Hazel Grian

2.8 Hours: Our massive Zombie chase game: "like paintballing and bungie jumping... only more thrilling and more consistently storyworld driven!"

2011-06-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

For a second year we are very proud to announce our cross-town zombie chase game

2.8 Hours Later, has had another massively popular outing in Bristol. Over 1000 people played our real-life version of the zombie movie. They ran for their lives through the shopping malls, churches, bars and streets of Bristol. Produced by Sling Shot as part of their annual igfest, our game asks 'can you survive the zombie apocalypse?'.

Here's just some of the many excellent reviews, videos and pics. online:

2.8 Hours 2011 - player You Tube vid.

ScareTour review

Posterous review

Sci-Fi and Dark Fantasy Review

Stepford Wife Tweets: my adaptation of 1970s cult film played out live on Twitter

2011-04-28T01:57:00.000-07:00

One year ago today I completed a month-long live Tweeting of the Stepford Wives movie. I set up an account for the film's lead character Jo Eberhart, imagining what she would have Tweeted had she been able to after her fateful move to the sinister town of Stepford. I followed the 1975 Brian Forbes film beat for beat, Tweeting in real time: if a scene was in the middle of the night that's when I Tweeted.

Fans following the daily updates were able to tweet back to Jo and she replied to them. They invited her to cocktail parties and told her to get the hell out of there! The feedback was great, fans really enjoyed the well-timed daily tweet format and the dramatic build up to a climax. For me as a writer it was an immensely gratifying experiment!

Read The Stepford Wives retold via Twitter :

Hello Sisters of the Liberation! Are you there? Welcome to 1975!

http://twitter.com/#!/Jo_inStepford

Smelly Holodeck: how we created the smell of Bill Murray.

2011-03-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Our Sculpting With Scent prototype was a great success at the MediaSandbox 2011 Showcase in February. We developed a group of friendly table top objects for you to interact with, which contain a series of odours. The objects, or 'pebbles', shaped something like a larger Mac mouse, speak to you by giving off realistic scents, glowing, vibrating and triggering voice files. The idea is that you pick up the objects when they glow and vibrate, sniff them, hear the voice and be transported to another place.

We created a romantic cinematic experience inspired by scenes from Lost In Translation. This included the smell of the bar in the Park Hyatt Hotel Tokyo, the traffic in the heat, a Takai fish restaurant and a hug from Bill Murray.

We believe this prototype acts as a model to deliver other scent-based experiences to public places.

Find out all about our amazing smelly narrative experiment:

Here's our video and our blog.

My Moksha partner Darius Pocha speaks about the project on the MediaSandbox 2011 Pervasive Experiences panel

Robot fans! Download My Daemon Robot Report and watch the Public Presentation Video

2010-07-15T05:37:00.000-07:00

My Daemon robot project report is available! It's easy to read and there's pictures!

And there's also a video of my presentation of the project. Enjoy, robot fans!

Download the pdf here.

Video of my presentation of the project at Watershed here.

Video of Daemon robot in action is here.

Robots and Avatars Round Table Debate with Noel Sharkey at NESTA

2010-06-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

I took part in an interesting Lunchtime Debate yesterday at NESTA, organised by bodydataspace

"Robots and Avatars is an innovative project exploring how young people will work and play with new representational forms of themselves and others in virtual and physical life in the next 10-15 years."

There were fifteen of us from creative, academic and scientific backgrounds sitting around the table discussing our thoughts on the near future of Artificial Intelligence, robots and avatars. For me, I'm relatively new to all this in a practical sense, having created live interactive characters as part of Alternate Reality Games including the Star Trek movie ARG written characters/scripts for AI/chat bots for the Sherlock Holmes movie game (the BBC covered it)... and I've just finished a prototype empathetic robot who chats, Daemon (you can see all my blog posts on that).

In Science-Fiction terms I've been fascinated by our relationships with robots and AI since I was a kid. Now I'm talking with people who are trying to make it all a reality and I love it. My angle is as a storyteller... as narrative and character creator looking for a wider audience. I'm keen to take my ideas and experiments to the film, games and publishing industries to see if they'd like to run with them. My area in the past few years has been in making those story world elements become physically real in people's everyday lives. The great quote from the Star Trek ARG I worked on being "Oh my God Star Trek's real everyone!" from a fan who found our Romulan crash site in an Oxfordshire field.

Here's my rough write up of my notes from the session, which serve as a good brain dump for now:

Professor of Artificial Intelligence Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn took part in the discussion, I was so impressed by her and I'm hoping to visit her at the University of Hertfordshire if she will be kind enough to spare me some time to pick her brains and get some inspiration from her.

Also attending was Paul Harter, programmer and digital artist, who struck a chord with me when he said that he's more interested in 'Artificial Humanity' than 'Artificial Intelligence' because he's interested in the imperfections of human personality rather than a logical, perfect model. This is very much my approach, as a writer I know that people prefer characters who are flawed and who behave illogically.

Professor Noel Sharkey who's somewhat of a celebrity in robot and AI circles and is also Professor of AI, Robotics and Public Engagement at Sheffield Uni., gave us a useful over view:

he talked about taking ideas to the film industry, which as I say I'm keen on. Other roles for robots, points out Sharkey, are service robots, robots for care, companions, education and therapy. He mentioned our tendency to 'anthropormorphic projection', where we just can't help letting our imaginations fill in the gaps where robots are concerned, giving them human like emotions and behaviour. An important point for me is that robots don't need to be 'humanoid' for us to do this: the very simplest movement from a very basic shape will lead us to see 'life' in an object, we can create 'artificial artefacts'. I'm very interested in exploiting this, what I think of as the 'theatre' of i, whereby people are playing along with AIs. This leads me to think again about my intention to write up a kind of 'rules of engagement' for role-playing for people who aren't professional actors. Online communities already have strict self moderating behaviour, which I'm sure is being well documented by academics... I'd like to see what people want to do and when, how to avoid feeling embarrassed or annoying other people etc. when playing and role playing face to face. I'll start doing this by analysing the success of the Natural Theatre Company performance approach, who I performed with for twelve years. I'll also be looking at film robot characters and how people relate to them and their part in the narrative.

Daemon robot prototype: video

2010-06-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the video of how the user experiences the Daemon in its current prototype form. In a relaxing 'living room' installation the Daemon plays music through iTunes and chooses different music for you when you hold its hand, depending on your mood. The Daemon instant chats with you using your TV monitor whilst you use your laptop. The Daemon reacts when you enter the room, tracks your face, moving and tilting its head when listening and reacting to your face and your touch. The Daemon's goal is to allow you to relax and express how you feel as you would with a therapist, a trusted friend or indeed your own inner voice.

If you find this vid takes too long to load, you can watch it on You Tube

It's alive! Daemon therapeutic prototype looks, listens, chats, plays music & loses its head.

2010-06-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

So last week I was able to present a working prototype, well a demo-video working prototype, of my Daemon robot research project to an audience at Watershed, Bristol. Working with Tarim and Dan Williams, colleagues at the Pervasive Media Studio, we managed to get together something that resembled my drawings and which could do some of the things we hoped we could achieve, and all within a couple of weeks.

We were able to build a simple prototype robot with a little added theatre, the end result is an installation with a relaxing atmosphere and a robotic entity that looks at you, listens to you, converses with you through instant chat and plays music it thinks will help with your mood.

I tried to create a 'living room' feel, so that you are sitting comfortably next to your Daemon in low light, with music playing. This is to create a relaxed atmosphere in which you might like to confide private feelings with your Daemon, as you might with a trusted friend or therapist or indeed, as was my original idea, as you would converse with yourself, the Daemon being your own inner voice made visible.

