Heartlands (‘Ere be Dragons) won the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award 2007
We (the artist from Active Ingredient, Capra and me from MRL) recently went to Tampere / Finland to collect the “Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award 2007” for the heartrate-based game Heartlands (previously known as ‘Ere be Dragons).
The judges said “Heartlands (‘Ere Be Dragons) lets us discover a world on top of reality at the rhythm of our heartbeat. While running through nature or urban areas Heartlands augments our senses to perceive our body in an ingenious way. Controlling the game means controlling ourselves and thus our health. Art and technology are very rarely found to be bound to reality this tight, making an ordinary activity like running an exciting and highly motivating task by means of ubiquitous media.”
MindTrek turned out to be a very nice conference. Unfortunately I had to work in my hotel room most of the time in order get another project going (see next post). I still managed to get out for a few hours and visited the Moominvalley museum, which brought back lots of childhood memories. You should go there if you ever visit Tampere.
Read a press release or two if you are interested in more details about the award.
Read a recent review of the game on Pocket Gamer and listen to an interview with artist Rachel Jacobs on BBC Radio Nottingham talking about the project. Also make sure to visit the project website and the AI blog.
