10 Questions About…

Last week I dragged Patrick to the Science Gallery for a great DATA 47.0 event. There were three speakers who worked on techie, cutting edge performance arts stuff. The first was Teresa Dillon who worked on performance arts pieces in off-site locations where the scenes or acts seemed to be triggered by the audience. The audience members had RFID trackers that triggered the action. Next was Duncan Speakman who spoke about silent flash mobs or “lazy film making” where audience members are each given an MP3 – but they receive different MP3s. SO some may hear a narrative, while others are hearing instructions to perform acts (like shake someone’s hand) that would in effect lead them through acting out the stories that the other audience members are hearing.

Also he has used technology (cell phones, Google maps and an artist at a remote site) to lead individual residents through a conversation/tour of their city. Where the residents might talk out loud about what they would like to see happen (in terms of urban development) in various areas. While the residents talk, the artists work away to draw out the visions described. Then the residents convene – a map is created with the artist renderings of the ideas and talk together about their visions – making they cases as to why their visions would make sense.

Finally, Peter Petralia spoke about a project in Bristol where they had sort of a scavenger hunt that involved about 100 volunteers. People signed up, not knowing what was going on. Then for two weeks then received emails, texts, letters and phone calls inviting them to different tasks. If they were available – they participated. The participants interacted in the various tasks, which often involved some use of social media to track their impressions and thoughts.

So I have to say that all of the ideas sounded super interesting to me. Makes me wish I could participate or even lead something like that. Can you imagine anything better than a techie scavenger hunt that goes on for a week?

Those sound cool — and given my predilections, a great way to precipitate a hoax, too.

Comment by Rich Broderick August 1, 2011 @ 1:44 pm

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