In this first very early stage, with two months R&D and a very small budget, I asked Tarim and Dan to help me make a simple prototype in a few days. We used Arduino and servos within the robot body to allow its head to move side to side and turn on one side in a 'listening' position. A web cam and face tracking allows it to follow your face as your move, again to give the impression of 'listening' and being interested. Tarim made a text interface so that the user and Daemon could chat with each other instantaneously. This works automatically, using prewritten replies and question I had written for the Daemon in the style of a very simple chat-bot. The user types into their laptop and the Daemon speaks on it's own monitor next to it, as if this is your domestic TV screen or monitor. Having identified my desire to be able to manually chat and operate or 'puppet' Daemon too, Tarim built a manual override into the system. For me as a writer/performer who loves improvising with the audience via characters, this is great fun. It means that what the Daemon says and does can be 'puppeted' either entirely manually (as in via computer commands) or as a mixture with the automated chat-bot. This is a very important tool for this platform.

We also have the Daemon's ability to change music when you squeeze its hand. Dan was able to set this up (we have a button hidden in the robot's hand) and his next step is to make it work with iTunes. I'm keen that the Daemon works as an interface with iTunes, as Daemon is about communicating emotion, particularly through music. Perhaps in future Daemon will read your emotions via BCI. For now I'm liking the 'fortune teller' approach whereby it tells you to squeeze it's hand and think your most private thoughts, desires, fears and it will understands them, playing you the music and giving you suggestions and comforts it thinks will help you.

And here's one I made earlier:

I made the prototype this time to look like the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, partly becasue as a child I desperately wanted them to come and take me away like they did Roy Neary. I sat at my piano playing that little five-note tune over and over. That movie has influenced me in many ways so here it pops up again. Since I wanted to put pretty much all of my scant budget into paying the programming tech brains, I had to make the robot body in a Blue Peterish way using tupper-ware boxes and humous pots covered in fabric. The head is papier mache. I tell you I had to do a lot of learning to make that bloody thing. Mainly in how many glues, no matter how expensive, do NOT stick polyethyline and polythene. Nothing on God's Earth would stick the different plastics inside the head to those in the body long enough to stop the damn thing's head falling off every 15 minutes. Therefore it wasn't ready to test on public users by last Wednesday's evening presentation. Instead we made a demo video, which I was able to shoot while it still had its head on.

The video is on YouTube and you can see interviews and photos on the D-Shed website as well as my Pervasive Media Studio blog and flickr pages. I'm writing up a proper report of the project and where we're going next with it, so look out for that too.

Daemon: So how will your robot inner self talk to you? iPhone apps perhaps or BCI?

2010-05-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

In my exploration of Robotics and Narrative, this week I've continued talking to technologists about how I can get Daemon to do what I want. Here's my notes from a chat about using iPhone apps with Tim Kindberg from Matter2Media. Followed by my second visit to Bristol Uni. Computer Science Dept. to talk about Brain Computer Interaction. At the end are my thoughts that have come from other conversations this week:

Chat with Tim Kindberg:

How do you and your Daemon talk to each other?

It wants to talk to you, it’s had a thought so it puts its hand up or some gesture.

You bring it close to you, to your ear, there's a proxiomity sensor in its ‘mouth’, maybe it whispers to you.

It says

what it wants to say,
what its been thinking about,
where you are,
What you said when you last spoke – it remembers what you’ve said before.

A human could answer for it
lots of people could answer for it, the wisdom of crowd choose what it says to you
these could be your friends if you want.
Can phone apps be used to help you and the robot talk to each other?

To do this it’s connected to your phone.

Google Speech – needs to be wifi to intercept the google pages then text to speech. Could use an AI like Pandorabot, Google Speech and text to speech.

There’s also a text to speech iphone app by Acapela.

The daemon has a phone in it.

Connect Daemon to your phone – you get directions on your phone or whatever it wants you to see/read/hear.

Voice recognition – IBM Via Voice or Dragon Naturally Speaking. There’s an iphone app for this – voice to text that learns your voice. Plus Pandorabot or our version.

Programme running inside Daemon to:

speak back to you
connect to google
voice to type, to our programme, to type, to text to speech.

Bristol Uni. Computer Science Dept.: chat about Brain Computer Interaction:

Today I met student Vi, who is studying the Emotiv kit by Neurosky . At the moment Vi is exploring the software and everything Emotiv can do on the PC screen, like moving objects in video games by thinking up, down, left right. I asked him about all the possibilities for controlling real world objects, robotics and all kinds of applications and he was very encouraging indeed. So for the next stage of my R&D there will definitely be some moves made towards using BCI. I want to move stuff with my mind!!!! It would literally be a dream come true.

Other notes from this week:

I was wondering if Daemon is like an analogue synth, itmakes emotional music, where person meets machine.

A kind of retro Close Encounters kind of thing.

it references films and books. It actually reflects my own, Hazel Grian's personality.

Nabaztag wifi ‘rabbit’ by Voilet. Uses RFID tags and speechrecgnition.

Therapy – it listens, it remembers and feeds back questions and statements to you to help you decide how you feel and act to help yourself be less lonely and isolated and depressed.

You help yourself by spending time with it it reflects back to you what you’re saying to it in a way that allows you to make decisions.

Dan told me about 750words.com – libraries that work out howyou feel from what you write and the kind of language you use. It needs you towrite 750 words a day.

Etoy

The rock music sample site – text to music – that SimonJohnson showed me.

I’m thinking about touch sensors, volume sensors, movementproximity, play music, text chat.

Other things I want to write up:

A Manifesto of Role Playing in Public

Rules of the Coneheads as performed by The Natural Theatre Company

Documenting this project

A Living Teddy Bear who plays Sigur Ros : Daemon Installation Test with lovely results

2010-05-24T05:41:00.000-07:00

I set up an installation test here in the Pervasive Media Studio last week as part of my work in progress presentation. It actually went pretty well, although it wasn't a comprehensive test, due to time restrictions I only asked for one volunteer, I was really pleased to get the exact feedback I wanted and some completely unexpected and useful results.

I created a 'living room' atmosphere in our small 'dark room', which has black out curtains (put up for the Punch Drunk Theatre installation). Basically from behind the curtain I operated a lap top with Skype Chat and iTunes with one hand and puppeted a teddy bear with the other hand! Only the teddy was visible, sitting on a chair as if it was 'alive' with a chair for the user/participant next to it. In front of them was a laptop with Skype Chat ready and a larger monitor and speakers with iTunes playing.

The experience with my volunteer, Amy (in her 20s), began before she entered the room. My intention was that the user would receive a text message telling her that her Daemon/Teddy is waiting for her and asking her to text back, give her name and her greatest secret wish. The text would add that only she and her Daemon would know this wish. Actually Amy didn't have her phone with her so I asked her to write it on a piece of paper and give it to me before the experience began. My reason for asking for this information was so that I could gauge her mood and something about her and also to give her the feeling that the Daemon shared one of her intimate desires, therefore giving the relationship a head start.

I set it up so that when the user entered the room the only light was the glow coming from the laptop and monitor and music was already playing. I chose to play a track by Icelandic band Sigur Ros, whose music is emotional, melancholy and soothing and which also has lyrics in a fictional language. The bear turned to look at Amy when she entered and she instinctively sat down, touched its paw and stroked its head. The bear responded by moving closer to her and nodding. Amy then received a chat message on the lap top from the bear and she answered it by typing. I had prepared a script before hand, designed to give the user an emotional and intimate exchange with the bear, helped by its movement and the music. I knew that I would have to improvise some of the chat as the user would not always reply as expected and may also say yes or no to any question. There was also a small delay in chat appearing at times. The first part of the chat went as follows:

imyourdaemon: hello amy

[05/19/10] test account: hello oops iwasn't quick enough

[05/19/10] test account: and I can't punctuate

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: I’m just listening to some music. Aband from Iceland called Sigur Ros. Do you like it?

[05/19/10] test account: oooo yes I'm going to see theguy from them in Barcelona in 4 weeks!

