Judit Klein BCT

The Show

2010-11-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Exhibition night was upon us and in the two and a half hours leading up to it, what seemed like at least half of the 2nd and 3rd year BCT students were rushing around prepping the studio; vacumming the floor, setting up drinks, moving tables, touching up the partitions with white paint, cleaning the computer screens, fixing up projects and exhibits. It was a really good vibe to see it all coming together and going from a university assessment, to a more formal exhibition.

Once people started coming in, it was exciting going around with fresh eyes and showing off not just my project, but those of others to friends and family. It was fantastic to see the final products which have emerged from the briefs which were pitched to us only a few months ago, especially the ones I saw only small bits and pieces of over the semester.

I had a few bugs getting Unity Remote up and running as the connection is quite finicky sometimes so in the end I just left it running. Whenever people tried it out and it worked, I always received a positive response; something immediately appealed to people about being able to use the iPhone to control navigation through a 3D space on the iMac.

I wad surprised a bit that the iPhone app seemed to have a little bit less of the uptake . This was possibly because they were a bit hard to see just sitting on the plinth and people seemed a bit hesitant to just pick them up and interact with them. By my conversations, if they were encouraged by either a member of the team or if they saw other people using them they were more likely to engage with it.

That did however seem to be the case for most of the exhibits. This being my fourth exhibition during my time in the BCT, I am becoming more aware of what make a successful exhibit. I tried to pay attention to was elements made for a successful exhibit. The animatronic dragon worked well as people were almost forced into interacting with it as it responded to movement via input from sensors which quite often shocked and surprised people. The duo of third years who made a 3D comic book did well by having copies of it people could take away and also by having it running on a large screen. The various flying devices caught people's attention because they were quite visually imposing but really relied on being demonstrated to show off what they actually did.

This exhibition was a bit different from previous ones as each group made presentations. I was up first presenting on behalf of our group.

My speech is also viewable by clicking here.

The next morning we had our final crit / question and answer session to meet with the tutors and discuss any other questions they might have. The main point that was discussed was each team member talking about their role in the group, which led to reflections of how the team worked as a whole. In particular, the international students reflected upon how the nature of the BCT was different to what they were used to.

I found that particularly interesting to hear about as they are used to a more formalised structure and had some trouble adapting to the more casual nature of the studio paper. At the beginning we had attempted to create a formalised structure and timetable with deadlines but it wasn't adhered to. I too work better with a structure and have almost found the balance between keeping deadlines but also to explore those little side roads and detours along the way. I think finding this balance is the trick to this paper as it results in a richer, better explored project, but one which is also completed on time and not rushed at the end. In saying that, this project too was a little rushed towards the end.

I felt my response was a bit different to the rest of the team. Everyone talked about their role in the technical side and bringing this together, while I mentioned this but also talked about my interest in the theoretical and research side which was one of the main driving forces for me in why I chose this project. This too however was something I only started to get more into towards the end of the project and wish I'd explored earlier.

Overall, the tutors seemed pleased with the outcome and the feedback felt positive. We were told that more time should've been spend on the theoretical / research side and James summed up by asking us this: "How do you measure the success of a project - by what you've learned or what you've made?"

I feel that this project had elements of success in both these areas; we created a functioning app to fulfil the brief and we learned a lot of skills to get there. Personally, I didn't learn quite as much as I would've liked as I chose to step back from the programming side of things and focus on other aspects required to bring the project as a whole together. I learnt a lot of the fundamentals to get started in iPhone development which was one of the things I wanted out of this project. Over the summer I would like to keep working on this and get an application in the app store early next year. It is a skill I am looking a possibly taking into project work next year too.

I struggled a bit working in a large team and in reflection of my two years doing this degree, I work better in smaller group of 2-3 , but not on my own. My final reflection and contextual statement is viewable by clicking here.

At the end of the day, it was a good project and I am pleased with the outcome. All that awaits now is the grade! But regardless of that, I feel it was a strong and rewarding project and I am glad I chose it. Next year I am definitely looking to doing a self directed project and pulling together a strong team. I am going to the CreateWorld Conference run by the Apple Universities Consortium (AUC) and hoping this will be an inspiring experience to drive me through into next year.

Bring on third year!

Exhbition Set Up

2010-11-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

Our deadline has come and gone and tomorrow night will be the big exhibition, presentation and assessment. The requirements for our project were to have the iPhone simulator running the app on an iMac, the Unity Simulation running on an iMac and iPhones running the app.

We decided we would set up our space like a gallery with the artworks on the walls and tagged with the numbers so people could try it out like an actual audio tour.

Due to size / space and financial restraints, the works were all printed at A4, despite the fact many of them are a lot larger, they are all different scale and that some of them are sculptures / installations rather than something that can actually be frames.

The visual result of this turned out quite well and perhaps makes an interesting comment on the nature of the reproduction of art. I had lots of helpful feedback from James while setting up and in the end decided on clustering the artworks as it plays on the fact that they are pretending to be something they're not, and makes obvious that they are in fact, not actual artworks or accurate depictions thereof.

Regardless of the accuracy ( or lack there of), I think it makes for an eye catching exhibition and will draw people over. It will be the first proper time we'll have people outside the project and the BCT interacting with our project and app so will be a good chance to gather user feedback on usability and aesthetics.

We had set up in the end three iMacs running the iPhone simulator, Unity iPhone interfacing with Unity Remote (on the iPhone), and the standard version of Unity with the keyboard and mouse navigation and content interaction.

I am looking forward to showcasing our project and presenting it as it has always generated a lot of interest as I've talked about it over the semester.

Finally, below is the documentation I have collated for this project, summing up key areas and ideas of the project from the duration of the semester. Some of it is taken from this blog and refined and brought together in a more cohesive manner. It can be downloaded to be viewed at full res (originally intended for A3 size) or can be zoomed in.

The App

2010-11-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

With the app in the nearing finished stages, it had undergone a visual revamp and what we have achieved over the duration of a semester long project is an app which implements the integral and fundamental components of an audio tour. I feel it has fulfiled the primary aims of being aesthetically pleasing and easy to use, as demonstrated below.

Reflecting back on the original brief, it is important at this staget o think about other features which would enhance the app to meet the desires of the client and ful lfill the long term brief. These features would work to make the experience even more impressive and interactive.

We have being to tap into some of these but beyond the scope of a semester long project, there is much more to be achieved past the initial pilot prototype.

Such features include:

Information tailored to user specfi c interests. This would involve research and trials into each of the user profi les to fi nd out what would make the gallery experience enjoyable for them.

Access collateral material such as video, images, audio and text. Recon figured content would be required to fit within the di fferent user pro files and additional images and videos would o er more insight into each artwork as it shows the viewer more into what is behind the creation of the work. e.g. In fluential images / art movements, Initial working sketches, Other works by the same artist

Connect with other visitors and the gallery community as a whole, through a social or participatory experience. Social media is embedded into many websites, giving users the ability to connect with existing pro les such as Twitter and Facebook. These would enable users to leave comments, messages and ideas with visitors in the space and those who come after. Discussions around ideas and topics and personal interpretations might reveal even more to a user or explain it in a way they might not have understood.

Tag works and send links to their email for later reinforces a ‘post-gallery experience’, the ability to continue to interact and learn even after they’ve left the space. Such a feature would encourage return visits.

