The overall objective of this project is to build an optimal tool, a multicasting platform for the artistic and scientific communities which will best respond to their different and divergent needs. An open-source platform must be flexible enough to be easily reconfigured according to those needs as well as containing easily operated templates for different uses by the non-initiated.
The development is guided by real-time experimentation in all fields with an emphasis on artistic use because it is often the most demanding user of communication technologies. The discoveries resulting from interactive music, dance or theater will bring new dimensions to network use that will surely benefit other communities.
This new medium of communication, the very high bandwidth academic network, will become an even more important space for European society. It is already a research network of world-wide scope. The kind of research and development proposed by this project will expand the cultural use of that network and bring together an original mix of partners from art, education, science and technology working together to improve its performance capacity and expand its potential uses. The effort anticipates new roles and professions and actually begins a form of training for those new jobs. The effort would begin a snowball effect by identifying and responding to creative needs, by building tools to fulfill those needs leading to expanding use of the network pushing the boundaries of network activity, leading to a cycle of innovation. The content created will also bring to the public a new level of serious programming, provocative fare through experimentation in which the public can participate.
This is more than technological development. It is more the beginning of a movement for the cultural occupation of the very high bandwidth network space with a broad range of partners and disciplines and engagement with an interested public. The space, while related to internet and the web, is actually a new medium of communication. It is up to us to assure that this addition to our media space carry the best of human endeavour and that it be driven by our society’s cultural needs and aspirations, not by its advertising potential. It should contain the values that Europe most cherishes.
Much past experimentation with creative ideas and the high bandwidth network has led to discouragement due to the limitations of available tools and non-technical artists have been dissuaded from entering this space. This project proposes to resolve this by building on existing technologies a cross-platform, open-source, open-ended, response to an identified need to advance to a more creative future.
Educational and artistic partners will be responsible for developing online multipoint, multiscreen projects demonstrating the potential of the platform and giving direct feedback to the developers on their needs and ambitions. Events will happen in real-time with the public participating fully in an interactive artistic performances.
Enormous amounts of cabling already exist throughout Europe and elsewhere. The proper tools for further exploiting the potential of the very high bandwidth network as a fully operational educational and cultural space are still missing. Those tools must be provided in an open-ended way so continued participation will allow them to grow, tools that will explore to the fullest all dimensions of new forms of online creativity.
Too often Multicasting nodes duplicate the boardroom or classroom rather than rethinking the space as a new kind of space with its own requirements and advantages. Collaboration between MaP partners will take a new direction in configuring the physical installation to improve communication over the network, designing the network nodes to respond to the interface between virtual and physical space. The project has already been initially funded in France and work has started on software development on the necessary interface. This proposal will expand the scope of the project to the European and ultimately an international level.
The importance of the cultural sector in Europe is evidenced by the numbers of theatre tickets sold to tourists in major cities, the important role of major exhibitions and festivals in generating tourism revenue and the recent investment in new iconic venues such as Bilbao’s Guggenheim or the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, UK. Many galleries and museums across Europe are exploring new ways to provide their visitors with immersive interactive experiences, e.g. the recently redesigned Imperial War Museum in London features new immersive exhibits. This is indicative of the scope for use of the types of innovation applications the MaP project will develop and showcase in WP4: the performances Laying Continents Onstage and Interactive Theatre-Music Lab, or ground-breaking exhibitions such as eMetro, Database City and Sky Memory which MaP are designed to test the Multicasting platform, engage the audience/viewer and stimulate creativity. It is very likely that these public sector developments will transfer to the private sector, through commercialisation strategies of key participants in these and related initiatives.