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: thatss wonderful. how does themusic make you feel

[05/19/10] test account: dreamy

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: I worry sometimes that I feel coldwhen people touch me. Do I feel warm?

[05/19/10] test account: you don't feel warm but youdon't feel cold either

[05/19/10] duncan speakman: I feel cold quite a lot so don'tworry about it

[05/19/10] test account: Thanks.

[05/19/10] test account: oh no you've got stuffing comingout of you

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: That’s very honest of you. I likeit.

I had then planned to direct attention to the larger monitor and to use iTunes Visualiser so the user and the Daemon could watch the abstract and ambiguous images created by the music.

[05/19/10] test account: Does your leg need fixing?

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: no its fine I’m no good atdescribing feelings.

I can show you some of my feelings as pictures on thescreen. Want to do it?

[05/19/10] test account: ok it's sounds a bit wierd butif that's how you express yourself

[05/19/10] test account: oh and how do I do it?

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: great . Squeeze my paw tight.

[05/19/10] test account: i'm squeezing

[05/19/10] test account: it looks like a bjork video

[05/19/10] test account: do you like things from iceland

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: ok hoe did that fell

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: how did that feel

Amy watched the images but meanwhile she had been distracted by what she interpreted as the Daemon/bear nodding its head towards a chest of drawers in the room. In fact this was just my puppeting the bear without being able to see properly, it was meant to be looking at the screen and nodding but Amy felt it was indicating something on the chest of drawers (which was actually part of the Punch Drunk set up poking through the curtain). Amy found a book on wild flowers on the chest and looked at it for clues, so I had to improvise my reply.

[05/19/10] test account:is the stuff on the table yours?

[05/19/10] test account: you keep looking at it

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: no its your stuff this is your roomin icelandic dreams

[05/19/10] test account: something about wild flowers?

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: yes. I’m going to have a little napnow. Will you come back and see me again sometime?

[05/19/10] test account: can you feel when i touch yourleg

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: yes

[05/19/10] test account: ok i'll leave you to it - yesi'll come back abd see you

[05/19/10] test account: ta ra

[05/19/10] imyourdaemon: bye amy

Amy then left the room. In the feedback session afterwards Amy told the rest of the people attending my talk about the experience. I was pleased to hear that she said, unprompted, that she felt at home in the room, as if it was her living room and she felt comfortable being with the 'living' teddy bear. She said she felt OK talking to it and touching it because no one else was there. We discussed whether the Daemon/bear should have spoken to her with some kind of audible voice, she didn't think she would have liked that. We all then discussed generally where this could go. The accident in which Amy had thought the bear was pointing her towards the book actually led to some really useful ideas coming out around the Daemon leading the user to other media, either physically pointing it's arm or whatever and/or giving clues/suggestions as to where the user could go next to find parts of a narrative, game or whatever.

This then lead to other really useful suggestions about the Daemon technology and more about its voice: perhaps Smart phone/iPhone technology might be enough to deliver many of the things needed with or without added sensors or robotics. For instance the voice could use something like Google voice recognition and the Daemon could perhaps speak in a whisper, if you put it to your ear. This would be also using the proximity sensors phones have. I'd suggested that it speaks with your own voice but this was thought to be too creepy by the audience, however it was then suggested that it could take your voice and change it somehow, so that without it being exactly your own voice it would remind you of a family member.

So my investigations and conversations with technologists, game designers and psychologists continue along these veins. Next week I am being shown some examples of the sensors, servos and Arduino bits and bobs that might be useful. I'm also hoping to go back to Bristol Uni. to look at a project being done there using the Neursky Brain Computer interaction kit. The residency is due to finish on June 9th.

Communicating Emotion: an unscientific encounter with technology

2010-05-12T09:21:00.001-07:00

It’s become popular to use technology to ‘measure’ emotions as part of an interactive 'process'. But do we really want to know how fast our heart’s beating or how sweaty our hands are? And if a computer knows this how can it really translate these things into anything useful for us emotionally? The scientific measurements of our physiological responses, which are out of our conscious control, are not necessarily the most useful way for us to understand emotion through experience; they are a scientist’s reaction to emotional understanding. For me it’s more important toask how do we show that we’ve understood these emotional signals and how do werespond? In other words how do we have an emotional conversation? How do we have an empathetic exchange between human and computer?

I want my audience to consciously make decisions about the emotional state of the robot and about their own emotional state, I don’t want the experience to feel like some kind of lie detector test. My aims are about decisions and control in the hands of the user, not about scientific testing. We read other people’s body language to seeif it’s safe for us to approach them and if we’ve been understood by them when we do interact. These things are important and we judge consciously and unconsciously facial expression, heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, sweating, muscular tightness and posture but what we’re looking for is distress or pleasure (apparently we have the ability to express and detect distress and pleasure from birth) but what makes it actually meaningful is a sense of empathy. Verbal language isn’t essential to convey emotions, a dog or a baby will know what emotion is in your voice no matter what words you use. So you can say and read a lot through sensory expression alone, voice intonation, facial expression and tiny bodily movements. I don’t think we’d choose to communicate with another being through knowledge of their heart rate or sweat levels; if we had to find a common language we’d much rather communicate by sharing something abstract like music.

Emotion as a word is imprecise and imprecision can be useful. Creating a mood may be the best way to get results. Mood bias makes people interpret ambiguity differently and tells us more about them, it gives people more space for expression if you present them with important ambiguity within a ‘safe setting’. Meaningful interactions between people involve warm hands, eye contact, movement towards or away from each other, smiles, head tilts, listening, breathing, hands and feet movement, tears, head up, listening, reacting. Speaking, responding, having a conversation, moving closer, touching hands,responding with noises, making jokes, sharing secrets, saying nothing, sharing moments.

It is not a realistic humanoid form that is important but the way a robot responds to and interacts with us. This means giving it the feel of an intelligent living entity that has emotions and empathy and needs our help too. May as well let the robot be and do what robots do best, not try to make them look or move like humans. Robot mentality may be different to humans it should be an interesting philosophical engagement between us and them.

So what’s the best way to convey contact and understanding between a computer and you? Does it read your brain waves and speak back to you in headphones? Using BCI translated to audio recordings? I have been thinking I could try to make an engagement like Close Encounters – using music and hand signals to communicate. Or like The Abyss. Imagine the next scenes after these films have finished, how do you begin to talk and communicate? I’ve been listening to the band Sigur Ros recently as I just discovered them. Their album Agaetis Byrjunis very emotionally evocative. Their use of an invented language creates thekind of ambiguity I have just mentioned, allowing the listener to interpret the meaning in their own way, lead by the emotional language of the music. The changes between the tracks create a kind of narrative, whatever order we listen to them. I am wondering, despite not having the rights to the music, if I could use this album as means of creating mood during which we interact with the alien-like entity that is theDaemon. I am thinking that the Daemon experience, whether for individuals, couples or groups, is a way of addressing loneliness and depression and is a kind of therapeutic experience, whichwordlessly brings hidden things to the fore and deals with them in a universally meaningful way.

My exciting adventures with the Robot Lab. part1: learning empathy and language with robots.

2010-05-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I visited the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. This is part of my discussions with different technology researchers who's interest is in social and emotional human-computer interaction. I've also visited Microsoft Research Cambridge where I'm being helped by Kenton O'Hara, John Helmes, Alex Taylor and Tim Regan all of the Socio-Digital Systems group and Bristol University Department Computer Science where I'm being advised by Sri Subramanian, senior lecturer in Human Computer Interaction. More on these later, for now here's the first tale of my Bristol Robotics Lab visit.

