So another day finished. A really fantastically enjoyable creative day.
Day Three was about simplicity for me. We have our idea and now we are looking at way to simplify it. This has been from both a message point of view, what will people see, do, interact. And a practical level, in the time we have what can we do. And with the skill sets we have what is possible. (from a skillset point of view our technical knowledge is letting us down) we spent a lot of the day wrestling with IFTTT.com trying to get around the fact Vine doesn't have an open API - boo vine booo. We spend some of the day asking Andrew what an API was. And the rest of the day working out hacks to get around the thing we hoped Vine would let us do.
IFTTT.com is amazing.
So we have a plan, we have everything in place. Day Four, we make.
and
we have a logo. Which has made Julian laugh, laugh nervously.
I also have learnt some people can casually say "I'll get the jig-saw out tonight and sort that out" which is very similar to "That's just a simple bit of javascript to get that to loop"
Yesterday was Day 3 of our playARK ‘hackathon’ here in Cardiff. Despite the fact I had to pause every 8.4 seconds to sniff/sneeze/blow my nose/try not to breathe on anyone, it was a another highly productive day that raced by with exciting, but also rather perturbing speed. ‘Office’ hours for us this week are 10-6, but I’m fairly certain every single one of us is working round the clock to ensure we deliver our projects on time. The pressure is on!
Guest speaker was Lisa Matthews from the Arts Council of Wales, which really got us thinking about what we do with our projects after this week? Is there life after playARK?
Day 4 today involves tying things up, testing and devising our presentations for the festival’s day of talks tomorrow. So with a little bit of luck, and if this stoopid cold doesn’t kill me, in my next post I’ll be able to explain more about what our Team Two project actually is.
‘WORLD JOURNEY’ is what we’ve decided to call it. How does that sound to you? What does it make you think of? All thoughts are very welcome :)
Click on pictures to see the videos.
via Heather Kelley
Wednesday - the day in the middle of the week. and the day in the middle of our 3-day hackathon to make something for sharing at PlayArk2013. a day where creativity ran in waves of expanding ideas and complexity, then simplifying everything and starting again. regularly. setting up new websites and twitter accounts, and finding out that actually, sometimes the best technology can be a friendly face and a finger on a button.
we ended the day with Mr Hyde doing a birthday dance for me. in a large cardboard box.
what a great way to turn 44. creating creative stuff with creative people. with extensive use of post-it notes, TeamThree came up with a set of aims and objectives for our little project. its a good team - we have one person who tends to specialise in real people, one who is keen on real things and one who has faith in the virtual. its a great collaboration, and in no time at all we had come up with an idea and started running with it.
diversions came in the form of Rob telling us about his fascinating project called Conducttrrrr, or something, and offered it to us to play with, which was nice, and Ian telling us more than i imagined i'd ever need to know about L(A)RPing. which was also nice.
another hour of testing and developing and we had a very botched together prototype system.
at the end of the day, the three groups generously shared their ideas and gave feedback before disappearing off into the chilly Cardiff night.
after that, it seems as though Wednesday might prove to be the difficult second album.....
Day two:
So today was our first day trying to come up with an idea. It's been a fascinating day, if nothing else the challenge of quickly working with people you only met the day before. The task yesterday to create a game in a couple of hours certainly helped.
It has been interesting because it has made me think hard about my own work and what themes run through it and how that conflicts with other peoples way of approaching their work.
For me an element I always want to add is scale to a project, perhaps there it is something about working on the internet primarily - I want the world to be involved in everything!
Others in my group have a more intimate approach to their work which could have caused a tension. But intact it's been really good and I think will make the project strong in the end.
Now to make it!
A quick overview of day two’s breakdown before I get to the very lovely bit:
So we arrive back at the Wales Millennium Centre and immediately get into our groups of three. For a good couple of hours we think about the project we’re going to create for the festival game-play day on Saturday. After that it’s guest speaker Rob Pratten talking about his transmedia software Conductrr, which feeds out multiple character and events very cleverly through social media. Lunch break. And we-Team-Two take the opportunity to walk around Cardiff Bay for inspiration. It helps. The morning’s idea that we came up with starts to take shape. A second guest speaker mid-afternoon in the form of Live (Action) Role Player Ian Thomas, with his infectious enthusiasm for costume and pyrotechnics! Then it’s time for the team to share their ideas and get some feedback from the others – very useful indeed. That leaves us with a final half-hour, that my team use to try and solve a technical issue we may be facing in our particular project. All in all a very productive day despite, or perhaps because of, all the questions and thoughts that were raised along the way.
Why not come along to our meeting on Wednesday evenings and see how you can get involved! Click here to view our calendar.