Playing an interactive activity or educational game, perhaps a scavenger hunt or quiz, would reinforce learning and add the element of a challenge, especially for younger children who may be initially uninterested in the gallery visit.

Access to multiple layers of information, for example an artwork referencing a specifi c artistic movement or historical context could allow the viewer to access a section explaining that background. Providing a deeper and wider perspective on the context in which art is created helps the user form a better understand of what an artwork means. This also means that if a viewer if not interested in the context and only wants to know about the medium of the work, this too is possible.

Hear multiple perspectives and opinions about artworks, especially within the context of New Zealand art, hearing a Maori perspective would be di fferent experience and viewpoint from a Pakeha perspective and reveal more about the cultural signi ficance and New Zealand heritage.

Navigating the building is an essential tool which we have begun to explore new ways of doing. We are no longer restricted by having to provide a linear tour but it also challenging to have to consider how the user may want to approach, enter and explore the space. Ideally, this would be integrated with a seamless integration with the artworks. That is, the device would automatically be able to detect not only the user’s location but which artwork they are standing in front of and bring up the appropriate content.

Such a feature would have require extensive technical research, a budget and experimentation. Possible technologies would be QR Codes, Wi , Bluetooth or Image recognition software.

The client has also discussed embedding commercial applications , for example is a user ‘likes’ and artwork, it would suggest to them to buy a print, if they’ve been in the gallery for a while it could suggest to them to go to the cafe.

Conclusion
Emerging technologies will continue to change the role smart devices play in our every day lives. In the long term execution of this plan, it is important to take into consideration that devices become very quickly outdated so that the content must always be king: regardless what the platform, once the novelty has worn of, it needs to be the UI and the content and the experience that keeps the user coming back.

Unity Remote

2010-11-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Once the gallery space was set up in Unity and looking reasonably reaslitic, it was time to add navigation features. With Unity iPhone, the scripting had to be adapted over from the inputs we had be using (touch inputs versus keyboard and mouse inputs) but we also had to consider the practical usability of the best way to implement navigation with these different inputs.

This poses and interesting con flict: how do you interact with a 3D environment with a 2D touch interface? With the touch interface, you have no keyboard, mouse joystick or controller, the traditional components used to move around and interact. This is where the limited screen size and touch interface will be become crucial factors.

With a touch screen device, the screen is the one and only form of input and this method of direct manipulation impacts on how the user interacts with the device. The user has both zero and many locations on the screen - if you have no fingers on the screen, you have no location.
The hardware is the content - an application becomes the entire content for the duration it is running.

As I starting point, we had a look at Penelope, an iPhone app available in the app store which has been built using Unity 3D. The source code, files and a tutorial are available on the Unity website to learn how to integrate UI elements in Unity applications for iPhone.

It o ffers three diff erent ways to navigate through the space, two of which are based around an on screen ‘joystick’ off ering the option of camera relative and player relative control. The third option is a tap control where the fi gure moves to where the player taps.

Unlike this game, for our app the user will not be controlling a ‘character’ on screen, but rather they will be navigating themselves through the space, hence the camera will act as the ‘player’ that the user controls. As this is not a game, the joystick interface is not a relevant one.

The tap to move is the most applicable. However, as we have other elements on screen that the user needs to interact with, it could get too di fficult to accurately select where the user wants to move to.

Rather, the other feature of the iPhone we can utilize is the accelerometer. This way, the user can move through the space by simply tilting the iPhone in the desired direction of movement and tap on the screen only when they want to interact directly with the space (i.e. the ‘bubbles’.)

For our application, this is more intuitive than the joystick and more functional than the tap to move but needs to be calibrated carefully to allow for natural movement as the user holds it so it doesn’t move around when the user wishes to stay still.

To implement this through code, the online documentation and scripting reference was extremely helpful. I was given the code for reading the accelerometer input from the iPhone and using that to move and object. From there is was a matter of callibrating the movement so it seemed natural in the gallery space and setting thresholds for the value so that the user could hold the iPhone naturally and it would only move when the user intended it to. I also ran into issues where once applying this code, the person controller stopped reacting to the colliders on the wall so would move straight through them and this had to be fixed.

The swipe to rotate was a little more difficult. I was working off a code which too the swipe movement across the screen and used it to translate an object. I spent a few days trying to recode this to rotate the camera to give the user the ability to 'look around' and after creating and calculating purely through code, I found a function which did all the calculations and reduced my code down to about half a dozen lines. It was however a good learning experience.

The video below shows a demo of this in action.

Unfortunately, some of the other code we tried to adapt over which created the bubble behaviors and revealed the content and interaction with the artworks generated a lot of errors. A lot of what Unity handles in the background has to be done manually for Unity iPhone and with the time constraints, we weren't able to adapt over and integrate.

So for the final hand in of this component of the project, we have two standalone aspects which we will present: Unity iPhone running on an iMac hooked up to an iPhone which enables the user to navigate through the space, and another iMac running standard Unity and interacting with the bubbles and content through mouse and keyboard.

If this were to be further developed, the next stages would be to successfully amalgamate the two and have it running on the iPhone as an app (currently it is only communicating through WiFi and acting as a remote). And from there, embedding it into the audio tour iPhone app as an option for navigation with the ‘birds eye’ view navigation / basic map accessible as well. Not everyone would be comfortable using the 3D interface and would prefer to stick to the familiar 2D map.

However, I am pleased that these two components we will be able to exhibit for our final presentation.

Audio half of the audio tour

2010-10-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

Our audio is recorded and edited! I met with Ben again today to follow up on the recording session we had last week and to assist in editing it. Although it was really him doing the editing, it was useful to see how it was done and get an understanding of the process.

So we now successfully have our audio and so now it is a matter of splitting it up for the different 'sections' of audio i.e. in the Unity application, the 'sub-bubbles' will give access to different sections of the content if the user if only interesting in, for example, the medium of the work. The PDF below shows how the content has been divided up into different headings which would make up the sub sections of accessible audio content.

Realistic Dimension

2010-10-20T13:10:00.000-07:00

This week I have been attempting to make our Unity recreation of the gallery space more realistic. If deployed, this part of the app would create a more augmented gallery experience, combining the basic requirement of navigation with the more abstract exploration of the concepts and information about the artworks simultaneously

To do this, I have been working to try get the artworks and gallery to a more a more realistic scale. I mocked up the artworks to scale in Illustrator and was surprised at how they actually varied.

As we hadn't been given a scale or any measurements with the floor plan of the gallery which we'd used to build up the 3D model of the space, I had to judge by eye what looked right, using the animated tour of the gallery as a guide. However, once the artworks too had been made to relative scale, some of them seemed ridiculously small.

I debated this situation for a while as having studied art, I know that the size of an artworks impacts the meaning of the artwork itself. For example, studying abstract expressionist paintings in high school, working from small scale reproductions in books and online, didn't compare to seeing them in real life on such a scale where it completely encompasses one's field of view. The size of the artwork is interellated with the medium and meaning which is why I was stressing getting this to an accurate depiction within the Unity recreation.