I talked with Roger Moore who's visiting BRL from Sheffield University Computer Science Dept. Professor Moore is also Chair of the Spoken Language Processing, Speech and Hearing Research Group. Roger and I had a long and very interesting chat in which we found we had a lot of common ground between myself as an artist and he as a scientist, which I'll go over in a moment. We also had some interesting differences in approach: Roger's main field is the creative application of speech technology, that is looking at the best ways in which computerised voice and speech can be applied to 'artefacts' as he calls them or 'pervasive media' as I might call it. My interest when I met him however was in how non-verbal language might be developed as the best way of emotionally communicating with a computerised object or robot. I am looking at how we might treat a robot type entity more like an alien, where we would wish to learn from each other by finding any common ground through which we can communicate should verbal language fail us. This might be visually through body language or images or with music. I mentioned to Roger that I was getting a lot from reading Rosalind Picard's book Affective Computing and this lead us to discuss Emotion Theory and some interesting projects around it.

The HUMAINE project, for instance, is concerned with developing interfaces that will register and respond to emotion, particularly pervasive emotion (forms of feeling, expression and action that colour most of human life.) Another key individual is Klaus Scherer of the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences. Now I made notes at the time, which made sense to me as Roger explained things but now all I can do is try to summise what any of it meant without having spent any time studying Scherer's work and Emotion Theory. One of the things I picked up on is the fact of our 'normative' use of emotion: this is where context a a sense of the appropriate dictates how much emotion we express. For instance one is not supposed to grimace and pull extreme facial expressions at a business meeting but at sporting event it's fine. Of course we're not usually aware of the intricate rules of emotional expression until they're broken, suddenly the rules are all too clear. In terms of art and entertainment of all kinds, this is often its job, to point out these rules of expression that we live by. Breaking these rules creates very strong emotions in us immediately from humour and freedom to anxiety and fear. We learn a lot about ourselves and others when we become aware of the rules of appropriate emotional expression.

This brings us to empathy and Theory of Mind. Roger Moore points out to me that learning language is closely linked with being able to project ones self and to understanding other's needs. Autism for instance is linked with both a lack of empathy and a lack of ability to learn language. In other words learning to communicate with strangers, foreigners or aliens teaches us empathy and emotional intelligence. What I'm now looking for with the Daemon project, are ways in which we might learn to communicate emotionally with a different kind of being forming some kind of emotional language between the two of us, so that people of all abilities might come away feeling a great deal of understanding of the emotionally suppressing rules we live by and perhaps by communicating with our Daemon, break them.

Daemon Project: Plumping is Essential: developing emotions in computers to help ourselves.

2010-05-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Cast your imagination forward to a time when there are no special people called ‘artists’ who make sanctified ‘art’ but everyone is recognised as creative and what we all create is available everywhere. ‘Aagh! Imagine all the crap all over the place, look at YouTube!’ your Daemon yells. Context dear friend, you retort to your inner critic, it’s all about the context. Personally I do not feel at all comfortable labelling myself an artist but I don’t mind thinking of myself as someone who delivers emotional experiences in different contexts, admittedly not a very snappy title. However, I’m currently getting a lot from Affective Computing, scientist Rosalind Picard’s seminal introduction to the idea of emotional computers, in which she can‘t help but highlight differences between scientific and artistic approaches. I’m discussing her ideas in this and a few of my next blog entries so for ease I’m referring to myself as an ‘artist’, that is someone who’s stock in trade is emotion, delivered by use of technology.

How do artists ever make decisions? It’s hard enough to decide what knickers to wear in the morning. So how do we artists work out what exactly is going to be happening in our art? Firstly one ‘researches’, soaking up information from many sources with an open mind (or if you like, wandering about a bit on your own) until eventually an initial decision is taken, the idea begins to take shape and we start writing, making images, noises whatever. But how are these decisions reached, not just by artistic types but by everyone? According to Rosalind Picard non of us: butchers, bakers, computer chip makers, can take any decision without coming over all emotional. Accepted wisdom trains us to believe that emotion means poor judgement and irrational behaviour, it’s inappropriate, embarrassing, a stigma, non scientific, on the sidelines, a luxury.On the contrary Picard announces, emotion plays an essential role in rational decision making, learning and other cognitive functions. Emotion, she says, is in fact a fundamental part of perception itself. This apparently is big news to scientists, even the female ones. Artists deal in emotion but again contrary to popular belief, we do also use logic and rationality as part of our processes: it would be impossible to communicate ideas or get anything done or without it. Picard’s point is that all perception, whether deciding on knickers or directing Avatar, requires both emotionality and rationality: they are not polar opposites indeed they cannot be separated.

We make decisions by weighing up the possibilities and then going by ‘gut feelings’ or ‘instinct’ to finally decide. Computer programmers tend to do everything they can to avoid emotion hence computers are not built to understand emotion, they are built entirely on a model of logic. But intelligence is not comprised of logic alone, it requires emotional skills to allow us to deal with valence: that is whether we feel positive or negative towards something, how we decide what is right and wrong in any context. If Mr Spock wasn’t half human he would be a crap member of the Star Fleet crew, endlessly considering the options but never coming up with a conclusion. If he was all purely logical Vulcan, he wouldn’t be able to ‘plump’ for anything. It’s our human ability to ‘plump’ that makes us intelligent. According to Picard, emotions are essential to intelligence and to creative and flexible problem solving. Our sense of valence, what we ‘plump’ for, is what we generally refer to as ‘gut feelings’ and ‘instinct’. This is closely associated with ‘morality’ or ‘taste’, which are not naturally occurring ‘truths’ but based on all the symbolic cultural meanings we’ve picked up from our surroundings through out our lives. See my other blog post on Bourdieu’s study of taste and class. Coming soon.

For Picard, emotions influence the very mechanism of rational thinking. Emotional skills especially the ability to recognise and express emotions are essential for natural communication with humans. So now science has given the thumbs up to emotion, women may stop being chastised for it, men can stop fearing it and computers may be developed to have emotional intelligence. Perhaps as well as being the ying to your yang, the Daemon is a computer that has the ability to plump.

Daemon Universe Creation, Day 1!

2010-04-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Today is the official start date of my Artists Residency at iShed Pervasive Media Studio. I've been a resident here for two years already but I'm excited to have been awarded R&D funding to day dream about a new platform for interactive narrative I'm calling Daemon.

My initial tag line is that Daemon is your inner self made visible; as life is a quest, together you will go on an adventure. As your most private companion it gets to know you, how you feel, your dreams and fears, your day to day emotional states. Daemon will carry a story, which you and it will embark on together. Daemon is connected to any digital information you want via the internet. What this means most importantly is that it can download a narrative, which you will experience with Daemon as your side-kick.

My concept for Daemon is that you will be able to experience something of the immersion and drama of a rich story universe, its complex themes and relationships, whilst having the personal control and interaction of gaming ie you are the main character.

At the moment I'm imagining the main theme to be about control, decisions, fate, authorship, the handing of our own lives and the idea of destiny, hope, death and redemption. The Daemon name comes from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, in which each person's soul or inner self appears in animal form as a constant companion. I'm inspired by the epic literary quests such as Frodo's journey to Mordor; is it about the goal or the journey or the way you do it? Is there a pay off? Is there a right and wrong way? As an atheist I ask, without religion how to we answer these questions?

Psychologically I'm inspired by the conversations one has with ones own inner voice, the constant battle of life as a journey.

Technically I'd love it if ones Daemon could actually be a fluid, living creature capable of hovering, scampering or flying, jumping in ones pocket or perching on one's shoulder. Since this technology doesn't exist yet, I'm proposing a combination of the nearest technology we have plus the greatest thing we have, our imaginations.

You can see all the progress in my March, April and May blog posts on this.

My Stepford Wives Twittertale

2010-03-26T05:23:00.000-07:00

Roll up! @Jo_inStepford has begun.

My attempt at the (more or less!) real time Twittertelling of The Stepford Wives movie, 1975 version.

