This screenshot from Glocal’s Motion Sequence Application (MSA) is an anonymous portrait of a tree in Holland Park – one of the many trees that were being showcased at Surrey’s Fusion Festival!

 Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

This Summer season has become an extremely prolific one for the info-crew at Glocal… 

In addition to the Canada Day festivities, the Glocal project was also represented by the Fusion Festival in Surrey (July 19-20, 2008), another Cultural Capitals of Canada initiative.

Computers in the tent were used to allow visitors to get creative with a web-cam. An additional computer provided access to the glocal website and blog so that visitors could see first hand how to download the software applications and contribute to the project.

Here are some more pictures from this culturally diverse summer blockbuster event…

Two ladies from a neighboring sponsor booth were quite keen to try out Glocal’s software applications.  Our applications were so enchanting, we lured many people working at other booths to see what Glocal was up to.  Every one we talked with was very impressed that our software applications were free for download.

One of those participants happened to be one of our immediate neighbors as she worked at the Chase booth next door.  You can see her co-workers in the background.  Just about every nearby participant decided to take their lunch break at our booth. 

Here is our volunteer Byron Peters launching our special Balloon Cam camera-kit. The Balloon Cam is made of 60 balloons and is lifting up a tiny digital video camera.  Byron has this special configuration on a leash so it cannot go far.  This Balloon Cam floated all across Holland Park and truly showed the demographic diversity of the Festival’s audience…from above!

Our summer student Erica Lapadat-Janzen (wearing the pink blouse) explains the Glocal project to some booth attendees while Byron Peters sets up his Balloon Cam for a re-launch.

 The re-launched Balloon Cam floats alongside the sky-train  bridge from Surrey Central to King George Station.

 Here, a family is enjoying learning more about the Glocal project and playing with our Motion Sequence Application on the main presentation monitor.  Yes, that little girl has her eyes closed but that was because she blinked.  It had nothing to do with our application (honest!).

Ready! Aim! Fire!  The boy in this family of booth participants treats our applications as if it were some sort of video game. This might be due to the success of our applications being as fun and engaging as any commercial entertainment system.  If it was not for the reflective glare off the screen, we would show you what we mean.

We would have had 10 times the amount of expected booth traffic if it was not for the fact that our booth was behind this fire-track for most of Saturday afternoon…sigh!  Audience members made diagonal bee-lines between main stages without seeing our booth along the way… double sigh!  Having said that, just about everyone who managed to find out hidden booth, was very enthusiastic about the project and took home our promotional handbill.

This particular festival had the largest Police presence per-capita that we had ever seen!  As you can see from the above picture, the Police had their own mobile prison-sized paddywagon (the one next to the white van)! We would have also taken a photo of the Police crew themselves since they had their own massive BBQ to the left of this wagon (behind our monitor) but we were too afraid to point anything at them…even a harmless camera!

This is what happens to a casual viewer after they have played with our Software Applications…heheheh!  Just kidding.  At least our Applications do not stunt your growth after prolonged usage.  There were many stilt-walkers going for a casual stroll throughout Holland Park for this ceremonious occasion.

You might need to zoom in to see the details of this photo but there were quite a few people doing historical re-enactments that were depicting classic Surrey events. We were quite amazed how interactive their monologues were and they seemed to remain immersed in their role-playing act for quite some time…now, imagine the interactive possibilities if  Glocal also wore period-era attire!  

The above image is an example of a participants’ response to exploring colour and motion using the Motion Sequence Application (MSA).

Hello Glocal Blog Readers!

Glocal just held a week-long intensive Digital Summer Camp that was hosted by both Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology and the Surrey Art Gallery.

22 Youth from Surrey were selected to take part in this free digital summer camp from July 14-18, 2008.

 Each day from the camp had different themes:

Day One – Students (such as Sarah Lae whose photo is pictured above) learned about the details behind Glocal’s various open source software toolkits.

Day Two – Students were then given guided workshops using the user-friendly computer programming language, Processing.

Day Three – Arduino camera hacking with the help of guest artist,  Daniel Jolliffe.  The cameras were hacked via labourious soldering sessions using Glocal’s custom-printed circuit boards.  Later in the day, the class went outside to neighboring Holland Park which was the site of Surrey’s Fusion Festival once the Summer Camp had finished.

Day Four – A special conceptual photography workshop was developed in order to educate the Students on ways they could stretch their imagination and make full use of the freshly hacked cameras and their newfound enthusiasm for Glocal’s Software Toolkits.  This included the 60-balloon cam made famous by one of Glocal’s committed volunteers, Byron Peters.  In the above picture, we have an example of conceptual photography by one of our Summer Camp participants, Stephen Golding.

Day Five – This final day at the Camp occurred at Glocal’s home-base, the Surrey Art Gallery.The Camp explored the surrounding Bear Creek Park region and tested out their own camera hacks and newly acquired software skills.

