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Review: It Felt Like A Kiss

By Peter Price
BBC News – Click to read this at bbc.co.uk/news

Documentary film-maker Adam Curtis has teamed up with theatre group Punchdrunk for his latest project It Felt Like A Kiss. The ‘walkthrough experience’ has taken over a disused five storey building in Manchester as part of the city’s International Festival.

The lift doors close. I’m trapped with three strangers and surrounded by 70′s elevator chic. We ascend in silence with the words of the show’s host ringing in our ears; those with a nervous disposition should think again.

Inside the mind of Adam Curtis. Photo: Punchdrunk

Breaking the spell, the girl next to me tells us her boyfriend saw this show the night before. In her words he’d returned home ‘seriously freaked out’. The doors open, my heart quickens and we make our first tentative steps into the darkness.

Fans of Adam Curtis will instantly recognise the world he has created. Working together with theatre production company Punchdrunk, It Felt Like A Kiss occupies several floors of an abandoned office building in Manchester’s Spinningfields.

I’ve stepped through the screen and into a new Curtis film. Every sense is immersed in the experience. Navigating through this rich world of evidence, movie-goer becomes movie maker as we each find our own narrative.

Visitors are encouraged to scrutinise every prop in this unscripted thriller. There’s a lot to investigate and I become engrossed in books, photographs and letters.

Curtis is a documentary maker who has produced a series of highly acclaimed programmes for the BBC. His fascination with post-war Americana is present in this show, which treads the fine line between dream and nightmare.

At the heart of this adventure, if you can find it, is a film. It’s a fascinating and thought provoking riot of colour and music where the plot is stitched together with pictures and sound from the archives. It explores the links between a young CIA agent, a young Saddam Hussein and a young Doris Day.

Barely a week after the death of one of the world’s most famous entertainers, we delve into the lives of previous stars who hid their nightmares behind silver screen dreams.

The venue for this special screening is a film night in an American school gymnasium. This is very much a conventional Curtis documentary in a unconventional setting. With the senses on edge, it’s a chance to sit and catch my breath.

Just as the story is becoming clear, the dream turns sour and rushes away from me with alarming speed. Cacophonous music composed by Damon Albarn adds to the sense of chaos and disorientation.

The staging is deceptively simple. Old fashioned stage tricks of light and sound combine with the hi-tech of projectors and concealed cameras to subvert the mind.

Over the course of the action – nearly three hours – daylight becomes a distant memory. Just like Hollywood’s most scary creations, you know it’s make believe but under the spell of the director my common sense is disappearing fast.

Through it all I stay close to the girl from the lift. Although never exchanging names we’ve forged a friendship in the face of adversity. But then we lose each other and I’m alone and helpless in a vortex.

The mind is cruel as our camaraderie has fooled me into thinking of my fellow strangers as a lifeline. After all, no matter how hard I try, I’m not in control. And within an instant, instinct is all I have.

Oyster card hack details revealed

By Peter Price
BBC News – Click to read this at bbc.co.uk/news

Details of how to hack one of the world’s most popular smartcards have been published online.

The research by Professor Bart Jacobs and colleagues at Radboud University in Holland reveals a weakness in the widely used Mifare Classic RFID chip.

This is used in building entry systems and is embedded in the Oyster card used on London’s transport network. Publication of the research was delayed by legal action taken by the chip’s manufacturer.

This article was adapted from my report for “Click” broadcast on the BBC News channel and BBC World News.

Prof Jacobs and his team first identified the vulnerability in a research paper that was due to be published in March 2008.

However, the release of the article was delayed after chip manufacturer NXP attempted to secure a court injunction against its publication.

The paper was finally released on Monday at the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (Esorics) 2008 security conference held in Malaga, Spain.

Sensitive data stored on the Mifare Classic chip is protected by a unique number that acts as a key. When the chip, or a card bearing it, is placed near a reader it transmits and receives information based on its key. The security of the system depends on the key remaining secret.

In March Prof Jacobs and his colleagues discovered a flaw in the chip’s design which makes those keys easy to calculate and copy.

“Once we knew how the system worked and what the vulnerabilities were, it turned out to be very simple to actually clone cards, steal someone’s identity and enter a building as someone else”, he said.

After making the discovery the researchers informed the Dutch government and the chip’s manufacturer, NXP.

When it knew about the research NXP moved to delay publication by seeking an injunction.

Steve Owen, vice president of sales and marketing – identification at NXP Semiconductors, told the BBC’s Click programme that it was motivated to take legal action to give its customers time to update their systems.

“We sought the injunction to cause a delay, not to completely stop the publication,” he said.

Mr Owen recommends that the card alone should not be relied upon for secure access to buildings.