This will be my own spoof retelling, IN MY OWN VOICE, of the classic Bryan Forbes film, following the fate of modern New York photographer Joanna Eberhart as she moves with her husband to the seemingly idyllic town of Stepford. It's as much of a fond tribute to the 1970s movie as it is a retelling of the fantastic story.

The Tweets will go up in time with the days covered by the movie story.

Watch Joanna's fate unwind AND if there's anything you think she should know: fashion tips, get the hell out of there tips... then @reply to her at any time.

Follow at http://twitter.com/Jo_inStepford

The Tweeture: the social robot toy

2010-03-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

This month I helped develop The Tweeture, the social robot who Tweets, along with Bristol pervasive games company Slingshot. As well as helping with his design, I wrote his voice ie all his cheeky Tweets, which you can see @thetweeture. We took him to SXSWi 2010 in Austin and he was a great hit with one and all, including Twitter CEO Evan Williams.

There'll be more to come on The Tweeture including a Tweeture book in June.

Meanwhile here's Pervasive Media Studio Director Clare Reddington's blog post about the lovable monster robot: And you can see more photos of The Tweeture here in my flickr set

See more about Tweeture here http://www.pmstudio.co.uk/news/2010/03/15/capturing-tweeture-1

Artificial Intelligence 2010: When will AI reality catch up with Sci-Fi Imaginings?

2010-03-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

Why has AI been taking so long to develop compared with its fictional version?

These are my notes from the SXSWi panel, which asked the question. The chair was Dr Doug Lenat of Austin based www.cyc.com :

"Cycorp was founded in 1994 to research, develop, and commercialize Artificial Intelligence. Cycorp's vision is to create the world's first true artificial intelligence, having both common sense and the ability to reason with it."

Doug Lenat shows a brief history of AI in both science fiction and science fact. He says that he believes the HAL 9000 computer in the 1968 film 2001 Space Odyssey, showed us a way of changing everyday life on Earth. However, he asks, twenty years later, is the Alice chatbot as good as it gets? We continue to underestimate the problem of how much information we are using as humans when we use language.

Lenat takes a shot at predicting the future of our relationship with computers over the next ten years:

2013: crowd sourcing explosion.

2015: computers capable of question answering, semantic search and syntactic search.

2020: cradle to grave mental prothesis - we'll delegate more and more to our mechanical servants.

The panel comprised of: Professor Peter Stone from University of Texas at Austin department of Computer Science and director of Learning Agents. His research has taken the goal that the movies have adopted ie fully autonomous agents in the real world. He believes we will try to build complete agents on a closed loop ie robots that sense, decide and act. This will drive research forward he believes. He uses the example of Robocup project where robots play football. By 2006 robots are fully autonomous individuals on soccer field and they do team work. He also cites the DARPA Grand Challenge wherein a robot drove across the desert and also examples of robots driving cars on race tracks. He shows a simulation of how robots driving cars could solve traffic flow problems through automation and detection. He concludes that AI can be part of a solution for a good future: I imagine he means compared with the dystopian vision of the Terminator franchise in which machines take control and seek to destroy all human kind.

Next up is Natasha Vita More. A strangely beautiful woman of 60 who yet looks somewhat robotic herself. I can't say she has definitely had surgery but she was, as well as being the only woman on the panel, the one who looked and sounded most like a visitor from the future. She is currently doing her Phd at the University of Plymouth and her subject is the Transhuman or the Post Human.

Vita More asks: what is human enhancement? What are its media? In future will here be a new criteria for normal? And as for behaviour, will biosynthetic identities be familiar or fearful?

What will happen if a biologically unfixed species develops? What happens if we create multiple bio-syn personas? Will we consider ourselves disabled in the future if we're not transformed or enhanced by AI?

Doug Lenat rounds up with how a fiction writer might look at the idea of human plus machine from an artistic perspective. A question from the floor asks whether computers can ever make something ' beautiful'. Lenat says it is in the eye of the beholder and mentions Harold Cohen's programme, which has made 'beautiful artwork'. He says in a century or two people won't understand what this problem is about, or why we're concerned with it. A follow up question asks about the possibilities for humour as machines learn to be more like us. Lenat says it is a question of whether a computer can predict what will be seen as funny or beautiful in any context. I think that what is funny or artistic is often something which is out of context. Another layer of complexity of meaning which computers will need to understand.

Lenat concludes by saying that as well as a sense of self awareness and self purpose, we must build a sense of morality into these machines. Whose morality in what context remains to be seen.

The AAAI Presidential Panel on Long Term Futures (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) www.aaai.org

Pervasive Creatives are Ahead of the Game. SXSWi2010

2010-03-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

Listening to the panel discussion With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Future of Video Games, I once again feel I’m listening to a major entertainments industry very slowly catching up with what ARG and pervasive gaming creators have practised for some years: that games can be physical, that games can be social, that gaming can teach you stuff, that games can be cross-platform.

Shock news, alert the media. Surprising, isn’t it that these very basic realisations are being expounded as ‘the future’ by a panel of professionals who include the exec. producer of Spore and Sims2 (Lucy Bradshaw of EA)?

Here’s the panel members and the basics of what they are saying about themselves:

Jim Bower: created Whyville – 2D casual gaming world for kids which is ‘educational’ and has 6.2 million registered accounts. “The video game industry has been slow to pick up on the culture around video games.” “Games in which you learn something and gain cultural standing are interesting.”

Tiffany Barnes: uses ‘video games’ to teach computer science “games are more effective than traditional learning for science and computer science students.”

Anne McLaughlin: cognitive scientist working with older people and cognition. “Games are more and more physical activity. Video games and social interaction is very interesting”.

Lucy Bradshaw: EA Games – Spore, Sims2. “With user creativity being recognised, the landscape of video games is changing dramatically. We’re interested in how games go beyond the box, how they spread onto the internet. It’s democritising. Games utilise the latest technology, like twitter.”

In some ways these comments are all encouraging. I’m very glad to be working in a gaming world that is financially very poor but which is considered by the megabucks ‘video game’ industry to be THE FUTURE.

I'm in Austin for SXSW Interactive 2010

2010-03-12T16:01:00.000-08:00

I'm here with a delegation funded by Arts Council England calling ourselves the Umbrella Group. I'll be filling you in a lot more throughout this week and you can see my live-ish SXSWi blog here along with the blogs of the rest of my group.

My Latest research project: Daemon, your inner self made real.

2010-03-05T05:43:00.000-08:00

I've just been awarded funding for my latest R & D project, in which I'll be attempting to develop a roving character, possibly robotic, with whom you build a very personal relationship and follow a narrative. I'm seeking to reflect the kinds of classic central character and side kick relationships found in fantasy literature such as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. I'm also looking to explore how technologies such as Brain Computer Interaction, AI, voice, face and proximity detectors can be used in the design of a new platform. This is meant as an exploration of our personal imaginative world created by books and how that portability and fluidity can be created using technology and devices - without tying us to a fixed screen or some kind of 'dead' device. Here's my initial proposal, which got me the first stage feasability funding from my beloved base the Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol and Arts Council England.

DAEMON Daemon is an entity who responds to your thoughts and emotions and to your physical actions: following, protecting, contradicting, knowing you. Not just a robot, not just a pet: Daemon is your inner self made visible in the physical world. Together you and your Daemon will go on adventures throughout the world.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND PARTNERS

I will be asking these questions:

Does meaningful, emotionally engaging narrative need to be experienced in a fixed environment ie screen, book, stage, or can it be pervasive?

How well can a robot respond to an individual user’s thoughts and emotions as well as their voice and physical movements?

How can such a robot work in unison with its user, learning to respond and play and advise like a friend?

Can I bring an adventure narrative into the relationship which reflects similar ‘literary quest’ relationships like in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings and other fantasy fiction?

