titsay
pixel skylines
Monterey Bay Aquarium
cherry valley forever
Cookie Run:Kingdom Official!
No title available
Cosmic Funnies
tannertan36
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Love Begins
noise dept.
KIROKAZE
Jimmy Eat World
Claire Keane
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Interview Vampire Daily
ellievsbear
𓃗
No title available
RMH
seen from Belarus
seen from Russia
seen from Germany
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Colombia
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Brazil
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands
seen from United Kingdom
@unlockdigitalhct-blog
A trip to the Enchanted Forest
A trip to the Enchanted Forest
As part of the the Time to Shine Digital project we at Unlock Digital -Hot Chocolate Trust are able to offer cool experiences and new opportunities to young people, the Enchanted Forest in Pitlochry is an example of this kind of experience and it did not disappoint! The time for the Unlock Digital project to end is near, which…
View On WordPress
Hot Chocolate Young people and team travelled to Glasgow for the UnConvention on Thursday 20th October 2016.
The event was hosted by Creative Scotland as a celebration of Scotland’s National Youth Arts Strategy. Hot Chocolate’s project was part of Time to Shine Digital, a funding programme designed to inspire digital creativity in Scotland’s youth.
The event featured performances and interactive installations from the TTS Digital funded projects; Hot Chocolate Trust, Sensatronic Lab and Templar Arts and Leisure Centre (TALC) .
Young people Cait, Conal and Kai were manned the Unlock Digital exhibition where there was media on tablets and laptops for interested parties to engage with. It was great to see them taking the opportunity to introduce new people to the games they created over the course of the year. Including those made at the Games Jam Weekend Away and the Exodus summer project.
Cait, Kai and Joanna Helfer (Arts Worker from Hot Chocolate Trust) gave a presentation on the Interactive map of Dundee that was created during the Exodus summer project
You can visit the Map by going to http://www.metamapdundee.com
Time to Shine Unconvention Event Hot Chocolate Young people and team travelled to Glasgow for the UnConvention on Thursday 20th October 2016.
The Unlock Digital project is coming a close but in during we have enjoyed witnessing the amazing creativity of our young people who, when given the opportunity and support have achieved some incredible feats both digital and analog. With these awesome young people in mind and in true Hot Chocolate Trust fashion we set them their biggest challenge yet!
We would make our very own new game. A small team of young people and digital artists descended upon Sheilbrae House in Stirling for an intense weekend long games jam.
Our digital artists partners Biome Collective would guide us through our first Games Jam as this is the first in Hot Chocolate history! Biome have become known to our young people as Tom, Mal and Albert , they have brought new technologies to our young people through the Unlock Digital Taster Sessions and programmed the interactive map game created during the Exodus summer program.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
The weekend away was lead by youth arts workers Joanna Helfer, Lauren Herd and Anna Reid with the Games Jam program taken care of by the Biome Collective team Mal, Tom and Albert with additional support from the fantastic Daniel Allan. The limited time was structured around getting to know one another by spending time playing games,generating ideas, eating meals together,going on a nature walk and focussing on our new game’s creation during high intensity development sessions.
Young people came up with 4 ideas that were whittled down to two games . Both Spooky and heavily influenced by our venue Shielbrae House.
These games were Moon Room and Possession.
Jo plays Moon Room at Sheilbrae
Nathan plays Moon Room at Sheilbrae
MK plays Moon Room at Sheilbrae
Craig waits to play Moon Room at Sheilbrae
The Moon Room Game
The Moon of the Moon Room at Sheilbrae
Moon Room is screen based, meaning it is designed to be played on a phone, tablet or pc. This game was developed with Mal and Albert from Biome, with help from Tom from Biome for recording sound.
The story was crafted by young person Cait Lamb. We learnt that Cait is an accomplished writer, usually woking on role play characters’ back stories and enjoys hosting and developing several character chat rooms. Everyone was amazed by Cait’s imagination and writing talents, throughout the games jam process she proved herself a confident and capable leader as well as a supporting influence to other young people and team.
The haunting illustrations in the game were created by young person Kai Christie. They utilised existing drawing skills to create the visual aspect of the Moon Room game but adapted a unique sketchy drawing style to enhance the eerie story. The images were then imported and digitally enhanced by Lauren of Hot Chocolate Trust. When time was running out to finish the game, Kai was focussed and driven, illustrating as fast as they could. The hard work paid off as the resulting brilliantly detailed dark drawings are a stand out feature in the game.
