D3 is a prototype public multimedia interactive for creating a stop-motion narrative. It was installed for four months in 2003 in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) based in Melbourne, Australia to assist in its further research and development. D3 is a storytelling engine. It explores a sense of place by mapping trails through the city – collecting mementos such as images and words, and evoking a poetic sense of journeys and destinations.
C2o, APC member in Melbourne, modified their flexible software system –WOK- so that it is able to save and manage assets being fed to and from a unique Flash interface. This enabled new content to populate the interface, as chosen by ACMI curators, content that the public would use to compile their stop-motion narrative. Another version of the WOK was used as a project management tool for the production crew and ACMI public programs staff.
The WOK’s use throughout the D3 project is being evaluated as part of the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) trials coordinated by APC’s Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP). The Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM) for ICT initiatives and ICT evaluation is an innovative gender analysis tool produced by APC WNSP for practitioners who share a commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment in ICTs. Field-testing and refining GEM with about 40 projects is taking place in a series of regional activities in Latin America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America.
D3 was conceived and produced by c2o director Andrew Garton with Toy Satellite in association with ACMI.
Public authoring kiosks attached to the D3 could allow the creation of “a kind of community-moderated weblog of considerable social and cultural value”, said creator, Andrew Garton. “D3 could engage the benevolent interests of telecommunications providers towards the establishment of public authoring kiosks in both urban and rural communities, its resources available across mediums, syndicated to like-initiatives world-wide.”
INFORMATION UPDATE: Storytelling engine D3 returns improved
D3, the prototype public authoring kiosk, created by APC member c2o and Toy Satellite, has returned to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) for a second season. D3 has been slightly upgraded to improve performance and facilitate easier curatorial control over content, both created for D3 and by visitors to it. D3 is also available within a dedicated Pod, one of several Pods custom designed and produced for ACMI’s Memory Grid exhibition and public production space. (November 2004)
Photo: D3 Pod and information "Footnote" screen, Memory Grid, ACMI. – Courtesy of c2o
