*To VJ: to conduct a live visual performance.*

Ever dreamed of projecting onto a skyscraper? Building visual awesomeness to accompany your favourite band? Sharing your photography or home videos in a more creative way?

Then this is the workshop for you.

Learn practical skills – creative and technical – in VJ’ing and share your first VJ set with a group of the lovely SHARE folk at the CuriousWorks warehouse.

Over two hours, you’ll receive hands-on training and create your first VJ set.

The price? A measly $30. There are 10 places only – we want to keep this workshop intimate, so everyone gets to really make and learn something.

Book a place at the workshop now – simply by sending your contact details to workshops@curiousworks.com.au with “VJ Workshop” in the subject line. We’ll take it from there.

Details:
Sunday, 5 September 2010
3-5pm VJ Workshop ($30)
5-9pm Share Sydney (Free)
402/11 Randle St, Surry Hills, NSW 2010
Directions: http://www.curiousworks.com.au/contact/
No BYO

The workshops are suitable for those who:
- Are first timers
- Want a burst of creative ideas and thinking around showcasing their visual work
- Have been dabbling and seriously need to spend some one-on-one time with someone who can answer your fiddly technical questions

Tutors and respective VJ Software:
* Joe aka sqgl – Arkaos + MIDI mapping
* George aka Subpixel – Neon v2 (Open Source+Free)
* Robert Moorman – Resolume (or Final Cut Pro Editing)
* Jolanta aka VJ lullaby – Modul8 + Numark mixer hardware
* Bart aka Videokidz – Modul8 + image mapping techniques

Demos of their work can be found at http://sharesydney.spruz.com/videoprofiles.htm

After the workshop, as the Sunday afternoon turns to dusk, you can share your new-found knowledge and jam with other VJ’s and electronic musicians, as CuriousWorks hosts its first SHARE Sydney.

Share Sydney is a regular open multimedia jam, the likes of which are occurring globally as part of a network which provides support & infrastructure for new media communities worldwide.
http://sharesydney.org/

Lorraine at CW HQ

Lorraine did our New Media Training course late in 2009 – and since then she has put it to such good use that we had to share her story with you.

Lorraine’s concern is the rate at which we are logging our native forests in Australia, putting even the koala into the endangered species list. She has worked tirelessly to bring greater awareness to this issue. We helped her incorporate new media into what she does in an innovative manner, invigorating her team and her work. We worked to build a digital system with her that was relevant and useful – and did not add an extra burden of cost and time to her already busy life.

Folks at the Mumbulla Protest

If trees could talk...

She’s been projection bombing around the Opera House, sends the media to her Flickr stream with a simple copy and paste, gathers communities around her website and, most importantly, no longer feels that emerging technology is some kind of inaccessible dark art.

Projection Bombing at the Opera House

Says Lorraine:

Q: How to you take an ordinary person who is not too media savvy and turn them into…well, not exactly an expert, but someone who feels confident around the new media?

A: A CuriousWorks training workshop.

My lack of confidence was no obstacle to Shakthi and Elias. They take all ages and stages into account.  They don’t talk to you from the rarefied air of techno-space; they speak to you in language you can understand. Curiousworks is committed to taking people with ordinary skills and getting them out there, doing what they want to do. I guess that’s called empowerment.

I now use the training I got at Curiousworks everyday. I get my photos on the internet, I have a functioning website and blog, and use the new media to create identity for my not-for-profit organisation. I can’t recommend this training highly enough. Thanks Curiousworks!

We’re chuffed. Thanks, Lorraine!

If you’re intrigued by Lorraine’s campaigns, visit:
http://www.forestmedia.net.au/index.html
http://forestconnect.wordpress.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30873160@N05/

If you’re intrigued by this new media training thing we do, head this way:
http://www.curiousworks.com.au/our-services/training/

The toolkit is a living resource library for artists, educators, cultural leaders and media makers everywhere.

