Click on the ingredients to find out more.
A – D
3G
Accelerometer
Actors
After Effects
App
App Furnace
App Store
Archivist
Arduino Circuit Board
Artist Residency
Audience Engagement
Audio Software
Augmented Reality
Binaural Audio
Bluetooth
Calvium Player
Commercial SMS service
Commercial Theremin modules
Compass AR
Creative Technologist
Curators
E – H
Experience Designer
Face Recognition Software
Flash (ActionScript)
Google App: Sketch Up
Google Maps
GPS
Graphic Artist
Gyroscope
I – L
iPhone
Infrared camera
Installations
Java Script
Light Detector
Linux
3G
3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services. These services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile Internet access, video calls and mobile TV, all in a mobile environment.
After Effects
After Effects is a digital motion graphics and compositing software published by Adobe and used in the post-production process. It can be used to create sophisticated motion graphics and cinematic visual effects as well as a basic non-linear editor and a media transcoder.
Accelerometer
An accelerometer is a device that measures proper acceleration. This is not necessarily the same as the coordinate acceleration (change of velocity of the device in space), but is rather the type of acceleration associated with the phenomenon of weight experienced by a test mass that resides in the frame of reference of the accelerometer device. For an example of where these types of acceleration differ, an accelerometer will measure a value when sitting on the ground, because masses there have weights, even though they do not change velocity. However, an accelerometer in gravitational free fall toward the center of the Earth will measure a value of zero because, even though its speed is increasing, it is in a frame of reference in which it is weightless.
Actors
Using professional actors within your project has the potential to make story lines more realistic and in turn make the projects aims more effective.
App
Abbreviation of application. A piece of software that has a particular purpose. App has entered everyday language through the arrival of the iPhone and the App Store where people can buy/download different apps for their mobile devices.
App Furnace
Software developed by Calvium, that enables people with no programming skills to develop apps for iPhone and Android. Also used as a useful platform by people with technical skills who want to easily integrate sensors into their apps.
App Store
Technically a generic term for digital distribution platforms, such as BlackBerry App World, Android Market and Windows Phone Marketplace. However it’s predominately applied to the Apple App Store; the official Apple online application distribution system for iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
Archivist
Someone who works in an archive. A the person who collects, catalogues and maintains collections of material, whether historical documents or other forms of media they are a very useful source of information about what their archive contains and where to find it.
Arduino Circuit Board
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP).
The boards can be built by hand or purchased preassembled; the software can be downloaded for free. The hardware reference designs (CAD files) are available under an open-source license, you are free to adapt them to your needs.
Visit the Arduino site for more information.
Artist Residency
Usually for a specific length of time, and sometimes with a guiding brief, residencies allow an artist time to reflect and develop a creative piece of work in a new context, often encouraging collaborations with people working in the hosting organisation.
Audience Engagement
We talk about how engaged an audience is when we want to describe the idea that they are connected to something and care what happens next. An audience might start by being engaged by your idea, the content or the technology. The trick is to keep them engaged so they will continue to follow your project as it develops, or your storyworld as it unfolds. An engaged audience can also follow you across to other projects that you develop, and may even be a source of funds to get a project started.
Audio Software
Generally audio software is used to edit, mix, convert or record sound files or mp3. Some free online software packages, which are often open source, include Audacity, Ardour and SoX.
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology in which the real world environment is somehow augmented by a computer generated input.
iPhone and Android apps have used AR to augment the users view of the real-world through their phone, for example the ‘Gorillaz: Escape to plastic beach’ app, used AR to overlay information and graphics onto the real-world passport that was distributed to users. Therefore the technology functions to enhance the users perception of reality.
Binaural Audio
Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener – making them feel as if they are in the recording studio with the performers/instruments. This effect is often created using a technique known as “Dummy head recording”, wherein a mannequin head is outfitted with a microphone in each ear. Binaural recording is intended for replay using headphones and will not translate properly over stereo speakers.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth is an open wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances, using short wavelength radio transmissions, from fixed and mobile devices, creating personal area networks with high levels of security. It comes as standard in most new mobile phones and some laptops.
Calvium Player
A piece of software that allows you to play apps developed on app furnace. It is available as a free download for iPhone and Android. Once installed, it allows you to test out App Furnace apps that you are developing but have not yet published.
Commercial SMS service
Commercial SMS services give the power to use texting as a means of communication with users. With services such as converting email to sms and the ability to link up texts with computer databases, commercial sms services can provide another form of communication and potentially a more personal dimension to a project.
Commercial Theremin modules
The theremin is an electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. The controlling section usually consists of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player’s hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and volume with the other, so it can be played without being touched. The electric signals from the theremin are amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. The modules that make up a Theremin such as a Pitch control oscillator, a Mixer and Volume control oscillator can be bought separately and assembled to fit in with a project or design.
Compass AR
Either a standalone app or integrated into other apps, Compass AR is an augmented reality compass that displays your current location and direction with a 3D compass on top of reality in the camera screen of the phone.
Creative Technologist
We use this to describe someone who is skilled at software as well as having the creative ideas; hybrid.
