#MoCo360 kicks off!

#MoCo360 is an umbrella term/collective (Mobile Collaboration all around you, geddit?) designed to aggregate mobile film co-creations and collaborations across the globe. Involving the usual suspects from the #ELVSS international mobile filmmaking collaborations, along with the welcome additions of Anthony Nevin and Dave Cowlard, #MoCo360 is the social aggregator for various mobile filmmaking projects and collaborations involving staff and students from NZ/FR/DE/CO/UK, including ELVSS (the BIG one), 24 Frames 24 Hours, Shoot Me Now, Shoot Your Egg, and #marmw.

We wanted to find a way to sustain our global collaborations and mini-projects, especially when diverse student numbers and shifting semester dates work against us, while still retaining a sense of community across space and time. Hopefully #MoCo360 will give us a bit more flexibility; by connecting under the #MoCo360 banner we can still work together – hopefully all year round in an #iCollab sense – with the option of dipping into projects right through to full-on international collaborations (depending on constraints or lack of) while still remaining a collective.

So far things are looking good! It’s nice to see things shaping up through the #MoCo360 hashtag. We have VINE video intros, a wonderful group Vyclone-hello from Dan’s students in Auckland, a growing tagsexplorer and increasing activity from various platforms showing up in the #MoCo360 tagboard. It’s always great to see what others are doing elsewhere, allowing us/our students to learn from others around the globe, sharing ideas and inspiration.

Although some students have been using Vine and Vyclone to say early ‘hello’s’ to one another asynchronously, we’ll be holding our traditional Great Global Hangout on 18/19 March (depending on the hemisphere). Really looking forward to this, as it’s always quite special seeing so many people coming together through a Google hangout! Two years ago we had 50+ students, last year it was more like 100 – wonder if we’ll break our record in 2014? Lots of potential with so many students in NZ, Colombia, France and the UK this time around!

Week Four: Ascilite (Sydney) – Wellington – Auckland

ASCILITE (SYDNEY): After an intense week of #marmw2013 (mobile augmented reality movie workshops), it was a 5am Saturday start as myself Thom Cochrane and Laurent Antonczak flew to Sydney to deliver a condensed version of our Mobile and Augmented Reality Film Workshop at the Ascilite conference. Planning the session was in itself a useful exercise as it forced us to trim the workshop right down, sticking to the main points and activities.

DSC01267 by heloukee
DSC01267, a photo by heloukee on Flickr.

In yet another ‘incredible shrinking world’ moment, the first people we bumped into at Ascilite were some of the Canberra team (big yay!), and it was great to have Cyntia Franco at our workshop. Cyntia’s into digital art installations and sailing around the world… i.e. awesomes.

DSC01252

Huge thanks to all of our workshop participants who were happy to get hands-on straight away and engaged in discussion and debate throughout – topics ranging from identity and ethics through to transmedia practices and geocaching. To finish off the workshop we all headed down to the local station, which had a rather striking set of escalators with a lift/elevator running down the middle: quite the Metropolis feel. Using Vyclone, we positioned ourselves on escalators, concourses and the lift and got to work. Rather pleased with the finished product (WE MADE ART GODDAMIT!) – example of rapid co-creation – and filters – which you can see here. Vyclone seem to like it too.

MASSEY UNIVERSITY (WELLINGTON): The following morning it was another early start (4.30am this time – my bodyclock is getting really screwed…) to fly back over to NZ: Massey University in Wellington – or Wellywood as it’s also known. Often referred to as one of the world’s coolest cities, it’s easy to see why – it’s colourful, quirky and oozes creativity. I was fortunate to be there on an unusually sunny/hot/calm day (Welington’s notorious for gale-force winds and earth tremors), but liked the vibe of the place straight away.

Went to Massey University today - here's a Photon Plasma Acceleration Rifle :)

I was visiting the College of Creative Arts at Massey’s Wellington Campus – highlights included seeing a plasma proton gun, meeting up with Antony Nevin and finding out more about his work, learning more about Maori culture embedded in the currlculum, the fact that this is a campus with a high school in the middle, there’s a graffiti wall of fame on campus (used by kids for art projects), visiting the audio studios (felt like home)… and of course, seeing Max in his home environment. Max and the lovely Karen Curley gave me a whistle-stop tour of Welly in the evening before another early morning start – this time heading back up to Auckland for the last few days of our mobile and augmented reality film workshops.

