It was good for BAIMPs to represent Bournemouth’s debut at the show and we return with the good news of Chris Herring and Tom Schrimshaw having won Best New Blood awards for their projects Ruled by Secrecy and Douteki respectively.

Although again tarnished by being called out as ‘The Arts Institute at Bournemouth’ at the award ceremony, at least this time it was more laughable in being half expected and now a long-running joke since Computer Arts’ mistake in their Graduate Showcase.

As for other awards, Talkboards finished as a Finalist in the Rhizome Artist Commission 2007-2008 (the very deserved winners here) and a Semi-Finalist in the Adobe Achievement Awards – so while I won’t be flying out to San Francisco, I have got a nice shiny certificate

Seems now with everyone now slowing beginning to disperse, our three years have gone stupidly quickly. It really doesn’t seem that long ago that we were working through the night on our Flash Animation projects in the first year.

From: One of the Geek Team All-Night sessions – 19th April, 2005.

Not that I’m even going to begin to get soppy or anything but I think our coursemates and tutors have been truly decent and we’ve only benefited from being so close friends and always on hand to cooperate and help each other out – or lend hardware. A huge huge thank you to Craig, Matt, Chris, Joe & Chris for screens and computers loaned for the exhibitions.

To: The Final Studio 3 All-Nighter – 15th May, 2007.

It’s a shame to hear our other years don’t get on nearly half as well as we do – let lone do these ^^ kinds of things – so much so that it’s possible that rivalry and unhealthy competitiveness may have significantly negative effects on projects or prospective shows.

I think iheartplay was a huge success, with most people getting interviews, internships or even jobs already secured as a result. A whole load of card-swapping and networking went on, very promising for individuals and in promoting Bournemouth University and the proud IMPs that we are.

While there were only four of us demonstrating at New Blood, we plastered the iheartplay promo materials – visually and literally – all over our pitch. We also rinsed the remaining iheartplay catalogues, showing the work of everyone involved and did our best discussing everyone else’s projects as relevant to visitors’ interests.

The huge majority of the other stands mainly exhibited graphics, illustration or print media. So although there were a lot of visitors to the exhibition as a whole, we found (as most did in Brick Lane) that an instant panic and chronic fear of computers and touching mice came over to anyone in the vicinity and they rather take our brochures to browse links and read the copy in their own time and space rather than risk showing their lack of computer skills or whatever. Either way, for all these people it was actually irrelevant who was physically there, as much as any projects that caught their eye inside the books.

I’ve only been able to find two reviews of the iheartplay exhibition so far. Daniel Harris’ of SubSub, though brief, described the show as ‘well coordinated, felt coherent .. and in placed damn interesting’. The only other from a disappointed BAIMP student who unfortunately didn’t think to note the opening times and missed the show completely (found here).

If anyone discovers any more dotted around the web be sure to send me a message or link on del.ici.ous.

Finally, sincerely the very best of luck to everyone on the July 11th. Personally I feel if two hours of Image Studies for a year has set us up for top marks all round then we deserve them just for sitting through ‘em

I now have a better – working – webcam to test with, some prototyping with that has been successful so far. Unfortunately I’m not able to attend the 24hr Sponsored Work-a-thon tomorrow, but at least with the new cam I can be there visually if not physically.

Plus, I recently received an e-mail regarding my project’s proposal for a Rhizome commission and I’m pretty happy to say it’s made it into the final round of voting. Apparently it was very well received by the community and it’s now one of thirty-five projects subject to ranking and voting from Rhizome members and a special jury to work out the rest.

If anyone here is a member and susceptible to bribery and/or flattery I’d very much appreciate your vote

Seems even though I’d planned not to start a production blog until I’d finished the dissertation, I’ve spent the past week celebrating the hand-in and clearly not even got around to registering yet.

So here it is. Monday 2nd April 2007, Stardate -315749.1 apparently.

The project is kind hard to explain, it’s basically collective community-defined chat spaces, but unlike chat rooms and message boards everything is non-linear, the structure and the interface are totally different to the conventional methods. It’s a bit concepty so it’s not like strictly a communication ‘tool’, it’s a bit of fun – it’s not going to make anyone redundant any time soon.

About 6 o’clock this morning was the deadline for the Rhizome Commissions Project which I just about managed to meet, here’s a shiny excerpt – the working title seems to be Talkboards:

Talkboards are community-defined and administrated spaces creating interactive, collaborative art formed on users’ online communication.

Built on subverting the accepted ideas and structures of ‘traditional’ communication platforms, Talkboards converge features native to chat rooms, message boards and instant messengers, borrowing existing, familiar and already successful functionality, to find innovation with an entirely original and highly interactive interface. Talkboards challenge the essential form vs. function argument in a place where it’s completely unexpected.

Full version here.

Most of it is superfluous spiel, but its 500 words explaining it a bit better and there are a couple of screens on there too. There’s a very basic prototype as well, I’ve got far better versions I used for my Minor presentation that I’ll get up here later.

Four weeks to go I believe, guess it all begins today.