Matt Adams University Fellowship at Exeter
Matt Adams of Blast Theory has accepted a four year University Fellowship here at Exeter.
During our collaboration Matt will be associated with the Centre for Intermedia http://www.ex.ac.uk/drama/research/intermedia/welcome.shtml
Led by Matt, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj, Blast Theory is renowned internationally as one of the most adventurous artists’ groups using interactive media, creating groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art that mixes audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting.
Day Of The Figurines, 2005. Copyright Blast Theory. Photo: Nicola Dove.
For the past four years Blast Theory has been exploring the convergence of online and mobile technologies in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham http://www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/
Day Of The Figurines is a major new project being developed with MRL alongside Sony Net Services and the Fraunhofer Institute as part of the European research project IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming).
The piece was piloted in July-August 2005 and will be fully developed through 2006.
Mapping players’ real-time gaming via mobile phones from any location, through figurines occupying a model of a fictional city, Day Of The Figurines explores action, identity and interaction in reversals and exchanges between real and virtual social and political spaces.
Day Of The Figurines, 2005. Copyright Blast Theory. Photo: Nicola Dove.
Blast Theory describe the premise of the piece:
Day of The Figurines is set in a model of a fictional city that is littered, dark and underpinned with steady decay. From the Gasometer to Product Barn, the Canal to Rat Research Institute, up to 100 players roam the streets, defining themselves through their interactions. A gunship of Arabic troops appears on the High Street. Scandinavian metallists play a gig at the Locarno that goes horribly wrong. How players respond to these events and to each other creates and sustains a community during the course of a single day in the city.
The company has also been commissioned to create a major, new permanent installation for THEpUBLIC in West Bromwich UK, due to open in 2006.
Using Augmented Reality, Flypad will generate avatars from a 'data body' - information submitted by visitors on their entry to the gallery and as they progress through the space.
Flypad. Permanent commission for THEpUBLIC's new building, West Bromwich, to be launched in 2006. Copyright Blast Theory.
At the installation, up to twelve players will be able to fly their avatars through the gallery’s large central atrium, while attempting holds and forming moves with other avatars.
In its appearance, Flypad draws on Peking Opera, Mexican wrestling, facemasks, and skydiving.
Matt suggests that:
The whole work springs from the architectural location [….] What we're trying to do is make sure that the virtual representation and the real space which sits around it are as seamlessly interlinked as possible, that there's a very fluid relationship between the two [...] the sense of play that you will experience as you dart between real and virtual, and experience the frisson of this difference, is a very important part of the pleasure of it.
Blast Theory's complex and immersive game-structures distribute player-presence across multiple and incongruent sites and networks.
During Matt’s Fellowship we will be developing critical frameworks through which to engage with Blast Theory’s radical work.
As part of this, we will be documenting the development of work by the company through the Presence Project Collaboratory.
Blast Theory’s website is at http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/