“We do not recommend the use of Mifare Classic for new installations,” said Mr Owen. “We are working with customers to review their security.”

Spot check

The Mifare Classic is widely used on many public transport systems including the Oyster card in London. The researchers say their security flaw can be used to copy cards. They claim to have even been able to adjust the amount of credit stored on a pre-pay card.

Earlier this year members of Prof Jacobs’s team visited London to test their findings, travelling on the London Underground using a modified Oyster card.

Shashi Verma, director of fares and ticketing at Transport For London, told the BBC its system spotted the security breach.

“We knew about it before we were informed by the students,” said Mr Verma

He stressed that the Mifare Classic chip in the Oyster card is only part of a larger system. “A number of forensic controls run within the back office systems which is something that customers and these students have no ability to touch.”

“We will carry on making improvements to the security of the Oyster system.”

Speaking in July, security expert Bruce Schneier said: “As bad as the damage is from publishing – and there probably will be some – the damage is much, much worse by not disclosing.”

Mr Schneier said it was a “dangerous assumption” to think that the researchers were the only ones that knew about weaknesses with Mifare.

“Assume organised crime knows about this, assume they will be selling it anyway,” he said.

Commenting on the publication of their research, Prof Jacobs told Click the information being disclosed was: “not a guidebook for attacks”.

Competing to create ‘mash-up’ apps

By Peter Price
BBC News – Click to read this at bbc.co.uk/news

We sent our resident coder Peter to Alexandra Palace in North London – on the longest day of the year – for an event which brought together hundreds of wannabe hackers: Mashed.

The term “mash-up” means combining two applications to make something different.

They were conceived in the second wave of dotcom fervour out on the west coast of the US, but they have worked their way firmly across the Atlantic.

After joining a team, he had just 24 hours to create a beautiful new blend from two existing applications.

The feature was broadcast on BBC News 24 and BBC World

Silicon Valley eyes Oxford entrepreneurs

By Peter Price
BBC News – Click to read this at bbc.co.uk/news

The mood is bullish as Silicon Valley investors gather at Said Business School in Oxford to find new opportunities, new entrepreneurs and new ideas.

Michael Malone, journalist and former editor of Forbes magazine, explains why Silicon Valley is unique for technology start-ups.

“Silicon Valley has developed a sophisticated process for taking individuals with good ideas and surrounding them with the infrastructure and the money to build new companies,” he says.

“It’s where you go if you want to start a great company. Everything is there to enable you to do that.”

This article was published in the business section of BBC News

The Valley combines talent and knowledge that is rarely found anywhere else in the world.

Even other US cities can struggle to incubate new technology start-ups, demonstrated when Facebook was forced to move from Boston to Silicon Valley to secure venture capital.

Since its inception in 2000, the “Silicon Valley comes to Oxford” event has helped foster an entrepreneurial environment in the university city.

The number of British venture capital firms has grown in recent years, but Michael Malone says that entrepreneurs still have to work harder to get funding in Europe than the US.

Experienced angels

Reid Hoffman made his fortune by selling PayPal to eBay in 2002.

He went on to co-found the social networking site LinkedIn and after securing venture capital to grow the website, he now uses his wealth to invest in start-ups as a business angel.

He is adamant that the Valley remains the best place for him to invest in new firms.

Hoffman says that the highly developed market for start-up finance forces venture capitalists to compete for the best investments.

“There is no better place in the entire world to set up a company than Silicon Valley,” he says.

Attitudes to failure

Until recently Kulveer Taggar was a student at the Said Business School.

Now he has returned as an expert, sharing the secrets of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Mr Taggar co-founded the website Auctomatic.com and, after operating in the UK for 12 months, he migrated to California to secure venture capital funding.

“We decided that if we want to build a big business we should go there,” he says. “It increases your chances of success.”

Mr Taggar is sceptical that Oxford will become as famous for entrepreneurs as Silicon Valley.

“I think it’ll take a very long time,” he says. “Unless people are willing to take serious risks over here, I don’t think it will happen.

“There’s a different mindset in America to taking risks.”

That is a view echoed by Paul Graham of Y Combinator, the firm that provided initial seed funding for Auctomatic.com.

Mr Graham says that about two thirds of the companies they invest in fail.

Attitudes to failure are so different in America that he says it is unlikely to damage your chances of securing future funding.

“What makes the difference to us is how good the people are,” he says. “We don’t hold it against them that they’ve failed.”

Fiona Reid is in charge of entrepreneurship at the business school. She agrees with the notion that investors act differently this side of the pond.

“We’re certainly more risk averse here and the time scales that people are prepared to wait for dividends is definitely too short.”