Browse a repository of media and arts workshops, develop a community-based strategy for your cause and skill up on your technical knowledge.

Check it out – it’s free and it’s yours.

CuriousWorks spends a lot of time in high-schools doing workshops that are an eclectic mix of art, theatre and multimedia exercises. These workshops are constantly evolving and changing and many are influenced by websites and artists who inspire us. We thought we’d share some of the websites that are the shoulders we stand on and inspire our work. If there’s any great sites we’ve forgotten you can add them in the comments.

1. Make Zine Blog

Make Zine is a great website that has loads of DIY projects that are perfect for a high-school Design and Technology class. http://blog.makezine.com

2. Craft Zine Blog

Craft Zine is the Home Economics sibling to Make Zine. Instead of screwdrivers and soldering irons it’s projects that use hot-glue, sewing machines and felt. http://blog.craftzine.com

3. Instructables

A brilliant website for science classes, design and tech, just about any subject at school really. Instructables has DIY projects for literally any machine/invention/concoction you can think of. A great resource for high-school students to be engaged with and contribute to. http://www.instructables.com

4. Howtoons

Howtoons is a brilliant idea, a science and technology site made using comics. This website is aimed at upper primary and early secondary kids and does a great job of making science exciting and accessible. Their blog is updated regularly and finds science news that kids will actually be interested in. http://www.howtoons.com

5. Learning to Love You More

This is a website created by the artist Miranda July and it lists a number of art assignments for visitors to complete. You can then upload your assignments to share with everyone else on the site. I can’t think of another website/art project that better defines “community”. I think this would be great for Year 10 art class. http://learningtoloveyoumore.com

6. TED

Remember those boring science documentaries you had to watch at school? The TED conference takes a Large Hadron Collider and smashers boring science into obcsure sub-atomic particles. There are videos that cover a whole number of different subject categories across science and the humanities. Kids in high-school should be watching at least one of these videos each week. http://www.ted.com

7. Deviant Art

Despite the suspect name that will probably put a lot of teachers off, Deviant Art is a fantastic online community for high-school students to upload and share their own personal artworks with. As oppossed to Myspace and Bebo, Deviant Art is all about being creative and productive and sharing your work with your peers. Highly recommended. http://www.deviantart.com

8. NSW State Library Online Collection

The State Library has an online archive of some very old and fascinating documents. You can explore the journals and notes of Sir Joseph Banks, Matthew Flinders and Miles Franklin. Probably one for the older kids but really interesting when you start digging. http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/about/collections/online.html

9. Fun Brain

Fun Brain is not your typical online video game website. All the games have some kind of educational bent and there is also a comics section as well. This site more suited to younger students, but I’ve spent many a time there myself. http://www.funbrain.com

10. Google Maps

Google Maps has a great new feature called “My Maps” which allows users to add and upload their own content to a map and share it with friends or the public. This is a great tool for field trips and school excursions. You could create an interactive worksheet by having a map that students use to upload their answers. http://maps.google.com

And two great how-tos from our very own Peter Cossey!

You sing into ducky. Ducky makes a red square move. Magic ducky.

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Hugo Bowne-Anderson talks about a toy duck that can affect and mix audio and visuals at the 2008 Underbelly Festival.

Edited by Chelsea Johnson during her 2009 internship at CuriousWorks.

Listen to the rest of the CuriousWorks presentation at Underbelly 2008 on All Around You.
Check out the CuriousWorks / Underbelly 2008 photos on Flickr.

One of the organisations we worked with in Roebourne in 2008 was the Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation. The NAC is the formal organisation that represents the Ngarluma people who are one of the traditional owner groups in the Pilbara region. Roebourne is in the heart of Ngarluma country.

While we were working in Roebourne we received a lot of assistance from the Language and Culture Unit of the NAC. Andrew Dowding and Tyson Mowarin are the two NAC team members who we spent some time with during our stay. Their focus at the moment is on creating resources which document the Ngarluma language and they have some exciting projects in the pipeline.

