2.4 Ghz Homing Pigeons

Just spotted whilst catching up on some tweets that a friend and work colleague, Joel Porter has a screening as part of 'Manchester Urban Screens 2007'. It's the curiously titled '2.4 Ghz Homing Pigeons' screening from 3pm to 5pm on Thursday 11 th October in All Saints Gardens. Not an ideal time of day for working folk but it's near to where I work so I should hopefully be able to catch some of it. Joel describes it as such:

"Based on the original photographic work of Edward Muybridge's study of pigeons in flight this work utilises Bluetooth technology to build an interactive environment in which pedestrians control the number of birds based on the number of enabled mobile devices present within a 10m/33ft range. The pigeons appear to fly over a virtual Manchester skyline while commuting pedestrians travel beneath."

Joel had shown me a sneak preview of this in the summer and I mentioned it in a previous blog post not knowing it was going to be part of such an illustrious event. I'm sure it'll take on a whole new life in this large scale context.

Looks like there's plenty of other interesting stuff going on as well. One thing that caught my attention is the '2008: Man with a Movie Camera' experiment in database cinema on from 9am till 10am the same day - "Individuals are invited to upload shots and scenes based on scenes from the original film, creating a database which then streams as a film". Interesting, as I love this film having been introduced to it by the fantastic Cinematic Orchestra record of the same name (also highly recommended). I may try and contribute to this event as all are invited to by the artist.