The Video and accompanying website and mobile app  is an impressive collaborative effort involving 33 listed collaborators many of whom are commercial motion designers or motion design firms, web developers, and interest groups. The narrative of the film is framed by the failure of the 2009 CopenhagenSummit on Climate Change to finalise an international agreement on the reduction of Carbon Pollution. The film claims that an effective ‘War on Climate Change’ must be also ‘War on Consumerism’ – a war our governments are unwilling and perhaps unable to fight. The film then proceeds to argue that we require a return to the form of Swarm Intelligence that was characterised by the counter-cultural movements of the 60’s that were undermined by their (superficial) reduction to a marketable ‘individualism’. The internet and specifically Web2.0 and Open Source development are figured as providing and demonstrating the potential for a return to the true and marginalised potential of 60’s collectivism. This new found potential will provide the potential for open source solutions to Climate Change.

Six short ‘essays’ accompany each of the films in order to develop its themes and to provide a basis for ongoing discussion. They provide some more detailed insight into the claims made by the film. More importantly they detail the specific qualities and models of web2.0 and Open Source development figured as being the basis for this new counter-cultural efficacy. The film and accompanying essay argues for a three tier architecture for harnessing and motivating a ’swarm’ intelligence to act on Climate Change. The first of these tiers is an open source, collaboratively developed, Green Knowledge Base – an engine with which to share both simple and complex solutions and contributions to reducing CO2 emissions and approaching sustainability more generally. The model for this tier is the Wiki. The second tier is rather less detailed and appears to be a collaborative engine along the lines of a version control system  - where I ideas could be shared, fleshed out, developed, and implemented in a collaborative environment. The model for the second tier is, rather predictably, Linux. The third tier is a socially driven engine of promotion, networking and information, to quote; ‘This is where green activism 2.0 is expressing itself’. Somewhat disturbingly/tellingly the relevant model here is described as Facebook meets Indymedia.

The film project is divided into the six chapters mentioned above. The release of the film was staggered to promote discussion of each section of the film while the film was still in production. It is clear from the COTW website, however, that this was a social media promotion strategy designed to give consumers a sense of ownership over the film and its ideas and in the service of developing an ‘environmental brand in itself’.

Amongst the mostly UK based designers and producers listed as collaborators the film also lists the Betterment Bureau- a team of likeminded media producers and designers working to ‘make the world a better place through design’, and Ladyverd.com an online magazine ‘that was created to promote inspiring information for organizations and individuals committed in the war against climate change who want to fight for a better world.’

The projects supported by the Pervasive Media Studio are diverse in both their mode of practice and their projected outcomes. A long terms partnership between HPlabs and the University of Western England was concerned with the development of software allowing for the production, distribution and consumption of ‘mScapes’ or mediascapes – They were also central in the development of an ongoing conference series exploring and demonstrating the potential of mScapes. An m(edia)Scape is essentially a mixedmedia production that uses GPS to both record and playback audio, video, or augmented reality style graphics (mapped images on a smart phones camera/video input – dependent on position) as the basis for a particular ‘text’. Most of these mScape were audio centric allowing for recorded audio to trigger as a user moved through a space. In more recent times the ubiquity of phones with gyroscopes, GPS and compass, has allowed for the real time overlay of graphics on a video image- allowing a user to view an augmented reality through the phones camera. The latter development has seen AntiVJ – one of the Pervasive Media Studio’s residents – working with the HPlabs and the University of Western England on the potential for/feasibility of identifying and tracking a plane in 3 dimensions. The facility for mapping and tracking a plane in 3D space supports the mScape project by allowing the augmented/imposed image to move beyond ’simple’ two dimensional infomatic style augmentation and toward the potential for ‘architectural’ augmentation in 3 dimensions.

The mScpae project has largely fed into the launch of Calvium – a ’startup’ aiming at the commercialisation and continuing development of the mScape production and playback tools.

The facility for automatically mapping and tracking a plane in 3 Dimensions also serves the project being developed by Anti-VJ as part of their PM Studio Residency. That project involves the development of a ‘Mapping’ Suite of Applications based on the demonstrated potential for projecting a ‘keyed’ image onto a 3-Dimensional object providing for seamless projected live augmentations of architectural space. At present  AntiVJ projects depend on laborious keying of an image or video to a necessarily static surface or plane. Automated identification and tracking of planes would allow for the mapping of projections to dynamic/mobile surfaces effectively allowing a new form of augmented reality (augmented virtuality??). This potential is further extended by another of AntiVJ’s projects stereoscopic projection – the idea here is that keyed projections on a tracked plane in 3 dimensional space would allow for 3D ‘holographic’ projections.

The PM Studio has also supported research into the use of POV cameras in theatre productions. The ‘Extended Theatre Experience’ has explored the potential for attaching cameras to actors and to objects/props provides for a better or extended experience of recorded theatre although increasingly this has led to the development of new modes of mediated performance.

The SubtleMobs project developed by Duncan Speakman as a residence of the PM Studio is a variation and development of the rather tired/dated concept of Flash Mobs – The SubtleMob projects move away from the simple realisation of a social spectacle that became the standard for flashmobs to explore the more interesting performative affordances of that practice. In the simplest terms this has meant ensuring that the ‘mob’ maintains the form of subtlety that ensures the experience of the ‘mob’ – both between members and for the unsuspecting public – retains its submersion-in and subversion-of the everyday. SubtleMobs participants are told not to bring cameras or other recording devices that might subvert the grounded subtlety of the ‘performance’. The participants of one SubtleMob were instructed to download two sets of recorded instructions to an mp3 player. The recorded instructions were to be played only at the site of the SubtleMob performance and carried out with a partner listening to the alternative/paired recording. The ensuing performance emerges between partners, between couples, between the mob and the public – a kind of purely emergent performative practice.