During our time at the NAC we talked a lot with Andrew and Tyson about our mode for using digital media in communities, All Around You online platform. We showed them our prototype and some of our other online projects and we ended up running a short seminar on using online technologies, in particular social media tools. One afternoon Shakthi, Andrew, Tyson and myself sat around a whiteboard and brainstormed some ways that the Ngarluma people could use internet technologies to document their own culture and stories and knowledge.

Andrew and Tyson already gather a lot of important and valuable cultural content as part of their larger projects and we all looked for ways to leverage some of that content in an online context. We came up with a lot of ideas but there were a few really simple ones that we had the chance to prototype with them.

The first idea was using Flickr to create a visual dictionary of plants and animals from Ngarluma country. The titles of the photos would show the names of the plants and animals in Ngarluma with the English names in the captions. It’s a really small simple project but something that could accumulate over a long period of time and become something really cool. The other important part of the project was the low-barrier to entry both in terms of production cost and also effort. Uploading an image with a title and a caption isn’t too tricky. If 10 images get uploaded each week, that’s 520 images at the end of a year. That could be a 520 page visual dictionary in the Ngarluma language which is accessible to kids in local schools but also kids on the other side of the world. The prototype got started that afternoon.

The next idea we ended up prototyping with Andrew and Tyson was another small language resource using short format videos. The idea was to use video as a way to combine the idea of a visual dictionary with audio of the Ngarluma language. Each video would show an object with a voice over asking “What is this?” and then a person naming the object to camera in Ngarluma. It’s probably easier just to watch some huh?

This is the kind of collaboration that gets us really excited because we end up working on ideas that can only come about by combining forces with other groups and cultures and ideas. CuriousWorks and the Ngarluma Aboriginal Corporation will definitely be staying in touch and exchanging more ideas so we’ll keep you up to date on further developments.

This was a session spent spinning visuals at a rooftop bar in Adelaide. The session was part of a GRL masterclass week in Adelaide in 2008.

View the video on YouTube || Music by Hilltop Hoods.

The GRL crew aim to “technologically empower individuals to creatively alter and reclaim their surroundings from commercial and corporate culture.” Their offshoot F.A.T., or Free Art and Technology, has the motto “Release early, often, and w/ rap music.” See what they’ve been up to in various spots across the globe.

I spent four days in early 2009 in Chennai, in the South of India – training the staff at OfERR to set up their own, free Wordpress website and develop ongoing digital media content related to their mission. Best of all (this is a first for us), the website is not in English – it’s in Tamil!

OfeRR is the Organisation for Eelam Rehabilitation Refugees. It is a secular, politically neutral NGO that services the 100,000+ Sri Lankan refugees in Tamil Nadu, India. Their activities cover everything from advocacy to engineering, architecture, agriculture, education and – of course – media. This was the first time they were setting up a communications system in their mother tongue – a language spoken by over 80 million people around the world.

On my first day with OfERR I went on a trip to a Sri Lankan refugee camp to get a sense of the places OfeRR works in. You can read about that trip elsewhere on this site.

Returning from the trip, it was clear to me, as I could not speak fluently in Tamil, that I would be of little use to the refugees through direct contact. It was better for me to work with those in the OfERR head office who could speak some English, had interest in the power of new media and could be trained to implement a digital media strategy themselves, with the community and in the language that they knew best. The Director of the organisation, Mr Chandrahasen, identified Anojan as the staff member most suited to this task.

This, step by step, is what I did, over 4 hours each day with Anojan:

Day 1: Discussions about OfERR and it’s mission

Discussions were had about the type of communications system OfERR wanted to set up. They desired a place where they could share:
- success stories about the refugees
- updated, unbiased news about the conflict in Sri Lanka
- the nature, purpose and developments of their activites
- and allow other Tamil people to discuss some of the relevant issues.

