Second Places

Manchester Metropolitan University - Urban Myths Project

From the Urban Myths Re-Told Project brochure:

For the Urban Myths Re-Told Project, students from the groundbreaking Interactive Arts degree course at Manchester Metropolitan University have created a public tour through the Urbis building. Along the way, the traveller will stop to explore 10 unusual locations and experience 10 new artworks produced by second year students.

The students were invited by Urbis and the Manchester Literature Festival to develop work inspired by 10 winning flash fiction (short, short) stories on the theme of Urban Myths Re-Told. The result is a series of works in a variety of media from live art performance, graphics, animation, installation, light-sculpture and map-making to play equipment. Students have responded to the stories in a variety of ways,creating a motif or tableau based on their chosen story; summing up its essence in an interactive work or using it simply as a creative springboard tolaunch their own creative ideas.

In just their second week of university, First Year Interactive Arts students were given a challenge to work in groups to produce aperformance based on one of the 10 stories, using only newspaper as a resource! The result is 10 short videos, which will be screened on the wed in Second Life Urbis. Students will also be making some small interventions in Second Life so we encourage you to pay a visit. The project has been a wonderful opportunity for the whole course and we are very grateful to Urbis and the Manchester Literature Festival for inviting us!

Graham Ebbrell of Second Places (and former Interactive Arts student) acted as a consultant to the project and aided the students and staff by offering advice on building their installations and in the preparation and streaming of the videos into Second Life. He also set up the video viewing area at the front of SL Urbis.

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