Guest lecture at the University of Hull, Scarborough Campus

Me, Myself and MRI

Following on from my lecture at Huddersfield on Tuesday, today I was at Scarborough giving the same talk to students on the second year of the Creative Music Technology course. The lecture covers a wide range of projects from my time before Apollo Creative, as well as more recent work like 'Me, Myself and MRI' and the Fountaineers Project.

Apollo Christmas Card

We're proud that this years official Apollo Christmas card was designed by Jack from The Forest School whilst he was on work experience with us in the summer. 

Lecture at University of Huddersfield

Today was my annual lecture at the University of Huddersfield, talking about real world examples for interactive installations. It's an opportunity for the students to see how some of the work they are doing might be applied in the 'real world'.

I also stayed around after the lecture to provide some feedback on the students work and also to chat to Anton, who is doing an MSc by research and will be working with the Apollo Ensemble.

Charmed Lives exhibition opens at the Rotunda, Scarborough

The 'Charmed Lives' exhibition opens today at the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough, featuring touch screen interactives created by students from the University of Hull. The interactives were created over six weeks by students on the Creative Music Technology course, with mentoring and lectures provided by Mark from Apollo Creative.

You can see a brief overview of the pieces on the cultiv8 blog.

The exhibition will be on until the 27th November.

Student from Huddersfield joins Apollo

We'd like to welcome Andy to the Apollo team, who will be joining us for the year from the University of Huddersfield. He is currently studying on the BSc Music Technology and Audio Systems course.

Andy will be working on a number of different projects, including a software development toolkit (SDK) for the Apollo Ensemble and new foley sounds for our copyright free sound library.

New student joins Apollo for work experience

This week we welcome Tess from St. Aidan's School on work experience. We hope she'll enjoy getting to grips with the Apollo Ensemble in our demo room and producing some resources.

Another day, another lecture!

Today was my annual visit to the Creative Music Technology course in Scarborough, to give my overview of practical applications of Creative Technology. Most of the group braved the snow and cold to get in for the 9.15 lecture slot.

Luckily for me the trains from York were running pretty well despite the cold.

Lecture at University of Huddersfield

In full flow in the lecture theatre

Today I was at the University of Huddersfield delivering a lecture to students on 'Interactive Technology in Action' (part of the Undergraduate Music Technology course). This involved looking at how interactive technology has been used to create a range of installations covering everything from sensory rooms to exhibition stands.

This is the second time I've visited to present the lecture.

News: Apollo win at York Press Business Awards

Apollo Creative tonight received the award for Best Higher Education and Business Link at the York Press Business Awards.

Fighting off competition from companies including last years winner and heavy weight opponent Northern Rail, Apollo triumphed at a glittering awards ceremony.

The award recognises Apollo's comittment to working with a range of educational establishments from Primary Schools through to Further Education. Recent work has included a series of lectures and mentoring at Scarborough Campus University of Hull for the Creative Music Technology course, and guest lecture slots at Hull, Huddersfield and York.

You can read about the work that lead to Apollo Creative being named the winner of the Best Higher Educationa and Business category here on the company blog;

Apollo win York Press Business Award

Mark (right) collecting the award from York University
Pro-Vice-Chancellor Colin Mellors (c) The Press, York

All the hard work of the last four years paid off tonight when Apollo Creative scooped the Best Business and Higher Education category at the York Press Business Awards. Beating off stiff competition from Northern Rail (last years winners) and Natures Laboratory, Apollo was commended by the judges for its strategy of engagement across Higher Education.

Thanks to everyone at Apollo and to all our colleagues that we've worked with across education over the past few years. As you can see by the post below we already have some more collaborations planned for the coming year.

York Press Business Awards 2010 - The build-up

The York Press Business Awards are tomorrow night and Apollo Creative is short listed in the Best Business and Higher Education category. Judging was about two months ago now, so it all seems a distant memory. Having said that, our work across the education sector continues with any potential award being purely the icing on the cake.