Moon Room by Conal Lamb
The sound effects and coloured depiction of the Moon Room mural were created by young person Conal Lamb. Conal assisted in capturing a series of sounds from different places in Shielbrae house. These sounds perfectly compliment the dark story allow the player to become enveloped in the experience of playing Moon Room.
The second game developed during the Game Jam was a physical role play game entitled Possession. The roles that a player adopts during the game were created by a production team of young people guided by digital artists Tom (Biome), Jo and Dan.
Matthew, Nathan, Mk, Craig, Verena and Kyle developed a scenario where the house is possessed by spirits and demons. Players were instructed to follow clues around Shielbrae House and retrieve special items designed to exorcise the spirits and keep everyone alive!
During the 24 minutes run time, the players have the choice to work together or alone all the while staying within their character traits. There is an extra aspect to the game in that there is a demon within the playing teams ranks that acts to disrupt the progress of the other players and in the first run through the game they caused plenty of spooky mayhem!
As players move around the house to find and follow paper clues, the production team acted out peculiar and haunting roles of their own, like an embittered grounds keeper (Craig) and a comatose guest (Jo Helfer) adding to the creepy atmosphere. As well as these characters’ odd actions like perpetually tweaking the radio and laying prone in the bathtub, the house was rigged to play spooky noises like a haunting piano tune and a child laughing.
The scripted element was written by Matthew and Nathan and voice acted by Matthew himself with a comedy horror theme. It sounds very demonic until the demonic prescence succumbs to a coughing fit which made everyone giggle.
Watch the film below for a insider view of how the Games Jam Weekend progressed or visit the Time to Shine Unconvention Event on Thursday 20th October 2016 at SWG3 in Glasgow from 12:00-18:00pm.
Game Jame Weekend Away The Unlock Digital project is coming a close but in during we have enjoyed witnessing the amazing creativity of our young people who, when given the opportunity and support have achieved some incredible feats both digital and analog.
Biome guys brought a fascinating workshop to Hot Chocolate Trust open session on Wednesday 21st of September. The workshop kits featured are from a website called www.bareconductive.com and include a range of different equipment for experimenting with integrating electronics into our environment, including electronic paint, wiring and touch boards.
Young people responded really well to the touch sensitive array of vegetables and fruit that were rigged to a Touch Board related to a drum and bass sound cube. The sounds were on a loop and would start and step as young people tripped the sensors through touching each item. Robbie made us laugh spinning the watermelon! (See a special Robbies edit here)
Most of the young people found it totally hilarious to experience the feeling of ‘d-jing with fruit’.
Sensors could be almost any material if accurately linked up the the Touch Board, here Tom from Biome set up Tin Foil Squares as sensors relating them to different MIDI sounds from a free downloadable music program. Young person Emily enjoyed the drums and got a pretty regular rhythm going!
The electronic paint works by conducting electricity through conductive material suspended within the paint formula. Biome painted graphics ahead of time to make simple circuits and sensors. Above, young person Matthew tests the connection and discovered that we had to wait a bit longer for the paint to dry for the connection to be secure! After the connection dried Matthew could trigger the Touch Board by distance proximity (previously set) and trigger midi tone and sound from a laptop program.
Detailed information on the processes by which these kits work is available on the bare conductive tutorials page, be warned, it’s addictive fun!
Look out for future controller experiments by Hot Chocolate young people and developments on our Game Jam Weekend Away!
‘Controllers’ September Taster Session 2 Biome guys brought a fascinating workshop to Hot Chocolate Trust open session on Wednesday 21st of September.
In preparation for our Games Jam Weekend Away, Biome brought a glorious variety of games into Wednesday nights open session. Everyone involved seemed to have a brilliant time.
Thinking about rules, story, gameplay and goals help young people think about how to make our own digital game!
“Playing these games makes you think about what kind of game we could make” – young person , Cait Lamb.
In addition to playing the games, this was the first chance for young people to get their hands on a consent form for the games jam weekend away. We are taking 9 young people to Sheilbrae House near Stirling at the end of September for a weekend full of the fun challenge of making the our own playable digital game.
Featured Games of the night included:
Coup
Adventure Time: Love Letter
Codenames
Zombie Dice
Coup proved the most popular with our young people giving us some of the best facial expressions we have ever captured.
