A few quick updates on show & tell events for the gesture-responsive storytelling book project:
In March I was invited to talk at The Electric Bookshop in Edinburgh, where I did the first public demo of Treasure Island, our little prototype of the book we’re making for The Library of Lost Books.
One weekend in the middle of February, we ran a hack session to make a first useable prototype of our book for the Library of Lost Books – a talking, gesture-responsive book.
Our aim was to put together the elements we’ve each been working on: story and audio; Lilypad Arduino; gesture detection; getting iPhone and Arduino talking to each other to share data – and to combine them in a physical book.
Over the past couple of weeks, the first drafts of the PleaseReadMe story have been written, re-written and recorded. It’s a linear narrative, although some choices (that a reader takes or discovers by moving the physical book) take the reader away from the main path temporarily, before bringing them back to the main story line. Continue reading
During the past few months, I’ve come across a number of different stories that have hung around in my brain for longer than expected. Each one explores different ways of storytelling: an unexpected context; an engagement with a physical object or space; a forced slowdown, or pause; a blurring of play and story. Here are five stories that have made an impression. Continue reading
I’ve asked fellow PleaseReadMe collaborators Dave Addey and Mo Ramezanpoor to talk about and share what they learn in the process of making a talking, gesture-responsive book.
In this first post, Dave explains how to get an iPhone connected to LilyPad Arduino over a wireless connection.
- Alyson
A tiny hack against the dark, using Lilypad Arduino.
When the light level falls and it starts to get dark, an LED switches on, and the buzzer plays a short tune to ward away the darkness.
This modified buzzer plays a few bars of Do Re Mi. After all, if Julie Andrews can’t chase away the darkness, who can?
This is an early prototype of the project I’m making for The Library of Lost Books: a book that tells a story by responding to gestures and movement when taken off a bookshelf.
I’ve just returned from a visit to mid-west Wales, for the iOSDevUK 2012 conference at Aberystwyth Uni. It’s been an awesome three days of meeting brilliant new people, catching up with friends, sharing ideas, learning new stuff and feeling inspired.
“There are almost a million feet of sound effects film in the sound library of the First National studios. This library covers a multitude of sins– as well as joys, sorrows and train effects…
“But in the library there is not one record of the human kiss.”
- A Library of Sound Effects, The Picturegoer’s Who’s Who and Encyclopaedia of The Screen To-Day, 1933.
Sometimes things aren’t lost, just misplaced.
Last month, I wrote about how my book for the Library of Lost books project – a 1933 copy of The Picturegoer’s Who’s Who and Encyclopaedia – had been posted out but had never turned up.