(#marmw2013 – AUCKLAND): Over the past 5 days, workshop participants back in Auckland had been working on their personal #marmw2013 projects so these were the main focus for the rest of the week. Projects ranged from geo-located mobile-mentary through to new forms of engagement with architecture and interactive video applications. Dave Cowland did an excellent job of demonstrating how one device can be used to engage with architecture in different ways through media-rich POIs on an interactive map. Troy Egan had made a film based on the Augmented Reality Game INGRESS, which gave us a genuine insider view into the world of Ingress players in action. This actually made a wonderful complement to Candy Elsmore’s presentation at MINA – although bizarrely Troy wasn’t at MINA and wasn’t aware of Candy’s presentation. His inspiration for the film came from seeing a group of people acting strangely with their phones at a station and asking them what they were doing. SPOOKY – and yet more incredible shrinking world syndrome/serendipity/synchronicity. This was an ambitious project, giving us not only a rich insider perspective on INGRESS gameplay, but also touching on game addiction, game mechanics, identity play, social capital  and communities dynamics.

Although I’ve only highlighted a couple of examples here, one of the most interesting developments (for me) has been seeing the way participants went in completely different directions when they went away to work on their personal projects. These individual interpretations and applications of mobile AR film across multiple contexts perfectly demonstrates the potential for media-rich, engaging, mobile AR across the curriculum. I’d love to have one more week (or more!), so that we could bring all participants together again to collaborate on a major project  – after seeing their individual work and convening for group reflections/feedback, the potential for multidisciplinary teamwork is becoming increasingly apparent…

Auckland: Mobile and Augmented Reality Film Workshops/Journalism Symposium

(and a title so long it reminds me a really must sort out my WP template…)

Oz/NZ Week Three

Many of the contributions to last week’s MINA 2013 Mobile Film Screenings and Symposium explored locative media and geo-located production practices. Carrying on the same theme, for the past week I’ve working alongside iCollab/ELVSS collaborators Thom Cochrane and Laurent Antonczak, with the welcome addition of Vik Narayam from AUT. We’ve been running a series of Mobile and Augmented Reality Film Workshops (#marmw2013) for academics from AUT and beyond.

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It’s been a packed week, where we’ve covered many aspects of mobile/locative media creation with guest speakers from around the world dropping in via Google Hangouts. Together we’ve explored collaborative mapping and augmented reality applications (similar to the recent #iCollab project); collaborative movie making using Vyclone; Vine and a range of mobile film apps; Vimeo and YouTube (or rather Vimeo vs. YouTube); mobile film history and aesthetics; mobile filming techniques; mobile audio production tools and practices; and transmedia narratives for audience engagement.

Guest speakers via hangout included:

  • Vernon Rive (NZ but currently at Cambridge University in the UK) – as an environmental lawyer, Vernon’s use of social/mobile media in his casework is a real eye-opener as he uses online platforms to highlight community issues in relation to legal cases. This led to Averill Gordon musing on the blurring of boundaries between law and PR if lawyers are using digital media to engage people/raise awareness of campaigns – reminding me of Ron Burnett‘s writing on transdisciplinarity in networked spaces, which I find myself referring to on a regular basis, including in our paper “New Global Learning Cultures: Interdisciplinarity through Networked Technologies
  • “The Swedes” (Sweden, funnily enough) who told us about the ways they’re using mobile and social technologies at Umea University – they’re wonderful, as is Thom’s blog post which tells you more about them…
  • Dan Wagner (UNITEC, NZ) who gave us a live demo of filming techniques (from the great outdoors – well the lush grounds of UNITEC at least – complete with a serendipitous tui birdsong accompaniment) particularly focusing on the technical capabilities/limitations of camphone lenses.
  • Everybody’s favourite German mobile filmmaker Max Schleser (Massey University, NZ) who gave us an entertaining yet erudite perspective on mobile filmmaking, including a sample of his mobile-mentary “Frankenstorm“, filmed at the Jersey Shore, two month after hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast and caused an estimate of over $71.4 billion in damage.
  • Catherine Cronin (Ireland) – a member of the iCollab team, who talked about our international collaborative google mapping project, raising important issues around trust and identity in online networks. It’s always good to hear Catherine’s graceful musings on learning and teaching through social and mobile media…
  • Finally, Mark McGuire (University of Otago, NZ) joined us on Friday afternoon and gave a rich overview of digital media practices and possibilities before spending time talking to each participant individually about their projects, which was much appreciated and ensured that people went away brimming with ideas.