So for the purposes of this application, it makes more sense to have the artworks at a size where they are visible, especially when taken on the context of the iPhone as platform where you have a much smaller screen size than, say, a computer. Taking usability into respect, the artworks act also as clickable 'buttons', hence they need to be a reasonable size for the human finger to touch without difficulty (the ideal mimimum button size for the human finger is 44x44 pixels). In terms of visual aesthetic, it is important the viewer can actually have a good view of the artworks within the space so they can see what links are being made without having to fiddle too much with the navigation to get in 'closer' to the work.

As the primary purpose of the app is to be used in the gallery itself, the user would have the artworks in front of them anyway and would be able to make the visual connection. So at this point, usability is more important. The scale of the gallery itself is a huge improvement as the initial mock up had seemingly small rooms, high walls, narrow doorways and no ceiling.

(Click to enlarge)

I then worked to try get the righting light. In the animated tour, the gallery looks more cream sort of light and I tried to recreate this. The difficult part is to try get not only the tone right but also the lighting itself. Currently it looks quite dim but is an improvement as it looks a bit less like a 'cold' 3D render.

This part of the project is one which will not likely be integrated as part of the final app itself but rather a standalone component which supports the project as a whole. It is important to deploy it start testing it on the iPhone itself so we can start getting user feedback. It makes sense to us as we have been working with it so closely but it has been a concept difficult to explain to others but we are hoping that if we create it right, it will make sense to the user upon being presented with it.

The phase of creation needs to start drawing to a close in order to finish to test and document this project for our final presentation and end of year exhibition. Feedback we can get now will inform our reflections and give us a greater understanding of knowledge to discuss in our final critique.

Nagivation in 3D Space

2010-10-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

Even though we are not sure we are able to implement the Unity 3D navigation audio tour interface working as an integrated part of the final app, we are still aiming to have it as a functional app in itself for this project.

Once the 3D model of the space was build from the floor plan we were provided of the gallery in Maya, this was imported into Unity 3D and then artworks added onto the walls as game objects ( the scale and positioning of these artworks is not precise ) .

Game objects in Unity can then have scripts and behaviors added to them. Trixi made an initial version to give an idea of what we want to achieve in our plan to visually connect the ideas, audio content and artworks within the 3D space. The video below shows this: when an artwork is clicked, a bubble pops up. When this bubble is clicked, related bubbles appear with related ideas to link to other works within the space. A 'play' bubble also appears which, when clicked, triggers the audio content to start and changes to a 'stop' bubble.

As I haven't don't Javascript before, my initial experimentation was the movement you see when the bubble starts 'bouncing' while the audio was playing.

From here, I created the below flowchart to try plan out exactly how these bubbles should behave in reaction to each other and to the user's interactions. From here it is a matter of figuring out how to code it.

(click to view larger)

We probably will also face a few difficulties when it comes time to convert it over to an Xcode file. We have been working on the standard trial version of Unity so we will have to adapt it over to the iPhone version which will involve changing 'clicked' actions over to iPhone based gestures.

What I've had more trouble with is getting my head around yet another new language. I briefly learnt and last used Java a year ago and with this and general programming understanding, I can look at scripts and documentation for Unity and get an idea of what is going on. I am having trouble writing it myself and figuring out how to make it do what I want to so am getting stuck with this. Especially as I've spent the last two or so months learning and focusing on Objective-C.

Though it isn't overly complex in itself, setting up the relationships will be more fiddly than anything else. Hopefully once I've discussed with the tutor, it should become more clear and ready to deploy onto the iPhone next week.

From code to iPhone

2010-10-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

Version 1.0 of our app has been deployed! This version is the initial integration of the various components that each team member has been working on. The base navigation structure was me, the map view was Ryan and loading the content from database was Dodo. The three components were integrated by Trixi.

It is of course still not without its flaws (and has crashed on occasions where I have been showing people) but it was a good and important experience to learn how to actually get an app onto the iPhone.

From here now I have made the decision to step back from the coding aspect to focus on other important aspect of this project. From the outset we realised we would reach difficulty in that we had six people in the group and everyone wanted to do coding. As a result we have almost forgotten that we need audio content as well, among other things.

I have made this decision as I feel content in having spend some time gaining and understanding of the language and building something functional which has been deployed, even though the final version will most like be far from this. Instead I will be focusing on getting the Unity 3D navigation component up and running to be deployed on iPhone too and getting the content ready. This involves making sure that the audio is recorded and cut up to fit with how we want to use it and any other content we may require.

Additionally, there has also been the idea of modifying the app for exhibition purposes. For the end of year BCT exhibition, we aim to have both the Unity application and the iPhone application ready and set up for demonstration purposes but to make it additionally more interesting, James suggested we modify it so that the content is an audio tour of the BCT exhibition.

As we only have material for nine art works for the gallery tour, this would be a much better way of demonstrating what the application is for and how it will behave, as well as a good way to get valuable feedback on the usability of the app. It would also be a good way to provide people from outside BCT more information about the projects on display and the BCT as whole.

I am excited about the potential of doing this as in previous exhibitions, I haven't felt particularly enthusiastic about showing off my work and none of them have been particularly engaging as they've all been fairly static. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to produce something more interactive to exhibit.

On Air

2010-10-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Two hour in the radio recording booth and we managed to get all our audio recorded. One thing we quickly realized was the difference between reading something in your head and reading it out loud. A lot of simple grammar or spelling errors which we automatically correct and understand become big obstacles to trip over. A few times we had to stop and restructure the sentences or add or remove words.

We had a few interesting things which came up we hadn't considered. For example, a lot of the descriptions had Maori words in them which was important to get these right. As the tour would be documenting the permanent collection of the gallery, many words would have links to Maori culture and significance, especially as the collection tells the story of New Zealand. Ashlee was familiar with the language so could make sure the pronunciation was correct. Leif's European language was useful in getting the names of some of the more foreign artists right.

On this note, we also made the observations that many people from overseas would't understand Maori terminology and in a lot of the works, the usage isn't explained. This creates the opportunity in the app to create perhaps a glossary of Maori terms so within the written text the user can tap on such a word and get a definition or explanation. This works only to enrich the gallery experience we are creating as it reinforces the meaning of the work in relation to the historical and cultural context of New Zealand art and heritage.

Ben and Ashlee were very professional and familiar with the equipment and the proccess which ensured it all went smoothly. Their voices were authoritative and friendly and they kept good pace for Leif to understand and not so slow as to be boring for native English speakers. It was also good to differentiate between the voice used to read the description and the quotes, as the quotes were to sound more like a conversation with the artist so didn't have to be as formal.

Even though I'd read through the descriptions of the artworks before, it was really completely different hearing them read out. It is too easy to skim when reading words on a page and makes more sense when you have a voice telling you about it. I feel Ashlee and Ben did this really well, I could've listened to their voices all day.

Even though I've been interested in art for a few years and been to many galleries and exhibitions, I have never taken an audio tour. I found myself considering what the reason for this might be and realized it was because I like to explore and learn at my own pace and whim. I've learnt about art by studying it through books and discussions with friends, teachers and classmates. This is what I feel is the most enriching experience and never felt the appeal to take an audio tour. So it was interesting that by recording the audio for our tour, I already felt like I was experiencing the works in a different way. It made me look forward to going to actually see the works when the gallery opens.

By having to voice the audio, I think Ben and Ashlee also got a better understanding of the project. At one point when Ashlee was reading and Ben was recording, the description reference another artwork than the one being talked about. We explained to Ben that for cases such as this, the referenced artwork would be linked to within the app within the space if it was also part of the exhibition or an image shown. Ben described it as 'hyperlinking' in real life and I think this is a very good way to describe and approach it.

