The “Shakey” Macbeth game in action: screenshot of a projected image halfway through a game, along with what an audience member saw on their phone.
EDINA newsline
June 2012: Volume 17 Issue 2
The “Shakey” Macbeth game in action: screenshot of a projected image halfway through a game, along with what an audience member saw on their phone.
As part of our work on the JISC-funded Shakespeare Registry, Will’s World provided data around the text of Macbeth to the Culture Hack Scotland (CHS) event at SocietyM in Glasgow on 27–28 April.
Will’s World aims to demonstrate the value and principles of aggregation by assembling metadata and APIs to online data sources relating to the life, times and work of William Shakespeare. These are made available to developers to enable them to create new and imaginative applications with the data.
Developments on the Registry itself are still on-going. Therefore only a subset of data was made available, the centrepiece being a marked-up text of Macbeth, including characters and locations, using EDINA’s Unlock web service. Additional metadata from the Statistical Accounts of Scotland and JISC MediaHub services were also made available to enable CHS participants to connect the play to related resources, such as historical notes on counties mentioned in the text, or video recordings of key performances.
Three teams at the event chose to work with Will’s World data and produced impressive and imaginative applications. One team focused on the emotions of the text, one built an interactive game and one looked at how Macbeth and social media could be combined. The Shakeyapp team were awarded winner of Culture Hack Scotland for Shakey: a Massively Multiplayer, Real Time, Macbeth Parlour game.
Mobile/computer users can join in the game and take part in the production either as an actor in the play or as a member of the audience. People’s Twitter avatars are included in the stage production. Cast members are prompted to recite the text and the audience can either throw virtual flowers or tomatoes to show their like or dislike. The result was creative and entertaining, and a worthy winner of the top prize.
This provided very positive feedback to Will’s World. Considering that only a fraction of the resources that can be added to the Shakespeare Registry were used, it emphatically demonstrates the potential for aggregation and creative use.
Resources used at CultureHack are available, including the Macbeth chapter from Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, by Isaac Asimov, which we didn’t have time to make available for the event itself.