It became clear to me that a Wordpress-style blog was well suited to their needs. I knew Wordpress was available in Tamil. Anojan specifically asked for something simple which let the content stand out and this is what a blog does best. Their staff registered www.oferr.in, the ONLY cost incurred in the whole project, aside from our time. We set it up to forward to oferr.wordpress.com and started building the site.I guided Anojan to the Vigilance theme, which was simple and flexible. We looked through OfERR’s various photos and found an iconic photo that represented the aims of the site and the organisation. By cropping and layering the OfERR logo on this photo in Photoshop, we had a simple but powerful web banner in less than an hour (this could just as easily have been done in GIMP). I showed Anojan how easy it was to change to a new theme or upload a new banner in the future.

The next task was to decide on a process for the staff to type in Tamil on the website. We needed something which was free, could work on any computer in the office and was not dependent on certain installed software. Google’s transliteration service became the obvious choice. You simply type a Tamil word with English letters – such as ‘Amma’, or ‘mother’ – and it turns the letters into the equivalent Tamil lettering  – அம்மா. Text was written in the transliteration window and then copied and pasted into the desired field in the Wordpress back end. It worked quickly and intuitively for Anojan and he was posting in Tamil in a few minutes!

I then guided Anojan through more of the back end of Wordpress, going through each icon and tool and its uses. Specific, important concepts had to be explained, such as static pages vs. ongoing, quick release posts; using tags and categories to intelligently architecure your information, etc etc. Anojan had previously done some personal blogging with Blogger so he got a hold of Wordpress very quickly. I left him alone for the rest of the day to continue exploring the back-end of Wordpress on his own terms.

Day 2: Set up a website

In our second session, I felt Anojan was ready to put up his first posts and pages – the basic foundation of the information on his website. So we talked about the different types of content that would be generated. After the talk, I left Anojan alone for a couple of hours to put these posts and pages up himself. When I came back he had published a basic version of OfERR’s about page, programs, contact and staff details as pages. He had organised categories around each of the main topics OfERR would publish content around.

Anojan had also written and published his first post, celebrating that day as the birthday of their Director and all he had achieved for the company. Clearly this post deserved an accompanying photo of their Director! So I taught Anojan how to take or find suitable portrait images, and convert them to a size and quality suitable for the web through Photoshop (again, this can all be done through GIMP or, if you have a Mac, iPhoto). Now that we had started generating assets for the website we set up a simple file structure on his computer that organise all files related to the website in a simple, clear manner, sorting by date and media type so that any point in the future he would easily be able to recall a particular image, audio or video file for other uses.

Anojan then went on to write his next post: explaining to future contributors of the site – both his own colleagues and interested people from the wider Tamil diaspora – how to type in Tamil on the website.

Day 3: Content on Website, Training other staff, Photos and Videos
One of the key components of the CuriousWorks approach is ease of use and accessibility. Your website should not be the domain of just one person in your company. Set up correctly, people involved in each of your different programs should be able to contribute to the site, growing the site as a whole and giving it greater authenticity.With this in mind, Anojan presented the site to key members of the OfERR staff who would be publishing to it in the future. He took them through the basic steps of publishing posts and inserting images. After the presentation (in Tamil, of course), we registered each of these staff members and guided them in publishing their first posts, about their respective programs at OfERR – women’s empowerment, medical unit, nutrition, computer unit, advocacy, etc. These people had never done this kind of work before and were posting, in Tamil, within the hour!

Find more photos like this on All Around You

I finished off the day teaching Anojan how to shoot video with the resources available at OfERR. They had one stills camera with a video function built in as well. So I taught him a simple process involving shooting with the stills camera and editing and exporting in Windows Movie Maker. By the end of the session he had made his first video, on equipment he had ongoing access to.

