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July 2010

Fitting that, on an evening when Vinayan Kodoth's award-winning film Journeys was screened, it was announced that humberMUD is on the move. July's MUD was the last, then, to take place at temporary home Fudge.

From August 19, chair Mal Williamson announced, humberMUD will take place within FRuIT Space, a venue located in the historic Fruit Market area of the city that promises to be Hull’s most exciting entertainment and arts space. The usual day will also change as a result of the venue shift: The third Thursday of each month is now earmarked for our increasingly popular and regular gatherings of creatives and business.

And that wasn't the only big news on the night. Mal was proud to announce that humberMUD will also host MUD Expo over three days and nights in October. An extension of our regular networking and knowledge events, MUD Expo will unite creativity, artistic endeavours, education, training and business, with a varied programme of workshops, screenings, exhibitions, networking opportunities and trade stands.

Eric Coates' appearance at the start of July MUD ­ - Eric spoke at length about the Stateside journey he enjoyed as a Masters student - has proven to be a catalyst for a joint initiative between his old alma mater Stanford University and Hull History Centre.

A fascinating live Skype conversation between Eric and Deni Wicklund, manager of the Stanford University Libraries' technology support group and instrumental, as the speaker told us, in shifting access to Stanford's hard copy material to the virtual environment of Second Life, led to Deni being informed of Hull's multi-million pound archive facility. Subsequently, staff from Hull History Centre have made contact with Stanford and will benefit from the American university's expertise as the two organisations share knowledge. And all thanks to humberMUD.

Paul Starkey and Steven Conlan explained the technical process involved in creating groundbreaking 3D environments for historical study and public exhibition. The pair, working alongside other second year student colleagues at Hull School of Art & Design, drove the live project for Hull Museums.

Self-confessed lovers of memory-hogging polygon models, the dynamic duo explained the complex process of turning initial research around Hull's historic dockside into a three-dimensional walk-through that could be enjoyed by visitors to the Ferens Art Gallery, who would then be encouraged to seek out physical objects they were expeosed to in the virtual journey. As mud users saw for themselves, a games engine - Unreal Engine 2 Runtime (a toolset more typically used in the creation of video games) was put to good use to create a 3D simulation of a lost part of Hull's history that was eventually – and successfully - played out to gallery visitors as a digital film. The project has gone on to be showcased at the V&A as part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design conference.

Rounding the evening off was the aforementioned Vinayan Kodoth and his film Journeys, a mesmerising insight into travel between the home and workplace in Mumbai (Bombay). The film, made seven years ago and commissioned by the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, demonstrates the perils of journeying on a rail network where it is the accepted norm that around ten people will die each day - nearly 4000 people are killed every year as they fall off trains or are run over on the tracks.

Vinayan explained the whole production process, including the fraught nature of documenting the travellers' experience on extremely busy trains, how the original script was rewritten in order to create the biggest possibile impact and how the film was received in India (Bombay audiences were disappointed that what they regarded as the issues of public transport were not fully exposed). The experience, from Vinayan's perspective very much an organic process, sounded as tense and hazardous as journeying atop Mumbai's overcrowded rolling stock. The end result, plain to see even in the confines of a cafe-restaurant, is a work of poetic genius.

Dave Windass