So with the audio recorded, it will be cut together into the appropriate sections, ready to be input into the app. Ben and Ashlee have gone above and beyond to help us out and it has been good learning a bit about their department works and what they do. They even have a radio station, Static 88.1 so have a listen and support them!

So with the audio side of the audio tour well underway and the app being pieced together, the 3D Unity navigation interface needs also to be completed and implemented. With one week left until study and exam weeks, the end of this project looms ever near.

Putting the 'Audio' into Audio Tour.

2010-10-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

As we enter a new phase of this project , recording the audio, we once again need to consider the implications of any decisions we make at this point. Upon meeting with the two people from communications who are helping up with this aspect of our project, I found it was good for us to have to explain the project to someone who is outside the sphere of this project and the creative technologies department all together. During our meeting with them, it was highlighted that it would be interesting collaborating between the two disciplines; they're coming in from disciplinary culture where you have an industry which has a very 'top down' mechanism, where as BCT culture has a different directorship models which is more collaborative based.

Rather than having them just "be in" our project as the voices, we want them to be a part of it, hence by bringing their knowledge and expertise to it, makes it a richer project. Rather than "its your project, your assignment, how do you want it done" , we want their input as they have the knowledge as to what make good audio and tap into their professional advice, but all the while still considering the requirements of the client and we answer back to them and ultimately the project and its outcome is our responsibility.

Audio is never something any of us have worked with in depth so their technical expertise is definitely something we can utilize, especially as they have the resources and the equipment and know how to use it.

Looking over the written content we were provided brought up the differences in converting written content into spoken content as the two differ but Ben and Ashlee , our two voice artists seemed apt at this. We decided it would be a good idea to take along one of the international students in our group to the recording to ensure that it was being recorded in such a way that they understood it clearly enough as a lot of 'self improvers' would probably tourists from overseas whose first language might not be English.

Important issues are raised in terms of the affect the audio will have on the project, especially within the scope of the long term project. For this shorter component of the wider project, we are targeting specifically 'self-improvers' so we need to consider what sort of voice they would want to hear, while also considering for the future scope what 'character profiles' we have and what sort of voice they'd want to listen to - what is that 'voice' to different people? This is part of breaking away from the 'one size fits all' approach of traditional audio tour guide with the authoritative voice telling you what to do and where to go and,everyone gets the same experience; it is very linear, very prescriptive , its not about you. Rather, art is should be about your personal experience and interaction with it and what you want to get out of it.

Ben and Ashlee are used to talking in a 'radio' voice, and where that might not be exactly the right tone, they're used to the concept of having to sit down and pretend they're having a conversation with that person who isn't there. But that more casual, conversational voice is going to be desirable for some of the character profiles and for most self improver. as it is familiar and friendly. We're aiming for friendly yet informative and after talking with them, it seems they have are able to do the whole range of tones.

Finally there was the issue of how to split up the content into the male / female parts. It was decided that where the artist of the work quoted, it would be appropriate to have a female voice quoting a female artist and therefore the rest of the dialogue would be in the male voice. This then also works visa versa where a male artist was quoted. This resulted in a fairly even balance between the two voices.

Voice and audio is not something I've had to consider as part of a project before so it is good to have the assistance of people who know a lot about this area.

Creating

2010-10-06T17:14:00.000-07:00

Phase Five - Creating

23rd August Onwards

The creation phase is well and truly in progress! We have spent a month or so working on picking up the language used for developing iPhone applications. We have various amounts of programming skills ranging between Processing, Arduino, Java, Javascript and C++ so if nothing else, we are familiar with the fundamentals of programming.

For me, jumping into Objective-C and object oriented programming was a bit of a challenge. Most of the last month or so was spent working through examples, tutorials and sitting in with the 1st year BCT students who started learning from scratch about two weeks after we had started. Coming back after mid-semester break it was time to start trying to write our own app.

For my first attempt, I tried to make a series of custom buttons to reflect the interface on the Auckland City Art Gallery Website and have them lead to separate views which would ultimately contain content.

As the client didn't specify what sort of visual aesthetic they were interested in, we decided to stick with just trying to reflect the aesthetic of the website.

The Flash interface which is the main component of the main homepage is clever and aesthetically pleasing but redesigning it for a touch interface poses new challenges as it is a different visual language to web. The initial obvious limitation is size, those three simple buttons running down the side already take up about a third of the screen. This led to the debate of whether our app should run primarily in landscape or portrait mode.

Arguments for landscape were the strongest in that a larger proportion of artworks were landscape and that buttons content could be easier arranged to be more aesthetically pleasing.

Arguments for portrait mode were that table views (which we are highly likely to be implementing in one, if not many forms) work better in portrait mode. I argued that it feels more instinctive to hold an iPhone in one hand and, hence, in portrait, while holding it in landscape feels unnatural to hold in one hand and almost demands to be operated with two hands.

The argument seemed to be that, overall, landscape worked better for the visual aestehtics and content while landscape worked better in terms of physical usability. Obviously we can have it operational in both modes but this would require more intensive coding and might be less instinctive to use as the user would have to switch between them and thing about how they have to use it. There is also the added delay in the time taken for the screen to rotate.

In the end we decided to work towards a landscape orientation for the time being and spend some time mocking up some visuals to reflect these ideas. From here we began to build our visual mockups.

Here I attempted to amalgamate the Auckland City Art Gallery visual aesthetic with the iPhone UI features. It is not properly to scale (if scaled down to an iPhone screen, the text and buttons would be far too small.) I tried to make the buttons look more 'pushable' by adding a gradient and drop shadow. The black buttons represent the functionality of the UI Tab bar commonly found in iPhone apps.

Dodo's mock up takes scale into account and the aesthetic still reflects the existing gallery's style. I argued that it looks too flat and no obvious visual cues as to what is pushable. We discussed the issue of the buttons being to small as well to 'push'.

Daniel's is again a bit different, taking on board the colour theme and general style without recreating it exactly. It makes good use of the limited space sticking to the smaller buttons. In all cases I think the semitransparent black text box make effective use of space.

Bones, flesh and organs - building up the app.

With end of semester drawing near fast, it was time to make a plan as to what components needed creating for this app and to actually get it running on an iPhone for testing. A formative assessment with two tutors provided positive feedback on where we were at and suggestions th on how we can work more cohesively as a team.

As we all want a part in the coding, we delegated different sections of our proposed app among the six of us. Our task list was as follows:

- create a Singleton and access it from another view
- navigation for the application (blank views)
- view that loads details from database
- create a structured database and fill it with content
- figure out audio content, record and edit it
- play Audio content
- 2D Map Navigation
- User interface & Graphics

My task was to create the bones of the app, the structure and navigation that the other sections would be integrated into. Despite having initial trouble getting my head around root controllers, view controllers, table view controllers and navigation controllers, I found a tutorial on YouTube very helpful and once I'd created this, I was able to start building on it.

It doesn't look like much yet but I felt proud of what I'd achieved. We'd agreed that the default aesthetics of the tab bar, table view and navigation controller weren't particularly exciting but there are ways to customize it. This here is the bare bones.

