europe to make as much money as possible. As well as being a touchscreen kiosk, this exhibit will be on the Company website and be distributed on a CD to schools.

Play Be a merchant

Merchant Adventurers' Exhibition Opening
The Company of Merchant Adventurers opened their exhibition, 'Meet the Merchants', on Saturday. I created two touchscreen exhibits for the exhibition which were very well received. After a number of speeches I gave a presentation explaining the exhibits and then we all went upstairs for a "Boar's Head Medieval Repast". This featured a couple of Boars' heads being brought in accompanied by a three piece band and choir singing The Boar's Head Carol - partly in Latin (naturally). As you would expect this made quite an impression and the lunch was excellent. I'm looking to post web versions of the exhibits on this site pretty soon so watch out for them.

A Boar's Head plus accompanying singers

New office
I've moved to a new office! At the moment everything is still in boxes but when its unpacked there will be a lot more space. It's a great location, right in the centre of town - next to the river. Luckily the office is on the first floor so the traditional York floods aren't likely to be a problem. Please note my new phone number 01904 624681 and address The Fishergate Centre, 4 Fishergate, York, YO10 4FB

Walls film on the web
I've been meaning to put the film I made for the Bootham Bar installation on the web for a while and I've finally managed it. When you put a film on the web you have to trade off the size and quality of the film against the amount of time it takes people to download it. The finished result isn't quite as splendid as the high-definition original but it does bring a new excitement to the idea of walking around the walls. Have a look for yourself - you'll need broadband to make it work.

An image from the film of York walls

Centre for Life
I've been asked by the Centre for Life in Newcastle to create several exhibits for their new gallery Our Future which is opening in Spring 2007. We're still evolving the design of the exhibits but we're looking to put a new interactive spin on news feeds. There's also going to be a fully updatable "Find Out More" exhibit. Last week we spent some time discussing whether it was a good idea to put a picture of Brad Pitt on the attractor screen. Looks like I'm going to have to put more time into reading Heat before this one is done.

Bootham Bar picture
I've realised that although my installation has been up and running now in Bootham Bar for some time I've still not posted a picture of it on this news log. Any one who's ever tried to take pictures of a projection will tell you that it's a bit of a pig but luckily John Oxley from York City Council has let me have some good ones - so here it is. As its a multiplayer game, a whole group of people can play at once. I've often seen it with a huge crowd of tourists around it so I couldn't even get near, let alone take a photo. I'm still looking at ways of shrinking the 500MB film of the walls down to something that can be played on the web. When I manage I'll post it here.

Bootham Bar installation. Image: John Oxley

Merchant Adventurers' Hall
I've been invited by the Company of Merchant Adventurers of York to create two touchscreen based kiosks to interpret their medieval hall in the centre of York. The kiosks will also be converted to run on the web. The company has a long and fascinating history having been founded around 1356. At the moment we're trawling through the archives to find some good content. Today I read that in 1472, Marion Kent of York exported two pokes of madder as well as importing one maunde with 22 shocks of trenchers. I suspect this will need some interpretation. Apparently the company was also active in importing large quantities of opium for "medicinal purposes".

The Merchant Adventurers' Hall, York

York Walls film
The speeded up film of York Walls is now edited and its looking pretty good. I shot over an hour of HD footage with the help of steadicam operator Andrew Sheard who normally works for Emmerdale and Coronation Street. If you haven't come across a professional steadicam before they're very heavy and normally only used for short scenes. We had to split the shoot over two days to give Andrew a chance to rest, but we still ended up shooting on the hottest day of the year so he did well to last the distance. I speeded up the hour of film so it lasts just over 2 minutes and it's quite intense. I've been trying it out on the projector in the tower where it will be installed and found that it looks best on less sunny days when tower is darker inside and the contrast is highest. Still, even when its sunny it still makes quite an impression. The Bootham installation is currently in robustness testing and proving very popular. All we're waiting for now is a date for the press opening so we can formally open it and finish the project.

Andrew Sheard filming on the walls

Manchester Art Gallery
Today I went to Manchester Art Gallery, and visited the Clore Interactive Gallery. It's a fantastic fully interactive gallery about the art collections which is aimed at children but it's lots of fun for adults as well. There's some really well thought out exhibits, both computer and physical. I'm told the gallery opened in 2001 and I would say that it's still at the forefront of interactive interpretation of art. One of my favourite exhibits was the one where you get to dress up and pose like a painting of two people climbing the Jungfraujock. In another where you have to sit very still to understand how it feels to have your portrait painted - move just a little bit and its ruined!

© Manchester Art Gallery

BIG Event
Today I gave a talk at the BIG Event, a conference organised by the British Interactive Group (BIG). BIG is a British organisation for everyone involved in interactive communication but most of its members come from science centres so there's a lot of science demos. Best demo was definitely the guy who brought two small pipistrelle bats to the conference in a small box. They seemed quite happy in the box and were admired by everyone. My session was called Tools for the job and discussed how you should go about chosing the right type of exhibit for your exhibition. I was lucky to be joined by visitor studies expert Ben Gammon and Steve Pizzey from Science Projects.We had a good attendance and it all went very well.

Perry Hoberman: Accept
Today I came across the web site for Accept, an exhibition by artist Perry Hoberman. I'm not normally keen on art about technology but Perry nicely skewers the absurdities of the meaningless messages we get from our computers as well as issues such as trademarks and surveillance. Make sure you try out Your time is valuable and have a look at his older works if you've not come across them before.

An image from OK/Cancel
© Perry Hoberman

Pixar: 20 years of animation
Today I visited the exhibition Pixar: 20 years of animation at the Science Museum in London and it's great. Most of the exhibition is made up of concept artwork and development materials from Pixar hits like Monsters Inc and Toy story. As far as I can see the process starts with Pixar artists producing drawings of the main characters and scenes in a number of different styles. These are then assesed and the final design developed from a composite of the elements of each design which seem to work best. Part of the fun is spotting which well known artists and styles the studies are derived from. Here's a study from Monsters Inc which reminded me of this well known work. See what you think. The exhibition closes on 11th June 2006 so if you want to see it you'll have to hurry.

Round the walls of York
More news about the Bootham Bar installation. Part of the project is to shoot a film showing a whole journey around the walls. We haven't shot the whole film yet, but here's a demo that we've been working with. I shot it by taking 160 separate still pictures with my little Canon Ixus and I'm really pleased with how its turned out.

Installation in a tower
I've been commisioned by York council to build an installation in one of the towers on the walls around York. The plan is to put a projector into the gate tower called "Bootham Bar". The projector will be mounted in the ceiling and project down onto a table. This will allow a group of people to stand around the table and interact with the installation. It's a great project and we're looking to open it around June/July 2006 so look out for more updates.

Web site redesign
I've finally got round to redesigning my web site and I'm really pleased with the result. The new design is cleaner and simpler than the old one and introduces a new colour - shocking pink! Right now I'm busy testing it on every combination of browser and operating system I can get my hands on. There are some slight variations from browser to browser but overall its held together pretty well. If you've had any problems with the new site then do let me know - I'd much rather know about problems now so I can fix them. I've also started this news column and hope to add something new at least once a week - so check back regularly and see if I manage it.