Day 4: VodPod—>All Around You.net—>Wordpress; Anojan does everything by himself

I began our last day by teaching Anojan how to embed slideshows and videos into a free Wordpress account. If you don’t pay to host your own Wordpress site, embedding some types of multimedia content can be tricky. I showed Anojan a simple work around process for this. Firstly, all single, web-sized images and text-only documents were to be uploaded directly to Wordpress. The space included in their free account is enough for thousands of these assets.

All collections of photos, audio and videos were to be uploaded for free using our own service, All Around You. Anojan signed up and uploaded both a collection of photos and his first video. Anojan then used All Around You to organise his photos into a photo album. He was now ready for the final step.

I asked him to open a new window and go to Vodpod. It took Anojan about 30 seconds to sign up this free service and log in to the home page for users.

Then, back in All Around You, he simply click the ‘get embed code’ link for his photo slideshow and copied and pasted that code into the ‘paste embed code’ in Vodpod’s home user page. You can see this tab just under the ‘add videos’ tab near the top of the page.

Once pasted, you click ‘preview’ and the ‘post to site’ tab. At this point, Anojan could just publish his content directly to the OfERR website, with accompanying text, by clicking the ‘Wordpress’ button and entering his website’s details. Or, after clicking the ‘Wordpress’ button you can click ‘options’ and get the embed code yourself to paste directly into a post, in the back end of Wordpress.

Videos can be added to Wordpress in exactly the same way.

As we were nearing the end of our last session, I wanted to make sure Anojan could go through everything he learnt on his own. I left him alone to do this, and on his own initiative he write a how-to for his colleagues on the proper processes for writing content for the website. Then, he took his own photos, made his own video, and uploaded them to All Around You. He used our process to publish them to the Wordpress site with accompanying text in Tamil – all on his own.

To finish, I discussed with Anojan the current operational systems of OfERR and how digital media could be integrated into these. This is literally about writing up who works where and how they can pass information about what they’re doing to Anojan in the head office; how often different people to report on their work and how that can be translated into posts for the website; etc. We wrote up a full document on this – essentially a digital media strategy for OfERR that just fit snugly into their already ongoing activities.

I created a private group on All Around You for OfERR where this strategy was published and through which Anojan, myself and other staff at OfERR could continue to talk about their site. Here Anojan and other staff could also access our knowledge base of ideas, looking through our ever-growing collection of techniques and how-to’s for using digital media effectively with their community. This is a service that anyone can use to publish content about their community.

I was quite certain now that OfERR no longer needed me in their offices and could run the website and develop effective content for it on their own. I had achieved my goal: redundancy.

Not bad for 4 days!

If you’re interested in going through this training yourself, or for staff in your organisation, find out more here and contact our General Manager Naomi, via naomi@curiousworks.com.au. We’d love to hear from you.

Overview

Kinect is a research and development lab for open source technologies to be used in community and contemporary arts.

Our first lab was held in April 2008 as in-residence artists at the Casula Powerhouse in Western Sydney. CuriousWorks’ Online Director, Peter Cossey, led the lab, with elements of the team each working on different projects. Also in attendance were Shakthidharan, Elias Nohra, Aimee Falzon, Hugo Bowne-Anderson and Mark Havryliv.

Some of the results of our research included the creation of: a touch screen interface that triggers images, sounds and movies in real-time; simple circuits that can be embedded into everyday clothing items and can trigger audio or visuals on the basis of your movement; a DIY portable speaker system for $30 – allowing people to turn their backpack or mailbox, for example, into a speaker; a soft drink bottle that can graffiti in light; and a Texta that can mix and post-produce audio and visuals with gestural movements (for example – you move your hand up, and the music you are playing gets louder; you move it down, and the music gets quieter).

Each day, the artists involved in the lab recorded an informal video diary, discussing the day’s activities. Here’s a sample (they are extremely informal):

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

View more of the video diary on All Around You.

All of these technologies will be shared in CuriousWorks’ All Around You labs and utilised in our own artistic projects. They will also be made available to the open-source community.