Dodo was working on creating and loading content from a database which she successfully got working. This too is in the early stages of developing and this sort of content loaded from the database is the vital organs of the app.

Ryan is working on the scrollable 2D map with buttons using MapKit and UIScrollView which has been a challenge. The 3D map, which is being Trixi and I have been building using Unity poses its own sets of challenges too.

With only a few weeks to go, there is much more creating to do!

Phase Three: The Idea

2010-08-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Phase Three - Planning

9th - 15th August

As with the design of anything that is to be used by a variety of people, we were faced with the inherent challenge of how to best create it in so that it is functional and user friendly. In a paradox it almost has to be simple and complicated: complicated so that it performs a wide variety of function and offers a lot of features but is packaged in a way that is intuitive and the user is unaware of the complexity. Each of us attempted to devise a flowchart style visualization as to how our app could be structured and navigated.

(Click for larger Images)

Phase Four - The Idea

9th - 15th August

In our case, in order to create a successful app, we need to devise a way of navigating simultaneously through the physical space and the content. The idea came when we came across online visual brainstorm and thesaurus.

Visuwords and Visual Thesaurus show a visual way of visually exploring concepts and ideas and links between them. This prompted the idea that what if we could create this sort of visual concept navigation in combination with the navigation. Such a solution offers a way for the user to navigate through the spaces they browse topics, themes, artworks, artistic elements they are interested in while immediately seeing them placed in the physical space.

To achieve this, we plan to integrate the use of Unity 3D. This software enables us to take a 3D render of the gallery space which we can make up in a 3D modeling software (e.g. Maya, 3DS MAX) and set up camera movement and other features commonly integrated into 3D games. But what's more than that is that is can be easily converted to an Xcode file to upload to iPhone. Hence, this would enable us to take advantage of the hardware features of the iPhone for navigating through the space, such as, the accelerometer to tilt to navigate or the touch gestures.

The visual brain storm would take the form of 'bubbles' in the 3D space. The user can 'follow' the ideas and bubble which would lead them to works and then reveal more about the works.

For the initial deployment of this project, it would act independent of the user's actual physical location. In the long term implementation of this project, ideally some sort of real time location tracker would make the navigation more natural. That is, it would be able to place which room the viewer was standing in by bluetooth, GPS, IR, RFID or similar, and in combination with hardware such as the gyro and accelerometer, the map could update real time to accurately reflect location.

Even at this stage, it can offer the viewer to skip ahead and plan out which direction they want to head in. For those confused by the interface or the bubbles, there is the option of narrowing down what strings of bubbles they want to see, turn them off completely to see just the artwork titles or switch to simple overhead view for more traditional mode of navigation.

The effect of augmenting the gallery space in such a way creates an interaction and dialogue not just between the viewer and the works, but also between the works and the space. It is not often one gets to see the relationships between the works when in fact, a lot of work has gone into curating exhibitions around such dialogues and connections. We have been told by the client that the works in the permanent collection tell the story of New Zealand and so by presenting the works in such a way, it deepens the understanding of the collection as a whole, rather than just as standalone works.

The next phases are in fact to be the most time consuming. There are many elements we have to bring together, in particular the Unity 3D interface and learning the language of iPhone apps. The conceptual frame work and technical structure are both vital to realize this project.

The initial phases

2010-08-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Phase One: Ideas and Brainstorms
26 July - 01 August 2010

Our initial exploration and starting point of the task of creating an interactive audio / multimedia tour guide for the Auckland City Art Gallery posed more questions than actual answers. Key ideas to explore were around who the gallery goer and target audience is, what should we consider in regards to usability of the hardware, user interface and content and what the purpose of an audio tour in traditional and modern contexts is.

These answers we began to find through discussion in our group, with lecturers and with the client as well as research.

Phase Two: Research
02-08 August 2010

Why an audio tour?
Audio tours as an accessory to a museum or gallery visit reveal more and deeper levels of information about an artwork that may be otherwise available or understood by the gallery-goer. Most galleries have small placards of text alongside each work but the audio tour offers a greater dept of information than could fit physically. They encourage visitors to spend more time at the gallery and engage in more of a learning experience.

Why an interactive / multimedia device?
Interactive devices deliver this content in a method that is more appealing and engaging, hence people can learn more when enjoying it.

The client has identified their key aims of such a device to help users engage with artworks in a meaningful way which works to build and strengthen the relationship between visitors and the gallery.

Who is the target audience?

Characteristics of the gallery goer to consider:
- Student
- Have they been to a gallery before?
- How old are they?

- What culture are they from?
- Are they tourists?
- Are they by themselves or in couples / groups?

The client has identified their their target audience for the device based on a visitor profile developed through research by the Tate Museum which looked at audience behaviors and motivations for visiting the gallery. They have decided to target self-improvers who are looking for ways to broaden their knowledge their knowledge and skills. The device would serve this target audience by acting as a learning tool that helps them build skills for looking at art and strategies for understanding it.

What sort of content should it deliver?
Many people are put of traditional audio guides because of the connotation of the droning authoritative voice. However, this can be likened to not going to the cinema again after having seen a bad movie. The audio guide is just the platform and the content itself is vital to the user experience.

The content itself should offer various depths of information giving the user the choice of how much they want to access. As well as the traditional audio, users can access images, video and navigation option as well as expand upon the information by delving deeper into specific aspects of the information such as historical / cultural context, symbolism, about the artist, about the the art style / movement, and related works.

The content will be provided to us by the gallery and for the initial stage of this project which we are undertaking for the purposes of this project this semester, we are focusing on eight works which are part of the New Zealand Permanent collection that is the overall focus of the wider project. It has been discussed that for the more long term purposes to set a connection to a database, Vernon, which offers collections management software for museums, galleries and other cultural heritage sites.

How should the content be delivered?
The initial platform we are using is the iPhone. We discussed the pros and cons of web based content versus a self contained app and for the initial project, we are focusing on a self contained. In the long term we will aim to deploy content that is web-based and available on any mobile device so that visitors to the gallery can use their own devices.

The cellphone platform offers a way to attract new audiences. Jane Burton curator of interpretation at the Tate Moderns said I was particularly interested in finding out whether it could reach new audiences who wouldn’t have considered taking a traditional audio tour. I suspected it might.”

Museums in the US have found that use of cell phone as a platform reduces the infrastructure and staffing costs for the audio tours. However, visitors can be put off by potentially incurring high data fees from mobile service providers, especially foreign visitors incurring roaming fees.

The advantage of an iPhone app is that it provides a more or less consistent platform; where a general mobile device would have to cater to a wide range of screen sizes, resolutions, functions etc. The iPhone offers a set of consistent features and so by using it as a platform, we have to utilize the features it offers such as the swipe and gesture functions and the hardware.

It is important that if it is deployed on a device such as an iPhone, the content is what draws the visitor to want to use it, after the novelty of the device has worn.

What has been done already?

Such devices are becoming more common at museums and galleries around the world. The existing iPhone applications we downloaded and had a look at were standalone guides that worked outside the gallery. What we're wanting to create would enhance the gallery experience and offer something more when used in the gallery space.

The overall aesthetic of the apps were quite plain, many of them following the standard template of the iPhone app, even the one MoMA has recently launched.