Their are a number of other  interesting projects and collaborations supported by the PM Studio. The Street Art Dealer project is a collaboration between C6.org and Steal From Work – both groups concerned with public and street art and its marginalisation by market driven art practices and cultures. The project use QR codes (the form of barcoding that allows for embedding and collection of metadata via mobile phone cameras) to allow street artists to sign their work and for ‘consumers’ to then locate work identified by artist (or any other applied taxonomy) – it is suggested that this could lead to a form of commercialisation supporting the work of street artists (perhaps via commissions).

The PM Studio also supports; a CyberTherapy project (collaboration between HMC Interactive, Drake Music, and bibic) looking at the development of simple software that provides synaesthetic feedback (voice to visual feedback) as a form of Therapy for autistic children, a project enabling simple browser based recording and sharing of audio between schools students (Audio Enable), a number of augmented reality and cross media narrative projects, development of the IndieMobile social media campaign engine (Complaint Generator) in collaboration with Indie Mobile (an UX agency).

The PM Studio is supported by The University of Western England and their Digital Cultures Research Centre, Hewlett Packard Labs, and the Southwest Regional Development Agency and is part of Watershed @ Bristol.

Much of AntiVJ’s work is positioned against the status quo of club based VJing – in that the works tend to explore a unified theme, question, or project that is driven by the context in which it is performed or presented – one of AntiVS’s artists, Olivier Ratsi describes one of his modes of production as ‘live painting’ and to a certain degree this term describes the type of work AntiVJ do in a more general sense as well – dynamic time based projections that transfigure the site of their projection. AntiVJ consists of artists Simon Geilfus, Yannick Jacquet, Joanie Lemercier, and Olivier Ratsi, Romain Tardy with music by Thomas Vaquie.

The work of AntiVJ has mostly involved large scale intricately mapped projections onto the surface of the built environment. Some of the work extends to or from the club environment but it real power lies in both extrapolating, deconstructing, and playing with the perception of the surface and volume of architecture via the play of projected light (Desherence, Songdo). More recent work has included  large scale stereoscopic work with the electro outfit Principles of Geometry – a 50 minute exploration of a starry 3D space and work with Mexican composer and producer Murcof – confounding projections that seem to hang and move through mid space at will.

AntiVJ’s work displays a unique aesthetic and a previously unseen degree of  precision in terms of projection onto large scale, multi-faced/multidimensional, objects. The mapping is apparently achieved via software developed in house that AntiVJ intend to eventually release publicly.

See the cross referenced projects for more on the Mapping Controversies projects and network.

These courses and their output along with the collection of resources that support those course represent the first ‘workpackage’ of the MACOSPOL (Mapping Controversies on Science for Politics) project. The student work represents a testbed for the collected resources and the communication and development of the ‘Mapping Controversies’ methodology for a public ‘governmental’ stakeholders.

The volumetric representation of data appears to have been drawn from the expertise of the Centre for Medical Image Science at Linköpings university . The interaction/installation/industrial design concept and production appears to be drawn from the expertise of the SII. These two elements of the project come together under the banner of the intriguing Visualisation Centre in Norrköping which includes presentations on Swedish innovation in visualisation, educational workshops, a cinema, and a dome projection system as well as providing an umbrella (in terms of funding and research) for visualisation projects. The Centre is closely associated with the  Visualisation Information Technology and Applications centre at inköpings university who is also involved in the development of the project.

Run Silent, Run Deep is the 2008 Singapore Iteration of the series and involved a mapping of the Marine environment of Singapore harbour onto an immersive and interactive sonic topology that the user can explore via a projected visual interface.

The Audio Nomad project involves the representation of geo-tagged, recorded, media including images, video, sound, juxtaposed with the sonification of geo-spatial information. This reconstitution of this collected data in a sonic topology allows a user to navigate a soundscape in which recorded histories, unseen ecological dynamics, and visceral field recordings are evocatively juxtaposed to reveal otherwise forgotten, marginalised, or assumed networks of relation.

Adrift is amongst the simplest and most linear of Helyer’s works but nonetheless manages to make visceral the complex of relations that characterise and constitute the interactions of human/marine culture.

Eco Located began with a  maiden collaborative residency aboard the MARIN (Media Art Research Interdiciplinary Network) catamaran.

The project took water quality and meteorological readings, geotagged information, made field recordings, and recorded interviews with scientists and the community in and around Belfast Port and during their voyage across the North Sea- concentrating on the ‘Littoral cultures’ – the cultures that develop at the transition or boundaries of (in this case) land and sea.

The information gathered becomes the basis for an immersive surround sound installation that uses the Audio Nomad system to allow a user to enter and navigate an abstract soundscape – a kind of sonic topology constituted of and juxtaposing (sonifying) the information and media recorded during the vessel’s progress across the North Sea.

The Eco-Located project continues a common theme in Helyer’s work that explores the potential for audio to make audible that which be forgotten or unseen – this extends beyond the post modern desire to reveal an underlying or marginalised structure and  to explore the way we might use audio in both new and old technology to realise new networks of relation and remembering between individuals, the communities of which they are part,their ecology, and their histories.