While the workshops ran Monday to Friday, we also spent part of the day on Wednesday at the AUT Journalism Symposium, where Thom was presenting on the use of mobile technologies in L+T and I was a panellist (Innovation and The Future) along with Jeremy Rees (Editor-In-Chief, APN-online/NZ Herald) and Richard Pamatatau, expertly mediated by Helen Sissons, where we discussed, debated and occasionally disagreed on the role and impact of social media on mainstream journalism.

Danni Mulrennan, who organised the Symposium (and is doing great stuff with mobile/social in journalism ed.), also gave us a tour of the fantastic journalism facilities at AUT. Myself and Laurent had a great time playing around with the VidyoCast system and making… erm… screen art

All in all it’s been a packed week, and we’ll be seeing the workshop participants again on 5 and 6 December to view their individual/group projects, which I’m really looking forward to.

Here is the G+ Community for the workshops, which gives an idea of the kind of things we’ve been covering, and for a visual summary see this Flickr set.

MINA 3rd Mobile Creativity & Mobile Innovation Symposium 2013

WEEK TWO: Auckland (post 3 of 3): MINA 3rd Mobile Creativity & Mobile Innovation Symposium 2013

The Mobile Innovation Network Aotearoa [MINA] creates interactions between people, content and the creative industries http://mina.pro/

This is the final post of three covering ‘WEEK MINA’ (as it shall henceforth be known) – my first week in Auckland and a welcome excursion into all forms of mobile creativity. The main event of the week was the 3rd Mobile Creativity & Mobile Innovation Symposium 2013, organised by Max Schleser and Laurent Antonczak and held at AUT’s stunning Sir Paul Reeves Building.

Now in its 3rd year, the MINA Symposium is gaining a reputation as one of the leading-edge academic events around mobile creativity, with close links to partner mobile film festivals around the world. The 2-day symposium was punctuated by 3 nights of mobile film screenings that I wrote about here.

I was delighted to be invited to the symposium as a keynote speaker along with Prof. Larissa Hjorth from RMIT. This was the first time I’d attended a MINA event, and I was impressed by the diversity of sessions. With key themes of:

  • MOBILE & PEDAGOGY / Learning & teaching
  • MOBILE & MEDIA PRODUCTION / Distribution & collaboration
  • MOBILE & AESTHETIC / iPhonography & filmmaking
  • MOBILE & SOUND / Music production & Instruments
  • MOBILE & HYBRID ART / Installation
  • MOBILE & INTERACTIVITY / Ludification & gamification
  • MOBILE & SPACE / Locative media & GPS tagging
  • MOBILE & APPlications / Science & Health

Contributions ranged from gaming, interactive film, pedagogy, citizen journalism, film theory, cultural theory, politics, audio (design/art), pedagogy, documentary filmmaking, transmedia, product design – in fact, I kept finding myself thinking ‘(insert colleague/collaborator/twitter contact’s name) should be here. There really is something for everybody at MINA, with the devices in our pockets serving as springboards for an impressively rich range of contributions from pretty much any discipline/field – I was as transfixed and inspired as I am by The Rest Is Noise festival, and that’s saying something…

The full programme is here, but I’ll just pick up on a few (personal) highlights beginning with Hjorth’s keynote, a brilliantly nuanced exploration of social, mobile and locative media signalling a need to focus on emplacement and co-presence rather than the dominant ‘network’ metaphor in visual/media and internet studies. Mobile, movement and geolocated production practices were recurrent themes (as you’d expect), with Hjorth’s keynote followed by Trudy Lane and Halsey Brugund’s audioscapes – which being based in acoustics/audio I found especially interesting – and Candy Elsemore’s mobile location-based augmented reality gaming, which resonated with me from the perspective of engagement through alternate realities and pedagogies.