We think we can go above an beyond what is already available. What is achievable to create this semester will serve as the building blocks for what it will become. Our goal is to create an app that is ready to launch which provides the fundamental components of the overall aim with the potential to expand it further with the other identified components that we and the client have identified. We plan to explore all these avenues so that the groundwork for them is ready and reinforced what is initially executed.

Next step is to being planning how it is to be structured and what identify and learn the skills we need to create it and put it together.

Research sources:
A Museum Electronic Guide in Real Use
Cells and Sites: How Historic Sites are Using Cell Phone Tours
The learning experience with electronic museum guides

London Museum Releases Cool Augmented Reality App
New Plymouth Museum Puke Ariki launches iPad based visitor experience
When In Roam: Visitor Response To Phone Tour Pilots In The US And Europe
“I never take audio guides. I can’t stand them!”
Visitors want to know 'Why?' (museum handheld guides)
The eyes want to have it: Multimedia Handhelds in the Museum (an evolving story)
Designing Visitor Experiences with Mobile Platforms in Museums
MoMA iPhone App Puts a Museum in Your Pocket

Auckland Art Gallery Audio Guide Project

2010-08-02T20:43:00.000-07:00

Take Leonardo Da Vinci painting the Last Supper, Masaccio painting the frescos of the Brancacci Chapel or Paolo Uccello painting The Battle of San Romano hundreds of years ago; it would've been completely incomprehensible to them to be handed an iPhone and be able to scroll through, zoom in and out, share and collect the works they worked for months, even years on.

So of course, that is my project for semester. As part of the Auckland Art Gallery Developmental Project, we will be working on developing a multimedia audio guide. to use as an interactive learning tool which helps visitors develop strategies for understanding art. The gallery reopens its main gallery in 2011 following development and reconstruction.

The client has come to us wanting a technology partnership as a way of exploring ideas and technologies beyond their expertise, deliver engaging gallery experiences through an innovative platform, and incorporate perspectives of professionals working outside the museum / gallery industry.

They are wanting to create a visitor experience that will:
• Provide inspiring, imaginative and enjoyable experiences
• Nurture curiosity and foster life-long engagement with the arts
• Create opportunities for dialogue and debate through interaction and participation
• Encourage visitors to make meaningful personal connections with the collection

Given my previous interest in studying art and art history, this project immediately appealed to me. The potential of launching this sort of application with the iPhone as a platform, I jumped at the chance to learn iPhone coding and development with a practical application.

What they are initially wanting from us (which will take us through the duration of this semester) is to investigate possible ways to approach this, develop a working prototype and explore how the initial device will fit into plans for its long-term development.

I am excited about this project as it is a more real world application of our studio work. For the first time in this course, I am beginning to find an application to my interests and skills that I could work towards a possible path after completing BCT. There are a lot of other exciting opportunities coming up during this semester to network with people in the industry and potential future clients, mainly the Semi-Permanent Conference and the Creative Tech Conference. Specifically, I hope to be able to become adept at the iPhone platform and app development. So all in all, should be a busy semester ahead.

Developmental Process and Construction

2010-06-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

Contextual Statement:

Simply a suitcase as an object is inseparable from a wide raft of connotations and associations: travel, holiday, movement, mystery. The original brief encouraged the exploration of the suitcase as a symbol of modern life, in such a society where we move around a lot more, are more globalized and often pack up our entire lives in a suitcase, whether by choice (migration) or necessity (refugees). Increased mobility in a changing world has also impacted on the suitcase; it is often the object of scrutiny, regarded as potential threat until proven otherwise - which suitcase contains the condensed and compartmentalized life of a humble traveller, and which contains a terrorist threat?

I chose several of these elements to draw upon. The mystery and intrigue of this banal, everyday object is in the mystery and uniqueness of it's contents. Though my suitcase is open, most of the internal section is concealed and with it all the mechanics. The viewer is confronted only with the sleek reflective black surface and weighty metal cubes.

The interactive nature of the work is that the viewer is asked to unpack and repack the suitcase. It is a strange paradox of control where their actions determine the result of the output, yet they aren't consciously aware of how they are effecting it. How often is this the case with modern technologies where we aren't often fully aware of exactly what the implications of our interactions are? And yet, we can interact with them without fully understanding.

It is in fact these technologies which have had an impact in shaping what we call modern life. I chose to look at the work of the Futurists who 100 years ago were exploring the implications of their modernity with the emergence of the mechanical age. Between WWI and WWII the immense social and economic change stimulated by the technical achievements of the modern age created the founding manifesto of Futurism, that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. They celebrated the dynamic synergy of man and machine and the inescapable presence of speed in modern life.

Since then, technologies have exponentially developed and our concepts of time have been greatly influenced by networks that offer instantaneous information and connectivity. The speed of modern life dictates that we must always be on the move, always be accessible and must be in touch with these technologies to not get left behind.

Futurists tried to represent concepts of time in static forms through sequences of movement sweeping across a single composition. I chose the medium of photography as it can represent the accelerated pace of modern life by recording in sharp, frozen detail a minute slice of movement too quick for the eye to see. The pressure sensors act as the interface, the metaphorical 'pressures' of modern life which dictate the pace at which we must live our lives.

My final work, though not yet fully resolved, explores the movement of a figure, represented within the suitcase, manipulated by the contents and arrangement of the contents of the suitcase. The suitcase represents a life determined by movement and mobility, condensed and compartmentalized. The pace and way we moved is controlled by external elements outside our control. Modern life has sped up to the point where clarity is lost, moments are fleeting and it all becomes a blur of movement.

Are we no more than a suitcase, a vessel within which we pack out lives, only to be moved around on the conveyor belt out of our control?

Construction commences

2010-06-02T14:10:00.001-07:00

As deadline draws near, it has become inevitably important to start on the fabrication process. Beginning the construction of the suitcase, there were several important aspects to consider.

The Suitcase:
An obvious given which probably shouldn't have been delayed this late as ultimately, the aesthetic of the suitcase should reflect the project.

Originally, we were all to use the same suitcases but seeing as we didn't have these from the beginning, we all explored different avenues to what we might've had we had them from the word go.

I went out in search of a suitcase and was shocked to see how expensive they were. There was nothing that really appealed to me with my project in mind. On Trademe though I stumbled upon one that was quite possibly perfect (pictured top right corner). I like the sleek metal and geometric aesthetic of it and that it had compartments. My only concern was that the overall size was quite small (43cm x 31cm, x 12.5 cm) and was more of a briefcase than a suitcase.

The solution was quite simple in the end, I discovered in my own house an old, unused, large suitcase, similar to the ones pictured above with a hardshell, dark silver / metallic finish.

The Mechanics:
Essentially, all the mechanics will be concealed underneath a layer of acrylic which sits upon an existing lip about 2/3 of the height of the bottom section of the suitcase. Everything will be running off a Mac Mini; the Arduino running the code and the projector displaying the output.

The Acrylic:
The base plate of acrylic consists of 3 sections for easy insertion/removal. On top of this are a series of dividers (Image to the left, red lines) which create the compartments for packing into.

Within each 'compartment' will be a layer of conductive foam and then another layer of acrylic the same shape and size as the compartment to conceal it and equalize the pressure place onto the foam by the cubes.

The shapes and sizes I required were quite a tricky size to accurately meaure and sketch up so my final laser cut pieces weren't completely accurate. I was able to fine tune these in the 3D lab to fit where required, as pictured below.

