Some fellas named Mudlark have been in touch, a cross-platform company who have recently moved into Fazeley Studios in Digbeth from my hometown of Tamworth. I didn’t know anything about the company but from the projects outlined on their bright and breezy website I recognise some past projects. Notably, ‘Love City’ – an SMS mobile phone and web game played over several different locations, bringing players together through sending messages of love.
The aim of the game is to move about in the real world to locations that are mapped onto the game world of Love City. Players score points by sending messages to players who share locations with them in the game world. The game was originally launched across 3 cities (Nottingham, Leicester and Derby) on Valentines Day 2007.
Mudlark are currently developing ‘Chromaroma’ a project backed by the 4IP fund and Screen West Midlands. The website describes it as ‘a pervasive online game played in the real world’. It uses smart cards and urban mass transit systems as a currency and environment to allow people to play as they commute, travel and move around their urban environments.
This is one of the most exciting companies I have seen in a long time, who seem to be successfully combining a games company, a TV company and a web company. The website is clean, crisp and outlines what they do without all of the usual alienating mumbo-jumbo speak. They will be getting together with an invited a group of people who are also developing new practices, projects and ideas on a similar ethos on Friday 22nd, and hopefully will be posting any interesting outcomes onto their website.
230 Miles of Love is an interesting project – a series of sat-nav triggered comedy sketches that are triggered as you drive along the M6. It’s been put out to publicise the charity Motivation.
You can download the audio from the website and play it via a Garmin or TomTom satnav thingy or a GPS-enabled smartphone or PDA. It’ll play on your computer too if you want a taster.
In case you’re interested in creating something similar yourself then have a look at Geovative for the tech behind the scenes.
There’s a bit of a review here from The Guardian and I’ve downloaded them for the next time I’m out and about. If anyone else has a go I’d be interested to hear what you think.
Paul Willocks is a graphic designer who makes digital art. He also produces music under the name Tech Star – he designed the above CD cover for the release of his most recent single ‘Switchblade’.
There’s quite an in-depth interview with him on Abduzeedo.
(Found via Behance)
Twitpanto – 23 December at 2pm
Featuring:
With special guests:
- Tom Watson MP (West Brom) as Baron Tweetup
- Jemima Kiss (Guardian tech correspondent) as Baroness Tweetup, the wicked stepmother
I’m going to be one of the ugly sisters. Follow @twitpanto on Twitter or check this Twitter search every so often to keep up to date.
LUCID is a research project funded by Advantage West Midlands as part of Birmingham’s Science City project which aims to help SMEs in the area to develop content and applications for mobile devices.
Screen Media Lab has created two workshops to bring ICT and multimedia SMEs in the West Midlands up to speed with the latest developments in mobile information delivery, and enable them to start providing mobile content and services.
The first workshop, on Jan 22nd 09, will give the SMEs an introduction to the issues, technology and opportunities. The second workshop, on Feb 5th 09, will deliver a set of practical tutorials and consultancy with mobile experts.
For more information, please contact Alexa Torlo on 0121 204 9882 or alexa.torlo@bcu.ac.uk
David Rowan‘s new website has cropped up on a fair few blogs recently and with good reason. It’s real purty, with a stack of great photography on it and is dead clever to boot.
David is a photographer at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and also lectures, consults and does bits of art design and graphic design.
The website was put together by Tak! and has a soundtrack provided by Chris Herbert which is remarkable because it’s interactive (try moving the three lines about) and didn’t have me reaching for the mute button like most autostart music on websites.
(Via Surely?, Tak! and CMYKern)
Media Talent Bank is a collective of creatives, media organisations and freelancers. Through this robust online database of individuals, employers can source the hottest creative talent around through personalised profiles.
This project is funded by Digital Central and managed by Media Content Lab part of Birmingham City University with the aim of galvanising the West Midlands creative and media communities into a strong and sustainable sector
It’ll be interesting to see how this takes off. If you’re a creative type then I’d say it’s probably worth a couple of minutes of your time to fill out a profile – you never know who might be looking to give you some work.
Another site maybe worth checking is Behance. It’s not for everyone though – you have to ask to be invited – but it aims to be a (fairly prestigious) platform for the world’s leading creative professionals. There’s a few folks from Birmingham on there but of those, only Suzie Webb (website) has had a mention here before.