Credit crunch

Banking is suffering a period of uncertainty due to bad debts in the US sub-prime mortgage market, but delegates in Oxford are quick to dismiss suggestions that their industry will be affected.

“We haven’t seen much impact of the credit crunch in Silicon Valley,” says Mr Malone.

“The venture capital funds are swollen right now.”

American investors gathering in Oxford are confident about the prospect of finding new entrepreneurs on this side of the Atlantic. According to Mr Malone, the real problem is “not a lack of money, it’s a lack of ideas.”

Malone shrugs off any attempt to compare the current “web 2.0 bubble” with the technology boom of the late 1990s.

He says that the venture capitalists are being a lot more careful with their money while business angels are naturally more cautious because it is their own money at stake.

Ms Livingston agrees.

“I don’t think we’re in another bubble like the 90s,” she says.

“I think investors are being a lot more careful so I don’t worry about something bursting as dramatically as it did in 2000.”

Mr Malone is confident that the Valley will ride any downturn in the market thanks to the area’s financial and emotional resilience.

“We’re going stronger than ever,” he says. “The Valley’s bigger now than when the bubble burst, and that just seems astounding to me. It’s a miracle!”

Machinima waits to go mainstream

By Peter Price
BBC News – Click to read this at bbc.co.uk/news

Falling somewhere between film, animation and gaming, machinima is the art of producing films using graphics rendered by computer games.

To many it is a brand new medium, but this weekend Europe’s first machinima festival at De Montford University in Leicester kicked off with a presentation from Paul Marino entitled “celebrating the first 10 years”.

Marino is Executive Director and co-founder of the Machinima Academy of Arts and Sciences, an ward winning machinima director and author of the first book on the subject.

Two years ago he participated in a discussion at the Sundance Film Festival which generated considerable interest in the medium amongst independent film makers.

This article was published in the technology section of BBC News

In the cash-strapped world of low budget movies, many see machinima as a cheap way of getting their ideas on screen. The technique involves recording footage from games consoles and editing shots together to tell stories.

Revolutionary steps

“They still know how to track a camera through a scene and how to get certain shots but without having to learn the animation software”, says Mr Marino.

“In my eye machinima is just one of those revolutionary steps in film making.”

“I think it’s inevitable that we’ll have these virtual systems that allow us to create stories that give us flexibility but at the same time don’t hamper us with the constraints that the real world gives us.”

Machinima directors are never troubled with bad weather or the leading man’s ego, for example.

Toby Moores, visiting professor at the Institute of Creative Technology at De Montfort University, is an industry insider and successful games developer. He recently created the quiz game Buzz for the Sony PlayStation.

Mr Moores says machinima developed as a result of players wanting to be creative with their favourite game.

‘Creative gaming’

“More and more people are seeing this as a way to do creative gaming rather than destructive gaming. They’re making stuff rather than blowing stuff up.”

He thinks that games producers are respectful of the machinima community and are stating to take the community seriously.

One of the most popular tools, Microsoft’s Halo 3, has a sophisticated 3D camera system and can record footage in high definition. Last week Microsoft even updated Halo’s end-user agreement to allow in-game footage to be distributed for non-commercial use.

Many professional coders are also writing cheats into their games with no purpose other than to help budding film directors.

“The time is right”, says Mr Moores. “People like Microsoft are very forward thinking.”

Others at the festival were voicing concern that large game producers will start to exploit machinima for commercial gain.

In 2003 the BBC created the TV programme Time Commanders which included war scenes re-enacted using the strategy game Total War.

Production techniques

Ricard Gras, who works as a consultant to broadcasters, says that established TV and film producers are increasingly interested in machinima’s low cost and fast production techniques.

“There will always be a need for professional media people. However, user generated content is cool because people are entitled to have a go at being creative.

“The media have to accommodate that.”

Hugh Hancock, who is credited with helping to coin the term machinima and is a founding member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, premiered his feature length film ‘Bloodspell’ at the festival.

Mr Hancock, who made the film with Johnnie Ingram, says that Bloodspell compares favourably with other animated features.

The only difference, he says, is the cost of production. Created using the game Neverwinter Nights, it was produced for less than £10,000 with a team of eight people.

For Hancock the ease of production is the main appeal. “We can make things that we’d have no chance any other way.”

The machinima movement may have officially gathered in Europe for the first time last weekend but the festival’s first award ceremony showcased worldwide talent.

The show was dominated by the Australian science fiction production Stolen Life.

Paul Marino hopes that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be keeping an eye on the new game-as-art world but admits that it may be some time before there’s an Oscar for best virtual camera-person.

“I have a feeling it’s going to take a new organisation, possibly the Association of Machinima Arts and Sciences, to really recognise the talents being applied in these areas.”