Curators
Traditionally used in a museum or gallery sense, the curator chooses and looks after collections of artworks
Experience Designer
In HCI terms, user experience design is a way of thinking about the whole interactive experience that someone has when they use a piece of software. It is also used in a more theatrical sense to describe the way that a theme park might think about how a customer moves through and between the different rides or experiences. It implies an understanding of human behaviours.
Face Recognition Software
Face Recognition is a very active research area specialising on how to recognize faces within images or videos. Face recognition compliments Face Detection. Face Detection is the process of finding a ‘face’ within images or videos and Face Recognition is the process of matching the detected ‘face’ to one of many the faces known to the filesystem.
Open CV, the face recognition software used by Tim Kindberg for Heads, is open source and free to use.
Flash (ActionScript)
Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript and supports automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL).
Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones and a few other electronic devices
Google App: Sketch Up
SketchUp is a 3D modeling program marketed by Google and designed for architectural, civil, and mechanical engineers as well as filmmakers, game developers, and related professions. The program, which is designed for ease of use, allows placement of models within Google Earth.
Sketch up is one of a wide selection of Google apps which are generally free and sometimes open for development.
Google Maps
Google Maps is a free web mapping service offered by Google. It is easily customisable and embeddable on most online platforms.
GPS
GPS is a global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver, which is now inbuilt in most mobile phones.
Using GPS within a project can immediately personalise an experience for a user as it is using their location.
Graphic Artist
A graphic artist or designer assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media and can also be responsible for typesetting, illustration, user interfaces and web design. A core responsibility of the designer’s job is to present information in a way that is both accessible and memorable.
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of conservation of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation.
Since the gyroscope allows the calculation of orientation and rotation, designers have incorporated them into modern technology, for example the iPhone 4 and Wii remote both have in-built gyroscopes.
iPhone
Created by Apple, the iPhone has become perhaps the most recognised smart phone, providing a platform for apps.
Infrared camera
An infrared camera is a device that forms an image using infrared radiation and is similar to a common camera that forms an image using visible light. However, instead of the 450–750 nanometer range of the visible light camera, infrared cameras operate in wavelengths as long as 14,000 nm. The best example of this is night vision.
Installations
A term used in arts to denote more than an object like a painting on a wall, or a video piece on a screen; an installation might refer to a room or a collection of related objects that the audience can move through.
Java Script
Java Script is a form of programming language that can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content.
Light Detector
A light detector uses a circuit that can tell the difference between darkness and light. For example: switching on and off signs, porch lights or other things when it gets dark or light.
Linux
Linux or GNU/Linux is a free and open source software operating system for computers. The operating system is a collection of the basic instructions that tell the electronic parts of the computer what to do and how to work. Free and open source software (FOSS) means that everyone has the freedom to use it, see how it works, and change it.
There is a lot of software for Linux, and since Linux is open source it means that most of the software for it is open source and free.
Max/MSP patch
Max is a visual programming language for music and multimedia which was developed and now maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling ’74. MSP (short for either Max Signal Processing) is an extension package developed for MAX, which allows for the manipulation of digital audio signals in real time. This means users can create their own synthesizers and effects processors, for example in Guerilla Dance Project.
Media Assets
Collection of media such as images, sound files, video that can be used as source material when developing a project. The media assets can be kept in a database.
Media Sandbox
Due to a perceived risk or lack of track record, a key friction in the UK media market is the difficulty for smaller producers to secure new commissions. Media Sandbox was set-up to bridge this gap, giving small, agile producers an opportunity to develop early stage ideas.
From the outset, a clear structure was built into the scheme with an emphasis on community. Participants are therefore not isolated entrepreneurs struggling to express ideas – they are part of a network of content producers, clients and commissioners; and share knowledge as widely as possible through physical events, blogs and social media. Two successful years have proven that this access to peer support, industry expertise and market intelligence is invaluable.
Media Sandbox also reassures entrepreneurial companies that what they do is valuable, that their ideas and innovations matter, and that we as a nation are concerned to help them grow to a point that they can survive in the market place.
To find out more, click here.
Micro Projector
Micro or handheld projectors are an emerging technology much the same as a regular projector, but within a small or handheld device. Handheld projectors involve miniaturized hardware and software that can project digital images onto any nearby viewing surface, such as a wall.
Mobile Pie
Mobile Pie is a games and mobile entertainment developer that was one of the original occupants ofthe Pervasive Media Studio.
Narrative
Narrative is another word for the story. The narrative of a project is important; it is what can keep the user/audience engaged.
OSCulator
As a free bit of software, OSCulator allows you to send ‘Open Sound Control’ messages between music or video software and controllers such as the iPhone or Wiimote.
Osculator supports the OSC protocol, which makes it able to be used with a wide variety of software and devices like Processing, Max/MSP or the Lemur multitouch controller, even the TUIO protocol.
Overhead Projections
Overhead projections project an image down onto a surface as opposed to a standard eye-level wall projections.
Password Protected URLs
By adding a small piece of code to a website or particular website pages you can restrict content to users who have a given username and/or password.
PHP
A coding language, PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (yes, the first “P” in the acronym does indeed stand for PHP!), which allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.
