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….