| The Multi-Player
Game
We are now working on EBD3, the 3rd version of 'Ere Be Dragons.
We have an all new singing and dancing 3D map where audiences can
follow the players as they walk around the city. The game play has
changed slightly and it all works much more smoothly.
EBD4 is also now in development and will involve a Mobile Smart
phone and we hope will include a heart rate monitor on the wrist
and one finger that is connected wirelessly to the the phone creating
a more seamful and comfortable experience.
'Ere Be Dragons was commissioned in September 2005 to be developed
as an interactive artwork for the Radiator Festival for New Technology
Art, 1st - 4th December 2004, Nottingham, UK. The artwork maps unknown
territories, controlled by the heart beat of the players as they
walk around Nottingham City Centre and resulting in an interactive
installation. From the Galleries of Justice, audiences were able
to watch a map of the city being created live by players who plug
in their hearts and set out to explore the real world, in order
to reveal their inner world. Overlayed onto a real map of Nottingham
people create and occupy territories, overlap with other players,
keep the world alive by keeping their heart rates healthy.
Working with Leif Oppermann and Mauricio Capra from Mixed Reality
Lab to connect the players live to the interactive installation
so that audiences can view a map of the City Centre being created
live.
The Game
The game is based on the research into optimum heart rate activity
and maintaining good levels of heart rate activity over a period
of 20/30 minutes.
The game works on two levels, stand alone for the player to play
as a regular game whilst walking around their environment, or as
part of a mutli-user game, where the stand alone game is connected
to a server that updates a global interface mapping the environment
where the players are walking. This takes place as part of a performance,
where the game on the pocket PC connects to performers and and an
experience that unravels in the real world.
Artistic Vision
Active Ingredient’s motivation in the development of ‘Ere
Be Dragons was to create an experience that used the tools of game
play to build a visualisation of the player’s internal and
external worlds. The aim was to generate levels of conceptual and
mythological meaning from the feedback of the player’s heart
rate as they walked through a real physical landscape, therefore
creating a map of the player's personal interaction with their environment.
Active Ingredient is in the process of exploring computer games
from an artistic perspective. The aim within the ‘Ere Be Dragons
project was to create an experience through game play that went
beyond the traditional definition of a game or artwork.
The project’s conceptual thread lay in the artist’s
ideas about creative mapping. By using heart rate as a means to
map real space we were interested in the representation of an emotional
city, seen less as streets and buildings but more as a visualisation
of the internal processes of the players.
‘Ere Be Dragons became a project where we could explore ways
of altering the experience of the real world through game play,
virtual space and remote space, themes that have been recurrent
in our work since 1996. The liveness and the live feedback (through
the heart rate of the players) are therefore central to this experience
of interaction.
The three disciplines that are explored through the project are:
* Hybrid interactive digital artwork
* Public health and exercise
* Pervasive technologies (specifically mobile gaming)
The Science
'Ere Be Dragons is a creative game that aims to encourage people
to exercise by walking and to learn more about their body whilst
they are doing this activity. It is aimed at people who live sedentary
lives - regular computer games players, teenagers and people who
work at a computer all day. Through creating a game that links computer
gaming with physical activity it is our hope that we can engage
people in exercise as a creative experience.
'Ere Be Dragons was devised in response to working with available
mobile technologies, researching ways of exploring the environment
and how to interpret a personal response to this environment. The
project relies on the player/users internal responses to the external
environment, both physical and physiological, captured by a heart
rate monitor.
The Technology
'Ere Be Dragons has been developed using the following technologies:
* HP IPAQ or SMART phone
* GPS
* Sciencescope heart rate monitor + Fraunhofer Bluetooth heart rate
monitor
* Hewlett Packard Mobile Bristol and Mediascape toolkit
* GPRS
|