At a pervasive games lab

The other week, I was invited along to a pervasive games lab at the MAC. Fierce organised it and Hide & Seek hosted it. The other invitees were artists (of various stripes), filmmakers, webby types and developers of serious games.

Pervasive games might involve roleplaying, running about, technological doodads, funny hats, location-based tomfoolery and all sorts of other things. Often the games take place in the ‘real world’ (the very fact that it’s necessary to point this out is instructive). Games might last ten minutes or run for days at a time. It’s a broad church. Street games and alternate reality games are similar/related.

I’m consciously avoiding any proper sort of definition because no-one seems able to agree on one, leading to all manner of tedious hairsplitting.

Labs, just to clear this up, are workshops but… um… edgier. Maybe?

After some general orienting in the morning, we spent the afternoon devising games for Nikki Pugh’s whale hat which she explains here along with videos like this one:

All in all, it was nice to mess about with something a bit different for a day and to make some new friends. What’s more, Nikki’s gone on to develop the whale hat into a game called The Bloop which became something of a media magnet in the run-up to this weekend’s Hide and Seek weekender at the National Theatre.

Going all big picture for a bit, there seem to have been two motivators for the day; to give some WMers a kick up the backside and to get some cross-sector collaboration going in a growing market.

Reticent West Midlanders

Fierce had an event happening at Warwick Arts Centre on 26 June. They’d put out a call for proposals – offering cash for artists to come and do stuff . There was apparently loads of interest from around the rest of the country, but not much here.

This ‘lab’ was partly an attempt to coax out a few more applications and develop some games that could be tried out at that Sandpit event on 26 June. We didn’t quite get that far – half the group had to leave after lunch and many had brought projects they were already working on and couldn’t really give up to this process. That stunted things a little so hooray for the whale hat.

I hear this sort of thing from time to time. To pick two off the top of my head, the West Mids has/had the lowest number of bidders for upcoming Olympics contracts and a (Birmingham-based) BBC chap I met was saying that he gets pitched digital stuff all the time, but from agencies outside the region. It’s rather frustrating.

Getting all collaborative

There are a whole bunch of initiatives going on that are/have been trying to draw links between different sectors and disciplines. Hats off to Screen WM for being active in a lot of that, Producers Forum are working with others a bit, 4iP has been a beacon for that kind of thing, the TSB are trying (in their own mildly incomprehensible way) and there’s a new thing called Switchboard which is a next step in bringing together various creative industries strands.

As well as the general benefits that collaboration brings, pervasive games, transmedia projects and multiplatform approaches are all the rave at the moment. I imagine there’s a sense that the region could do quite well in this emerging area if people got their heads together. Where the best transmedia producers come from is a tricky one, but these sorts of sessions will help.

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Last night I couldn’t sleep

Last night I got to enjoy Stan’s Cafe‘s new production, Tuning Out with Radio Z, from a fairly unique perspective. I say fairly unique because there were four others who were tucked up in beds arranged around the stage at the mac.

It was a strange experience.

We took our positions 10 minutes before the doors to the theatre opened and only got up after the audience left, so I’ve no idea how many people were there watching.

I didn’t get to see any of the action on stage from where I was lying and, when I was told I could get up, I was surprised there was that much paraphernalia lying around.

Without the visual part of the show it was like listening to 4 hours of Blue Jam.

Although the focus is on two radio show presenters, reality and perspective slides sideways and backwards quite regularly. It was smoothly conveyed through speech and, the more I think about how they achieved the effect, the more impressive it seems.

The music was really good – I particularly enjoyed a bit of Spiritualized and will be digging out Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space soonish. They played my fave Girls Aloud tune too.

We weren’t given much direction or told what to expect, or at least no-one told me anything other than to lie down and look asleep. When Craig dashed over to me and started shouting questions in my ear – “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes? Blink if you can hear me” – I was a tad surprised and not sure how to react. I figured the safest thing would be to not react. Good choice, I reckon.

There was a part where. I gather, we sleeping forms were non-responsive patients in a hospital. There was an extended period of no action on stage and I shifted slightly, making Craig run over, all hopeful that I could be roused. I wonder if they were waiting for one of us to move or if he just improvised around that.

As for what the show was about, I’m not sure. It was an improvised performance that took the theme (that night) of ‘shooting’. Things or people being missing provided a major thread – opportunities not taken, the shock of people being taken and events happening in other places. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice was told with small alterations.

Gemma Thomas, who was in the audience, said that she was moved more than expected by the last hour.

UPDATE

Ah, I’ve just found the tracklisting online via the joy of the Stan’s Cafe Last.fm account. I was there from Donna Summer onwards.

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Adem/Richard Swift @ Midlands Arts Centre, 9/06/07

Kicking off a season of open air concerts in June is a brave move as the early summer weather can be an unruly beast, but the Midlands Arts Centre are seasoned in this game by now so for the opening night it should have been no surprise that the forecast rain never appeared. As we took our seats in the mini amphitheatre (Nina Nastasia commented that she expected the lions to be released any moment) we did so under a clear sky, warm and, most importantly, dry. Read the rest of this entry »

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