As well as the course just completed at the Scarborough Campus University of Hull (which was developed jointly with the Creative Music Technology lecturer Rob MacKay), we also have the following on-going or scheduled in:

• "Interactive Technology in Action" Lecture and student feedback session, University of Huddersfield, November 2010 
• "Practical applications of Creative Music Technology" Lecture, Scarborough Campus University of Hull - December 2010
• Support for GCSE Design Project - Radio Design
• Support for A-Level Product Design Course - Bubble Lamp
• A series of lectures in the Department of Electronics, University of York
• Continuing work with the Research and Innovation Office, University of York

That's not to mention some of the bigger, longer term projects I'm not allowed to talk about. Even if we don't win this year we'll have plenty to recommend us for next years awards.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow night.

Scarborough Session - Final Presentations

It was the final session in Scarborough today, where the students had to present their finished installations. The four interactives have been combined into a single, touchscreen podium, installed on the first floor of the Rotunda Museum.

All four groups have done a fantastic job, producing installations that wouldn't look out of place on permanent display. Combining learning and games, each one takes a slightly different approach to present their charms.

I'm now busy typing up my notes from the session to send back to the University to help provide some feedback to the groups. Unfortunately I can't make it back to the opening reception on Wednesday, when hopefully they can celebrate their achievements.

The installation will be open from Thursday this week (18th) until the 28th November. If you get a chance then I highly recommend a visit. The students will be on hand over the period to help you out and talk through the work that they have done. Judging by the standard of some of the interactives you may well be seeing their installations in museums across the world in a few years time.

For opening times and location details visit the Rotunda Museum website: www.rotundamuseum.org.uk

Scarborough Session - Prototypes Presented

The students at Scarborough today presented their prototype installations to Jan and Ian from the Scarborough Museums Trust, Rob McKay and I. This was the first opportunity for us to see working versions of the systems that the four grousp are designing.

Overall I was impressed by how far most of the groups had got within such a short space of time. It's only four weeks since we set the assignment and three weeks since they pitched the initial ideas. Most groups had graphics, voiceovers, audio (tunes and sound effects), plus various working interactive elements.

The main criticisms were around the use of language and text. This included voiceovers that used complex words and tricky fonts on complex backgrounds. It's a common mistake to get carried away with the 'look and feel' of an installation and forget about comprehension. These installations need to appeal to audiences from 5 to 95.

The groups are keeping blogs detailing their work on the project, allowing me to keep up to date between sessions. They've also been provided with Flip video cameras so that they can put on video clips. The process is very interesting and the students are making use of some interesting software tools. You can visit their blogs by following the links below:

• Group 1 - Trade
• Group 2 - Protection
• Group 3 - Health
• Group 4 - Good Catch

They now have just two weeks before they have to be finished and we get to mark them. A lot of sleepless nights to come. At least this time it's not me.

Scarborough Lecture - Pitching and Blogging

Today was the first lecture for the Creative Music Technology Course (Scarborough Campus, University of Hull). Following on from last years successful project, I am acting as the client/consultant for the students as they attempt to produce some exciting interactives for the Rotunda Museum. This year they are working with some more of Clarke's Charms, helping to show to the public 'charms of the sea'.

Carved bone Intuit Good Catch Charm (c) Scarborough Museums Trust

During the lectures today I covered two main topics: pitching ideas and blogging. The following links and sites I found particularly useful in pulling together the overview for the students.

Scott Berkun - How to pitch an idea
A great rundown of the techniques to use, including an overview of the classic 5 second (the film Chicken Run - "Great escape for Chickens"), 30 second (Elevator pitch) and 5 minute pitching templates.

TED: Ideas worth spreading
Technology, Entertainment, Design - TED shows how you can get across almost any idea, in as little as 18 minutes. A fantastic, inspirational set of online lectures available for eveyone to watch and be inspired. If you need to get a flavour, then this 'Best of ' compilation will get you hooked.

Garr Reynolds Presentation Tips
Avoid 'death by powerpoint' by following these tips for a more 'zen' like approach. This presentation tips handout is essential reading.

Present like Steve Jobs
Love or hate Apple, you can't deny that Steve Jobs has presenting down to an artform. This site has a video that talks you through some of his main techniques.


The result of this project will be a two week installation at the Rotunda.

Next week the students will be pitching their ideas for interactives and creating short videos to send to me. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Apollo reaches shortlist for York Press Business Awards

After four months and several hundred entries, the finalists for The Press Business Awards were announced today.

Apollo Creative has reached the final three in the Best Business and Higher Education Link category, sponsored by the University of York. It reflects the work done by Apollo with colleges and universities across the region. You can get a taste of this by reading the company blog.