Since the first Kinect lab in April 2008, IR spray cans have been built and used by young people in Miller and Roebourne through the All Around You program; as well as being used by the general public at Underbelly Festival at CarriageWorks in Sydney and at Federation Square during the Melbourne Fringe Festival. The next Kinect lab will be held in 2010 at the CuriousWorks HQ in Surry Hills, Sydney. In 2008, Kinect is being funded and supported by many different organisations, including Australia Council for the Arts, Vodafone Foundation Australia, Arts NSW and Myer Foundation. Our key partner was Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.

Timeline

• March 2008 – Scoping Workshop, UNSW
• April 2008 – Lab: Casula Powerhouse, Western Sydney
• May 1 2008 – Showing: Casula Powerhouse
• May – Dec 2008: Liverpool All Around You Lab, Western
  Sydney
• July 13 & 14 2008 – Underbelly Arts Festival, Sydney
• July & August 2008 – Roebourne All Around You Lab,
  Western Australia
• September & October 2008 – Melbourne Fringe Festival,
  Federation Square, Melbourne

Project Outlines

IR Spray Can

The IR Spray Can is a visual arts project which seeks to re-imagine graffitti and aerosol art. This project uses recycled PET soft-drink containers to hold an Infra-Red LED circuit which acts as a virtual spray can. Combined with a custom computer drawing application and open-source Wii Remote software the IR Spray Can takes graffitti into a virtual space. Software controls the shape and consistency of the spray and light is transformed into virtual paint which is projected onto any surface via a data-projector. This project uses recycled materials and simple electronics to create the virtual spray can tool. The virtual spray can is cheap and simple to make.

Node Trigger

The Node Trigger is a live, multimedia triggering system designed to be interfaced with single click, handheld infra-red devices (rather than a keyboard and/or mouse). The interface operates through two screens: a trigger pad, made up of a variable number of small circles, or nodes; and an output window, on which all trigger multimedia appears or is heard through. The user can determine how many nodes are on the trigger pad and what relationship they have to each other. Each node can be assigned to a video or image file, as well as an audio file. The output screen is made up of 4 rows of 4 screens, so up to 16 nodes can be set to trigger 16 different pieces of multimedia at any one time. The Node Trigger has a special triggering system: when one node is activated, it sets off reverberations which, when they touch another node, activate that node’s as well. In this way, the user can design, live, an infinite number of node relationships that
organically trigger each other over time, and have this relationship mirrored in the way a set of 16 multimedia pieces are triggered and re-triggered. The entire system operates on single mouse clicks, so that an IR pointer device, such as a Texta case with a simple IR circuit inside and momentary switch on the side, could be used to play with the device without the need for a computer or keyboard. Effectively, with a generator, the Node Trigger could be projected onto any appropriate surface of the environment and interacted with through a small hand-held device, as if the node trigger pad was a touch screen surface.

Backpack DDR

Backpack DDR is a mobile triggering costume that translates a performer’s relationship with the ground into electronic messages on a computer. These messages can then be used to manipulate sound and computer based visualisations. At its most basic level the Backpack DDR system can trigger sounds when contact is made between the performer’s foot and the stage. This relationship can be made more dynamic by using software to analyse variables like the rhythm of the performers steps or the force of the foot hitting the stage. This opens the door for more than a simple triggering system, you could use the Backpack DDR to create a realtime simulated entity of the live performer which interacts with electronic and audio-visual elements of the performance.

Fly on the Wall

Fly on the Wall attempts to create computer interfaces from unexpected objects like soft-toys. The idea is to explore the possibilities of control systems which are not based around keyboards and mouses. This prototype uses a small hand-sewn plush-toy to control a video browser.

