All the news items featured here or on the home page can also be found in the Journal alongside other entries by Soda members.
Page 1 of 10 pages 1 2 3 > Last »
Fiddian gets Neurotic 16 April 08
In Fiddian’s performance Neurotic, giant pogo-ing robots attend 3 punk gigs. Neurotic questions how learning develops through the empathetic responses of the brain. The robots’ own neural networks are modelled on so-called ‘mirror neurons’ in the brain which stimulate mimicry. Each robot is exposed to punk records that Fiddian collected as a youth. The intention is that the robots develop their neural connectivity through ‘listening’. See fiddian.com for more details
Newtoon research report 16 January 08
”Newtoon not only helped learners understand scientific concepts but also helped them experience the scientific design processes and develop their digital literacy.” - Newtoon research report (1mb pdf) via www.futurelab.org.uk/projects/newtoon.
Daintywalker returns in an all new Constructor 25 September 07
We’ve just launched the latest version of our award-winning Constructor application. Read more about it on the New Sodaplay blog.
Sodarace UK Tour 2007 - Final Leg - Manchester 8 September 07
We now begin the final leg of the Sodarace Uk Tour 2007, and what a few months it has been.
After starting at the Cheltenham Science Fair, then onto At-Bristol, over to Pontypridd for the ‘All over the shop’ exhibition week then up to Scotland for the MiEast of Scotland networking event, we now find ourselves starting an 8 week installation at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry.
Our time at Manchester will also integrate their 2 week Science festival in October which looks set to be a very busy and exciting few weeks.
If you have so far not managed to make it down to see Sodarace for any part of the tour then now is your chance to get to see it while it is still on the road.
Sodarace will finish at the Manchester Museum on the 4th November and begin it’s journey home to London.
Sodarace UK Tour 2007 - 4th Leg - Scotland 1 September 07
Well after our week over at ‘All over the shop’ Sodarace is about to make a long drive but short trip up to Perth, Scotland on the 7th September.
Sodarace will be part of a day long networking event supported by Perth and Kinross Education and Children’s Services. The event is the MiEast of Scotland: Technology and Moving Image Education; Let’s Create Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence and is being held at the Horsecross Exhibition Centre.
It looks set to be a very busy and fun day with Soda giving a an hour long talk on Sodarace to all the attendees and getting them all interactive with the kiosks…
After our short visit in Scotland, it’s down to Manchester for the final leg of the tour.....................watch this space!
Sodarace UK Tour 2007 - 3rd Leg - Wales 25 August 07
Sodarace is now on it’s 3rd Leg of the UK Tour 2007 and this time we are down in Pontypridd.
This time we are part of a week long exhibition called “All over the shop”, this is an exhibition of: installation film digital art painting.
The exhibition is set in a shopping precinct in Pontypridd where a run of empty shop’s have been turned into small galleries where featured artists will all show their work. ‘All over the shop’ is a collaboration between CF37 ART.net, Inga Burrows & Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council.
Sodarace UK Tour 2007 - 2nd Leg - Bristol 23 July 07
Sodarace today begins it’s 2nd Leg of the Uk Tour 2007 and this time we are in Bristol.
The exhibition will be running from today at At-Bristol , one of the UK’s most exciting hands-on science centres, until 23rd August 2007. The kiosk will be set up in the foyer of the beginning of At-Bristols tour section and we expect a large number of people in every day.
If you missed Sodarace at TheCheltenham Science Festival back at the beginning of June then here’s your chance to see it again down at At-Bristol.
See you there.
Irrepressible.info on Facebook 13 June 07
For its first anniversary we revisited Irrepressible.info and added a brand new news aggregator. Users can now read and submit censorship relevant news.
Amnesty’s pledge has received close to 70,000 signatures exceeding our original expectations by far and the “censored fragments” have become wide spread through the internet receiving millions of views every month.
And we are delighted to see the irrepressible.info API being put to good use on Facebook. Add the irrepressible.info app to your Facebook profile now and help spread the word!
Sodarace begins it’s UK Tour 2007 - Cheltenham 6 June 07
Today Sodarace begins the first leg of it’s UK Tour 2007....
From 6th - 10th June 2007 our newly built Sodarace kiosk will show the latest version of Sodarace @ the Cheltenham Science Festival.
