Night Zookeeper launches!

Over 5 years on and this idea from my MA lives!

Our gates opened on 1 September 2011 and I am very excited to invite you in to a magical world of fantastical animals and their marvellous adventures that we have created.

Nightzookeeper.com is a website that celebrates children’s creativity. It is based on the adventures of a Night Zookeeper and the magical animals they meet. The website encourages children to invent their own magical animals and use illustrations and stories to bring them to life. A child’s imagination deserves freedom. Therefore, I hope that all children can enjoy the night zoo in schools and homes across the world.

The night zoo is available to explore for free 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

If you are a teacher, parent or kid please take a look!

I hope you enjoy http://www.nightzookeeper.com.

Thank you

A Chapter From The Night Time Zookeeper

Chapter 1. Stealth Giraffes

I swelled with pride that I had managed to spot them. I had hidden in a bush all night, listening to the Lions roar and the Vultures caw, just waiting. I watched their silhouettes as they slowly made their way through the grazing field in perfect graceful silence. They had been out, again. However, this time I had spotted them and that was considerable compensation for laying in a bush all day and all night.

I was in Zone 1 of my Zoo when I first noticed them. The day had passed and the only light came from the moons ethereal glow that shrouded the distinct forms of my Giraffes in a supernatural light as they grazed against a backdrop of stars. It may sound crazy, but I have got to be the only zookeeper in the whole world who has a herd of ‘Stealth Giraffes’. ‘What are Stealth Giraffes you say?’ Well I maybe the only zookeeper in the world who can tell you. My Giraffes, for no reason or purpose that I can fathom, sneak out of the zoo every day to spy on humans. They hide everywhere, from retail outlets to bowling allies, from celebrity parties to cinemas, only to return each night to my zoo. They eat as much as they can and rest up before a new days spying begins. I once asked the daytime keeper if there was anyway he could stop the Giraffes escaping. His laugh was louder than a belt of thunder but contained more bitterness than humor. However, as I watched the Giraffes sneak back into the Giraffe house I finally understood the joke. These are the best stealth Giraffes in the world. He would have more luck trying to placate a Rhino with cookies!

First post on the What is Collaboration? Discussion Board

In this project we have been introduced to several tools that allow us to contemplate collaboration within exciting new contexts. The live streaming video equipment allows us to consider 'real time collaboration'. I think of these real time collaborations as being like a sport. People collaborate in activity as they would if they existed on the same sports pitch. This is because they feed off the immediate actions of those around them. Timing their possible actions, like a footballer running into a space and anticipating a pass. Today (02/02/06) we learnt about Blogs and the potential for collaboration that they offer. A blog can essentially offer a forum for communication. It can build up a community of people who check into a blog to discover what other people have published. They may also be part of the team that post to the blog and so may add work to it. In this sense the blog becomes the focus for an online community collaborating on the blog. A blog may simply document individuals work posted on the site, but by simply collating the information is it possible that the blog becomes a collaborative project in itself? Like a virtual exhibition that offers its ideas up to anyone and everyone. Is a group exhibition a collaborative project? I believe work that is tied to a theoretical theme and exhibited in a managed space, does represent a collaboration between the individuals involved, simply because the outcomes are viewed within the same defined context. In the same way that a Movie is constructed from the work of various professionals but viewed as one within an encompassing context. However, maybe I am wrong and it is only when a group of artists who are united by an exhibition start to produce work that 'represents responses to the work of the other artists' (within the community that they are exhibiting with) that one can call it a collaboration. What do you think? Possibly, in order to call it a collaboration, the people who are linked by an online community will have to begin a unique and different project as a group before you would class it as a collaboration? I would actually be really interested in peoples opinions on this because this is a direction I am seriously considering for my collaborative project.

Collaboration Project MADP '06 Norwich School of Art and Design

Joshua Davidson. MA Digital Practices. Collaboration Unit Proposal
Statement Of Intent
Intentions and Concepts
To establish/evolve the method of collaboration that I am considering in my self negotiated unit. The basis of which uses the power of a community to create art and the communication technology of the internet to share that art online. I am particularly interested in fiction, specifically that which is stimulated and sustained by a particular narrative structure, this is linked with ideas about imagination. For my self negotiated unit i use the structure and the established dynamics of a traditional board game as the interface for creating an encompassing narrative. For my collaborative practices unit i intend to take this idea further. I am going to remove myself from process of control which govern the outcomes that result from a project. In a sense I will be placing myself in a circular system that spirals my artwork into a broader world of ideas. I will ultimately be creating a forum in which my art work is created, assessed and then reconsidered as it makes the transition from an individuals idea to a community art project that transcends location and other boundaries of physical space. (links to translation tools?)...The circular nature of the collaboration could potentially feed into many other individual ideas...in a sense developing a method of gaining new material for art works...it may also help me establish a new working method, where i work as an online community artist; setting up and being part of online communities that are interested in creating art that allows people to invest their imaginations in immersive stories and games. In this first project I will essentially be creating an online database of images and stories that are other peoples responses to my current art ideas, with the hope that the database will drive my future art projects. The database in this sense becomes the story. (Game Databases as Stories, ‘championship manager’) For my BA i constructed a story using dice and became interested in Keith Tysons ‘Art Machine’, and the ideas of the artist Sol Le Whit and the author Luke Reinhart. In this project , instead of using manufactured randomness to drive my story, I am using the random qualities of the world. Who has; time, interest, access to the internet and most importantly inspiration to join in and contribute their own artistic ideas about a very broad subject. I initially choose animals as my subject because I had read several novels that used them in exciting ways to describe perspectives on the world (His Dark Materials, Life of Pi), with this project the animals represent the works ability to transcend cultures and locations. Every culture has stories about animals as we personify animals and have created stories about them throughout our history. In this project I take ‘Zone 15’ of my Zoo, essentially it is just a square that maybe landed on during the board game (like ‘miss two turns’ or go back three spaces). This is a zone that so far in my imagination is a blank slate. I will begin to create a dialogue with online contributers about the animals and other features that could inhabit this zone of the Zoo.
Research and Creative Outcomes
My work will consist of three parts; Recording my own involvement in existing online forums, starting chain emails that attempt to stimulate responses and build a database of information about zone 15, finally to create a website that contains the resulting ideas and and allows further debate and interaction of the community that helped establish the site. Probably in this first instance through text based discussion and the posting of images. Although I could eventually establish a way, of people posting work in all mediums, possibly documenting actual community events.

Methods Of Collaboration
I will be collaborating within fictional settings; in online games and stories. Allowing my communication and involvement to be governed by the sites structure and analysing my own involvement. Then I will try to get people involved in collating material about one of my ideas. I will use this information to collate together a website that can establish a community of contributers and facilitate potentially infinite collaborations between people and the website; including myself. In which people respond to the ideas that already exist online and then join in with the community by contributing their own work. It is important to note that essentially the zoo is a metaphor for the world.

Responsibilities
My responsibilities within this collaboration is to begin to stimulate and gain the involvement of a whole host of people in an online community art project. I have the responsibility to sufficiently research ideas surrounding this theme, so that I can create emails and a website that fulfills my stated intentions. I will be relying on the strength of the initial idea to stimulate involvement from others so that Zone 15 can act as a point of convergence for the ideas of other individuals and therefore can to the inception of a perpetual online myth that constitutes a piece of community art that as I have said, transcends location and ‘potentially’ cultures.