Walking the Edit Presentation 2013
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The 'Walking the Edit' project allows users to create unique, real-time movies by walking through urban spaces while capturing geolocated audiovisual material. Using a mobile app, visitors generate their own narrative as their paths activate a pre-existing digital library of footage, resulting in personalized films. The project combines artistic exploration with technology to interactively engage users with the audiovisual memory of their surroundings.
Walking the Edit Presentation 2013
- 1. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 Walking the edit compose your movie just by walking
- 2. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 1 Short description 3 The artistic workflow 4 The technical platform 5 Context 6 Cases history 7 Press sommaire
- 3. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 1 Short description A Realtime movie. The artistic aim of the project is to enable the crea- tion of unique and individual movies by anybody, based on already existing audio-visual material and… a walk. In short, each trajectory recorded by a visitor creates a numeric trace which, once analysed by our “editing engine”, will generate in realtime an indivi- dual and unique movie based on geolocalized footage. Storiesarecomingfromunderyourfeet… Stories of-from-about-with the territory: the prac- tice of “walking of a movie” is an open and playful way of interacting with the audiovisual memory of our surrounding environment and everyday life. By mixing our immediate reality with feeds and data coming from the digital space (the mobile internet), we create a so-called “augmented reality”. The project “Walking the Edit” opens an alternative path to this hybrid territory, by reducing the data- worlds into an artificial construction that is a story- line. One story out of many potential others: the past of the place you are interacting with is (re)combining itself to deliver a new, contextual and unique story that belongs to your present.
- 4. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 2 Short description Generate your own movie just by walking. Using the “Walking the Edit” system, you can create as many surprising movies as you wish: each perso- nal path will generate it’s own unique movie. Like an Audio-Walk, you hear stories about / from the territory you pass through – but you get much more: the liberty to walk how you wish, where your foots- teps are “driving” you. The movie is not before you, but behind you ! By using our free iPhone app that records your tra- jectory with the built-in GPS, you hear along the way the soundtrack of the movie that you are composing As you progress, the audio visual material previously placed on the territory is “called up” into your movie: the form of your trajectory becomes the form of the movie. Once the walk is complete, you can watch the resul- ting movie on the iPhone or on the website, choose to share it with the other users and watch their movie.
- 5. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 3 The artistic workflow Two teams prepare the content: 1. A production team survey a delimited territory and gather audiovisual fragments which reveal the specific characteristics of this space: details, por- traits, fictional elements… Emphasis is placed on the uniqueness of the view- point and on the intensity of the relation with the reality. 2. The collected images and sounds are indexed and assigned to a geographical location on a digi- tal map by the team of editors. Each audiovisual fragment constitutes an asset which will be indexed according to objective and subjective attributes. Our editing engine and web services will then make the “magic” to create a meaningful and surprising movie. The public enters the scene and can use the system: 3. Equipped with an iPhone (personal or borrowed) and the WE app’, visitors wander through the urban space. They hear in real time the soundtrack of the film which they are walking and watch the editing process taking place on the smartphone interface. Their trajectory will “awaken” the existing images and link them together. 4. Once the walk is complete, the visitors, now become viewers, can watch “their trajectories translated into films” on the internet site and can share them. Each generated film makes it possible to (re)immerse oneself into the “digital memory” of the urban space. 1 2 3 4
- 6. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 4 The technical platform MEMOWAYS PLATFORM. On the road of building up this project we have deve- loped Memoways, a generic software platform in the cloud. The central piece of the Memoways software plat- form is a Mac OSX application, enabling any content producer to create a searchable, categorised and intelligent library of audiovisual files. The Memoways Platform holds unique features such as the spaceline concept; “magic” metadata; mobile creation and a programmable editing engine. The application has 2 main modules: _ Database management (upload, indexing of the assets) _ Project management (project creation, managing the usages) Around those two modules, it is possible to access to statistics (of the assets, usages, users etc), to manage users and lists, create and import contacts and more. Next to the Memoways application, there are fol- lowing modules that complete the platform: A generic architecture for mobile applications. By using this architecture, content producers will be able to build efficiently a mobile application with their own content, for their own public or customers. A series of public API’s. Those API’s will open access to the public content in a managed way, letting any developer build up he’s own mobile applications or website. A web SDK provides the content producers with embed code that will enable them to simply integrate functionalities (video player with map) and content (assets & metadata) into their own CMS and web presence (Facebook, LinkedIn etc). A innovative editing algorithm: our editing engine. This algorithm is a very special filtering algorithm that uses a form (human behavior) as an input to create another form (storyline) as output.