Since, co-incidently the Tweeture project is being developed for SXSW 2010 by Simon Games, I will be a part of that project and will be drawing on it. I expect the outcomes of the Tweeture project to be significant in the development of the Daemon project. The difference is that Daemon uses different technology ie Brain Computer Interaction, AI and Voice Recognition but much can be learnt about user interaction with a pervasive character.

For Daemon I will Design a character that will eventually be built in robot form. Write an adventure narrative in which you and the Daemon go on a mythical quest. Work with technologists to build-in brain computer interaction, AI and voice sensors. Work with a designer to have a simple but aesthetic prototype built. Weigh up the pros and cons of the user being required to wear a head set compared with the experience it offers. I’ll be exploring the possibilities of brain computer interaction technology, AI and voice recognition within fictional narrative. I’ll be looking into Neurosky’s basic ‘Mindflex’ technology and the more sophisticated ‘Emotiv’ headset, which has a greater range of sensors and recognises emotions. I’ll be doing this with the help of Kenton O’Hara at Microsoft Research/PM Studio along with other technologists, part of my research would be to find these other technologists.

AIM and AUDIENCE

My aims are to explore:the essential nature of narrative and character experience beyond literature, the wider public experience of gaming as a means of story world immersion. I have not said much about who the audience are, I am imagining them currently as being from a wide demographic and not necessarily children. I have begun conducting audience research on 9-12 year olds already and will broaden my research to establish the best test audience during this period of R&D.

Stage A is free exploration : of the narrative and of the technology. Visiting expert researchers in their own creative environments such as Microsoft Research Cambridge and the Robot Lab at Bristol University/UWE. Stage B is the writing of character and narrative world and detailing the story of user engagement. Stage C is, with the designers and technologists make sure a simple prototype ready to be tested with the public. I will then set out what developments could happen in the future. The whole process willl be thoroughly documented and distributed.

TRANSMEDIA IP AND PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT

I expect the outcomes to be something simple and fun I can show to the transmedia and product development industries as a taster for a wider project. The aims of the transmedia industry are in service of brands to develop and extend story worlds so that they can be accessed in many ways:

cinema,

gaming

publishing

product development

What I expect to show these industries is an example of two things:A new platform that can be used to extend audience engagement with existing large IP An example of my own original IP on this platform.

The outcomes of this project in terms of the Daemon itself will be fed into my next R&D projects this year, including Grants for The Arts and Media Sandbox funding applications.

You're My Hero: Swedish cross-media

2010-01-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

This is definitely one of the best things I've seen for a long time. The Swedes are really into mixing art, public engagement, digital and Television. Yes Sweden has produced some of the most risky and interesting transmedia TV experiments ever.

This is actually a campaign for the Swedish TV License. You upload a photo of a friend (or yourself!) and they appear in the film as a public hero. It's actually very moving and it appeals to my huge ego. I love it. Here's the version of the film my friend and colleague made by making me her hero. Aw shucks. tackfilm: Hero

Transmedia Storytelling: Pioneers in the New Age of Narrative

2010-01-07T09:18:00.000-08:00

Here's a really useful quote describing what transmedia is:

"Transmedia storytelling is the process of sharing a narrative through many different channels (websites, video, audio etc) at once, often becoming an interactive process with input from the reader."

This comes from an interesting blog series by Kat Meyer, showing how publishing is dealing with transmedia.

Kat Meyer's blog

Check out the chapter from transmedia guru Jeff Gomez of Starlight Runner Entertainment.

Sherlock Holmes game: AI Aims to Solve In-Game Chatter

2009-12-26T03:29:00.000-08:00

Great press for a fanstastic and complex game I worked on as a writer. 221b, the game leading up to the new Sherlock Holmes film released today, includes AI 'chat-bots' which I worked on as a script/character writer. The BBC have published this article on the successful use of AI in the 221b game!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8426523.stm

You can play 221b with a Facebook friend, you decide which one of you is Holmes and Watson. The production values are very high and match the movie, it's brilliant!

221b.sh

Here's an extract from Chris Vallance's piece for BBC News:

"Chatbot" technology is being used in an attempt to solve one of "the last uncracked problems" in games design.

221b, released in the run-up to the new Sherlock Holmes movie, harnesses the software to allow conversations between players and in-game characters.

Gamers, who assume the character of either Sherlock Holmes or Dr Watson, must interrogate virtual witnesses and suspects to progress in the game.

Success depends upon getting the right answers from these characters.

"It's our role to predict what you might know at that point in the game and the questions you might ask," said Rollo Carpenter of Existor, which provided the technology.

"The ways that you might say things to them are almost unlimited."

'Drama manager'

Mr Carpenter is a two-time winner of the Loebner Prize, a competition that challenges computer scientists to build programmes capable of convincingly human conversations.

When a player interrogates a game character in 221b, Carpenter's technology is used to analyse the question and to provide a relevant response.

Players must interrogate witnesses and suspects

Rather than attempting to create an exhaustive list of possible questions and the appropriate response, the characters in the game are capable of making a "fuzzy interpretation" of what is said to them.

Pattern matching is then used to identify the appropriate answer for any given input by a player.

The intention is to remove the frustration, familiar to any who played the old text-based adventure games, of having to guess the right way of asking a question or giving an instruction.

Media Hybrids

2009-11-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

Allison Cody, comment on kidscreen.com post on Media Hybrids

I do not think of hybrids as a primarily financial issue, but one of expanded creativity living across a variety of platforms. As long as the quality of the concept is present, that specific storyline can successfully become a TV show, a book, a toy, a video game and more. Sure, there are experts in all of those fields. That is to be celebrated and utilized. However, to say that there is slim opportunity for individuals and, thus, companies, to be good at more than one thing is perhaps short-sighted. The kids will decide.

Zombie March, Bristol 2009

2009-11-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

The Zombie March is set to become an annual institution in even more cities all over the world I think. Around 1000 zombies staggered and moaned their way across central Bristol this Halloween. I've uploaded my Bristol zombie photos to flickr.

What's Cross-Media? Film versus Interactive pow-wow!

2009-10-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Very interesting event yesterday discussing all aspects of what "Cross-Media" is. 'Experience design', 'story architecture', 'narrative design', 'full media', 'transmedia' - so many terms! But beyond semantics, it seems everyone has a different take on it and especially there are differences between filmmakers/distributers and those of us who may be used to be filmmakers but are now thinking beyond film structure and content and actually deconstructing narrative experience and the relationship between 'audience' and 'producer'. A very interesting debate. As a start here's the videos from yesterday's Power to the Pixel forum at which some of the world leaders in this area spoke.

Self portraits by the bathroom window

2009-10-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

I made a load of self portraits this morning, which was brave of me since I have massive bags under my eyes today. I noticed the light at the bathroom window was interesting so did a few experiments around the idea of emotions and actions you find yourself doing at the bathroom window that no one else sees or knows about I've uploaded a selection to flickr

Berlin photos

2009-10-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

I've uploaded my Berlin photos to flickr

How do you get a wide audience for X media content? Or any audience at all!

2009-09-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

A key issue for cross media creators is audience. Not only finding an audience but making sure they that they know how to take part. ARGs began as extra online activities for fans of movies and console games, like free treasure hunts, paid out of marketing budgets. As big brand film and game fans discovered these mysterious game/stories through forums small online communities formed around them. As more creative directors discovered what fun it could be the audience grew as did the discussion of the possibility of a new art form. Since ARGs are relatively cheap to construct and run, grass roots ARGs emerged which existed in their own right and not as an adjunct to a bigger product event. The ARG audience remains small and this kind of activity remains mystifying to a wider public. However there are no fixed rules about what an ARG should be, indeed the term itself is simply there so we know the very vague area we are talking about e.g. scaleable trans-media interactive stories, finding audiences through social media, possibly mixing digital and real world activities.

