CONVERGENCE	SENSE OF PLACE	ERGODYNAMICS:	WORKBOOK
THEATRE	PROCESS	JUMP	OBJECT ORIENTED

A SENSE OF PLACE:

The location for creative activity is of considerable importance. The Studio or Lab. There are generally two kinds of model for the placement of multimedia, the designer/artists studio or the computing laboratory. The first offers flexibility and a relaxed atmosphere (apart from deadlines) whilst the second offers a sense of logical order and discipline. Of course these assumptions are in reality a little vacuous however the requirements of a creative environment can conflict with the requirements of a computing studio. Having seen a cup of coffee write off a SPARC workstation, a sense of discipline is important.

Within an educational establishment creating the right kind of environment is often difficult. The installations at Plymouth have to cater for groups of 20 student. We have 3 multimedia production 'Studios' (although everyone else in the Department of Computing calls them Labs), the Hypermedia Studio caters for WWW production, scripting and general multimedia production, the Macromedia Studio (sponsored by Macromedia) is a more powerful installation offering more facilities for multimedia production. These two studios allow teaching of larger groups, the third Studio, the Audio/Visual Studio is a little less confined in its layout offering a video suite, rostrum and digital video and audio editing. This final studio breaks the conventional mould of the Lab and reflects the kind of design environment generated in smaller multimedia companies.

However the possibility of networking offers the notion of a distributed studio. There are many designer based collaborative networking packages. The one demonstrated on the SGI machines in the studio, In Person, offers many of the facilities the WIRE experiments hope to utilise.

Virtual Environments will be explored in the next satellite transmission.

Where does a telephone conversation take place?

Here, there or somewhere in between?

ISDN Quick Conference, 1st Feb 1995, Hoe T.V. centre to Expolangues conference Paris.

@ the Plymouth location were: Mike Phillips & Paul Maguire, MediaLab Arts. Eric Armstrong, Nexus Project. Andy Leadbetter, Centre for Modern Languages, University of Plymouth.

@ the Paris location were: M. Pierre Noaro, Inspection Générale, Technologies Nouvelles. Mme Blanchet, Proviseur du Lycé Technique Blaise Pascal, Rouen. Mme M. Uturald-Giraudeau, Proviseur du Lycee Futuroscope, Poitiers. M. H. Thily, Professeur, Lycé Technique Blaise Pascal, Rouen.