A project in the Liberties gives children a chance to use digital cameras while they're skateboarding. Iva Pocock reports.
As technologies go, skateboards are straightforward - no microchips, no batteries, no electronics. But in Dublin's Liberties skateboarding has gone high-tech, with the creation of digiboarding.
Digiboarding all started as a far-fetched idea among three college mates on the Multimedia course in Trinity College Dublin, when John Gerard, Jobst Graves, and Stephen O'Reilly (an artist, curator and programmer) created software for real-time editing of digital video footage. It is now being used by children on a summer project in the Liberties to edit images recorded by tiny cameras attached to their skateboard helmets and kneepads.
Developed by The Digital Hub and sponsored by Guinness UDV Ireland as part of their Liberties Learning Initiative, the project is aimed at teaching children about digital technology. Over the past six weeks a "peer group" of children have been introduced to skateboarding and image editing skills. They are now helping to teach another 100 children.
Kitted out in helmet with digi-camera, knee and elbow pads, 14-year-old David Dunne from Bridgefoot Street had never skateboarded or used a camera before. Although more interested in perfecting his skateboard tricks than talking about the project, he says: "It's been great like, excellent". He is particularly chuffed by the kick flip and ollie tricks he had learnt (on the skateboard not the keyboard).
Twelve-year-old Louise Mulcahy and her teenage friend Carol Marjara are equally enthusiastic. "I got a skateboard a few weeks ago and I was interested. Then I heard about this because my Nanny lives down in the Coombe," explains Carol. "Learning how to do different stuff on the skateboards is good but the computer's a little bit boring."
Louise says the skateboarding is "good and sometimes the computers are interesting". Carol's best friend, 10-year-old Amy Fitzpatrick, from the Coombe, hasn't taken to the computers at all: "My sister has a computer but I hate them cos you have to keep clicking them. They're awkward." She has learnt to go down the ramps and do a "stamp down" and is really impressed with another kid. "There's this new boy; he came the other day and he's flown through it; he's on the big ramps and all." The focus of her admiration is Johnathan Wilson, also 10 years old. He pauses just long enough to say he has been "all the ramps" before heading back to his board, his admirer in tow.
Although none of the children seems to have picked up the high-tech lingo of "integrated components" and "authoring footage" and appear far more interested in the skateboarding, they have created some amazing digital images. One of the developers of the Audio Visual Presenting (AVP) editing software, John Gerard, now with Rough Magic Films, is enthusiastic about the children's work.
"Initially the kids took digital portraits of each other and manipulated those with very sophisticated manipulations," he explains. "They went wild with it." Pointing to one girl's creation he says: "I'd be pleased to see that on any gallery wall".
His hope, and that of The Digital Hub, is that children in the area will become proficient in using digital technology. What seems certain, however, is that Dublin's young skateboard population will be boosted. The big pity is that the skateboard ramp built especially for the project is only temporary. Nevertheless local 14-year-old Dane Cannon, in a very officious tone, says, "I'd just like to say thanks to all the people who supplied the skateboards and the software."
