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One particular area of concern has been the design and construction of the eight ‘bell posts’… and with budget tightening and schedule contracting we were keen to make sure this was one aspect of the project that didn’t get squeezed too far. The bell posts are the main physical manifestation of PEAL – the sculptural and physical elements of the piece that the audience interact with ‘up close and personal’ – and so we want to make sure they have the design aesthetic and quality of build we’re aiming for with the project overall.

Nick and I approached several designers and fabricators through out mutual networks and have now engaged with Duncan Fitzsimons - a graduate of the MA. Industrial Design Engineering, Royal College of Art and a member of Vitamins design – a multi-disciplinary design collaborative based in London.

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Malcolm Garrett, RDI – Creative Director at Applied Information Group (AIG) has been developing the PEAL branding and graphic design for the ‘monitor’ output – and though still in development we think its circularity and clean, minimal vector aesthetic and historical font are right on tip. There are a series of variations for each of the installation modes: idle (above); self play, guided play, performance and timepiece.

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Interesting possibilities emerging for triggering and synchronising video via the in-house Alpine McBride Video Binloop 16 track video player which uses Compact Flash cards…

Steady progress… still some things outstanding according to my reQall list… but hoping to catch up this week.

1. Confirming Church participation and dates for visits and filming.

a) I’ve already visited St Peters Church aka Leeds Parish Church (LPC)

St Peter’s Church (Leeds Parish Church), Kirkgate, LS2 7DJ
12 bells
Practice: Thurs 7:30
Visit: Thursday, 9th July, 7.30-9pm
Filming: either Sunday, 9th or Sunday 16th August, 1-6pm

b) Through Steve Ollerton, Tower captain at St Peters (Leeds Parish Church) I’ve now made contact and arranged a visit and reconnoiter with a further three churches:

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(Serving suggestion.)

Some initial thoughts about the hardware construction of the campanile.

We are thinking about an eight-bell setup, with eight ringing posts, one for each bell. Each post has to be able to sense a ringing gesture, and to display the state of the bell (in other words, its position). Although physical bells are completely independent (I assume: is there any kind of physical interaction between them as they ring?), PEAL requires a central processing unit in order to display and animate ringing patterns. So: how independent are the ringing posts? How much of a brain does each one have? Read the rest of this entry »

Nick and I are trying out reQall “a voice-enabled memory aid that seamlessly integrates your mobile phone, email, text messaging and IM into a powerful organizer, reminder system and productivity assistant.”

I like the idea of a tool used for a specific project – and with reQall its easy to add notes, To-Dos and shopping list items via text, voice, email and IM – and share these with others – which seems ideal for a creative and collective project like PEAL – and a good way to document our development too.

What’s more you can publish your Reqall items through an RSS feed – here’s Lewis’s Reqall items for example.

Posting to the Monomatic blog via Flickr email…, originally uploaded by Monomatic-flickr.

Leeds City Museum – shot with my iPhone

This is a test to see how a rich text formatted email actually looks
on the Monomatic blog… and whether it’s possible to include photos
and add attachments – such as this audio recording of the bell ringing
practice session at St Peter’s Church made using Voice Notes on my
iPhone…

Conclusions:
Well the photo loads OK – bar the black border – which must be configurable in the Flickr settings (but which I actually quite like) – though (unsurprisingly) the Rich Text formatting in the email doesn’t translate and the audio file hasn’t materialised… but as a ‘quick and dirty’ way to post it could be useful.

1. Visit the Leeds City Museum and discuss technicalities with Tom Pace, Senior AV Technician
2. Meet with Sue Ball from MAAP
3. Visit Leeds Parish Church for a practice bell ringing session and meet with Steve Ollerton, Tower Captain and the group
4. Visit other possible churches – time permitting…

Resulting in the following notes (they’re quite extensive – sorry):

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This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

In setting up the Monomatic Flickr account I came across this existing  and unintentionally hilarious Monomatic listing on Flickr (part of the fantastic ‘Old Airport’ set in Mirsasha’s photostream)… look at the name badge – “Push to Flush” just has to be the name of our first album