Sticky Speakers

Sticky Speakers are an experiment with localised, portable sound. A ’sound pad’ or simple speaker driver is matched up with an everyday, small battery-powered amplifier from Dick Smith. Plug this into an iPod or similar portable sound device and you have a very flexible, portable, localised sound solution. Distinct from PA systems which spread sound throughout any given space, sticky speakers could be put inside a backpack to provide sound as the wearer moves from place to place; inside an esky or handbag to increase in volume as the item is open; embedded into sculptures or paintings for cross-artform visual arts; or simply inside personalised cardboard boxes to create your own cheap speaker system. Whether in a performance or installation context (or both), this is a highly affordable solution for providing many points of localised sound on stage that are different to each other in space and time. The system is modular and may be complemented with other devices, such as Backpack DDR or IR Spray Can, to create a particular audiovisual or performance solution.

Lab

CuriousWorks was one of the first in-residence artists at the new Casula Powerhouse in Western Sydney. We spent 21 days living in an annex to the arts centre during April 2008, over which we developed a number of portable, accessible, affordable, open source technologies to be used in contemporary performance and community arts. We also documented each day in video and stills. The videos were two-minute interviews taken at the beginning and end of every day, many of which you can see on the map above.

We have a visual diary of the lab – here is Day 1, told in pictures:

Explore other days of the Kinect Lab through our Flickr photostream.

Showings and Exhibitions

Casula Powerhouse, April 2008
Underbelly Festival, July 2008

The residency at Casula ended with a formal, relaxed showing inside the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre to a group of interested multi-artform artists, arts workers, teachers, students and arts lovers, from both Eastern and Western Sydney. The presentation was repeated in a symposium context at CarriageWorks for the 2008 Underbelly Festival. This larger audience was mostly an independent arts practioners and arts lovers audience from inner-city and Eastern Sydney cirles. During the Underbelly lab, two new works were made. Hugo Bowne-Anderson developed techniques for particular sound frequencies to trigger visuals in particular ways; through voice alone one could move the position of a red square on a black matte; pass backwards or forwards through frames in a video; actually trigger a multimedia piece (say, when the voice hits a certain high pitch). The microphone receiving the audio signals was embedded in a toy duck, so visuals were affected by interacting, through sound, through a handheld soft toy – again, avoiding interfacing through a computer, keyboard and mouse. Aimee Falzon and Shakthidharan developed a cell-based animation made up of 16 squares called ‘Undergrwoth’. The work was made to be triggered and played with through the Node Trigger system. This technique was used again to develop the ‘Overflow’ work, commissioned by Federation Square for Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Liverpool All Around You Lab, May-December 2008
Roebourne All Around You Lab, July 2008
Melbourne Fringe Festival, October 2008

Students at Miller Technology High School in Western Sydney built personalised IR spray cans and Sticky Speaker Systems. The technologies were developed in this process beyond the Casula Lab stage. The IR spray cans were developed to trigger a range of visuals, including images drawn by the students in workshops. They were also developed to trigger sounds created by the students that accompanied the spraying of the visuals. The Sticky Speaker Systems consisted of small, personalised carboard boxes that had a portable sound player and amp inside them. Audience could pick these speakers up and carry them around, listening to audio landscapes developed by the students. Both projects were part of an
installation at the local PCYC in November 2008 and are slated to be part of a student exhibition at Casula Powerhouse in 2009.

Similarly, young people from Roebourne, Western Australia (West Pilbara region) built their own IR spray cans and Sticky Speaker Systems. Wiimotes and other production elements were left behind with teachers at Roebourne High School so that they could continue using the devices as they wished. At the end of our stay at Roebourne, a community gathering was held out the back of the local youth centre. These devices were used and showcased at the beginning of the night.

Finally, on the opening night of Melbourne Fringe Festival, passers-by at Federation Square were able to use an IR Spray Can we’d set up to spray their own digital designs in Melbourne’s city centre.

