Blast Theory is an internationally renowned artists’ group led by Matt Adams, Ju Row Farr and Nick Tandavanitj. The group's work explores interactivity and the relationship between real and virtual space with a particular focus on the social and political aspects of technology.
Ivy4Evr is an SMS drama for teenagers created by Blast Theory, written by Tony White, author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber), and commissioned by Channel 4 Education.
After registering your mobile number and email address on the Ivy4Evr website, participants begin to receive SMS messages from Ivy -- ranging from quick updates about the minutiae of her life right at that moment, to pleas for help with her dilemmas about friends versus family, college and band commitments. You can reply to Ivy as often as you like, and the more you do, the more you will hear back from her.
If you want to know Paul's unique skill, you'll just have to follow his stream. What we do know is he's focused, and planning to snap as many players as possible.
www.idhideyou.com
Watch out Patrick, Natasha's after you. Is she behind that person? Is she under that car or other object? We literally don't know. Did she mention she's small?
www.idhideyou.com
I'd Hide You is an online game of stealth and cunning like no other.
Jump onboard with a team of runners live from the streets of Manchester as they roam the city trying to film each other. See the world through their eyes as they stream video: ducking and diving, chatting to passersby, taking you down the back alleys to their secret hiding places.
And play against your friends online at the same time. Use your wits to choose which runner to ride with. Get a snap of another runner onscreen without getting snapped.
Four times BAFTA nominated Blast Theory are world renowned as pioneers of interactive art and immersive theatre. I'd Hide You is their next genre busting mix of games and TV.
Play online from 17-19th May
Or spot the runners in the city and tweet it @idhideyou
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A new commission for The Space initiative from the BBC/ACE.
I'd Hide You is presented in partnership with FutureEverything.
I'd Hide You is supported by Madlab, Manchester Digital Laboratory, the University of Salford and Gath.
It has been developed by Blast Theory with support from Somethin' Else and the University of Nottingham.
Music: Space Is Only Noise If You Can See by Nicolas Jaar
Testing the I'd Hide You cameras in various lighting conditions. For more information about I'd Hide You visit http://idhideyou.com/ and follow us on twitter @idhideyou
A Machine To See With is a film where you play the lead. You sign up online and hand over your mobile phone number. On the day, you receive an automated call giving you the address you need to go to. Once you arrive on your allotted street corner your phone rings. From there a series of instructions lead you through the city.
You are the lead in a heist movie; it's all about you. As you move from hiding money inside a public lavatory, to meeting up with a partner in crime and onwards to the bank, the tension rises. It's up to you to deal with the bank robbery and its aftermath.
The project is a Locative Cinema commission from the Sundance Film Festival, 01 San Jose Biennial and the Banff New Media Institute.
Credits:
Camerawork: Eric Schleicher at Filmerkid
Cast: Ben Moren, Meredith Pearson, Tyler Stefanich
Edit and colour: John Hunter
Filmed at Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, April 2011
Chemical Wedding plunges you into a world where the multiple meanings of AIDS are contested. From the Black Death to the movies of paranoid Hollywood this promenade performance explores the viral nature of ideas; how do distortions and half truths spread and how do we escape the burden of outmoded thinking?
Documentation of A Machine To See With at the Banff New Media Institute, The Banff Centre, Canada, 2010.
Film by The New Media Institute.
A Machine To See With is a film where you play the lead. You are in a heist movie; it's all about you. As you move from hiding money inside a public lavatory, to meeting up with a partner in crime and onwards to the bank, the tension rises. It's up to you to deal with the bank robbery and it's aftermath.
Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Players from anywhere in the world can play online in a virtual city against members of Blast Theory. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player on a map of the city. On the streets, handheld computers showing the positions of online players guide the runners in tracking you down.
With up to 20 people playing online at a time, players can exchange tactics and send messages to Blast Theory. An audio stream from Blast Theory's walkie talkies allowed you to eavesdrop on your pursuers: getting lost, cold and out of breath on the streets of the city.
Flypad is a site specific work for the Public Gallery in West Bromwich, using augmented reality to create a thrilling, collaborative experience that combines game play with interaction, joyful goofing about with a visceral sense of the blur between real and virtual space.
Flypad has been developed in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab at University of Nottingham and Action Time Vision.
Ulrike and Eamon Compliant is a new work by Blast Theory which premiered at the 53rd Venice Biennale in June 2009, commissioned by the De La Warr Pavilion and supported by Arts Council England.
The work is based on the lives of Ulrike Meinhof (Red Army Faction) and Eamon Collins (Irish Republican Army). Having chosen to be Eamon or Ulrike, participants walk through the city receiving mobile phone calls. Exploring subjectivities and political obligations, the work culminates in an interview with the artists in a hidden room.
Documentation of the Atomic performance at CASCO in Utrecht in 1998. Premiered at Kunstlerhaus Betthanien in Berlin, 1997.
For further information go to www.blasttheory.co.uk.
Advert for the Kidnap project shown in UK cinemas among the usual adverts without titles in 1998. Approx 800,000 people saw it. Commissioned by Chris Dorley-Brown and Bob Jaroc at The Junction.
Desert Rain is a game, an installation and a performance placing particpants in a collaborative virtual environment and sending them on a mission into a virtual world. In a world where Gulf War images echo Hollywood images, where Norman Schwarzkopf blurs into Arnold Schwarzenegger, Desert Rain looks for the feint line between the real and the fictional.
Standing on a footplate and zipped into a cubicle, each of the six team members explores motels, deserts and underground bunkers, communicating with each other within the virtual world . . . a world projected onto a screen of falling water. You have 30 minutes to find the target, complete the mission, and get to the final room, where others may have a very different idea of what actually happened out there.
Day Of The Figurines continues Blast Theory's enquiry into the nature of public participation within artworks and within electronic spaces (here, through SMS). It uses emergent behaviour and social dynamics as a means of structuring a live event. It invites players to establish their own codes of behaviour and morality within a parallel world. It plays on the tension between the intimacy and anonymity of text messages, building on previous projects such as Uncle Roy All Around You, I Like Frank and the award-winning Can You See Me Now?
In 1998 Blast Theory launched a lottery in which the winners had the chance to be kidnapped. Ten finalists around England and Wales were chosen at random and put under surveillance. Two winners were then snatched in broad daylight and taken to a secret location where they were held for 48 hours.
The two winners were Debra Burgess, a 27 year old Australian working as a temp and Russell Ward, a 19 year old from Southend working in a 24 hour convenience store.The whole process was broadcast live onto the internet. Online visitors were able to control the video camera inside the safehouse and communicate live with the kidnappers.
During the run up to Kidnap, a 45 second video - the Kidnap Blipvert - was shown at cinemas around the UK. The Blipvert carried a freephone number, allowing people to register their interest.
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A Machine To See With (short edit)
