An update on current progress;

We are taking a new line with the narrative; one that has been finalised this time! We will highlight the extent and dangers of information-gathering and people-profiling in the inline domain by creating a real-world analogy of similar tasks being carried out by a surveillance team which the user is part of.

Ben and myself are drafting up scripts at the minute and hope to have one ready at the end of the week, at which time we will post ads for auditions and begin the rest of the preproduction. Keith is flat out programming working prototype programs for the interactive application and Baptiste continues to research the extent of what THEY KNOW ABOUT US...

Things are developing quickly...

Just a small update on the actionscript. We have begun the drag and dropping with movie clips. Its straight forward at the start, just have to tweek a few things on it. Were looking at coding transitions at the minute so the drag and drop function runs more fluently. Creating more of a 3d environment with all the movie clips.

We're also working on the script at the minute, in regards to the narrative. We hope to have this completed by the end of the week so we will keep you posted.

Laters

Another mood board version...

This one we used in the presentation:

Presentation Success!

First big Group Project day over... We had our presentation in the Dragon's Den today and I'd say it was a big success. We put alot of work into it (one of the reasons the blog has been quiet last while...), and it paid off. All the lecturers seemed to get the whole concept and were excited about the project, especially the core ideas of highlighting the issues of information leaks, media bias and the dangers of surveillance. There was some criticism regarding the narrative, but we cant win 'em all!! Overall we are delighted with the response.

We also learned later today that Glenn Doyle will be our supervisor for the year. Given his extensive knowledge in the area of media theory in particular, we look forward to working with him.

We'll keep you posted...

Updated Mood Board

I updated the mood board since we did the mock presentation last Thursday. The image here on the left is the updated version of the mood board, with the original version directly below it. As per the suggestions and recommendations of the team and of the lecturers, I tried to make it appear less "Hollywood" and give it a more gritty and real appearance. To achieve this I removed a lot of the futuristic cinema stills and also included more Irish references, such as the Garda crime scene tape. I also converted all of the images to black & white so now they all have a CCTV kind of effect. Hopefully this version is a better reflection of the style we hope to achieve with the project.

An other current affair in France..

To sum up the case, L'Oréal heir, Liliane Bettencourt, may have given money to Sarkozy's Party during his campaign.

And now, three newspaper's offices has been robed, and everything seems linked...

http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/271010/bettencourt-tapes-stolen-mystery-break-ins-target-mediapart-le-point-and-le-mo

Update : mediapart.fr is a french online newspaper that bet on the "pay to see" formula. You have quality information, but you have to pay 9€ per month. They already revealed some crucial information and this is why they have been robed as well.

Twitter

If you are following our blog, follow on Twitter as well! Lots of interesting links that are relevant for our project are being shared through tweets from all four team members. Search 'Team Obsurveillance'.

links

Hey guys got a few links below of bbc news stories.. think they could relative to our narrative..

Also they are in the news at the mo so be good to have a quick look just incase we get asked next week maybe??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7872425.stm?lsm: danger of surveillance society

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11646562 : police filmed punching 'stabbed' man

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-11650112: woman killed accidentaly by US as she was held hostage

MASSIVE Progress!

Delighted to announce (as per our Tweet earlier) that today we made major progress on the narrative for our project. Nailed it in fact! It means we can really turn our focus now to the presentation in two weeks from today and start preparing straight away!

New story involves two Irish gangs, one Gardai Surveillance Unit, multiple layered surveillance feeds, multiple controversial info leaks and media cover-ups. Going to be awesome...

By sorting the new story, we also sorted a much more intuitive interactive element than previously envisioned; instead of sorting through live surveillance footage, the aim for the User is to find the truth in previously recorded footage. However the truth is never that simple...

Wikileaks Spokesman possible smear campaign

I remember this case being all over the news when I was on holidays this summer. The guy the article refers to is Julian Assange, he is the main spokesman for Wikileaks and sits on its main advisory board, he is also credited as being one of the founders of the Wikileaks website. Anyway within the space of about 24 hours a warrant for his arrest for sexual misconduct was very publicly issued, only to be revoked by the end of the day. Alot of people (including me cos im paranoid) think this was a smear campaign just to blacken his name, especially given the nature of the website, and the fact that prior to these claims Wikileaks was about to release alot of sensitive documents about the US. Anyway you can check out an article about thsese claims here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/25/julian-assange-wikileaks-sweden-investigation

The article raises a few issues, like smear campaigns, which maybe we could bring into our narrative. It also raises a few questions about what makes the news, when this story broke it was the first time i could remember Wikileaks actually being featured on prime time television. I think this is a bit strange becuase given all of the documents Wikileaks have released, it takes sexual misconduct claim for them to become newsworthy.

Research Topics

regarding todays class a couple of things were brought up that we should really know about. the first link here is to the article which appeared in the guardian last week about how sensitive documdents were leaked via wikileaks about how the us ignored torture in iraq. you can read the article here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/22/iraq-war-logs-military-leaks

also brought up today was David Lyon, whose a professor of sociology and a leading expert in the field of surveillance and information society. he's wrote quite alot about surveillance society, ive put a link here which has a short review of his book "The Electronic Eye, The Rise of Surveillance Society". It also gives a brief background on David Lyon at the bottom of the article as well.

http://www.mightystudents.com/essay/David.Lyon.Electronic.51934

Met with Ronan Lynch of 'Tactical Control Force' today. TCF was an exhibit at the Fis in 2007 that won best in show, and Ronan was the programmer. Of particular interest to us was just how similar it was to ours, as it similarly involves current affairs, elements of media coverage of events unfolding, and a tactical control centre. However we found out there are significant differences; user interaction is completely different (TCF was really 3 games, Epifect will be a more serious, less fun, exhibit based more on the narrative and message), and the subject matter is not so stereotyped in our exhibit. Ronan was extremely helpful in giving us much advice. We meet again tomorrow, when he will show us files from the exhibit, including the video clips and the director file. Looking forward to it!

Posts

Ive just noticed that since I have moved all posts from the old blog at http://kenainiste.blogspot.com/ it says that I am the author of them all! Please note that I am only one of four contributors, and some of the posts below are from the others! To see exactly who wrote what, please check out the old blog.

New Focus

Ok so we have had our group project class this morning and we got clear messages regarding where we should go next from the lecturers. They seem happy enough with the new narrative, but are concerned how we have moved away from the wikileaks/media coverage element (although it is still there to an extent), and made it more 'hollywood'. I think describing the presentation of the peice in more detail tomorrow will help them understand more what we want to do; 'hollywood' this exhibit is not! Anyway we seem to have got less of a grilling than other groups so I guess its ok! Plan is to focus now on bringing the media back into the narrative more, continuing the research and bringing the knowledge that comes with it into the narrative, and continuing to look into ways of interaction. We can only move forward from here!

Major Progress

Ok so there are some changes tonight: Firstly the temp team name 'Kenainiste' has finally been abolished! We are now team 'Obsurveillance', as the Blog title suggests. We also decided on a product name (at least for now) of 'The Epifect'.

In other equally as important news, we have come a massive leap forward in our plans for a narrative. At the minute we are looking at creating an interactive surveillance hub from which the user views a twisting and turning narrative involving the surveillance people being spied on, a multimedia hacker mastermind and a supposed terrorist plot that turns out being anything but stereotypical. Theres way too much to explain in a post here but it is finally coming together anyway so we speak to the lecturers tomorrow; lets hope they are as excited as we are about where its going!

Research: Updated

Hey guys... Iv been researching the ways and modes of interaction. I got a playlist on youtube with all surveillance movies and different modes of surveillance. Im watching through some of them but I reckon it would be good to have a look at these. Also I have some notes taken down from the drama on channel 4 on thursday. I was more focusing on the narrative more so than the ethics of the story. There was a good bit of information on what government agencies do and how they would act if a kidnapping like this happened, a few interesting ideas for the narrative and what would happen in real life. A few good facts on the media also, relating to the story.

heres the link for that drama if you want to watch it on 4OD: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-taking-of-prince-harry/4od#3130750

Talk soon.

Narrative Progress

The team has been busy working together over this two weeks behind closed doors on an exciting and compelling story for our exhibit. We are creating an interactive (but fixed, i.e. NOT multi-threaded) narrative centered around the theme of surveillance and the sometimes-sinister media. We just wanted to update everyone watching that we are making good progress and that we have finalized a few key things:

The subject matter will be current affairs/mass media relevant.

We hope to change the User's opinion, or for them to realize something about the real world that they didn't think too much about before.

It will be presented and probably interacted with through a surveillance-themed constructed environment.

The hard-hitting, twisting, and possibly controversial narrative is the key element to holding the immersion of the User, along with a unique physical experience.

All still very general, I know, but specifics coming soon!

Surveillance Everywhere

Found a couple of articles out there about surveillance which might interest you guys. The first 2 are from last year but still relate to what we're doing. The first is about the police in the UK using unmanned drones to tackle gang crime and smuggling, and the ethical questions it raises. You can check it out here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/24/police-unmanned-surveillance-drones

The second is about a proposed introduction in 2013 of in-car surveillance equipment as a "safety" measure. Agains it's a UK article but relevant to us too given that its an EU thing. Check that article out here:
http://www.wiseupjournal.com/?p=856

The last one I found was about the drama Anya was talking about last Thursday. Channel 4 are going to show a drama about the hypothetical kidnapping of prince harry by the taliban this thursday so it could be worth a look. The article makes some good points about what makes entertainment, and the merits of a gritty drama. Check this article out here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/oct/10/taking-of-prince-harry-drama

Panopticon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

This is the Panopticon that Anya mentioned, its a prison design based around pre-CCTV surveillance. I think she said that it was a also project in the Fis a few years ago but I cant find anything on it... Anyway the real thing is an interesting idea and the psychology behind it is very relevant for us!

welcome in 8th wonderland!

Okay, just found the 8th wonderland adress... I think we could get some inspiration from it...

Anyway, would you like to become an 8th wonderland citizen?

http://www.8thwonderland.com/

Team/Project Name

Hey guys, the more I see Kenainiste, the more I wish I came up with something more creative... I know we should focus our attention on the narrative issues etc but lets also have a think about the name too!

Baptiste made a really good suggestion with the general idea of 'What you see is not always what you get'. This is perfect except for the length, so I was trying to find a word or pair of words that summed up that phrase... thought of 'Deception' but that has more than a little similarity with a certain major motion picture... So what about 'Eidolon' (means delusion) or the slightly over-the-top-but-still-cool 'Deceptio' (Latin for deception)... Anyway I strongly suggest a one/two word name that sticks out. Suggestions?

Contacting Tactical Control Force People

Hey guys when I was googling this project I found a lady named Sinead Rafferty on LinkedIn who worked on this project. I sent her an invite explaining briefly what we were thinking of, so hopefully she gets back in touch!

This is a conversation with the guys from 3 years ago who won best in show at the Fis... http://ww2.dkit.ie/about_dkit/podcasts/dkitalk/department_of_music_and_creative_media_fifth_annual_fis_multimedia_exhibition/tactical_control_force_exhibit_at_fis_showcase_13th_june_2007_department_of_music_and_creative_media_dkitalk_com

Blast off!!

love the name-fusion for the title, although not exactly catchy, still its a work in progress. I set up a twitter account today so you guys can follow it at mr_ben_10. there's no tweets up there yet apart from one advertising this blog. anyway back to business, i found this clip ages ago but it shows how television stations are at the end of the day run by people, and people have agendas whether we like them or not. What we watch on television and what we are told is news can be manipulated to favour say for example, the financial backers of a particular tv station. Obviously all news is not some kind of mental manipulation but it does make you think....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K2pLo8JV5Y

Sorry its only a link, ill try and upload the actual video later.

So, I just came accross a video that kind of scared me..

I don't know if you are aware of what's happenning in France right now, but the whole country on strike (I know you would say again, but still...).

A journalist has "hit" by a policeman... Well I don't know what happenned but, I was astonished by the video.

Well, this is current affairs, so...

LA POLICE FRAPPE UN JOURNALISTE D'INVESTIGATION DE CANAL+
Uploaded by MOASPRESS. - News videos hot off the press.

Hello Guies!

I really like the name. I think we should keep it as a code name for our project (until we come up with the actual name of the project).

I guess we'll brainstorm a lot in the few next days..

So see you around!

Getting started

you guys should have the ability to post; test it out. The team name is obviously just a temp amalgamation of all our names, although its catchier than i imagined! Of course this can be changed, and the URL also.