The Cube:
I wasn't completely sure what I to use for these that had a reasonably nice finish and cube shape and enough weight to register on the pressure sensors. I looked around North Shore Steel and the closest to what I needed came in the form of two long squared poles with quite thick poles. They weighed a tonne so I figured they'd do the trick.

At the work shop, I cut them up into 50mmx50mmx50mm cubes and attempted to polish the paint off. It was quite hard work getting just one cube done (and I have 41 in total) so alternatively, I can look into just repainting them.

Originally I had envisaged my cubes as sleek, metallic cubes so the finished result wasn't too far off. The only issue is that they are hollow so I am going to experiment with filling them up with a clear resin. Originally, I had also imagined that they would visually represent something, my earlier examples being folded out of paper with literal representations of the pressures of modern life printed on them.

I had moved past this idea, deciding to leave them just nondescript or leaving it open ended to figure out once I had the materials. Now the opportunity does pose itself to embed something inside the cube, floating it in the resin so that the object itself becomes more interesting visually compelling. This would also open up possible connections to be made when finalizing exactly what my visual output is going to be.

One week until deadline and there is still a lot to do...

Lost in Time

2010-05-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

Still feeling a bit bogged down, unable to figure out the conceptual framework for my project and exactly what it is I am trying to achieve, show and convey, I took some time to get some books related to Futurism and Modern art to help me explore deeper some of the concepts I've touched on so far. One book I found particularly helpful was 'Themes of Contemporary Art - Visual Art after 1980' by Jean Robertson and Craig McDaniel.

The book was broken into several sections, focusing on different themes: time, place, identity, the body, language, exploring each in terms of historical context, influential factors and modern day interpretations (fairly recent - published / printed in 2005). The sections I found particularly interesting and relevant were time and the human body.

Time was an obvious connection as I'd been exploring ideas of speed and modern life. The key idea that came through was that social and technological changes, as well as changes in our understanding of the physical and psychological universes we inhabit are reshaping the ways we perceive and conceive of time. The Futurists' imagery reflected the sped up tempo of urban life made possible by new inventions where now our concepts of time have been warped by newly emerging technologies and networks that offer instantaneous information (e.g. cellphones, the internet).

The medium with which I work best, photography, suits and supports the notion of time measured through movement. A photograph can represent the accelerated pace of modern life by recording in sharp frozen detail a minute slice of movement, too quick for the eye to see. Though photography was not accepted by the futurists as an art form as its static and lifeless nature was antithetical to the Futurist concept of ‘universal dynamism’. However, techniques such as photodynamism, chronophotography or (less commonly) strobophotography were able to achieve a dynamic recording of movement over a long exposure time.

Image source

The resulting effect created and emphasis on the continuity of motion and moving objects, not unlike how the futurists created a painted sequence of movements sweeping across a single composition, abstracted by linking the phases of movement with geometric colour structures. I decided to experiment with this technique myself just to explore the idea.

The above effect was reasonably easily achieved, with help from Ryan. Our setup included a dark room, my camera set on extended exposure, ranging from 10-30 seconds whilst Ryan was firing his flash on strobe ranging from 10-30hz as I performed various movements. I was pleased with the effects and was then thinking about how this sort of technique could be employed in my project.

In my research, I came across a quote by Milan Kunkera: "Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?" This comes from a book he wrote called 'Slowness' and is a comment of how the sense of time has accelerated from previous generations. This book was written in 1995 so it would be interesting to see what he has to say about the pace of modern life now!

So with these ideas in mind, I want to reflect through my project this concept that in our accelerated modern life, we expect everything to be so fast paced and instantaneous that we miss out on the sensations, the details, the experiences in between. We have so many responsibilities and places to be simultaneously that our perception of time is warped, we have lost the ability to place events in any temporal or historical context.

This now has to be taking back in conjunction with the suitcase itself and how I will chose to represent it.

Speed and Machines

2010-05-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

Following my previous developments in exploration of ideas, I realised I needed to again return to the conceptual basis. I had been focusing on the idea of modern life and it's pressures realised I needed to take a viewpoint so I could make a clear statement through my work.

I came across this quote: There is more to life than increasing its speed. ~Mohandas K. Gandhi and so it was from here I starting exploring the idea of speed in modern life and the art of the futurist movement.

The futurists embraced an exciting new world which transformed by machines and technology; they loved the speed, noise, pollution and cities. They aimed to express the energetic and dynamic quality of contemporary life embodied in the motion and force of modern machinery, representing also the technological triumph of man over nature.

They adopted the Cubist technique of depicting several views of an object simultaneously and used rhythmic spatial repetitions in an attempt to convey feelings and sensations experimented in time.

Technology, time and speed have become interchangeable and ubiquitous forces in the modern life we know today; speed is not so much embraced as a given part of life to cope with. Speed is the yardstick by which we measure productivity, efficiency, distance, value. It is no longer a matter of 'how fast', but 'how much faster'.

“In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world” - Margaret Mead quotes

The more stresses, pressures, responsibilities we 'pack' into our lives increases the rate at which is passes us by. The Futurists depicted their world view through multifaceted, multidimensional shapes and multicolored and flowing brushstrokes to express their perceived world as one which is in constant movement.

So what is our world now, 100 or so years later?

Speed kills colour... the gyroscope, when turning at full speed, shows up gray. ~Paul Morand

But with increased speed comes a threshold, a breaking point, where there is a loss of control, a distortion in perspective, an unrealistic sense of experience. We talk about how time is going so fast and passes us by; but time is a constant and it is life as it becomes increasingly more 'modern' that is speeding up. We speed through our days and our lives until they are only a blur, reaching the end destination and remembering nothing from the journey.

My direction from here is still not completely resolved. A possible development from the timelapse which I am yet to try is to use images with longer exposures. For example, rather than the lapse ranging from an image of one car on the motorway through to an image of a traffic jam on the motorway, using images ranging from an image taken of the motorway on a fast shutter speed to it appears stationary, through to an image taken on an extended exposure to give the impression of speed and movement.

With this concept now, I need to explore ways to incorporate relationships between the different sensors and how I can integrate both the input and outputs to communicate within this conceptual framework.

The sensors multiply

2010-04-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Following our last presentation, I continued to develop use of the pressure sensors created with conductive foam as an input and worked on making Arduino and Processing read and respond to a circuit built with multiple pressure sensors. Previously I had used a single pressure sensor in the bottom of my mock suitcase to manipulate output in the form of a graphical output on the screen and made a series of LEDs light up.

Using multiple sensors opens the potential to creating and programming a variety of relationships between the different inputs and how they are interpreted and used to manipulate the output. So as a simple experiment, I took the same images I had used to represent various 'pressures' (money, social, food, work, traffic, love) and assigned each to a sensor. The level of pressure determined the opacity of the image with increased pressure increasing the opacity. The total level of pressure from all the sensors would change the colour on the blank face in the centre, bringing in my earlier experiments with colour representative of pressure level.

This is still quite a literal representation of 'pressures' but was mostly to experiment with trying to get the sensors interacting to some extent. It was partially influenced by the Kronos Projector and this sketch in particular.

This led me to think instead of representing the effects of stress / pressure in the form of a timelapse. I like the effect the 'time warping' sketch had where the time lapse photographs of the city overlaid and then where ever the image is clicked, creates a 'time punch'.

