Today I presented theirwork to Karel Dudesek, which was a fun inspiring experience as well as extremely helpful to the development of the project.

Are you making visible your stats? Do you want to put a stats button there? You could see all traffic then, and so could everyone else. Some people don’t want people to see their traffic. I will email you some easy software for that.

Can you specify what needs to be done to different programmers? If you use rentacoder can you write about different aspects that need to get done, in their language? You are creating an enterprise now. You are an agency if you want to carry on. You have the framework, which was your plan. Now plan for a year’s budget - PR, equipment, travel and technical development… - then apply for funding but have money coming in and going out. You can target the Arts Council, you are hitting some buttons… Operate like Readers’ Digest.. It’s rubbish right? But they get articles and images from all over the place, for like £10. Say a school comes in and gives you 50 images, then give them £50 back. It’s not great to do all for free. Don’t rely on acts of the voluntary. People have to invest a lot. Free can create a tension and it’s hard to get rid of that then. It’s better to take away emotional attachment. Put a Paypal button there. Create an economy, even if you just give a programmer or someone a £1. Go auction.

Don’t take this criticism to heart. There’s quantity but it’s still text based - bring in more of the visual, and touch on the emotional, which is a chance thing. It is serious, too formal still. If you can hit on some emotion then you’ve got content and you need to keep getting content. Content is king, otherwise the thing dries out. The imagery of the childlike map and the logo buttons are fine, but bring in the design. What’s still missing is the visual representation of the data, and in a way which captures people’s emotion. Just percentages and points are not good. The text is nice on the right [the tagging] but it still needs to appear with things. Flickr hit by a mistake, it’s not an easy thing to hit emotion. They were so focussed on gaming environments for so long, the photographs were just one tiny part.

What’s missing is also the relationship of the lake to other things. The size of the lake, its dimensions, its mass.

Think about how much size you want to give something, how far should a car or building be from it? How much space do you need to give yourself? How much space to you need to give a flower? A fish?

People need to see more than, oh, there’s a focussed researcher; they need to see the thing. Don’t bring it from reading now. Your reading again now, into the imagery - don’t analyse that way. Look at the emotion and humour. Bring in the humour. Yes, it is serious; for sure climate change is here. We know in the world we are going to stand at the gates of heaven stripped bare and get sent down to hell. It is serious, people are being stupid but bring in humour with the daily changing of habit…with humour comes positivism…positivism alone can be contrived.

And you touched on it, but how would this work in other places? If I cast a net in China how would it function? For people have the same problems there. If I cast it on that table over there, that door, what would happen? It should work. How would language work in somewhere like China? What would happen? How can the project fire off? You need to be able to cast a net anywhere…

Don’t underestimate an individual’s involvement. What they can bring can change things. Don’t set them on the wrong track by not listening and staying too focussed on your track. You’ll lose them. With community you will bring in different types of people, stay alert to seeing it and what they bring…

Now it’s locative, its location. Get more locative. I don’t mean kiosks. Literally leave stickers on a post or something. And I do mean do stuff away from the computer…You know, because some people might not even be able to access the interface. It might be mobile phones, sending message of hidden treasure…downloading and uploading. Create dialectic between the real and virtual. Think about what else is fun. How do you involve people? Don’t think, I will just give out free GPS machine, say, ‘earn five organic salads’…

You say you’re presenting a paper, when?

It’s a good project. I don’t mind if you say that’s it now, I am moving on to another project. You have to decide what to do. Well done.

HIDDEN TREASURE

I am thinking about all of this. It is tiring (good tiring) and early to form a large response but I have been thinking about hidden treasure. And oh, how my work used to have humour, I think, and I think it’s still here, there, present in this project, but I need to dig it out. I totally agree it needs to come out. With regards to hidden signage, there are previous posts I will dig out later about mobile phones and technology and perhaps I should start to do some research in the Autumn on that. Here’s a nice one from Emmet that relates. I also have user tests not posted about interface design, that talk about making it more fun, and I will do more research into look and feel - like hands on research in the future. I also have some old posts about visualisation and quantifying data, (some of which touch on humour). For instance, a past prototype, creating something that needs to be evocative, layers merging in a map, visualising methodology. I will also revisit these to help drive ideas and perhaps future specifications.

Funny enough, I had just sent this to Emmet “Quite like this - making visitors public on sites, feltron.com, which is on a site you pointed to me earlier.” I look forward to seeing the software link karel sends. I think the most important thing to dwell on at the moment is the auction. And, I was so pleased to hear this, “Create dialectic between the real and virtual” because I had just posted a new category on the forum the day before. I was worried that such a thread might lead people away from the computer. Karel has given me the confidence not to worry about building on this aspect - create events outside, and leave things about outside that help to lead people into the project - give access to people who have no access.

hidden signage developing outside (aside from mobile phones)
stuff in the sand (leave signs)
wandering trolleys (once again)
bike messengers
houses with woodchips and logos
hooks on trees
love on a tree
scratches on a bench
purple dots in a tree, purple point data on a map
the butterfly ball
bluebell notes
postcard heavens
mapping with soul
maps of steal
dog bags (both sorts)
badgers in the bush

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