Tools

Four tools are required to equip each participant : the camera, the iPhone, the CMS, the website.

To make the system work, we have developed the following tools :

• A database (in PostgreSQL) containing the collected media. It uses a structure worked out on the basis of the specific needs of projects (the metadata required for the functioning of an editing engine) as well as the standard fields of video databases (mainly technical metadata).

• A collaborative management system to use and manage the data and metadata of this basis: a CMS (Content Management System). This is our principal work interface through which we control both the placing of the media on the map of the urban space and the criteria for the possible interconnections between the media. The media will all be catalogued and indexed (using subjective criteria such as thematic affiliation and editing criteria); it will be possible to test these choices with the variables used in the editing engine. For a more detailed look at the CMS interface, go to http://cms.walking-the-edit.net and enter with the WE user and the password "recherche".

• The editing engine. This is an algorithm developed from artistic and conceptual choices. Based on a set of variables that can be edited using the CMS (a special thumbnail regroups the fields of variables), the editing engine first analyses the trajectory data in order to establish a framework from it, on the basis of which it will review the different editing rules with which we will control the style.

• *Software for the iPhone. This software will be freely downloadable but will only function in association with a space which will have been prepared to accommodate the system. The iPhone serves above all to record the trajectory data (via its GPS) and to send them to a server, who will analyse them to create a playlist (the edit) making it possible to send back an audio flux as well as the data required for the visualisation of the process taking place.

• A website. The platform which renders visible what has been fabricated in the urban territory: the trajectory drawn onto the city as well as the resulting film. Just as the CMS, as a record of the media, is the configuration tool reserved for the specialists, so the website, as a place to share the resulting films, to record the trajectories and to store the films, is the meeting point of the whole system.

News

Since november 2009, Nicolas Goy (the software engineer) has completely rewritten the database and the editing engine.

We are working on a new version of the editing engine that will be released begin of april; the iPhone software in a beta stadium will be finished for coming may.

We are currently updating the videos, so there can be some problems with playing the films. Please come back soon, there will be the films calculated with the new editing engine (and passing from flash to html5).