Essentially ARG type activities remain as marketing for big brand events and to reach a wider audience ARG producers are reacting in different ways. A step-by-step introduction process is now being taken, whereby an audience can be attracted and retained. Some are tending to forgo the riskier ARG activities that require the audience to leave their computer or to act at a particular time. The activity becomes more like casual gaming than a live experience, making game play simpler by containing it within a single site online and taking away the live time pressure element, using chat bots, role playing, video clips and regular automated updates to give the sense of engaging with complex character and story. So role-playing and detective work remain key, as does some kind of collaborative teamwork. The ARG type experience is not single player; it requires that the player join forces with at least one other player and should at least lurk around a forum. It is this collaborative community engagement and the detective work required that puts off a larger audience, yet it is also these elements that give the ARG so much potential both as brand marketing and as a new art form. On other occasions producers are responding by taking much of the activity offline and attracting theatre or outdoor games audiences. In these instances of ‘experience design’ the audience is engaged in and chaperoned through a narrative experience with other people, with traditional live theatrical or street gaming interactions, i.e. actors, props, location, rules of engagement clearly explained. At these events however the producers attempt to utilise digital networking, content delivery and user interaction by using and experimenting with mobile/pervasive technology unobtrusively in order to create a seamless experience, sometimes mixing virtual locations with the real. I am currently most excited by the second of these main responses to finding a trans-media audience.

Berlin - bland face, dirty underbelly

2009-09-27T09:59:00.001-07:00

SXSW Interactive 09 blog roll

2009-08-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

This March I attended SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas for the second year running. I went with a posse of UK Creatives lead by Bristol's Pervasive Media Studio of which I'm a resident. It's great event comprised of tonnes of learning and networking all day and getting rat arsed at the many parties night. We all blogged about the many panels, discussions and events going on there, on a variety of subjects from the weird and wonderful to the prosaic.

Here's the archive of my blog entries from SXSW Interactive 09 subjects including: ARGs, Wisdom of Crowds, Mobile use in the developing world and Sixth Sense Computing - check out the great TED demo video for this with Pattie Maes.

Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment, USC syllabus and reading list.

2009-08-14T02:38:00.000-07:00

A useful resource on Transmedia story telling, which I've discovered via Twitter, is Henry Jenkins at University of South California who's running a course on Transmedia Storytelling and Entertainment . The course explores the phenomenon of franchises and how they work across all media, from both the commercial and narrative structure points of view.

"A transmedia story represents the integration of entertainment experiences across a range of different media platforms. A story like Heroes or Lost might spread from television into comics, the web, computer or alternate reality games, toys and other commodities, and so forth, picking up new consumers as it goes and allowing the most dedicated fans to drill deeper."

So for those of us who can't make it to his classes, Henry Jenkins' website provides details of the whole fifteen week syllabus and extensive reading list.

Henry Jenkins is the Provost's Professor of Communications, Journalism, and Cinematic Art at the University of Southern California. Until recently, he served as the co-founder of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More about Henry Jenkins is available here .

Guide to Transmedia Storytelling

2009-08-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

This slideshow is a great guide to Alternate Reality Games and what is some parts is being called Transmedia storytelling.

Havana, aesthetic city of intrigue

2009-08-01T04:08:00.000-07:00

I began and ended my two week trip to Cuba in Havana, locally known as Habana ofcourse. I went with one of my oldest friends Becky, we'd be talking about it for years and wanted to go now before Fidel passes away and things start to change. His brother Raul is now in charge and the country still has very little evidence of American influence or consumer culture but no one knows for sure how long it will last. I went with expectations and they were all fulfilled. The mixture of the Caribbean setting with European old world politics is fascinating. The faded glory of a bygone era seen in the immense, delapidated buildings and the 1950s cars exists like a parallel world along side more modern developments in transport and roads. We spent most of our time in Vieja Habana, the old town where the poorest people live along side the tourist attractions of old colonial buildings, the best hotels and restaurants. The people are always very evident as they hang out in the street, talking, playing, sitting on their doorsteps in the shade from the immense heat. And it was very hot, even the Cubans were sweltering, large muscular young men wiped their brows with pristine white hankies and beautiful young women moved slowly through the crumbling back streets carrying bright umbrellas to shelter them from the sun. The shops don't contain much, single chocolate bars are displayed in glass cases like lace might have once been in Edwardian department stores. All Cubans are given rashion cards which enable them to receive free staples from the Government rashion shops. Walking around Havana I was constantly intrigued by the tantalising glimpses into the dark recesses of the crumbling apartment buildings in which people live, not wanting to pry or invade their privacy I had to resist taking as many photos as I wanted although I managed to occaisionally snap a silhouetted figure standing in a court way or sitting in a chair in a basic living room, electric wires hanging over a picture of Jesus. And as we walked we were very often spoken to, mostly by the young men, they weren't exactly hassling us, not in the way you might expect in say Cairo, no these were constant yet gentle attempts to get your attention. "Hello beautiful lady, you are so beautiful, where are you from?" Of course at first I was flattered, as what woman wouldn't want to feel very pleased with herself for making a splash in the streets of Havana? For some reason they kept calling Becky 'Linda' which obviously means something like pretty. Whereas they mostly assumed I was Italian, with which I was rather pleased, they often called out German to Becky, which she was most offended by. One guy even half jokingly called her a German Facist to which she proudly retorted 'I'm English and I'm a socialist!" But of course they were hoping to make a little money from us and I eventually realised, a little disappointed. But I'm maintaining a little fantasy that my sachaying through Havana really did create a stir.

You can see all of my photographs of Havana here.

Cuba

2009-07-29T12:46:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an amazing life expanding two week trip to Cuba, from Havana to Guanabo, then to Trinidad de Cuba and back to Havana. More on the trip to come, meanwhile here's my photos taken with my Nikon D60:

Havana

Trinidad de Cuba

Traces of Hope Wins New Media Award

2009-06-30T01:34:00.000-07:00

Traces of Hope, the online game I wrote with Enable Interactive for British Red Cross has won the One World New Media Award.

British Red Cross consider it their most successful online campaign to date. The Judges of this prestigious award, which recognises the best coverage of the developing world across all media, said:

"[We] were impressed by the real innovation shown in this work, and how well it appealed to its target audience, who are hard to reach for a charity like the Red Cross. The fictional characters in the game, based on real-life stories, were well scripted, introducing younger audiences to issues and voices from other countries and giving them a vivid picture of The Red Cross and its work."

Traces of Hope is an online game in which users are asked to help Joseph, a young Ugandan who has been displaced by conflict, and to reunite him with his mother. The game combines storytelling with detective work, as users search for clues hidden across the internet. Through playing the game, users research information that will challenge their perceptions of people whose lives are affected by armed conflict.

With Traces of Hope we intended to simplify ARG elements and make this kind of narrative gaming experience accessible to a wider audience. The brief was to encourage 18 to 24 year olds to research the real work of British Red Cross by searching their web site. In doing so we made a central website that mimicked a web to satellite phone user interface. The audience were then able to receive text messages from Joseph in the IDP camp that felt as if they were interacting at that moment with a real person. Via mock Google maps the audience, having done their research, entered correct answers to Joseph's queries, so that the player worked together as a team with Joseph, guiding him through the camp to find his mother. Some of the bits of back story were hidden on other sites, which proved to be a little confusing to novices to this genre. However having Reuters as a partner meant we had our fictional journalist Alan Hackston mixing with the real journos, a lot of fun.

All about me - my latest Biog.

2009-06-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

Here's my biog followed by my CV:

I'm Hazel, I'm a writer and ideas person and I've won awards. I work with digital agencies for big brands, games, movies, NGOs. I work with Art Directors, Creative Directors and any member of the team on all stages of pitch or delivery. I write any kind of copy or bring expertise in experiential or gaming areas. I also work with the latest technology and find fun things to do with it.

