You can tell it's term time in Birmingham, while University of Manchester are in the middle of their exam period.  I have been somewhat frantic over the last couple of weeks while James has been largely sitting at home playing with Facebook and generally being able to get through the day without running between teaching and endless meetings with students.

The meeting with MADE prompted me to finally get around to upgrading the website, which I'd built with HTML as it was written circa 1994 - functional but not exactly pretty.  The web design software I'd ordered in September turned up toward the end of last term and I only got around to learning how to use it a few weeks ago.  Anyway, I sat down last weekend and moved everything into a new template and even spent some time learning XML in order to create a database to work underneath the interview page.  Very dull, but I was pretty pleased with myself.  At least our web presence is a little more professional looking now.

Warning, this next bit gets very techie.

Faffing around with HTML (page layout code), XML (database code), KML (mapping code) and other computery things has brought me back to thinking about solving the problem of presenting the interview transcripts.  (Yes, I know, they're still not on the website, in spite of many promises!)  I woke in the middle of the night last week thinking I can do this by creating HTML tags in Microsoft Excel (which is where we've got the transcript text, broken into 10 second chunks to match the GPS log), then using ArcGIS to connect the HTML text and the GPS points and export it as a series of formatted text balloons in a Google Map. Then I could set up an animation to run through each balloon in turn to allow people to 'listen' to the transcript in its location. Yes, my dreamscape is filled with such excitement.

Well, it turns out I'm not quite right about this because of the way I've been exporting the GIS data into the Google Earth KML format.  The script I've been using doesn't cope well with HTML tags as it tries to rewrite them into a different format to work with KML and doesn't quite manage this.  So I think I'm going to have to consult with friend, colleague and GIS-genius Lee Chapman to see if he can tell me how to write scripts in Visual Basic to run in ArcGIS.  This scares me quite a lot...

Less techie stuff now.

Anyway, what I have managed to achieve this week is to create a new map (available on the Downloads page of the site) which allows you to click on locations within Eastside and hear a minute worth of ambient sounds recorded at that location.  I did the recording this Thursday, which was a beautiful crisp, cool winter day with no rain.  I wanted to get workday sounds, hence why I cycled madly into town on a weekday in an unexpected gap between two meetings.  I'll confess that I haven't made a fantastic job of the recordings - slowly working out how to use the new audio recorder.  Most of the recordings were too quiet and I had to artificially amplify them (which has made some of the quieter ones a bit 'fizzy'), hence I may go and do them again at some point.  Still, the stereo microphone works really nicely - it's quite eerie listening to them with headphones on, because they do give a really strong sense of space.

The next thing to do is something similar but with a first edition Ordnance Survey map and pop up balloons with historic photos from the Central Library.  But that's not going to happen just yet.  I haven't actually had a day off in the last two weeks and I really, really need some sleep.  I'm going to get some teaching stuff ready for Monday now, then go to the cinema and probably doze off...

Realised last night that i am supposed to be presenting a research seminar on the project in two weeks time.  When i say 'realised' what i mean is that the organiser emailed me asking for a title and an abstract.  mind duly focused.

Working on it today has made me realise what a great project this is... we've got photos, stories, techno-toys, art, labs, videos, walking tours, anecdotes, a strong acadeic rationale, and at least two exciting topics to address.

Rock on.

I'm just hoping now that the bunch of planners i'm presenting to will like it.  The 'discussant' for the seminar is a hardcore stats guy - works on the census, say no more.  There's no results, and i'm no GISer.  Hopefully the pictures will fly, and the mobile methods theory will lend credibility.  Will post in a couple of weeks to describe how it all goes...

j

We had a great meeting with some very nice people at MADE last Friday.  To continue this blog's general obsession with the weather, it was a very unpleasant day... rain, wind, cold, a full house of fetidness.  I had wet feet by the afternoon as we were trying to film outside for part of the morning.  Could have picked a better day.  We may have to relocate to LA for the next shoot... But I digress...