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

Find more videos like this on All Around You

The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported on the unveiling of a POD (print on demand) machine in a Melbourne Angus and Robertson bookshop, with other stores to get the machines soon. The machine is called an Espresso Book Machine, and was dubbed by Time Magazine “an ATM for books”. Now many out-of-print books and out-of-stock books can be printed and bound on the spot in store.

All well and good, but what about the implications of POD for niche publishing? They’re significant and, I think, just as interesting as what it means for large publishing houses and bookstore chains.

Take the recent POD-published book Letters from Katrina. Its publisher, a guy called Mark Hoog with a micro self-publishing company for children, began donating books to a school in Colorado and invited each of the students to write inside a book a pen pal letter to a student in Mississippi. The project grew to over $20,000 in donated books, involving dozens of schools, and some of the thousands of letters written were compiled to become Letters from Katrina-with all proceeds going to establish a scholarship fund for young people affected by Hurricane Katrina. The 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards listed the book as one of its Outstanding Books of the Year.

POD publishing helped Hoog to bring the book to print quicker and for less money than would otherwise have been possible, so the scholarship fund for young Katrina survivors started growing sooner. The turnaround time for publishing a new book, from uploading the copy to printing and distribution, can be as little as 1 week and up to about 8 weeks, depending on the publisher and the project.

How does POD work? Richard Corbett, in an online POD-publishing tutorial written for UK computer magazine PCPlus, cuts through the hype and helpfully points out that what POD publishing companies offer is not so much publishing as, well, printing.

Corbett explains how the process works with one POD company, Lulu (www.lulu.com). (Lulu distribute in Australia, as do a number of POD companies.) First, Lulu provides the free downloadable template, which plugs into Word. Corbett says: “You provide your book as either a PDF or a DOC file, set the details, and anyone can then buy a copy.”

Cover and layout options are basic and don’t lend themselves to art or design books, although we can expect this to change.

“Pricing is based on several important factors, starting with a base price for a book of your size, then being increased further by the amount you want to be paid for each copy sold (your royalty). One advantage of Lulu is that once you’ve got a book on the site, you can also turn it into an online eBook, where the prices come down considerably.”

No upfront fees, no stock of books. And if no orders come in, the book costs you nothing beyond your own efforts.

And, says Corbett, if you pay an extra couple of hundred dollars for a ISBN, you can get your book listed with wholesaler and distributor Ingram and usually, by extension, Amazon. (The same is true of Lulu’s competitor, Lightning Source, which is actually owned by Ingram.)

Lulu also has a “published by you” option which makes the registered publisher the author, not Lulu. This is a bit like having your own imprint, so it’s a shame the option is limited to self-publishers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands.

Apart from the mechanics of printing and post-sale distribution, the author is left to handle everything. By “everything”, read marketing-which, in publishing, it often is. This is why Corbett thinks POD publishing won’t work for fiction, although I wonder whether writers with existing cult followings could prove him wrong. And perhaps the downright directness of POD publishing could have saved Stephenie Meyers from the leak of her new vampire-studded romance, Midnight Sun, which appeared online in draft form before publication. (Meyers later published the book on her own site to save her fans from reading it illegally elsewhere. Plans for publication were canned.)

Of course, vanity publishing projects will be left to languish, unprinted and unread, on the e-bookshelves of cyberspace.

So, at least for the moment, POD comes into its own with niche titles that people can’t get elsewhere, for which they’re prepared to pay more than the usual retail price. Where you have an online market, a POD-published book can make sense. It may also work for a publication that doesn’t aim to turn a profit or is subsidised by a grant.

The innovative POD production of Letters from Katrina allowed Mark Hoog to release the book by the second anniversary of the hurricane, just in time for some serious media attention. Some of the reviews and promotional TV appearances get a bit schmaltzy, but it’s hard to ignore one letter quoted by Hoog. It was from a 5th grader who took the book, found a corner in the gym, and two minutes later brought the book back with the words: “Sometimes you have to tear down the walls of convention with a wrecking ball of creativity.”