Un-digital gaming night! September Taster Session In preparation for our Games Jam Weekend Away, Biome brought a glorious variety of games into Wednesday nights open session.
How did you come to be working at Hot Chocolate Trust? My work at HCT was due to a partnership project with the One World Centre, and because of previous partnership work on the Our World to Save exhibition I was very excited work at HCT again.
What interested you about working with the young people of HCT?
My interest was due to the great reputation of the HTC reaching out to marginalised young people and supporting them through creative approaches such as music and arts. I find the level of ownership the young people have over the project and its services particularly inspiring.
What kinds of experiences did you have at HCT?
It has been a fantastic experience, and I found it incredibly rewarding albeit sometimes challenging. Throughout the One World Centre Creative Programme, art has always been a great medium to open up conversations which are sometimes difficult to introduce, and I found that was particularly true at Hot Chocolate Trust. Discussions in the art room often became more serious very quickly, with young people opening up about personal struggles but also sharing their views on current issues. I felt that bringing in a global perspective (talking about world politics, equality, poverty and other big issues around the world) has been really successful, some young people had very strong opinions and it felt as though they were just waiting for someone to ask them about their thoughts, whilst others had not thought about the bigger picture and considered many sides when discussing some global issues for what felt like their first time.
The nature of the drop-in sessions at HCT sometimes made it difficult for me to have debates or to plan an activity ahead of time because I never knew who would be coming into the art room that day, but this also had advantages as different young people dropped in every session and I had a chance to have quite personal conversations with many young people. Additionally, the support I have received from workers and volunteers has been really amazing as I would not have been able to reach out to young people the same way without their help.
Hot Chocolate acknowledged the International anniversary of the abolition of slavery during one session by talking about how much we don’t know about where our clothes come from. Tina and Lauren helped young people take a poll of where the young people clothes were made by reading the labels. Made in Bangladesh, Made in China, Made in Thailand.. Very few clothes worn by our young people were made inside the European Union. This stimulated conversation and research online.
Young person MK made it her mission to collect the “Made in …” labels from other young peoples clothes and then worked with Tina to develop a fabric collage incorporating an image of solidarity on a garment made in Bangladesh. Mk also recruited young person Andy Robertson to model the work.
Did anything surprise you? The level of ownership the young people have over the project has been equally inspiring and challenging – young people were very quick to shut off conversations or ideas they thought were boring, which showed just how empowered they feel at the HCT space.
What was the best part? The enthusiasm, the kindness and the love I received from the young people (and everyone else) throughout the project!
What might you try differently if you had your time here again? I would try to focus more on getting to know the young people first before trying to start a project, building it on their personal interests over everything else.
What role do you think the digital world has had on young people understanding of world issues?
I believe digital technology is young people’s major source of information, socialisation and fun, and as such has become a major aspect in their lives. Understanding what is going on in a young person’s life is impossible without the consideration of digital media’s impact on it in today’s world.
Tina has since applied to volunteer at hot chocolate long term, we are thrilled at the prospect and look forward to working with her on future creative projects!
Tina from One World Centre reflects on her time here. How did you come to be working at Hot Chocolate Trust? My work at HCT was due to a partnership project with the…
It was a retro game night at the second Digital Taster Session of August and the young people of Hot Chocolate were in for a treat. No one mentioned the fact that the games they were playing were older than the young people themselves, they were too busy enjoying these low-res old school classics.
Pac-Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan in May 1980.
Using an xbox controller to play Pac-Man
Dione found Pac-Man a stressful experience
Streets of Rage is a side-scrolling beat ’em up video game developed and published by Sega in 1991 for Mega Drive/Genesis.
Mario Bros. is a platform game published and developed for arcades by Nintendo in 1983.
The Legend of Zelda is a high-fantasy action-adventure video game series created by Japanese game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and first released in 1986.
Street Fighter is a fighting video game franchise by Capcom, first released in 1987.
August Digital Taster Session II It was a retro game night at the second Digital Taster Session of August and the young people of Hot Chocolate were in for a treat.
August Digital Taster Session
August Digital Taster Session
Mal , Tom and Albert were on a mission to add the special ‘Hot Chocolate Trust flavour’ to a game in the first of two Digital taster sessions this month. “Spliot started out as an exercise in code- based animation. Seeing what we could do with a simple circle. Once that worked and we could control the blob, we talked about how it could work. Most of the game mechanics came from the young people…
View On WordPress
MK is a rebel rebel gif.
