I’ve just spent the last 2 days in a workshop with Branded Meeting Places project at Edinburgh University. They have been great!! I met with a diverse group of people from a range of disciplines, yet we all had interests in common which made the group a very inspiring one.

We’d been brought  together for a workshop on tagging, looking at how these may be utilised in linking the physical world with the virtual. I’d been invited on account of my work with QR codes, and it has definitely given me a great food for thought with my own research. In particular The Branded Meeting Places group have been collaborating with Mobile Acuity who create image recognition software, to come up with Spellbinder which on their website is described as:

“..a new interactive digital medium based on camera phones and image matching. Using Spellbinder, digital content can be embedded in the real world by taking a photograph of an object or place. The digital content can be released by another user by taking another photograph of the same location. Spellbinder does not require special markers or barcodes to be placed in the world and works indoors or outdoors”

The creative scope for this is really limitless, especially when I think of it in the context of my own art practice.

On the first day we brainstormed ideas surrounding tagging. In groups we came up with possible applications of tagging and presented them to a vote to take one forward to build overnight. As it was 2 ideas were melded and three dedicated programmers worked through the night and morning to give us a working application to pay with.

The application that was built was called “Vocal Thumbs” which enables people to voice their opinions in a way which facilitates social networking via mobile phone. We were hoping to use audio, but that was not possible in the short turnaround time, but “Vocal Thumbs” worked via text messaging, so we all went out, tagged parts of Edinburgh, found each other’s tags and tested the system.

This very intensive group working to come up with a concept, build it and test it in 2 days is a very productive way of testing a concept and gaining feedback in a very short time frame. I think though, it is very reliant on the mix of people involved. Everyone there was positive,  committed to research and motivated in coming up with new ideas, and this enthusiasm was contagious. That is not to say however, at the end of each day we were a bit tired, but that good kind of tired where you feel like you’ve achieved something.

Channel 4 (UK) has launched a very cool site where you can take pix with your mobile phone of public art and send them to their server. They are then located on a map. This is an excellent use of locative media, the ubiquity of the camera and social networking.

At the moment most mapped public artworks  are in the UK, then Europe and a few in the US. Would be great to see some Australians posting works there. You can upload via a pc as well. Someone really should take a photo of whatever currently is decorating Taylor Square in Sydney!