December 17, 2014 by Seb Harding
We captured the data from over 100 delegates at the Creative Pie 2014 Conference. Using this data we created the charts above which break down our findings.
by Seb Harding
Characteristics: You’re practically nocturnal! You really start to hit your stride around midnight, just when everyone else is flaking out. Mornings are rarely seen.
Habitat: Can be spotted tripping the light fantastic at 4AM. If not outside then you may find them working late into the night within doors.
by Seb Harding
Characteristics: You’re the ultimate night owl. As the sun sets you come to life. Mornings are for lie-ins, or if you have to get up early there had better be coffee, and lots of it.
Habitat: Not often seen before midday. Usually found by night with a glass of red hidden in the depths of a wine bar.
by Seb Harding
Characteristics: You’re a bit of a ‘franken-bird’, part lark and part owl. Mornings hold no fear for you, but you like evenings too. You’re having your cake, and eating it.
Habitat: Adaptable to most environments. Often spotted outdoors in daylight hours.
by Seb Harding
Characteristics: Your motto must be ‘the early bird catches the worm’. Mornings are the best, why would anyone waste them lying around in bed?
Habitat: Always wakes by around 7.30 AM. Can be seen commuting around an hour later.
by Seb Harding
Characteristics: You are the living embodiment of that phrase ‘up with the lark’. A super-early riser, evenings tend to be a total write-off as you’re tucking yourself up in bed by 9pm.
Habitat: Can be found at 5:00am noisily making breakfast
December 2, 2014 by katie
Theatre Royal Winchester
Sat 14 – Sun 15 February 2015
Sat 28 – Sun 29 March 2015
Tickets now on sale (all now sold out!)
http://www.theatreroyalwinchester.co.uk/avon-calling/
August 14, 2014 by katie
Objective
To ascertain the feasibility of building a prototype of a software engine that automatically creates a video life story from an individual’s social media content.
Protagonist is a practical attempt to make sense of our vast stashes of personal data in a human, emotional, narrative way. Using their own social media content, we want to create a short film memoir of an individual – with the output feeling meaningful, personalised, beautiful and potentially provocative. And we want to see if we can create this using an automated process.
Our ambition was that the Protagonist service will be a commercial, stand-alone, direct-to-consumer product, but will also be used within the Afterlife Retreat (a large-scale residential theatre event The Other Way Works are planning for 2016).
Goals
To produce a design fiction film
To produce a technical specification for the software build
Outputs
An attractive design fiction film to illustrate the potential of the service. Working closely with an animator we have produced a film with a crafted, hand-made aesthetic, which is unique in the marketplace.
A Requirements document based on our research, to inform the Technology Feasibility Studies/Specifications.
Technology Feasibility Studies/Specifications from two independent software consultants/agencies demonstrating different approaches.
A summary of responses from our market research questionnaire.
Key Learning Outcomes
Building a prototype is feasible, and could be done for c£40,000.
Some adjustments would need to be made to the Specification, including reducing the range of social media feeds, and streamlining the processes that identify meaningfulness of the content to the user.
Music to soundtrack the video is a key component, with as much impact as the visual style. Rights and licensing cause a problem here, meaning that people can’t just have their favourite song to accompany the video. A selection of rights-free music would need to be offered, which mitigates the problem, but doesn’t solve it.
Construction of narrative from online data poses an extremely complex computing problem, which is just starting to be explored by digital giants such as Google and Facebook. It would be very difficult to compete in this marketplace currently.
by katie
The Protagonist project is ahead of its time. The ideas are sound, the research relatively easy to complete, and the concept is strong. The problem is that current computer technology and proprietary ownership of that technology makes creating a Protagonist platform difficult and somewhat expensive. At a future date, and perhaps not that far in the future, this kind of cross-platform video creation will be possible. At that point the technology will be used by a wide array of businesses and individuals. From my own research, I know that the Protagonist platform would create the kind of video content that funeral directors and other organisations working on personal memorialisation projects would find quite useful. One of the other groups that will benefit from this technology is archivists, many of whom will encounter enormous difficulties in the near future when it comes to storing digital content and information for prolonged periods of time.
For me, the entire project, and working with Katie, pointed towards what kind of future these online content platforms are working towards. At this point and time it seems far-fetched that one single company or government entity will own and run all online content platforms, so these disparate groups could end up creating a Protagonist-like system that runs across the groups. I have my doubts that this will happen, but it could.
The project also opened up another point for me, which is this: Maybe it is completely acceptable that most of a person’s online content is eventually lost and ultimately deleted. We first world Homo sapiens currently live in a historical moment in which the concept and practice of information preservation is crucial for an individual’s identity. I’m no longer convinced that our future cousins will necessarily view a lifetime’s worth of digital content with such reverence. Indeed, the difficulties in maintaining accessibility to that information as computer technology changes is itself alone a fundamental issue. Many people fail to realise, I think, that internet years are significantly shorter than human years.
Dr. John Troyer
Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society
University of Bath
by katie
We contracted two developers, independently of each other, to draw up a Technical Feasibility and Specification document for the build of a prototype of the Protagonist service. We wanted to get different ideas about how the problems could be solved, and get a sense of what approaches we could take.
We provided this Requirements Document as something to work from.
Here are their reports:
