Bluetooth brush with art

09 October 2007

Pioneering exhibition in All Saints Park

YOU’VE heard of bluetooth advertising in bars and clubs.

But mobile phone detection could potentially design the world around us as our ‘presence’ triggers tailored billboarding, music and even public art.

To highlight this ‘brave new world’, artist Joel Porter is staging Manchester’s first sensor technology art exhibition via a huge screen being set up in All Saints Park, Oxford Road, where people’s mobile phones will determine what is seen and when.

Joel, a Masters in Media Arts student at MMU is organising the pioneering ‘2.4Ghz Homing Pigeons’ exhibition as part of Urban Screens Manchester Festival.

Digital first

The 36-year-old’s work takes digital photography to a new level by allowing visitors mobile phone technology to control which image is displayed and to build a new image.

His animation of pigeons flying over Manchester* will be presented on the 5x5m screen and be controlled by the number of phones detected within a 100m range.

Joel said: "There are up to 30 pigeons in flight in the film and the number on screen will coincide with the number of passing pedestrians with Bluetooth enabled phones.

"There’s a clear and interesting relationship between pedestrians moving around the city at ground level and birds moving around the same landscape above our heads."

Joel says the piece questions our urban behaviour; how often do we look up, stop or stare?

BBC Screen

Manchester Urban Screens – co-hosted by The Cornerhouse, the BBC, MMU School of Art and others, takes place from October 11-14 when two huge screens (additional to the Exchange Square screen) will be erected in the city centre, one at All Saints Park, MMU and one at Cathedral Gardens.

The screens will broadcast international art works** on public screens ranging from mobile projection, VJ sets, live streaming, video and animation programmes, and interactive art. A series of talks includes doctoral student Maria Stukoff who is researching mobile phone gaming technologies on behalf of the Manchester Digital Development Agency.

Professor Steve Hawley Head of Art and Media at MMU said: "This event and conference shows how art can be located locally but also globally at the same time. This event is a thought-provoking spectacle, and at the same time wires the city of Manchester and MMU into a worldwide network."

Joel Porter’s interactive screen will be operating at All Saints Park, MMU, Oxford Road at the following times:
Thursday 11 October, 3-5pm
Friday 12, 8-10am
Saturday 13, 10am-midday; 8-9pm
Sunday 14, 9-11am; 6-8pm

Contact Joel Porter at porter.joel@gmail.com or go to his website at www.joelporter.co.uk

* The pigeons are based on Edward Muybridges study of pigeons in flight, taken around 1860.

** The Festival includes three premieres: True Fictions; New Adventures in Folklore by the light Surgeons, MegaPhone – the UK’s first outdoor, big screen games console, played via your mobile phone and A Wall is a Screen – the UK’s first mobile film night, which leads viewers through the streets of the city, stopping at points where iflms of different eras are projected. Footage provided by MMU's North West Film Archive.

For a full programme, go to www.manchesterurbanscreens.org.uk

Taken from the MMU press release at the following URL:

http://www.mmu.ac.uk/news/articles/716