Lorenzo Dalvit’s focus on camphones as devices for capturing events as they happen was a sobering unfiltered view of the inhumaneness of an oppressive regime. Showing footage that captured police brutality in South Africa, Dalvit highlighted the role of the devices in our pockets as tools for citizen journalism – a theme also picked up by Ben Lenzner who highlighted the work of Tim Pool and the community-activist group India Unheard.

In terms of mobile aesthetics, there were several notable sessions from practitioners/theorists/practitioner-theorists including Patrick Kelly, Dean Keep, Craig Hight and Felipe Cardona. I loved Miriam Ross’ session on ‘The New Vertical’. Ross set up the Vertical Cinema Manifesto as a response to the anti-vertical PSA-spoof (and related) vids that were doing the rounds online. Making the case that this in itself is a form of policing, Ross is calling for us to fight for our right to go vertical. Whatever you think about the horizontal vs. vertical debate (personally, I’m a big fan of the idea of vertical – although I don’t always find it comfortable to watch), it’s important to recognise industry-led convention and to keep questioning, exploring and innovating. Why should film always be horizontal? What about vertical, round, etc? Don’t they have a place too? I always find it interesting when we’re working with students on 24F24H, seeing how many people reject outright the vertical – because that’s how it is, that’s how it’s done, “there’s this study that says…” Ross’ work is timely, needed and refreshing.

MINA 3rd International Mobile Innovation Screening 2013

WEEK TWO: Auckland (post 2 of 3): MINA 3rd International Mobile Innovation Screening 2013

Screen shot 2013-11-26 at 22.06.26

As well as working with some of the ELVSS team on our Mobile Augmented Reality Film Workshops (more of that later), I’m in Auckland as a keynote speaker (along with Prof. Larissa Hjorth from RMIT) at the 3rd MINA Mobile Creativity and Mobile Innovation Symposium. I’m writing this after the event, which was so rich that I can’t fit everything into one post so I’ll write about the mobile film screenings here and the conference itself in a separate post.

SO, the films: The Symposium itself launched on Wednesday night with the first of three nightly screenings of mobile shorts from around the world. Each screening was held in a darkened theatre with films shown on a large screen. I’ve rarely viewed mobile films in this way before (having generally viewed films on smaller screens/devices – apart from when showing films to students, but then as standalone pieces rather than as a running showreel) and I was struck by the intensity of the experience. Because the films were so short, ranging from something like 15 seconds up to 3 minutes, we were immersed in mobile film in all it’s glory – a real cornucopia of genres, styles and aesthetics which showcased the rich possibilities of pocket cinema brilliantly. I’m more in love with mobile film than ever after this…

The depth and power of emotion in many of the short pieces is quite remarkable. These filmmakers really understand the medium and the art of telling a short story quickly. Interestingly, some of the films were virtually indistinguishable from big budget counterparts in terms of production values as a result of technological shifts (HD camphones) and were not only crisp and clear but also incredibly cinematic due to their framing and sweeping shots (for instance, Wilhelm Jerusalem – Kołacze by Lukasz Krysiewicz). Others retained a more lo-fi aesthetic, including several made using apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic. Max Schleser’s film “Midtown” was filmed on an iPhone 4 with mCAMLITE, the mobile video created with the Time Piles app, edited with the Splice app and the music was produced using the iMaschine app. It’s amazing to think what can be created with the devices in our pockets.

As is practically a defining characteristic of ‘pocket cinema’, the films had a sense of immediacy, intimacy and authenticity. Personal devices are ideally suited for telling personal stories, and the films were so imaginative and varied – the one unifying feature being that they all proved how compelling short-form content can be when the idea/story is really strong. It doesn’t have to take a long time to take people on an emotional journey, as proved by films such as “A Grand Mother” by Candy Elsmore, which conveyed her delight and pride knowing that her grandmother had signed New Zealand’s Suffragette Petition over 100 years ago. The spark and wit of pieces such as Kevin Logan’s “To Have and To Have Not”, and Paul Taylor’s “Digital Trust Hike” were palpable, without detracting from deeper messages. I won’t list all of the films here, but I’ll be searching them out online and if available, will write a follow-up post listing the contributions with hyperlinks (many are not in the public realm as this may compromise their eligibility for festivals etc.).