PART III Playing the game
PART III Playing the game
We invited everyone involved in the Metamorphosis game project and the wider Exodus community to play the game created by Biome using young people’s stories and design! Continued from Blog post Part II, Chantelle Patton – For people who didn’t play the game, what is it ? Mal – Over Exodus, we started playing with the idea of doing a treasure hunt in the city. So we started by first hiding things…
View On WordPress
The young people of Hot Chocolate were invited to created artworks on large wooden panels for display as part of the ongoing Dundee Waterfront development in partnership partnership with Dundee City Council. One of these panels was utilised as a map of Dundee and painted beautiful colours by the young people.
So what has this got to do with digital art?
We had young person Chantelle Patton interview Mal to find out!
Chantelle: How will the digital version of the game be developed?
Mal: So, we were thinking of maybe, initially developing an app together , but we realised that the physicality of the game made it more fun. It was more fun that people were talking and running about and stuff. However, part of the metamorphosis project was that we made a map. First we projected a map, we used different digital techniques to make a map, the second version we did, we picked out an area of Dundee based on stories shared by young people and then you guys painted it didn’t you?
Chantelle: No I didn’t paint it! but yeah, other people did!
Mal: But you were there when we were coming up with ideas!
Chantelle: Yeah :)
Mal: So we made the physical version which was huge, I think eight foot by four foot or something and then we also used that version to replicate it in digital. So we made a website where it was the same map as the background and when you hovered over particular locations it would share with you, stories that young people had shared.
The Biome guys took a group of young people geocaching for research, to demonstrate the potential of the medium… and to have a great fun day out!
PART II The young people of Hot Chocolate were invited to created artworks on large wooden panels for display as part of the ongoing Dundee Waterfront development in partnership partnership with Dundee City Council.
Our partners Biome Collective brought a whole host of games for young people to experience during the June and July Digital Taster Sessions.
This atmospheric game, when projected in the chill room with dimmed lights, drew a crowd.
One of the coolest games Biome brought to HCT is JS Joust. JS Joust is a motion control game where everyone (2-7 players) hold a motion controller with a light on the end of it, if you move your controller too much your light will go out and you’re out. The goal of the game is to be the last player remaining. So what happens is players start approaching other trying to pushing the others arm to make their light go out, this makes the game a physical game of balance and movement. The game is set to JS Vox music which sets the pace. When the music is slow, the controllers are more sensitive and when the music is faster they are less sensitive.
The game gets people to focus on each other in a space instead of focusing on a screen like so many other games.
Young people were also invited to try out a game about gender identity that invoked dry humour and reflection as well as more traditional screen based games.
All of this engagement really worked at enabling young people to think about different kinds of interaction in digital games and how their project Unlock Digital might manifest itself in the future!
June + July Digital Taster Sessions Our partners Biome Collective brought a whole host of games for young people to experience during the June and July Digital Taster Sessions.
Part I Exodus: Metamorphosis the Game
Part I Exodus: Metamorphosis the Game
The Exodus(summer program) theme was Metamorphosis – Turn and Face the Strange. There are always different kinds of metamorphosis happening in Hot Chocolate Trust from the physical changes of growing taller or moving out, to the emotional changes of struggle, loss and success. Making metamorphosis the theme of the Exodus program gave us youth workers and young people a great excuse to ask…
View On WordPress
We are in week 3 of Hot Chocolate Trusts Summer program Exodus with the theme of Metamorphosis! Weeks 1 and 2 were the caterpillar and chrysalis weeks, this week we metaphorically emerge into majestic Butterflies!
Today we went to the Butterfly Centre and it did not disappoint!
Emily Gray had this to say: ” I felt like I was transported to the rainforest, it was really hot, humid and there were an abundance of butterflies! There were little birds (quails) and terrapins as well as one big tortoise. The reptiles were cool, the snakes and geckos were awesome. My favourites were a Burmese Python called Fluffy, a Boa Constrictor called Missy , a Bearded Dragon called Nelix ( Star Strek ref!) and a Giant Green Iguana called ‘Salad Fingers’ ” There was lots of chrysalis hanging in rows and I got some brilliant photos.
“There was karaoke on the bus on the way there and everyone except John the bus driver was falling asleep on the way back, really good trip”
};{Butterfly Week We are in week 3 of Hot Chocolate Trusts Summer program Exodus with the theme of Metamorphosis!