Somethi;ng's cooking

In recent years, many new MA's in Digital Media have been added to the programmes of Schools for Art and Design all across the globe, leading to a young breed of newly graduated digital artists which seem to be the follow-up for the older, MIT-engineer-type generation. Among these schools is the Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, and among the breed is a London based group of artists called Someth;ing somethingonline.org

The Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication http://www.rave.ac.uk has been developing since 2000 an MA in Interactive Digital Media, http://www.ma.rave.ac.uk led by Karel Dudesek. The course can be completed in 1 year full-time or 2-3 years part time, the student obtaining a Degree after presenting a dissertation, which can be theoretical or practice-based. The objective of this programme is to develop 'interaction strategies with audiences on various hard- and software-based platforms related to art and design' http://www.ma.rave.ac.uk/idmPage.html 62 students have already earned the degree, some of them applying afterwards for jobs in the creative industry, others setting up their own companies.

This is the case of graduates Christian Benesch, Daniel YK Chan,Dave Mee, Jon Cambeul, Markus Michael Quarta, Nagore Salaberria,and Steve Cullen.
All of them followed the MA programme at Ravensbourne in the years between 2001 and 2003, and then teamed up to create Someth;ing. The group established in a warehouse in Central London in September 2003, and during the last year has begun working as an interactive art collective. With a background in advertising, graphic/industrial design or computer science, they have the ability to combine their artistic and creative projects with commercial works that help them make a living. As Nagorre Salaberria puts it 'the idea was to create a collective that could be able to collaborate with other groups, participate in festivals and have access to fundings from the Arts Council, but obviously we also have to develop commercial projects to pay the rent'.

Someth;ng's main interest is to 'create with technologies and people',which derives from their education in the above mentioned development of 'interaction strategies with audiences', a concept they have taken to street level with creative projects that reflect the actual relationship of people with technology. Their ideas are mostly based on affordable, commonly used technological devices such as Bluetooth phones and Wacom tablets, which makes them easier to develop but also imply a change from creating new technologies to creating new, imaginative and meaningful uses of existing technology. In this year's Ars Electronica symposium, Roger F. Malina indicated that 'we need artforms that give a cultural expression that is resonant with our daily experience'. This is what is being done by Someth;ng: interactivity, networking, reverse engineering are present in their works, but also emotion, game, participation, music... new values are introduced in our everyday use of technology, and also new ways of dealing with it in a playful or ironical way. Someth;ing's latest projects clearly illustrate this point.

T-Zoneis a game designed to bring people together. Unlike other multiplayer games in which each player meets others in a virtual world, but still plays for himself, T-Zone only works when players team up and collaborate. The game is a sort of rugby or football in which two teams of 6 players have to gain possession of a 'ball' and get it over the other team's goal line. It is played in mobile phones using current SMS and WAP technologies, but can also be played on the Internet. Multiplayer games developed for mobile devices have become popular since BotFighters(2000) introduced the concept and was succesfully launched in Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Russia. This type of games merge reality and virtuality by using mobile phones as positioning devices, so that the physical location of the player in reflected in the game. But, unlike Botfighters, in which individual players fight each other, T-Zonecreates communities that have a common goal.

m.pleasuredeals with the relationship we have developed with our mobile phones as devices for being permanently in contact, almost ubiquitous. The need to be in touch with others is explored further by attaching a set of wearable devices to the sensitive parts of the body. These devices, combined with a Bluetooth mobile phone, turn digital messages into physical sensations. A community is created among those who wear the devices and those who have the software that lets them transmit these 'virtual massages'. Thus, a 'receiver' opens his or her body to the remote stimulation of others, and a 'giver' sends away the signal that will be experienced by an unknown user. This project relates to the social phenomenon called 'Bluetoothing', or simply 'Toothing', which takes advantage of this technology to send a message to a nearby stranger and invite him or her to have quick sex. In m.pleasure the relationship is restricted to a community of users, and the intercourse is much more ethereal.

Wacom Rockis a music performance instrument based on the Wacom graphic tablet and the speech synthesis manager in MacOS 9.2.2. Jon Cambeuil developed this instrument as a guitar in which a Wacom tablet is inserted, so that the performer emulates a guitar player, while controlling a digital signal processing. Although the same effects can be obtained with the tablet laying on a table and the performer sitting in front of a computer, Cambeuil thought it was important to have an interface similar to that of the musical instrument. This is interesting in relation to how we have accepted our digital devices to have the typical desktop interface and not to develop other types of interfaces which think of the device as an object we can manipulate. With the idea of performance in mind, Wacom Rock is a guitar that combines the aesthetic of rock with the innovations of digital music.

Someth;ng presented some of its latest projects at the Kunstraum in Ars Electronica this year, and will surely be showcasing in future festivals. From now on, something's cooking in Central London.