The final night (Friday) was a showcase of films from other/partner mobile festivals, including SEISFF (Korean Mobile Film Festival), the Cinephone Spanish Mobile Film Festival, the Macedonia Mobile Film Festival, the USA Mobile Film Festival, and the Ohrenblick and Mobile Streifen Festivals (Germany).

There’s something about sitting in a darkened room watching a succession of short-form films on a big screen. It’s intense, compelling, leading the viewer into a Zen-like state. It had me thinking about the Netflix model of releasing an entire series in one go (see Kevin Spacey’s speech here). Increasingly, audiences want to be immersed in a viewing experience, and in the digital age, we can be. However, this isn’t just about gorging on the latest epic (obvious examples being The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black – even though 3 of these were broadcast as regular series, many or even most viewers saved themselves so they could watch the entire thing over a short space of time). In the case of the MINA 2013 screenings, we experienced the depth and immersion in a much shorter time period, ideally suited to short form content.

As you can tell, the MINA screenings were truly inspiring. They made me want to go away and start creating there and then – and judging by the conversations I was having many others felt the same. These screenings were invaluable in terms of opening the mind to what’s possible – vertical and square formats, durations as short as 15 seconds, a huge variety of styles and genres – it’s a brilliant exercise in freeing the mind from the constraints of industry-led convention. I’m looking forward to showing the MINA 2013 DVD to my students next semester as I think it’s a powerful way to experience mobile film, and I hope that it will really open up their minds and get them thinking about what’s possible, pushing them to create in new ways.

Here’s the MINA 2013 Showreel as a taster – and some stills here.

Some more of the films:

ELVSS13 – State of Being

The ELVSS collaboration/community of practice is now in it’s 3rd year. Since #ELVSS12’s excursion into internationally collaborative mobile filmmaking on the topic of global sustainability, we’ve taken a different turn – and the community has extended as we’ve now welcomed the University of Bogota (Colombia) into the mix.

This year (#ELVSS13), over 100 learners from the UK (Salford), New Zealand, Colombia and France were brought together to further explore creative practice through mobile filmmaking.

Their brief?

To work in international teams in order to co-create the visual backdrop for Warwick Blair’s 8-act opera which was premiered at the Tete-a-Tete Festival at the Hammersmith Riverside in London:

“State of Being is an inspiring, sometimes harrowing, journey through the human psyche. The opera presents a powerful series of emotional states of being that depict an individual’s struggle for survival and redemption. The opera interpolates live and recorded music with video and theatre to produce a compelling synaesthetic experience.”

In order to produce the video element, the learners were divided into 8 teams, and once again had to negotiate not only time and space, but also a challenging creative brief. Each team was assigned an act and given the ‘soundtrack’ with a one-word descriptor (real right-brain stuff). They then had to produce the visual backdrop for their act, entirely filmed and edited on mobile devices.

This meant that learners from across disciplines and cultures had to negotiate not only the creative process, but also meaning, e.g. What is truth? How can we represent truth visually? As you can imagine, this is extremely challenging not only from a organisational/temporal perspective (as we had even more timezones to deal with this time around), but even more so from an aesthetic perspective.

As with #ELVSS12, the process was exhilarating, scary, frustrating and at times quite painful – but WE DID IT! Warwick Blair’s State of Being was premiered in August, accompanied by a stunning visual backdrop that had been co-created by over 100 students from across the globe. Congratulations to all involved!

You can see the final output here.

#PLEconf Collaborative (un)Keynote

The PLE Conference, now in it’s 4th year and running simultaneously between Europe and Australia, is one of the most innovative conferences out there. I can’t think of any other conference that pushes the boundaries quite so much when it come to the keynotes – or in #PLEconf terms – UNkeynotes.

UNkeynotes are about interaction and audience participation, moving away from the idea of the ‘sage on the stage’ towards a model which is collaborative and energising, drawing on the knowledge of the room, not just the ‘main speaker’.