One for the younger people:
At long last The Drum is launching “Young Gifted Brum“, a free and continuous program of performing and digital arts for Children and Young People.
The launch will take place on Thursday, 6th November at 5.30pm – 7.30pm at The Drum, Aston and all Young People aged 8-18yrs are welcome to come along if they are interested in Singing, Dance, Music, Digital Art, Acting and Spoken Word to find out what will be on offer in the coming months. They do not have to have any experience and it is not just open to people who want to perform. There will be an opportunity to showcase your talents at two annual events, whether your talents lie in producing, writing, directing, delivering events or performing in them.
There will also be a free “Taster Session†that will take place at The Drum on Saturday, 8th November between 12pm and 4pm.
For more information please contact Dee on (0121) 333 2431
Taken from the Arts Council’s free mailing list, which is free and worth making use of. I imagine it goes to quite a lot of people nationwide and it’d be great to have plenty of Birmingham (and other West Mids) stuff on it.
Eye of the Storm is a digital project that has started off in Birmingham with involvement from Sandra Hall from Friction Arts. Voila le blurb:
What do a human statue, a divorce lawyer, a buddhist and a recovering drug addict have in common? The invisible connections between very different Birmingham lives are laid bare in a new online and real-world project that explores how people find peace within the noise of 21st century living.
There are two parts, with the website showcasing the stories, with an outdoor digital art installation due to appear in the city centre at some point.
Hello World is:
Birmingham’s international digital media conference, held at Millennium Point from October 23-24 as part of the Hello Digital festival
Tickets at the talks are free but, given the calibre of some of the speakers (impressive bods from Flickr, Pixar, Channel 4 and so on), really will need to be booked online pretty sharpish.
Here’s the line-up.
Thursday 23 Oct:
Friday 24 Oct:
As it’s copyright infringement day on Created in Birmingham it seems appropriate to mention The Chop Shop – Birmingham-based audio/visual cut-and-paste japesters who
cutup loads of tv and film footage and make daft audio and video with the results
and describe themselves as the Chuckle Brothers with samplers. Think adverts, political speeches, sitcoms and music videos all mixed together inna cheeky style, along the lines of Eclectic Method, Negativland and The Party Party, if you’ve heard of them.
My favourite track (so far) is DJ Reach’s recreation of NERD’s ‘Lapdance’, using quotes from Alan Partridge. It’s very special (and maybe ever so slightly NSFW) and is on his Myspace page.
The Chop Shop are DJ Reach (who also has a YouTube page) and Roger Species and they’ll be playing at Custom Made at the Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath on 24 May.
On Saturday semi-serious (i think) art group Digital Is Dangerous will be hosting a debate on digital technology’s role in the creative process. Conformed speakers include Robin Giorno, Jonathan Green, Keir Williams and artist and researcher for Wolverhampton uni Robert Grose (cant find a website sorry).
Event starts at 3pm and goes on till 5pm with D.I.D providing “a wonderful selection of edible digital nipples” and this all goes down at Jibbering Records in Mosley. I’ll be the one in with the long hair and mouth full of nipples.
The Big Picture are seeking artists/design teams to help with the following projects:
World Record Attempt (deadline for proposals 18th March)
Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to break the world record for the largest photo mosaic in the world, as the culmination of our ‘Big Picture’ project.
The current record is 94,392 photographs covering an area of 562.85 m2 (6,058.46 ft2). Both numbers need to be surpassed in order to break the record.
MMS Upload Project (deadline for proposals 25th March)
Audiences Central wants to appoint an artist or artist/design team to produce an engaging online concept that will drive MMS photo uploads to the ‘Big Picture’ project.
The same artist/team may apply for both projects.
Broadcast magazine have an overview article of Birmingham digital media companies from the perspective of traditional television production. While not telling me anything new it’s a solid snapshot of the scene. Unfortunately Broadcast requires you to log in to read the thing, something I don’t usually have a problem with but the process here is so protracted and annoying that I’ve re-posted the article here to save you the heartache. via Stef
Up and to the left a bit, Creative Wolverhampton seem justly chuffed that SP/ARK, the “specialist business incubator for digital creative industries at Wolverhampton Science Park”, is up for the UK Business Incubation (UKBI) Best Established Incubator of the Year Award.
