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Tolbooth Stirling

The first permanent building integrated interactive in Scotland! In 2000 we conceived and developed an interactive video server. We programmed in Nato & MaxMSP to create a video jukebox that displayed videos on three plasma screens around the Tolbooth Arts Centre in Stirling. We built ultrasonic sensors to sense proximity to the screens and programmed the servers to distress the images as you got closer. We married this innovative system to an equally innovative User Generated Content (UGC) Strategy that saw some 700 short films being made by members of the local community. Looking back on it now it is plain to see how far ahead of the curve we were — these are ideas that are only now coming into the mainstream with Sony's EyeToy for spatial interaction with screens and the likes of MySpace & YouTube for UGC.

“55Degrees' strategy has resulted in local people visiting the centre to show friends and family their own short films”