When I was invited to UNKeynote this year’s PLE, I was genuinely delighted – and also intrigued by the overall theme: Personal Learning Environments in the Cities of the Future, or ‘smart cities’ as they’re often termed. Having been working with colleagues across the globe for several years now on mobile filmmaking projects, I thought it would be pretty cool to do a collaborative keynote. After all, if we’re connecting learners across the globe, co-creating through mobiles and Google everything, what better way to demonstrate our global PLN/PLE than using a Google Hangout? What can possibly go wrong? Hehe…

So we did it. I’m still breathing. Just*

We started by exploring the range of smart city initiatives from the top-down, centralised initiatives led by the big beasts of IT through to bottom-up citizen-led, grassroots initiatives. Drawing on Dan Hill’s Manifesto for Smart Citizens (a city can only be as smart as it’s citizens, right?), we discussed the complexities and tensions between these ‘extremes’. Most importantly, we asked “what will the PLE of the future, in smart/future cities, look like? What about the idea of the whole city as a PLE?”

My co-presenters were Max Schleser and Dan Wagner, two awesomely creative people with whom I’ve been working for the past 3 years on a range of mobile/PLE-driven projects, bringing together students across the world to make short films on topics including global sustainability. Dan and Max are both based in New Zealand, although Max is from Germany originally and Dan is from LA. They are amazing to work with and they were amazing in the unkeynote – both joined via Google hangout and spoke about global collaborations such as 24 Frames 24 Hours (a constantly evolving film ethnography where participants across the globe contribute 2 minute mobile films representing their life/day/city), and ELVSS (which I wrote about here last year – and there’s more to come as this year’s project pushed the boundaries even more… yes, we ‘gone done’ a visual opera backdrop with over 100 students from New Zealand, France, Colombia and the UK), sharing their thoughts on mobile PLEs and the potential for connecting people across the world through co-creation.

We then invited the audience to contribute 15 second clips on THEIR ideas in relation to future PLEs using instagram along with the conference hashtag #PLEconf13films. Yes, we actually tried to make a film DURING a keynote (I’m still in the no man’s land between ‘never again’ and ‘I can’t wait to do that again’ i.e. slightly shellshocked). If you go to this URL http://web.stagram.com/tag/pleconf13film/?vm=grid you should be able to view the short videos as they come in. This is a living, connected, mobile film project. We have just over 24 hours to produce a short film composed of multiple clips from people across the globe – so we’re really hoping that our friends at the Australian #PLEconf will also contribute! We’re looking for either a) abstract shots relating to PLEs/future cities, or b) 15 second (max) talking head videos responding to the following question:

What do you think our learning environments will look like in the cities of the future? What will we use them for?

We also have a Google doc set up here http://bit.ly/11B92HM for crowdsourcing general thoughts and ideas, so if anybody would rather contribute to that (or even, as well as a video clip) then please do so! We’d love to end the conference with a manifesto of sorts – alongside a really cool short film starring YOU!

So thanks again #PLEconf for giving us the opportunity to experiment with a connected, collaborative, (un)keynote idea that was technically challenging, chaotic, and slightly scary at times – it was rather ambitious, but I’m hoping that tomorrow we’ll (and when I say WE, I mean ALL OF US!) look at the outputs and think ‘damn, we managed to produce something pretty special’. Judging by the contributions so far, I think we stand a good chance…

#PLEconf? We’re ALL the PLE Conference! Let’s make it happen 🙂

 

*a few unanticipated technical glitches 😉

Learning through frustration – ELVSS12

We bring you… Entertainment Lab for the Very Small Screen

I love this project. I feel very lucky to be part of a committed team, working on something that is not funded – a genuine Community of Practice where our passion for mobile filmmaking has brought us together in an international collaboration which spans disciplines, levels… and timezones.

Continue reading

From Mashups to Pocket Cinema…

As a fan of short-form user-generated content, I have a real fascination with pocket cinema a.k.a. mobile phone films a.k.a. productions for the Very Small Screen. The first camphone appeared in Japan in 2000, and within a few years mobile phone films festival started to appear, such as Pocketfilm in France and Japan, alongside dedicated streams at festivals like Sundance (US) and Raindance (UK). YouTube launched in 2005, in 2009 the iPhone 3GS launched and this saw YouTube uploads increase 400% in one week (1700% in 6 months).

There’s a certain aesthetic to many mobile phone films which can often be shaky and pixelated (termed the ‘Ketai Aesthetic’ by Max Schlesser) and yet some of the most powerful images of recent world events have been captured using these personal, consumer devices. The mobile phone camera is intimate, discreet, and allows us to ‘shoot from the hip’, recording events as they happen in real-time. Continue reading