I make new kinds of entertainment and I view entertainment as art. This is might be Alternate Reality Games, collaborative experience design, trans-media content...whatever you want to call it, it doesn't really have a fixed name...we experiment with social media, trying to give audiences stuff that has meaning and is fun for them. I specialise in Artificial Intelligence/chat-bots, theatrical/physical experiences.

Here's a run down of what I've been up to in the last couple of years and where I am right now:

I work as a freelance writer, experience designer and consultant, delivering a single service or the whole design, build and distribution package. I work with digital agencies where my work is paid for my marketing budgets: I work with brands and organisations such as Paramount, Warner Bros., Ridley Scott Associates, BBC, British Red Cross, either directly or through digital agencies such as Enable Interactive, Rubber Republic and AKQA.

As an artist I do my own R&D into creativity using new technology. For this I raise funding from Arts Council England and other bodies. I'm based in the Pervasive Media Studio in central Bristol, a very funky hive of new technology and digital creativity, which means I have a pool of digital designers and technologists at hand to help out, or I work on my tod, whatever suits me.

All my photographs are held in my Flickr collections.

You can find me on Twitter as LicoriceHazel

Check out my You Tube channel for all video content.

I just got back from SXSWi 2010, which I attended as part of the Umbrella Group funded by Arts Council England. You can read SXSWi 2010 blog here.

You can read my 2009 SXSW Interactive blog here, giving a run down of all the panels I attended including the ARG panel which was an ARG itself along with blood covered actors, to the demo of the interactive mini projector that turns your hand into a computer.

My background is as a writer, director and performer. I worked for several years as a performer with the amazing Natural Theatre Company , in BBC Radio as a writer and actor and made many short films, including world tour visuals for Portishead. Check out my You Tube channel for all video content including all the video for my ARGs.

And here's how the current phase of my work started:

In 2006 I created the ARG 'MeiGeist', which had a great fan base of around 30,000 people world wide and was a joy to do. It was the first publicly funded ARG with money from Arts Council England and other support. We had 10 web sites, 40 puzzles, 50 videos and a live event where the fans became a part of the story in the streets.

2007 I wrote season 1 of the online drama KateModern for Bebo, produced by the creators of LonelyGirl15. They say it had over 60 million views. This was a great way for me to take the lessons learnt from MeiGeist to a wider audience. Using all the Bebo tools to allow the audience to interact with the characters live both online and in person at elaborate live theatrical events.

In 2007 I also created my own ARG again with Jonathan Williams, commissioned by Hewlett Packard Labs. The Sky Remains is a social network site with video content and puzzles from which players are sent out into the real world to discover GPS delivered content and HP Mscape games. Parts of the complex story are hidden in geocache boxes around the world. The Guardian Technology carried the story.

I then wrote an online drama for British Red Cross and digital agency Enable Interactive for the campaign HIV:What's The Story? this created plenty of news coverage and is on Bebo, MySpace and Facebook

In 2008 I created an ARG Enable Interactive for the British Red Cross People in Conflict camapign. In this game, the audience discovers the work of the Red Cross in Internally Displaced Persons camps by helping a boy find his mother in a camp in Uganda, using a fictional satphone/website interface and Google maps. Traces Of Hope is considered by the Red Cross to be their most successful online campaign ever

Also in 2008 I spent 6 months with Pete Postlethwaite and the company of King Lear at Liverpool Everyman, directed by Rupert Goold. During this time I created a community blog, You Tube channel and backstage film, all as an experiment into how to extend the high profile theatre production to an online audience.

In 2009: STAR TREK MOVIE ARG and SHERLOCK HOLMES MOVIE GAME

I co-wrote and helped create the ARG for the Star Trek movie, which was released in May.

Here's a fan mash up video of that project, which helps to explain an old-skool ARG very well!

I worked on the Sherlock Holmes movie game 221b with AKQA and Hide and Seek. I wrote the AI chat bot characters for that.The two player game is accessible through Facebook. http://www.221b.sh/

I've written a GPS walking tour drama with Interactive Places for the National Trust and I'm working on an ARG/iPhone game about climate change with the same company. That game is called If Only and we have a blogger.com blog with that name.

2010: I've helped develop the social robot who tweets, Tweeture with Simon Games, which we took the SXSWi adn everyone loved him! He even met Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Look out for my blog post on this project.

Hazel Grian CV: Transmedia Writer/Creator.

‘Hazel Grian is a funny filmmaking genius’ Matt Groening, The Simpsons Creator

221b Sherlock Holmes: Online Narrative Game. 2009

Warner Bros. Pictures/AKQA/Hide and Seek. AI Chat-Bot Character Writer.

Star Trek: Alternate Reality Game. 2009

JJ Abrams/Bad Robot/Paramount Pictures/Rubber Republic. Co-Creator/user experience consultant/ Writer: story/script/improvised live character.

United Nations Sustainability campaign/Enable Interactive. Concept/writer. 2010.

BBC Learning/BBC Education: National ARG consultancy 2009-2012

If Only: iPhone Game with Real World Sensors and Live Theatre. Interactive Places 2010. Writer.

King Lear: Online Experience. 2008

Pete Postlethwaite/Rupert Goold/Liverpool Everyman. Filmmaker/Interactive Artist in Residence

The Sky Remains: Alternate Reality Game.HP Labs. 2008 Writer/Director/Producer/Co-Creator

British Red Cross. Traces of Hope: Online Narrative Game. 2008 Winner: One World New Media Award. Enable Interactive. Writer/Co-Creator

KateModern – Season 1: Online Drama. 2007-08 Bebo/LG15. Writer/Developer

iShed Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol, UK: Senior resident since 2008.

British Red Cross/Bebo. HIV: What’s The Story? Online drama. Enable Interactive. Writer/Co-Creator.

MeiGeist: Alternate Reality Game. 2007

Arts Council England/Watershed/South West Screen. Writer/Director/Producer/Creator

Short-listed Media Innovation Award.

Hewlett Packard Labs: Artist in Residence. 2007. Arts Council England.

Licorice Film Ltd: set up own company. 2006.

Portishead 1995-97. Filmmaker World Tour Stage Visuals, Live at Roseland New York, Road Trip.

There’s No One Quite Like Grandma: Radio play/Horror. 2004

BBC Radio 7. Writer

2000 Years of Radio: Radio comedy series. 2000

BBC Radio 4. Writer/Performer

Lou-Lou Lives Here: UK Film Council Digital Short. 2003 Writer/Director.

Baby-Cue. Animated Short. Writer/Director/ Animator. Matt Groening’s all-time favourite short animation. Winner Absolut Award.

Depict! Shortlist 2000-2005 Short-listed 3 times: Cocoon/Big Career/Donut

Sort of Champion. Writer/Director. Winner of BAVA Best Film Award.

Masters Degree in Visual Culture from Bath Spa Uni. First with Distinction.

UWE Visiting Lecturer in Visual Culture.

The Natural Theatre Company of Bath: performer, global street theatre 1992-2006.

Synchronicity and Photo Memes!

2009-05-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

I love it when a theme emerges.

I found this photo by Thomas Siokas on the Facebook profile of a friend. Now I'm going to look out for more.

First thoughts on photography

2009-04-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

I believe that photography is a conversation about breaking rules. For me the most challenging photographers are at heart non-conformists. The best photographs are unexpected, a wonderful, intriguing surprise. They contain conflict and humour, beauty and irony. This is how they have meaning beyond words, this is how they tell a story. They are about finding beauty in ugliness, value in the discarded. Something that only the photographer could have captured at that moment in that place. A strangely private exchange without words between the viewer and the photographer. A unique insight into the fleeting ironies of our relationships with each other and our objects. I'm not technical as such, I like to use whatever is at hand to capture things there and then. Sometimes this means being inconspicuous. Sometimes I take video footage and choose my favourite frame from there, that method brings even more surprises. Here's my flickr

Some of my favourite photographers Garry Winogrand, Martin Parr, Cindy Sherman