- 7. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 5 the context URBAN SPACE. To begin with, there is the search for a space. A strong and interesting context is needed in order to gather and then to sow our media. A priori, each space, whether full or empty, harbours the potential to let the imagination soar. But what matters finally is its capacity to fascinate, to be the meeting ground for contradictory forces, to create situations which take us out of the everyday in order to frame it better, in short: the most fertile ground for this pro- ject definitely appears to be the urban space with its entangled rhythms which elude us… It is then up to the filmmaker to choose a path from the many possibilities which pass before his/her eyes; to stick with it, to persist, understanding no- thing at all about it, to keep working at it in order to capture finally in flight the moment which will later be shared, revisited and be part of a new context: the digital space. The issue is, in a way, to be able to find a renewed and highly subjective relation to the urban space by sampling or watching well-defined fragments, for- getting the rest, just setting off into the perspec- tive offered, the “here and now”. Faced with complexity, to choose the simple gesture. CINEMA. The ideal film we would like to reach as a movie-loving visitor. There are models, examples, which make your heart beat faster – but how can we get what is the fruit of the lengthy toil of one or two brains, focused on their individual preoccupations, to work just by performing a physical activity (in this instance, wal- king)? The challenge faced by this project is to situate the cinema not at the level of the molecule (the film), but at the level of the atom (the media: our “building brick”). This means adding a little of the cinema to each fragment collected. Then comes the indexing, which will make our atom- media “vibrate” so that, later and further on, it connects with another atom-media which responds to its oscillation. And finally, the surprise (the deception, the enchant- ment); the magnetization of our media into a film, at the end of the process, will revive the images, the memory of the trajectory. We edit as we walk… NEW MEDIA. It could be said that the new media are in this case the meeting ground between the urban space and the cinema. The “Walking-the-Edit” project does not stress the newness of a medium (computing consumes any novelty even before it appears), but more the fact that a medium can be renewed without changing its identity, simply by changing its position (in a context) or its place (in time). In other words, it is a question of exploiting the variability of a medium (here, as much the content as the container). This is not new in itself, but the scale and the intensity of the varia- bility has evolved considerably, raising the question of linking the variations (by digital means) with the world as we know it. The cinema in a time of “media renewal ” still some- times sounds off-key or not in rhythm – it is up to us to invent new instruments, or systems, with which even the alleged false notes can ring true. The image which could result from the use of the system, is that the labyrinth is not in front but behind us.
- 8. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 6 cases history Adaptations. This system designed within a research framework is deliberately modifiable and open to many varia- tions and adaptation Those which interest us specially are of an artistic nature: An “installation” version. There could be several types of installations: an installation with temporary centralization (a star- ting space where one can watch the films, the tra- jectories of the visitors through a projection of their traces in real time, etc.); an unrestricted, decentralized installation (where the essential passes via a website and individual downloading of the iPhone application); an installation that uses existing urban screens (the films being walked are broadcast on public screens in the same space); an installation which combines the above possibili- ties; A “performance” version. A performer-editor walks through the city and creates a movie in real time that the viewers can watch simultaneously in a cinema. He/she has prior knowledge of the material and the issue here is to be able to bring the desired media into the flow of the edit through the physical journey. This version can be carried out on the same basis as the installation ver- sion (it can therefore be combined). Genève. This adaptation is funded by following institutions: The Département de l’Instruction Publique du Canton de Genève (subvention cinéma et du FCAC), The Département de la Culture de la Ville de Genève (subvention complémentaire), The Fonds REGIO Films avec la Loterie romande (aide automatique liée à la subvention Cinéma du DIP) December 2010: adaptation and presentation within the festival Image-Mouvement which will take place at the BAC between (9 -12.12.2010). February 2011: prsentation of the project within the Lift Conference, Workshop on friday and presence during the confrence within the Lift Experience. (2-4.02.2011) Automne 2011: almost 3500 video files placed on Geneva. Brussel. After having been nominated at the “New Technological Art Award 2012”, the institution iMAL is co-producing the adaptation of “Walking the Edit” in Brussel. In collaboration with six artists living and working in Brussel, we created the content in summer 2012 in order to present the project to the public for the exhibition (21.09-18.11.2012) Basel. The project is part of the exhibition “Sensing Place” at the Haus der Elektronischen Künste in Basel. We will work through workshops that will be organi- zed in september and october with local schools to create content in the area of Dreispitz. (09-10.2012) Paris. This adaptation is funded by following institutions: le Ministère de la culture et de la communication (DICRéAM) and the MRT: services numériques cultu- rels innovants du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication A co-production between: Cité internationale, Pascale Dejean – Valorisation du patrimoine / Archives audiovisuelles, Centre de valo- risation du patrimoine, Dédale, C-SIDE Productions The adaptation in Paris was presented during the “journées du patrimoine” at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, 18-19.09.2010) The project is called “Heritage Experience” and is now online. Renens. Adaptation of the dispositif between 2008 and 2009 within the research project.
- 9. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 7 press Tribune de Genève 21 octobre 2009 Les coupures de presse à jour à l’adresse http://walking-the-edit.net/fr/reseau/presse/
- 10. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 8 press Libération, édition du 25/26 spetembre 2010
- 11. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 9 press Tribune de Genève 9 décembre 2010
- 12. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 10 press 20 Minutes 11 août 2010
- 13. Walking the Edit presentation 04.2013 11 press Le courrier 28 août 2010