Sensational-Adelaide.com

Why didn't they organise a new years eve street party at the intersection using the screen for the countdown? Seems like a logical thing to do with the screen. Perhaps starting it next year when we have the opposite Target carpark covered in public art as well

Adelaide Fringe - Lantern-la-Lumiere

This special Adelaide Fringe event may be of interest.
Check out link to RSVP + see attached Flyer for higher resolution version.
http://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/Specia ... miere.aspx

Great video...I must admit that it looks sensational from an aerial perspective. In a recent flight from Melb to Adelaide i was able to see it and the beautifully lit city from the air.

What a magical sight. However, due to my stupidty in packing Xmas presents that contained knives in my carry on luggage i was forced to seal my carry on and get it to Adelaide in restricted storage..My camera was in that bag so i couldn't take a picture.


You should've heard how many people went "wow", as we flew over the city!

Anyone else noticed they've started to build that new cafe on the eastern side of rundle mall (near the intersection). Should be good, I guess it will be similar to the existing cafe at the other end of the mall.

ghs wrote:Anyone else noticed they've started to build that new cafe on the eastern side of rundle mall (near the intersection). Should be good, I guess it will be similar to the existing cafe at the other end of the mall.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=451&start=465#p55361

memo to Damien @ Fusion, that 3 columns of light panels weren't working tonight

jk1237 wrote:memo to Damien @ Fusion, that 3 columns of light panels weren't working tonight

memo to Damien @ Fusion telling him that the Tour down under animation is pretty poor. It took me a long time to work out that it actually says 'Tour down Under 2009'.

ghs wrote:

jk1237 wrote:memo to Damien @ Fusion, that 3 columns of light panels weren't working tonight

memo to Damien @ Fusion telling him that the Tour down under animation is pretty poor. It took me a long time to work out that it actually says 'Tour down Under 2009'.

Memo to ghs: More wine makes for pretty fusion of colours instead of all this reading malarkey.

Hey all, I just wanted to let you all know that the first wave of local artist generated content for the Rundle Lantern will air from dusk til dawn, every hour on the hour during this year's Adelaide Fringe (Feb 27- March 21).

I am one of the participating artists, so keep your eye out for the cartoon about the ill-fated shopping trolley.

I've made a detailed blog post about creating content for the lantern also, should you be interested in a creative perspective on the 'canvas'.

http://danimations.com.au/blog/?p=83

The following was written by a friend, and I am posting this on his behalf as I share the same views:

Looking at the recent release of the Lantern Simulator by Fusion and the Adelaide City Council, I have to say I am absolutely appalled at the quality of work that has taken apparently taken 3 months to build.

In the space of 1 week some of us Adelaide University students were able to build a fully functioning, cross platform, cross language simulator for the Rundle Lantern, capable of displaying both static and dynamically generated content on our virtual lantern. This currently is known to work on Windows, OSX and Linux (and more!), and targets C, Java and Python with additional ports in the works.

We've developed our simulator to work in a client-server model, so that you can interchange different programs to run on the lantern in different languages using a common network protocol, and it is also possible to use this protocol to simplify the complexities of interfacing with the DMX lighting protocol that the real Lantern uses.

I have also heard of another group via UniSA who are also developing their own simulator software, however I am not sure of where they are at with their software at this time or the specific design paths they have taken.

I'm unable to view the website correctly in Opera, and my friend has been unable to view the site in Firefox. All of the links at the bottom right of the page do not work at all, and looking at the source code for the page it appears that those buttons do not do anything at all. The short-sightedness in what qualifies as "cross-platform" for a desktop simulator is also appalling as it will only support Windows and OSX.

We have sent off several emails to both Fusion and Adelaide City Council about developing our simulator further during late November and early December about the possibility of taking our simulator work and applying it to the actual Lantern, and received absolutely NO response. I wouldn't be surprised if the UniSA guys are getting the same brick wall that we are, and we'd really like to be able to create something really cool out of this that would put Adelaide truly on the world stage.

One thing we feel it is very important for Adelaide City Council to embrace with this project is the importance of "new media", and that people do like to innovate with the way they produce content. Project Blinkenlights [1] in Germany was opened by the Chaos Computer Club in September 2001, which is very much in the "hacker" [2] communities regarded as a very innovative project that was embraced by the city of Berlin. It is very similar to the Rundle Lantern and as it is a bit of an "upgrade" in a way to Blinkenlights, it is an opportunity for the Adelaide City Council to show they're supportive of these kinds of cool hacks.

