OpinieBeam is a starting service of ixopusada. With VJ-ing we want to add an extra informative, yet entertaining layer to a debate or congres. One of our more recent research is into a system in which the audience can participate anounymously by sending SMS-messages to the big screen behind the debaters. The first test with this system during happyChaos in the Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam was conceptually a smashing succes...
The audience loved it and the direct commenting public formed a vibrant atmosphere throughout the whole happyChaos. While sometimes a bit diversive, it also provided the real voice of the public and helped the discussion-leader in finding exactly the right response to the debaters and keeping them sharp.
Technically it was a small disaster. Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. So in the end we had no fast network on which the SMS's could be automaticly processed. We had to improvise everything by hand: read the SMS's from a phone, type those SMS's in a template illustrator document. Save that document. Open it on a second machine and then drag the illustrator-text into the second monitor area of the screen, where we'd put the beamer on. At the end of the evening we estimated to have missed about 400 messages.
From this experience we learned a lot. That's why we are now constructing software and a network in which the SMS's are received automatically and immediate (with a much higher limit in SMS's per minute). Those messages are then processed in three phases:
1. First they are received on a editors computer, which will be operated by at least one person of the organisation who we work for. Here the SMS's are filtered. Some are deleted, some are send through, some even get priority.
2. Then on a second computer the messages are styled. Each message gets an individual design, composed out of simple style elements. It might also get an animation attached to it.
3. Finally they are received on the directors (regie) computer. Here they are "dragged" onto the screen or removed from there. The director watches the audience and the debate very closely and decides quickly and intuitively on what to show and for how long. The director also has a pallet of extra goodies, which he can add to the screen.
We are even thinking of giving parts of this directors-task in the hands of the discussion-leader who stands on stage. So he can really control what the debate is going to be about: "Here somebody says 86% of Europe is empty, how would you react on that?" He might even could call the sender of this messages back, the telephone feedback live on stage, to ask the person from the audience for further specifications on his or her question.
Check for an "independent" report on our SMS-medium during the last happyChaos on www.happychaos.nl