After the getting to know you vibe of the first day, the play:DO hack week has ratcheted up several gears with great ideas flying about and practical development issues being considered.
We settled on our collaborative storytelling thing (note to team: must get a name for it soon) fairly early on in the morning and chopped up the work according to each team members skills & experience.
From my perspective, there are a number of technical hurdles to overcome and I find myself veering from blind optimism to blind panic at regular intervals. Hopefully things will become clearer in due course - thankfully the optimism is growing as the project progresses.
What a frenetic last two days have been.
Personal presentations and meeting for the first time my colleagues, Kevin Moss, John Collingswood, Heather Kelley, Steve Coleman, Ben Hyde, Ravi Thornton, Chris Mog and Andrew Price. You should spent a bit of your time checking their great own works, you can find the info here.
Also, divided in three groups, we developed three games in less of two hours, Sea Shanty Spy (clue finding), Fist Full Of Dollars (Western Robbers Vs Sheriff) and Keystone 6 (Police and Robbers inspired by Keystone Cops Films). Without forgetting the inspired talk by Rosa Robinson on climate change. And finishing the day on the Meeting Place in Cardiff central for some dinner, where a kind of weird Musical Chairs took place between dishes.
Believe it or not that it was just the first day.
Presentations at the beginning of the day
Team 1
Heather Kelley, Jorge Lizalde, Chris Mog,
Team 2
Andrew Price, Ravi Thornton, Steve Coleman
Team 3
Ben Hyde, John Collingswood, Kevin Moss
Guest Presentation with Ros Robinson
A fascinating and invigorating first day of play:DO HACK WEEK here in Cardiff Bay. First up host and hack-master Julian Sykes took the floor, asking the question: How can we create playful experiences that are not only fun, but that people can actually take things away from, and thereby promote social change? It’s the question that ‘us nine hackers’ will be mulling over for the rest of the week.
Next we spent awhile introducing ourselves and our passions to the rest of the team: with Kev Moss talking about the difference between making things digital and making digital things; John Collingswood talking about mixed-media layering in contemporary dance; Andrew Price mixing up Dylan Thomas and wind speed; Heather Kelley talking about pushing gaming beyond the digital and physical to the sensory; Chris Mog talking about how mistakes can lead to new solutions; Steve Coleman asking where, why and how do we lose the innate creativity of our childhood, and can we bring it back again; Jorge Lizalde showing us memories he’d recreated in real time; me talking about the architecture of cross-media fiction; and Ben Hyde sticking us all together with elbow charge.
We wanted to do something extra for playARK Festival and Talks 2013, so we decided that this year we would run a hack week that would bring together nine individuals from different disciplines to develop unique ideas that explore the theme of RECLAIMED.
In conjunction with thinkARK, the aim of play:DO Hack week is to create a playful and socially aware experience that utilises creative technology and reclaims traditional approaches to how we live and work within our cities. The week will focus on the idea of knowledge exchange and open experimentation and we hope the week will create opportunities for future collaborations for the individuals involved.
Nine individuals will be working together to develop three prototype projects that will be shared and discussed at the playARK Festival talks (Friday 1st November) and run as an event at the playARK Games Day (Saturday 2nd November)
We are really excited to announce the following participants:
We wanted to do something extra for playARK Festival and Talks 2013, so we decided that this year we would run a hack week that would bring together individuals from different disciplines to develop unique ideas that explore the theme of RECLAIMED.
In conjunction with yello brick, the aim of play:DO Hack week is to create a playful and socially aware experience that utilises creative technology and reclaims traditional approaches to how we live and work within our cities. The week will focus on the idea of knowledge exchange and open experimentation and we hope the week will create opportunities for future collaborations for the individuals involved.
Nine individuals will be working together to develop three prototype projects that will be shared and discussed at the playARK Festival talks (Friday 1st November) and run as an event at the playARK Games Day (Saturday 2nd November)
Our Hackers are:
- Kevin Moss – creative director of Make&See who create branded digital content & experiences. His cross platform stories have been shortlisted at MipTV and Power to the Pixel and won the Media Festival, Channel 4 Digital Art Prize. www.makeandsee.com
- John Collingswood - one half of TaikaBox, a Cardiff-based company specialising in the integration of dance and digital media. www.taikabox.com
here's a nice blog from Germany, highlighting the fine art of Urban Hacking:
http://rebelart.net/
This year we have some fantastic games for you to come and play. We have scoured the world for the best in street games and computer assisted games. All games are free apart from our headline game.
HEADLINE GAME
BLOCK PARTY
A game that tests your speed, wits and cunning. You've been sent by the Big Boss, Bad-Ass Billy Ball-Breaker, to pick up a special shipment; you've got to smuggle as many packages as you can through Cardiff bay. But you've got competition; other gangs, bent coppers and a host of crooked characters want a cut too. You'll have to out-wit, out-run and doublecross them to get your way back to base. There are a lot of dirty dealers out there; you've got one hour to do the right thing…
Please note this game is played across multiple locations in Cardiff Bay.
GAME DESIGNERS: Brent Morgan & Stephen Donnelly
GAME TYPE: 18+ GAME LENGTH: APPROX 2 hours
TICKETS: £5.00 available from WMC - https://www.wmc.org.uk/Productions/2013-2014/WestonStudio/BlockParty/?vi...
This month Philippa Davies joins ARK and GeekSpeak Cardiff for a joint event to talk about digital projects for community glue and growth. You can expect a quirky mix of technology, psychology and an infectious approach to creating ‘glue’ that really sticks!
Passionate about digital inclusion and community building, Philippa set up and co-runs non profit organisation www.fyinetwork.co.uk and blogs about content, creativity and low-cost technology at www.mindhive.org.uk .
Come along, 7pm, upstairs in 33 Windsor Place.
http://geekspeakcdf.tumblr.com/ is a group that runs monthly meetups, sharing web/social media skills in 3rd sector. You can find them @geekspeakCDf
TOM CHATFIELD
Tom (@TomChatfield) is a British writer and commentator. The author of five books exploring digital culture – most recently How to Thrive in the Digital Age (Pan Macmillan) and Netymology (Quercus) – his work has appeared in over a dozen territories and languages.
Tom is a fortnightly columnist for the BBC, TED Global speaker, international commentator and broadcaster, and has worked as a writer and consultant with some of the world’s leading technology firms.
He completed a doctorate at St John’s College, Oxford, before moving to London, where he lives with his wife and two cats.
ODETTE TOILETTE
Why not come along to our meeting on Wednesday evenings and see how you can get involved! Click here to view our calendar.
