Jungulator is a self-generative audio and video tool. The system allows students to input, manipulate and output self-generative audio and visual material in real-time. It has been developed using, and building on, the original Jungulator application created by Bristol-based arts collective 'I am the Mighty Jungulator'.
Skip straight down to article…

Project article

Partners

I am the Mighty Jungulator
Futurelab

Technology

PC
Max MSP
Macromedia Director

Outline

Jungulator is a unique self-generative audio-visual tool that allows 14-17 year-old arts, music and media students to create new compositions made up of sound, text and video. Every time Jungulator is used a new piece of art is produced, and these works are created by the student in partnership with the system. For many young people, working with Jungulator is a new way to experience music and video and gives some young people their first opportunity to compose audiovisual works.

It was the notion of enabling students to form new types of relationships with sound and image that attracted Futurelab to the project. The ability to work in real-time to produce selfevolving and interoperable audio-visual artworks was something that was felt could support students' creativity, composition and performance practices in both school and community centre settings. As far as we are aware no educational software package is available that has the functionality of Jungulator.

Jungulator enables multiple routes of entry and allows people to use the system as they want, allowing random factors and intuition to become vital aspects of the creative process. It is a tool that gives agency to users, empowers them and gives them ownership of their artworks. This is done in real-time which means that they can instantly receive feedback on their decisions and acts.

Core to the development of Jungulator for students was the creation of a new user-friendly and intuitive interface, and building the interoperability between the self-generative audio and visual systems into a single application.

We envisage Jungulator's two main functions to be as a compositional tool, and as a live performance tool, in both formal and informal settings.

Learning and research objectives

Futurelab's key aims in supporting the development of Jungulator are to investigate:

1. How can we best integrate the audiovisual aspects of the tool and realise the software's full potential as a selfgenerative tool?
2. What type of graphic interface would best support young people to work with ease when using Jungulator?
3. What is Jungulator's potential as a learning tool and how can it support young people's creativity, composition and performance practices in both school and community centre settings?
4. What kind of interactions does Jungulator support?
5. What kind of support material would we need to consider developing for the use of Jungulator in school and community centre settings?

As with all Futurelab projects we are also interested in:

1. What this project tells us about the best ways of designing educational digital resources.
2. What this project tells us about how learning processes can be transformed through use of these tools.
3. How this project helps us understand the potential of next generation technologies to create intrinsically motivating and engaging learning experiences.

Research and development process

An early stage of development was supported by a workshop bringing together key external experts (teachers, artists and researchers) from the fields of visual and fine art, media art, music and music technology. The aim of this workshop was to scope out the opinions of the experts and the project team on the pros and cons of the existing Jungulator system, and their views on how it could be improved and used within their own practices.

Following this, Futurelab ran a workshop with nine young people (14-17 year-olds, Key Stage 3-5) who were studying a mix of music, art and/or music technology. As with the external expert workshop the aim of this session was to get the young people's views on the current Jungulator system, its advantages and disadvantages. This session involved working with wireframes as a basis for focusing discussion - these wireframes provided an initial guide to the functionality that will be included in the new interface.

Taking on board both the experts' and young peoples' opinions, the project team refined the functionality spec and developed the Jungulator application. Trials of the system took place with young people within schools and at digital arts centres.

Some of the findings from our research have shown that:

Young people could see the system being used as:

• an experimental/layer tool to support thinking about new ideas and creating new combinations of image and music that you would not have thought about before
• to make short films in media studies
• summer concerts - making the projections for the band
• making drama projections.

Film and media practitioners saw possible uses being:

• as a creative brainstorming tool
• as an active workbook
• at community arts festivals.

Indications are that Jungulator supports collaboration, with a researcher from WAC finding that "collaboration was 'crucial'. It enabled participants to bounce ideas off each other and created a peer support community".

This idea was submitted to Futurelab's Call for Ideas programme by I Am The Mighty Jungulator.

Contacts

Futurelab: Jo Morrison
I am the Mighty Jungulator: www.iamthemightyjungulator.com


Supported by:



September 2006