At the moment, our project is stalled as we have no idea if our code will even be useful in the end. Due to the lack of response from the Adelaide City Council so far, we are assuming that they do not care about people creating cool interactive and dynamic content to go on the Lantern and are more interested in Flash animations. Leaving us in a position where we are all very bored and resentful of the exclusionary attitude of the Council thus so far, who are more interested in the use of long legal documents to take control of works donated to them by artists.

We'll very happily change our tune once we start hearing some responses from the Adelaide City Council, and we actually have a face-to-face meeting, or even regular email contact. During the holiday period was an ideal time for us to work on such projects and gain some valuable work experience, however as term starts again this week we're in a position where we're going to have to push personal projects aside again until the next holidays.

[1]: http://www.blinkenlights.net/project
[2]: By hackers, I mean people interested in computer programming and learning about computer systems and creating cool new things. This being different from crackers and script kiddies (which mainstream media mistakenly also calls "hackers") who write viruses.

I wrote the above post which darksidelemm posted on my behalf so that I didn't seem like a one-post troll. I've now created an account on this forum, so any responses from the post you can direct to me.

And, in case anyone else was interested in the work we started, I created a Launchpad repository with all the source code and documents in it here: https://launchpad.net/lantern

I'm very keen to have Adelaide City Council and/or Fusion prove me dead wrong in my opinions about the handling of our project proposal. I'm quite open to off-forum or on-forum discussion about our proposals, and I'll even come in in person and chat with them about it.

Cheers.

Reading your observations re the shortfalls of the online simulator, rest assured... there are many more kinks in the work flow pipeline that need ironing out. The one I'd like to mention here is regarding what is deemed 'appropriate' content.

I have been in contact with the Adelaide Fringe regarding a request that was made of me to remove my production credit from my own work, which I produced, in kind, for the Lantern and ACC. It seems that the official party line is that an individual's name is regarded as a 'recognizable brand' and is therefore deemed inappropriate for display. Their manner in broaching this news was cold and bureaucratic, and I'm not expecting a warm reception when I bring this matter to the council directly. the news was actually delivered by the then program director of the Media Resource Centre (another partner in the lantern content workshop project).

I consider this judgment unreasonable, as I do not consider on-site credit for public artwork a privilege, but a right. There have been no other provisions made to acknowledge the creators of the work at the site, and to me this smarts of exploitation at one extreme, and in the very least a severe lack of gratitude. In other public art spaces, any curious member of the public can stroll up to an artwork (let's say a sculpture for example) and determine its authorship by reading a plaque, or at the very least a signature. Why should artworks created for this site be any different? Especially since in this instance the artists are offering the ACC a non-exclusive license to display the work without compensation for 12 months? A promise of a credit on ACC and Adelaide Fringe websites I don't feel is adequate recognition for work which represents tens of hours of specialised work (if not over a hundred in some cases).

Your thoughts, people?

I agree with you, Danimations, the author's right to identify themselves as the creator of a work isn't one that they should be trying to curtail (unless they are going to pay you some comission to produce the work). If people are going to invest time, effort, and creativity to produce something that they donate to the city, it does not seem unreasonable to expect that they could receive this small amount of credit as compensation.

As a further point you might like to raise with them: what if the content itself constitutes some sort of branding for the artist? Would they refuse to show something from Invader or Obey Giant? I can see that they don't want to turn it into an advertising hoarding, but it does seem that they drew the line in the wrong place.

Lantern La Lumiere launch last night

There was probably a good 100 people at the Rundle Lantern Lantern La Lumiere Fringe event last night. The work of 20 artists (that runs for a total of 28 mins), will play nightly, every hour for the duration of the Fringe. Lord Mayor opened the event, and the drinks and popcorn added to the atmosphere. There was some really innovative work exhibited, and it's exciting to see the Lantern going to the next stage. It is nice to see the realisation our vision of the Rundle Lantern being opened up for use by the community. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

Checkout the artists involved...

There are a few details there that need fixing... spelling the names of artists and their works correctly is important (especially when artists are working without a fee of any kind).

The name of my artwork is actually 'Shop 'Til You Drop' (not the dyslexic gen-y SMS kid version as printed) and my partner's name is Emma Sterling, not 'Em' as printed.

There are also several peeved artists who had text cut from their work without their knowledge... they only found out at the scene, on the night. We had been warned that logos, advertisements and explicit content would be rejected, but not that our works would be cut by a 3rd party, and in many instances without notification or approval.

Many of these texts were actually artist credits- raising an important issue of due respect that I will be pursuing further with the ACC. Fringe deflected my enquiry on that one.

Oh, and you might want to fix that blown pixel too Damien... not everyone wants an extra dose of fuscia in their work