Every year the Festival sells over 15,000 tickets. Since 2002 their free interactive science space – the Discover Zone has attracted over 100,000 people through the doors.
The time there promises to make a very exciting start of the tour with hundreds of people a day visiting and playing with the kiosks.
So come down and visit us if you happen to be in the area, it looks set to be a great few days, see you all there and we’ll keep you updated about the next legs of the Tour soon.
Soda Rocks (or Pops) Cannes 23 April 07
Alex and Fiddian went to Cannes last week for the Content360 pitching competition at MipTV and won the Children’s Content category. They pitched ‘Rock or Pop’ a fast paced online game comprising a series of user generated multimedia ‘this or that’ mini games. The prize is a development contract with the BBC with the aim to find a way to make ‘Rock or Pop’ work across CBeebies and CBBC. Rock...........or Pop!
Quickfire Fiddian 30 March 07
Fiddian presented at Quickfire last night on how Soda interfaces with many facets of the ‘Creative Industries’. Run by Katz Kiely, Quickfire uses a punchy 14 slide, 30 secs per slide format which is challenging for presenters but makes for an incredibly informative energetic event. Amongst the inspiring speakers were Charles Cecil MD of games co Revolution, Richard Adams Digital Strategy Director at Chemistry and Matt Hanson from Swarm of Angels the fab ‘crowdsourced’ film production project. Funded by London Westside the evening was an entertaining discourse on how the creative industries are evolving and boundaries blurring.
‘Wave’ to Dublin 17 January 07
Fiddian and Soda with artist Siobhan Hapaska have just unveiled ‘Wave’, a large sculptural low resolution screen for Dublin’s newly revamped Ilac Shopping Centre. The ‘portrait’ format screen is made up of 64 vertical Aluminium 5.5 meter extrusions each containing 96 four LED clusters thus making a huge, super bright 96 x 64 pixel screen. The extrusions are arranged in a wave form so at a distance and face on it appears as an ordinary screen but from the side appears as an abstract light sculpture.
The launch video content for ‘Wave’ reflects the Ilac’s environment and much of it was produced with Dublin school children. In the next phase we hope to use some of Soda’s skills and experience with computer vision generative art software to enable the Ilac’s audience to interact in real time with the screen.
Soda also produced custom playout and administration software that enables control of the screens content over the internet. Technographic did a fantastic job, as ever, with the screen’s production and it has been a real pleasure working with the Ilac’s architects Benoy.
Irrepressible invitation to developers 1 November 06
Due to the massive success of irrepressible.info’s launch earlier this year the site was swiftly internationalised with the addition of French, Spanish and Arabic language versions. Irrepressible’s continued appeal has now driven the release of another suite of features to further boost the acclaimed campaign against Internet related censorship and repression.
The site has seen tremendous growth in the last few months and ranked amongst the 5,000 most popular web sites worldwide (source: alexa.com). Irrepressible.info’s database of censored material has been accessed globally more than 39,000,000 times through it’s supporting blogs and websites (new feature). Crucially the campaigns’ popularity has led to more than 50,000 people signing the pledge, greatly exceeding the original goal of 30,000 signatories.
A Soda take on agile process 8 August 06
For some time now we have been looking at our design and development processes. We have also been talking to trusted advisers, clients and partners about different elements of this and have finally come up with a form of words to describe our revised processes. Our desire is to ensure that the way we work should allow us to play to our technical strengths and our creative culture whilst making sure that our partners and clients needs and requirements are always at the centre of our design and development activity.
The PDF file here is the latest version of this and we are now using this with clients. However, we welcome further comment and input as we will continue to review our processes.
Download Soda’s Iterative design and development process Aug 2006.pdf.
Irrepressible.info goes global 20 July 06
Following the success of the irrepressible.info launch in the UK, Soda has teamed up with Amnesty again to release an updated truly global version supporting multiple languages (currently English, French, Spanish with Arabic to follow soon). This is the second phase of irrepressible.info with an exciting third phase already in the making.
The update coincides with an Amnesty report about the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google in internet repression in China. The report can be downloaded from irrepressible.info or Amnesty (see press release).
Please keep up the amazing support for this campaign so that we can keep making it even better! Also your feedback is much appreciated and will help shape the next phase of irrepressible.info.