Reducing Info-Exclusion of Mental Health Service Users Through Online Content Using Synchronised Multimedia Integration Language

This paper describes how the multimedia mark-up languages SMIL and HTML+TIME were used to publish three types of online presentations of multi-modal artwork by mental health service users. This technology has the potential to bring the work of artists working with mental health services to a wider audience, at low cost, with fuller participation and also offers a number of new creative possibilities. The presentations included artwork, biography and audio transcripts in static files with the aim of reducing the info-exclusion of multimedia service user artists. The potential of server-side scripting integrating MySQL database contents dynamically into SMIL templates was investigated for its capacity to generate random or topical art displays 'on the fly'. In two prototype server-side applications, PHP scripts used user input to activate multimedia file pointers contained in the database. The feasibility of server-side scripting in terms of browser/player support and other issues is discussed.