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Playlines needs a developer!

We’re looking for a Unity/mobile developer who’s excited about the possibilities of immersive AR, with experience shipping apps across multiple appstores.

We’re developing an app-driven AR installation for a major international festival in October, and we want a versatile developer to lead app development and shipping, assist in design with our experienced team of AR creators, and come to NY to assist in installation and support the live experience.

MUST HAVE:

Led the development & shipping of at least one app on the Android & iOS stores

Experience developing from Unity for Android & iOS

Experience optimising performance across multiple handset manufacturers

Part-time availability from mid-July to end-Sept

Availability for travel between 28th Sept and 4th Oct 2018

Passport and ability to get US visa

Remote work is fine!

NICE-TO-HAVE:

London or New York-based

Experience working with bluetooth on mobiles, and/or bluetooth ibeacons

PREVIOUS AR EXPERIENCE NOT REQUIRED

This is a paid position including travel & accom. Send all enquiries to rob AT playlines DOT NET. 

WHO ARE WE?

Playlines is a London-based immersive AR studio specialised in location-based immersive AR. Our work merges app-based interactive narrative with iconic venues and real-world actors. It’s a bit like Punchdrunk Theatre meets Pokemon Go.

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Trailer featuring footage from our install at London’s iconic Tobacco Dock as part of Nesta’s #FutureFest.

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Coming Out at FutureFest

‘Coming Out’ was our biggest show yet, an exploration of the future of love and dating produced in collaboration with Nesta and Roundhouse, taking place in and around Nesta’s massive FutureFest in London.

Using location-based Augmented Reality we created three separate story ‘layers’ within the amazing Tobacco Dock in Wapping. Users explored the venue on three different virtual dates, choosing their partner via an app that took them twenty years into the future.

Each date created an entire terrain of story to explore within the festival venue: getting advice on dating fellow attendees from a virtual wingman; giving a password to enter a secret VIP dance area; even sneaking into the toilets for a virtual erotic encounter.

The show was a huge success, with more than 500 attendees exploring a festival in a completely new way, interacting with fellow attendees and real-world actors, and experiencing some of the possibilities of love and sex in an (even more) hyper-connected society.

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This is Harvey

He might not look like much, but for an iBeacon-based Augmented Reality developer, he’s an incredibly important piece of equipment.

Harvey is a Sainsbury’s rucksack that doubles as a cool bag, designed for picnics. He was bought in desperation during one of our early shows, because we needed to carry more stuff, and because Sainsbury’s didn’t have any other rucksacks. 

Making interactive AR theatre installations is a complex business that combines a software launch with a tech rehearsal, and so on any given day Harvey might contain:

Hard drives

Laptops

Duct tape

Skittles

Spare clothes

Emergency snacks

More skittles

But most importantly, a load of iBeacons

The thing is, when you have a sack of iBeacons that you need to rig in a venue, your first job is to work out which beacon is which. And to do that, you need to isolate each beacon so you can detect each one’s unique ID by placing a cellphone next to it, with no other beacons around to confuse matters. 

Used to be, we did this by wrapping our beacons in miles and miles of tinfoil, to block their signals, which is why our Tech Director Dustin had to face very suspicious customs officers asking why he was bringing four rolls of tinfoil from Canada to London. 

But with Harvey, this is no longer necessary. Because, as well as being roomy and stylish, Harvey, like all cool bags, is lined with foil. Which means Harvey is also a convenient, portable, wearable Faraday Cage. So once a beacon is detected and labeled, it goes in the bag, where it’s isolated and can’t be detected anymore. We’ve got pretty good at chucking beacons into Harvey from 15-20 feet away.

Harvey might have been bought in a mad, sleepless haze after a 15-hour tech rehearsal, but now he’s an essential part of our process.

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Coming Out at the Roundhouse

As part of an ongoing commission from Nesta and Roundhouse, we developed a location-based AR audio interactive theatre piece to be installed as part of The Last Word Storytelling Festival 2016. It was a real privilege to get to work not just with some of Roundhouse’s incredibly talented young artists, but also to have our first full-length show in such a legendary venue, on the same stage that has hosted Zeppelin, Quo and Queen.

Except, we weren’t using the stage; our show took place in and around the venue’s public spaces, including the box office, foyers, bars, smoking areas and even toilets (plus a custom-built ‘microclub’, for dancing!) Our work is about getting users to be participants, not just spectators, and developing stories that weave in and around where the user’s standing, what they’re seeing, and who else is nearby.

And this is the secret ingredient: a bluetooth iBeacon, manufactured by Estimote, just one of dozens which we seeded around the venue, inside and out. Using these beacons, we can locate the user within a venue with much more precision than GPS, and then, using software powered by Motive.io, we then develop a multi-layered audio drama which unfolds as the user explores the space, and in which users decide which characters they want to follow.

What is the future of love?

As technology’s influence on our romantic relationships grows and gender identities shift, we are facing a new world. Experience your own interactive audio journey exploring provocative, challenging and personal stories.

Coming Out is an opportunity for Last Word audiences to sample an interactive installation that will have its world premiere at FutureFest in September 2016. It has been crafted by some of the UK’s very best emerging radio makers and groundbreaking digital artists.

Taking the form of an augmented reality date, the show gave users a choice between three different characters who all have a different connection with the Roundhouse - and who all live in a not-too-distant future where technology has changed sex and dating.

As their AR date took them on a tour of the Roundhouse, users might find themselves sharing a dance with other users, sharing a quiet drink with someone who’s only virtually present, or even overhearing a tearful confession in the toilets.

It was a privilege to be able to put on such a groundbreaking show and to work with such a talented group, including all the creative team at the Roundhouse and the inimitable radio production artist Eleanor McDowall of Falling Tree. 

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A good science fiction story should be able to predict not just the automobile but the traffic jam.

Frederick Pohl

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A glimpse into our process. Here’s Playlines Tech Director @DustinFreeman testing beacons on a rooftop in Bethnal Green.