I just got back from Birds Eye View, where I gave a short intro to mscaping for beginners. Amazingly it wasn't just attended by people who had tried out e:merge (Jackie Calderwood's filmic piece running for the duration of the festival) or who had gone to Clare Reddington's talk about pervasive media studio that she gave to Geek Girls in London on friday as part of the festival.  On Sunday we only had a couple of hours for the workshop so I showed the basics of the mscape software then took everyone outside to try out a demo scape using five regions to trigger images and five speakers to play sounds. Its fairly clear to us that experiencing an mscape is always the best way to get the idea across, it helps cut the number of blank stares in the audience when attempting to explain that we can put sounds out in the landscape and hear them on a handheld device....  After being outside for the demo, which was livened up by the presence of a muscular man, dressed as Wonder Woman, running up and down the steps at the end of the ICA building (someone making a surreal film? A live intervention to run with my mscape demo? Who knows? Unfortunately we didn't have a camera on us) we all went back inside the ICA (very nice space - the Nash Room) to go into more detail on the software, the concepts, the design dimensions and issues and then take a browse around the website to see what sort of things are to be found there. I always show the createascape site too, in the hope it reassures people that 9 year olds can do this sort of thing......   

We spent the last half hour having a play with the software and answering questions on both technical aspects (programming language, hardware, wireless networks, areas covered by maps) and how people's own ideas could be realised.  I was lucky to have Jackie Calderwood sitting in on the workshop so she could talk about e:merge and how she had designed it, and she was also able to talk from the viewpoint of an artist who has worked in film/video and uses mscape in her own practice.

Its always fun to introduce mscaping ideas to a new bunch of people, and good to see a range of ages there. The feedback was very positive, apparently I scored 5/5 for inspiration (smug smile ) - there is some video on the Birds Eye View website.