information.

this week's topic is Beyond the Computer Screen

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The pervasiveness of digital technology has a profound effect on the way we live. Our economic system, social interactions and perception of the world are increasingly mediated by technology. In a sense, everything can be translated into digital code. Much online work is about representing the physical world as a digital landscape - accessed via a PC and the Net. The development of portable appliances, with accessible wireless networks, extends online experiences beyond the confines of the mouse, keyboard and monitor.

How can mobile and pervasive technology enhance the ways we experience and interact with our physical environment and each other? Does technology inhibit or expand our sense of 'being there'? How real is virtual reality?

featured product :: www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_uncleroy.html.

Uncle Roy All Around You - Blast Theory

Uncle Roy All Around You is where espionage movies become interactive; where the console game breaks onto the streets. It is a game that pitches online players around the world alongside players on the streets of a real city.

Using the latest wireless technology, Uncle Roy All Around You overlays a virtual city onto the real city and allows communication and cooperation between the two. It uses this as a metaphor for the intimate, secret city that exists as traces within the mundane urban world. Over the course of the game, players are introduced to a new experience of the city.

Uncle Roy All Around You premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in June 2003 and will be presented at Cornerhouse in Manchester in collaboration with digital summer in April 2004. It is a collaboration between blast theory and the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham, with support from BT Exact, with support from Arts & Humanities Research Board, Equator and the Interdisciplinary Arts Department of Arts Council England through the national touring programme.

About Blast Theory

Blast Theory is one of the most adventurous artists' groups in Britain, based in London since 1991, with a creative team of three. Pioneering the use of new technologies within performance contexts, the work explores interactivity and the relationship between real and virtual space. It confronts a media saturated world in which popular culture rules, using video, computers, performance, installation, mobile and online technologies to ask questions about the ideologies present in the information that envelops us.

For the past three years, Blast Theory has been exploring the convergence of online and mobile technologies in collaboration with the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham, to create groundbreaking new forms of performance and interactive art mixing audiences across the internet, live performance and digital broadcasting.

Following two BAFTA nominations and an Honorary Mention at the Transmediale Awards, Blast Theory won the much coveted Prix Ars Electronica for Interactive Art in 2003. (intro text from Blast Theory website)

Main site:www.blasttheory.co.uk

Mixed Reality Lab link:www.mrl.nott.ac.uk/