Producer
The role of the producer is discussed in the techniques section. The producer has the overall vision of the different elements of a project.
Prototype
An early example of what you want the final product to be, especially useful for testing on audience/funders. Prototype implies but does not necessarily mean technically functioning object.
Q-lab
QLab is the award-winning software that makes it simple to create rich multimedia designs for live performances and installations, by allowing you to control audio, video, and MIDI from a single workspace.
QR code
A QR (quick response) code is a matrix, or two-dimensional barcode. It has the ability to store comparatively large amounts of data and through QR readers on mobile phones, can direct users to online content quickly. They were used in both the Curzon Memories app and Fortnight Project as another form of interaction with the user.
R&D
Research and development; time and space to experiment with ideas that aren’t necessarily part of your money-making activities, but could develop into one.
RFID
RFID (Radio-frequency identification) is a technology that transfers data through radio waves from an electronic tag or label to an attached object, via a reader. It does this by transmitting an encoded radio signal to interrogate the tag. The tag receives the message and responds with its identification information.
Server
A server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the “clients”. Thus, the “server” performs some computational task on behalf of “clients”. The clients either run on the same computer or connect through the network.
Most commonly, the server is a physical computer (a computer hardware system) dedicated to running one or more such services (as a host), to serve the needs of users of the other computers on the network. Depending on the computing service that it offers it could be a database server, file server, mail server, print server, web server, or other.
Scratch Media
A collection of audio, video and image files that can be used to test out the coding and structure of a project before producing the final version using polished pieces of media.
Script
This could be refer to a piece of software code or to the outline of an app/experience showing relationships between narrative, sensor input and outcomes.
Soundwalk
Soundwalks are a genre of artwork that does not necessarily use cutting-edge sensor-enabled technology, but involves walking through a place, often along pre-defined routes and spaces, listening to various audio tracks that the artist/creator has chosen to link to that space.
Storyworld
The idea that you create more than one story that moves in a linear fashion, instead have a complex 360° story universe, and different elements of that storyworld are delivered on different appropriate platforms but link together to make a bigger picture.
Theatre Sandbox
Theatre Sandbox is an annual development scheme which supports practitioners from across the UK to develop new work using digital technologies.
In a rapidly shifting technological landscape, finding time and space to develop artistic projects that explore the potential of new technologies is difficult. Theatre Sandbox addresses this dilemma. It does not set out to establish or promote technology-obsessed performance, but instead enables and supports theatre-makers who wish to integrate new tools into their practice.
To find out more, click here.
Transmedia Storytelling
The idea of taking a story and telling different elements of it across different media platforms, for example text, online video, tweeted elements of narrative, game, graphic novel. interesting place to find out more would be Henry Jenkins blog, who coined the term transmedia in his book ‘Convergence Culture‘
Twitter is a social networking service which limits users to 140 character posts. Due to publicly visible nature, a users potential audience is vast. For example, the project Tweeture was featured on the BBC’s Digital Planet and the Tweet reach on the final day alone was over 120,000 people.
Ultrasonic Sensors
A type of sensor that uses sound waves to detect a target. Ultrasonic sensors are the best type of sensor for detecting liquids, clear objects, or irregularly shaped objects.
USB Reader
A plug-in and play device for reading flash memory cards such as SD or XD cards. Some are compatible with multiple memory card types, others just one.
See user testing
User Testing
Test your project early and often on your target audience; test initial ideas, outlines, first drafts and technical implementations and almost finished pieces. Incorporate the comments that you get back from the people in your test group; you can choose not to, but user feedback can help improve your project.
Vibration Sensors
The principles of inductance, piezoelectric, piezoresistive, strain gauge have all been used to create sensors designed for the measurement of vibration, acceleration and shock. Many versions of Vibration Sensors or Accelerometers have been developed and are used in countless applications both in research, test and industry.
WiFi
WiFi, is a mechanism that allows electronic devices to exchange data wirelessly over a computer network. Wifi enabled devices, such computers, smartphones, tablets etc, can connect to a network such as the Internet via a wireless network hotspot. These hotspots have a range of about 20m indoors and a greater range outdoors.
Wiimote
As the controller for the Nintendo Wii, ‘Wiimotes’ use both accelerometers and optical sensors to recognise gesture a range of technology outside the standard Wii bracket. For example, within the Guerilla Dance project they used Wiimotes as an alternative to iPhones when testing their project.
Wireless Microphones
A wireless microphone, as the name implies, is a microphone without a physical cable connecting it directly to the sound recording or amplifying equipment with which it is associated.
Workshops
We use workshop here to describe a session where a group of people come together to work on a particular theme to co-develop ideas or projects. Workshop for us implies discussion and collaboration towards a goal.
XBee Module
“XBee and XBee-PRO ZB embedded RF modules provide cost-effective wireless connectivity to devices in ZigBee mesh networks. Utilizing the ZigBee PRO Feature Set, these modules are interoperable with other ZigBee devices, including devices from other vendors. Programmable versions of the XBee-PRO ZB module make customizing ZigBee applications easy, even without wireless design expertise.” – digi.com
To find out more, click here.