(www.mdcn.ca)
Had fun at the first part of my internship for the Mobile Digital Commons Network project. We were in Montreal at Concordia’s Hexagram lab for the past 4.5 days doing some pretty intense writing, brainstorming, and then some actual visualization prototyping. Beyond simply spewing out ideas I found myself doing a lot of After Effects work and a tad bit of 3d studio max. There wasn’t enough time for me to get into producing any actual physical objects, but I didn’t mind doing video work, as I haven’t done it too much for the last little while.

The MDCN project we’re developing is basically a game played out with the assistance (or use) of cell phones. 8 players meet on Mount Royal in Montreal and interact with the game and solve tasks using their phones. We’re working off newer models so that we can take advantage of GPS tracking and monitoring of players, as well as bluetooth communication between phones, and between Bluetooth enabled gear (accessories we build). Such as an animatronic teddy bear that becomes activated only at a certain part of the map, and then triggers a video to play on the phone.
The short is that Arthur English who is buried on the mountain (famous Canadian who hung over 400 people) is trying to escape, so players have to complete a set of tasks or ‘locks’ to stop him. English is one of three storylines being developed for the project.

Intern: MDCN (Mobile Digital Commons Network) Montreal + Toronto. A project working on developing interactive immersive live action games for cellphones. MDCN is a joint project between OCAD and Concordia University amongst others.