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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.

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 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.