The judges will now meet the finalists in each category before the winners are announced on the 18th November at York Race Course. For a full list of finalists and to read the profile on Apollo Creative, see The Press website.

MRI talk at Archbishop Holgates School, York

This morning I gave a talk at Archbishop Holgate's School, York on MRI technology as part of my role as a STEM Ambassador. Together with Kirsty Halliday from Geodesic Arts, we talked the pupils through the 'Me, Myself and MRI' project and specifically the process of undergoing an MRI scan.

The talk was sponsored by NYBEP and links in with the launch of the new education website for 'Me, Myself and MRI'. The exhibition is currently split between Archbishop Holgate's School, the York Neuro-imaging Centre and the Knaresborough Technology Park.

Inspirations at Elvington

Today Ben and I attended Inspirations 2010 held at the Yorkshire Air Museum - one of the events run by NYBEP to encourage STEM work (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).  We ran an exhibition stand allowing the school groups and teachers to have a play with the Apollo Ensemble and control some sounds and lights. The stand also featured one of the pieces from the 'Me, Myself and MRI' exhibition, allowing people to see how the Apollo technology could be integrated into different applications.

You can just see the edge of our stand on the right of this photo, dominated by the fantastic 'Angel of the North' sculpture by Bradford Girls' Grammar School pupil Amber Thiara.

We were really pleased to see that one of the students we had been working with from York College had his work on display as part of the competition. You can see a photo of Daniels full scale mock-up of an alternative Ensemble Hub enclosure on the Inspirations website.

Music Technology now and in the future

The Apollo Ensemble will be making a guest appearance in the IET Young Professionals Event in London tomorrow night, as part of Professor David Howard's lecture 'Music technology now and in the future'.

David will be using the new EnsembleHub, together with an Ensemble Connect and Dice sensor, to allow the audience to join in with some demonstrations.

This marks the beginning of a long term collaboration with the University of York Department of Electronics, which will the see the Ensemble being introduced into the new BSc Music Technology course from September 2010.

The event kicks off at 6pm at Imperial College, London with a live webcast taking place on the IET website.

Futurelab outdoor spaces workshop

I've been down in Bristol today for a workshop at Futurelab on re-imagining outdoor spaces for play and learning. Together with a group of other people from a whole host of other areas, we've been looking at how you can create exciting outdoor spaces, particuarly for use in new schools. This follows on from other work by Futurelab including the Fountaineers project.

A Futurelab publication will follow later in the year and I'll update this post to provide a link when it is available.

BSF at Knottingley High School

Today we were at Knottingley High School, near Pontefract, to demonstrate what new technology might be available for the building of a new school. This was part of an Inspiration Day for parents and pupils, who also had to undertake a series of activities.

BSF is a Government funded scheme to rebuild or remodel every state secondary school in the UK. Knottingley is just beginning the development of its BSF plans and wanted to inspire everyone at the school to think differently about what a school could be.

Apollo provided three themed areas for the day. I gave short introductions to each area and explained how they might be used to inspire learning. Everyone was able to explore the areas and ask questions later in the day. A separate session was also provided for all the teachers and support staff at the school.


The Theatre
Seen in the background of the image below, this was a simple theatre stage where sensors were used by performers to control the lighting, sounds and effects. The stage was setup for performing an exert from Macbeth, complete with smoking cauldron, eerie lighting and thunder crashes.

The chill-out zone
Designed for informal learning and to help relax students, this incorporated bubble tubes and soft play elements.

Interactive corridor
This was what we call a 'proof of concept' demo using Apollo Ensemble technology. Designed to address the issue of lots of lcd screens appearing around schools with very little relevance to students, the Apollo version identifies and responds to individual students. Using ID cards the monitor can tell which student is stood infront of it and repsonds by displaying useful information - the students photo and timetable, excerpts of recently handed-in work, audio prompts for the next lessons in the day, reminders of deadlines and so on.

The demo used some of the students pre-prepared data, but in the future would pull all this information directly from the schools computers. It also helps solve the problem of how work generated digitally can be displayed to parents and visitors.

Our thanks to:

• Camel Event Production for the lighting and effects rigging
• Futurelab for additional literature and background resources for the day