 It was out of these landmark sessions that such hardware devices as the Skatecam were researched and developed. This picture above shows Tyler Mast with his own Skatecam that he had built himself.  Other notable cams included the: Bikecam, Hamstercam and even the innovative Spray-Paint Cam (see below).

Please scroll down for more images from this camp…

 Shifting expectations, young girls made up the majority of youth selected for the camp through an on-line application process.

Digital Intern Dennis Rosenfeld worked with half of the participants of the Digital Summer Camp at a time to demonstrate how to “hack” open a digital camera. He then instructed them on how to intervene into the shutter system so that the wiring could be attached to the circuit boards which would allow the cameras to operate hands free.

Guest Artist Daniel Jolliffe worked with half of the participants of the Summer Camp at a time to teach basic electronic circuitry. Working in pairs, participants were shown how to use a soldering station and wire a circuit board from a circuit schematic diagram.

Mentoring Artist Jer Thorp provided a lecture on generative and regenerative art practices to students, providing an explanation of OpenSource software. ..  Jer then led the group through a basic introduction to the OpenSource programming software called Processing…. 

Students were able to design their own simple Processing program and to save images from their own program.

Participants were invited to use their creativity with the glocal software applications and to provide feedback to improve the functionality of the programs. Participants contributed over 4700 images to the glocal project during the Digital Summer Camp week, many of which provided enlightening insight into the capability of the software and the potential for an amazing exhibit in September 2008. The following image utilized the Multiple Exposure Application.

 The Digital Summer Camp finished with a participant project that utilized the skills acquired during the camp. The objective was to provide a series of photographs that utilized innovative photography. Initially, participants brainstormed possible ideas for their projects, which the glocal team will use to develop educational toolkits for educators. The following image represents one participant’s idea of innovative photography.

Canada Day

This is one of my favourite images from Canada Day. These beautiful Persian girls came into the tent and quite naturally made stunning images.

To view more Canada Day images, check out the new posts on our flickr pool.

The first software toolkit facilitates creation of the motion sequence grids that we have been posting here and in our Flickr and Facebook groups. Built in Processing, the Motion Sequence Toolkit creates grids from either live webcam input, or from pre-recorded video. In both cases, the application offers a different perspective on motion by separating it into still frames. Here is screenshot of the interface, in standard grid mode:

Hello GLOCAL Project blog-readers,

As Coordinator, I have finally taken some time to reflect on my Winterfest information presentation on behalf of the Surrey Art Gallery and the Cultural Capitals of Canada Initiative. This mass-media event took place at Central City (Surrey Central) – more specifically, in the foyer of Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT).

As some of you might know, Surrey has been declared Canada’s official Cultural Capital of 2008 so this was a landmark opportunity to showcase the latest in interactive digital media art and technology.

The GLOCAL presentation was a huge success. Many onlookers from every demographic description felt compelled to play with this interactive screen… Some kids had even begged their parents to return to my booth to explore the video processing application developed by the GLOCAL team and many people wanted to learn more so I managed to hand out most of the official GLOCAL brochures.

I believe the reason why the GLOCAL booth in particular had such a steady stream of activity throughout the day was due primarily to the fact that this interactive screen directly engaged the audience in realtime. The webcam was also mobile enough for each attendee to casually play with the viewing angles and by doing so, a unique video-mosaic was created straight out of their own imagination.

I think that most people who visited the GLOCAL booth felt they were directly interpreting the shifting sights of the Winterfest as if they were one of the performers being featured at the event.

As a result of this booth presentation, I think there will be sufficient interest from schools and individuals from the Surrey community to engage in both short-term and long-term workshops with the artists that comprise the GLOCAL Team.

I will have more photos from this event in a future blog posting but for now, here are some officially released photos:

Here is a portrait of Dan Nielsen (Project Manager – Surrey 2008 – Cultural Capital of Canada) using the GLOCAL prototype interface.

Photo by Rick Chapman. Here is what the official Winterfest sign looked like…

Photo by Rick Chapman. The GLOCAL Coordinator is pictured on the far right in front of his FUSION information booth. He is wearing a white t-shirt and standing not too far away from an over-saturated white TV screen that is suspended from the ceiling. The computer screen used to display GLOCAL’s prototype software application looked really nice in person but the photographer had used a flash so the GLOCAL screen is not very visible in this picture.

Photo by Rick Chapman. Inside that illuminated window was where all our information booths were so you could imagine how powerful and loud the fireworks were since they were practically exploding right next to the building complex’s facade. When the explosions first went off, everyone thought someone had detonated a bomb.

Photo by Rick Chapman.Here is another view of the fireworks display that occurred right next to the entrance to the SIAT building.

Photo by Rick Chapman. Here is one last view of the fireworks for Winterfest which by the way, had the keyword FUSION as its theme for this year….