MADE are a regional version os CABE - into sustainable cities, quality design, community involvement and the such.  We've come across lots of their previous work, using artists of various types to uncover hidden aspects of cities and towns.  Anyway, they have a really nice office in an old canal masters house in the middle of Eastside, and we had a meeting with Julia and Stef to talk about how they might be able to help us with the project.  Stef made me a nice cup of spiced apple tea. 

 

 

They were really clued up on the creative / artistic / community engagement side of things, while also being embedded in networks with planners and regeneration bods.  Both of these things were of great interest to us.

The main things to come out of the discussion were that they could help make our end of project event much more than just a one-off thing.  They have two large function rooms on the ground floor, and offered them to us to for the event, which is wicked as we hadn't found anywhere suitable.  The rooms are just the right size - about 15'*20'.

Julia suggested that we don't call it an end of project event, but an 'Eastside Laboratory', where we get lots of different groups of people to come in and engage with the project's outputs.  She suggested getting the local community in, but also hosting a day for planners and local regen bods to try and get some of the work to feed into policy and masterplannig for the area.  We liked that idea.  This also made me think about the possibility of getting some follow up funding based around the idea of knowledge transfer...  MADE were really into making it policy relevant in some way, so this seemed like a good idea all round.

She also suggested that the lab could run for two weeks to a month, and we could get school kids in too.  This would also help them fulfill their educational remit.  They also mentioned maybe 'branding' the event for us... god knows... we need some help with our brand...

Funding was also discussed, with reference to the event itslef, and how to facilitate turning some of our outputs into forms of art. Julia suggested that an Arts Council bid between us and them, with three of four named artists including briefs of what work they would do might be a goer.  It would also be useful to orient this towards making art relevant to the community and policy makers.  She said she might be able to make a few calls and see whether the Arts council people would be receptive to such a suggestion....  Beyond that, it appeared that both the project and MADE might have enough odds and sods floating around in various budgets to make the event happen anyway.

The timing would be critical - in order to prepare as fully as possible, but still fall within the project timeframe, we settled on middle of sept 2008.  so we need to put boot to ass in order to get these funding apps in by Easter.  Must speak to Dan about it, he wrote us something that would be appropriate for the arts council bid a few months ago - need to find out whether he has done anything with it yet.

The details of what exactly to do in the lab were discussed, although no firm decisions were made.  Consensus was that it needs to involve ICT, and be interactive, although this would mean that tehcnical support would have to be available.  It would also need to 'be done right' in order to have a positive impact.

Stef mentioned something called mediascapes:

http://www.mscapers.com/home
 
Their description of a mediscape reads as follows:
"A mediascape is a collection of media fragments associated with
positions in space. You experience the media fragments as you walk
around the space." http://www.mscapers.com/home
 
the software can be used on a GPS handheld device as far as we can ascertain, and we were all excited about the possibilities of using some of our outputs in this way... further investigation needed though.

Anyway, it was only an hour and a half, but we covered a lot of ground.  We were singing from the same hymnsheet (as it were) and it really felt like we had something to offer them and vice versa.  if only all meetings were as pleasant and productive. Stef even offered to introduce Jane to some of the hidden parts of digbeth.  cool.

then it was back out into the rain...

 

Welcome back everyone - and especially the bold interviewee who came out with me this morning on a (shortened) walk around the Warwick Bar area!  The monsoon-type rain made us think twice, but as it seemed to be easing we went out anyway. 

Yes, it was wet - it turns out that my expensive raincoat doesn't withstand Midlands monsoons at all! - but two interesting points were noted:

1) We do need weather like this in order to assess if it has an effect on walking interviews!!  We went, but I am assured that it was a shorter walk than if it had been dry.

2) It was really peaceful once we left the main roads - after a couple of weeks of peace and quiet chez Jane, I was really noticing the heavy traffic in the centre of the city.  However, once we got into smaller streets and along the canal, it was really quiet, with the rain damping down the traffic noise and keeping most (sensible) pedestrians at home.