LeCielEstBleu : work : cd-roms : alphabet
			Alphabet From the book by Kveta Pacovska NHK Education, 1999 Production: Dadamedia Authors: Jean-Jacques Birgé, Frédéric Durieu, Murielle Lefèvre Alphabet is Published in the United States (Tivola), Japan (NHK), Germany (Tivola), Netherlands and France. The Alphabet was for me the opportunity to express my interactive dreams. A rare challenge indeed and one difficult to live up to. We had to imagine an autonomous interactive world for each of the 26 letters in Kveta's poetic universe. Some are white like snow with only a few bumps emerging from the page, others are mirrors where the reader sees his image reflected. Such were the unusual constraints for this project, ones that obliged us to imagine and create... I have always been a lover of kites, astronomy and the beauty of the natural world. Furthermore, thanks to my training as an engineer, I like to use math and the laws of physics - all those theories which explain the how and why of everyday things. Gravity, the forces of friction, accelerated motions, atomic forces, elasticity, Lissajou curves, derivatives, complex numbers, fractals... The Alphabet overflows with them. But I wanted to hide all that, so that this world would appear as natural as possible. These mathematical formulas were only tools through which to realize my ideas. I tried to make this world dynamic so that the user would never see exactly the same screen twice. The menus and the letter C are a good example of this. When the puppet of the letter O started to dance with sound of the microphone, a new direction opened up. It worked, and it was beautiful - a CD-ROM that listens, a clever metaphor for the mirrors in Kveta's book. Next I imagined the S which trembles when you talk. Then there is F, which draws spirals of smoke... A surprise presented itself when I programmed the P in the shape of a moving sphere. It was unimaginable that a function as simple as 1/x in the plane of imaginary numbers could make such strange and wonderful shapes. What joy when Kveta told me how much she appreciated this screen, reminding me once again that she liked mathematics. Each letter was a new experience. One followed the other, little by little, at the rate of one screen per week over the course of a year -- the adventure was so motivating that some letters even had the good luck to get three screens. This intense rhythm was made bearable by a talented team with complementary skills. Murielle continually surprised me with her interactive ideas and her ability to create ever more poetic animations. Jean-Jacques contributed his magical sounds with hundreds of instruments he directed with a tremendous, interactive sensitivity. Frédéric Durieu Alphabet has received 15 international prizes: France: Möbius International Multimedia First Prize SACD Multimedia Prize Coup de coeur SVM Mac USA: Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award 2002 Parents’ Choice Silver Honor 2001 Discovery.com Award of Excellence 2001 Software Magic Award, Parenting Magazine 2001 Children’s Software Review All Star Award 2001 Choosing Children’s Software, Best Pick 2001 Best Software Pick-Edutaining Kids.com 2001 Japan: First Prize Package MMCA Germany: GigaMaus Holland: First Prize CineKid Italy: Bologna New Media Prize