After discussing these ideas further with Sebastian and Jason, we came to the idea of taking this same concept of taking a time lapse and using the pressure sensor to control it. For example, taking a time lapse of the motorway filling up with cars as it becomes rush hour and then making the timelapse go forward with more pressure and backwards.

This relates to the idea that each individual doesn't feel like their actions contribute to the whole (e.g. one person doesn't create a traffic jam) but by seeing and controlling the build up of the collective makes one consider these consequences more. This can be linked to many ideas I've already been exploring around pressure and stress, where before I exploring effects of collective pressure on the individual, this turns it around to the effect collective pressure as a result of many 'individuals.'

At this point, I experimented with two simple time lapses, one consisting of 14 frames created in Photoshop and then another consisting of 108 frames from a series of photographs. The value recieved from the pressure sensor is converted to fit within a scale of 0-108 (or number of frames) so when the pressure increases, the later frames featuring more traffic (or in this case, a collection of pompoms). The following video shows the timelapse from beginning to end.

The next step now that I know I am able to actually program this is to create more time lapse sequences and start to explore and relationships between them. It is also now important to start making decision regarding how the input and output will be set up and exhibited as these will ultimately impact on and be impacted by how I go about the next step and what the overall effect will be on the viewer.

Architectural Perspective

2010-04-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

After last presenting our projects, Sebastian took us to see some third year architecture students having a critique. This was relevant because the starting point for their brief was also a suitcase; they were trying to create 'different environments' or something that 'popped out ' and could be stored inside the suitcase.

Our brief is similarily open with whatever we create needing to be able to fit inside the suitcase and our suggested starting point for our concept being 'modern life'. Even though the briefs were similar, the different backgrounds of architecture versus creative technologies were evident in what they had produced.

It seems fairly obvious to state but their products were more focused on how it was constructed and what sort of 'space' it was creating. A few of the ones we saw were a work space on the go which isolated the user, a fold up changing room, a tensegrity unit, an 'impossible structure' and a metal mesh structure. The one I liked most was a croched hammock / net structure made from 1.5km of twine(?) made to be hung from a tree or other structure to be sat inside. The idea that came through was a way to think differently about how we use outdoor spaces.

Even though these projects too were just halfway through (to be completed by end of semester), it was a useful experience seeing their work and hearing how the lecturers responded to it and what feedback they gave. It was and interesting insight as one of my options for university, had I not chosen Creative Technologies, would have been architecture. Creative Technologies itself is supposed to be a multidisciplinary and so taking influence from other practices can only help drive our work.

Discussing with Sebastian after, we agreed the most interesting structures were those that contained lots of multiples of individual pieces to make a whole. Structurally and visually it was just a more interesting piece. What I found different in their approach to the brief was that their focus was on the practical use of the space and it's intended use where our projects (or I aim for mine) have more of a conceptual grounding, in this case, modern life. Some conceptual meaning could be read into their works but I am not sure whether it was intentional and in the series of only short 5 minute crits, perhaps there just wasn't time to discuss it.

Seeing their critique has encouraged me to think more about the space and the environment I will be creating when viewers see my project. It is easy to get carried away with the concept, the programming, the visual aesthetics, but it is important to think about what effect these all will have in combination for the viewer as ultimately, they are the ones who are going to be experiencing it.

Input and Output

2010-04-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

In order to develop my project and start to steer it down a more specific path, I began by refining my concept down to a core idea from the many we had discussed and the one's I'd explored so far. From my last idea, I begun to explore modern life and following the presentation of this concept, the idea of tension came out. I chose to take this as my core concept and continued to develop my project from here.

THE CONCEPTS

Contemporary Life - Tension, pressure, stress

The suitcase is a symbol of modern life;
it is an empty vessel to be filled and to be transported;
it is designed to be portable and manoeuvrable.

We move and travel more and further;
Does our baggage sustains us in our travels
or weight us down?

Travel is connotative with a holiday, an escape,
but do we really escape what we pack within ourselves?

We carry our baggage, both physical and figurative,
It is lightweight enough to transport but it wears us down.

I am in exploring ideas of metaphysical and physical baggage and their link to aspects of contemporary life;
Ubiquitous components of society driven by
tension, pressure and stress;
things which can sustain us or break us down.

This suitcase as a banal, mass produced object will always contain something unique to each individual.

First Concepts

Inputs (Click for more detail)

Outputs (Click for more detail)

Conveyor belt

2010-04-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

In preparation for our final meeting before study break, I worked to develop my idea as I felt I needed to refocus so I went back to looking at the suitcase itself.

It is an object whose form is determined by it's function, it differs from say a backpack because it is designed in such a way that it implies a need for greater room and hence indicating a longer distance of travel.

I thought also about what Charles has been saying about contemporary life and how we travel and move around a lot more. Suitcases have been adapted and developed over time as we have been more mobile as there has been a need for them for be lightweight, portable and maneuverable over long distances.

Then I thought about the baggage claim at the airport where the suitcases come around on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt too is a characteristic of the modern life; the machine which has been developed to cope with the need for mass organization and mass production. These too were developed in airports to cope with and organize more people traveling but also in other areas of life such as mass production and consumption - for example productions lines and supermarket check outs.

Then of course there is the idea of mass organization of people which has been achieved through passports and RFID tags.

I discussed my ideas with various people and someone suggested it would be quite visually striking to have a suitcase sitting on a conveyor belt in the gallery space with the belt moving in one direction and the wheels of the suitcase hooked up to a motor to turn them in the opposite direction, hence giving it appearance of being both moving and stationary.
This highlights ideas of the paradox of contemporary life which is rich with movement and yet the constant feeling that we are never moving far or fast enough. If you put a person on a conveyor belt, as like a treadmill, we run and run and exert energy but seem to remain in the same place.

Sharing these ideas with the group, Jason suggested trying to represent this idea of tension as a way of tapping more into the metaphysical and moving past the more literal representations of a concept.

The issue still arises of how to make it interactive which is where perhaps RFID tags can be employed to be handled by the user and trigger a reader inside the suitcase and set off something, perhaps, as previously explored, a projection.

Difficulties at this point are the the logistics of building a conveyor belt which could both support the size of the suitcase and be able to fit inside the suitcase. I found an article on Makezine outlining how to build a small conveyor belt which I was going to try recreate as a prototype to work from but already I could see that it would be difficult to employ on a large scale.

Options to explore at this point are to focus in on what exactly it is I am trying to show or convey and then how I can feasibly apply it practically within a reasonable time frame and budget. I felt I learned from the first project of this year that it is good to start big and then perhaps scale it down; it is easier to scale something down than up. Once I have clarified my concept and intentions, begin to try represent it. I really want to start building and making something now, to start bringing my ideas to life...

Packing and Unpacking

2010-03-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

As I worked to develop my concept for this project, I realized that it presented me the opportunity to revisit a part of a previous project that was never fully realized. For the Urban Screens brief at the end of last year, I was working on writing a program that pulled on various RSS feeds to display on screen. I had managed to find, adapt and modify a program which uses Flickr API to search for images under a given keyword and within the Creative Commons licensed images.

Where I was able to get this functioning, I was unable to incorporate it with a different section of code I had written. So unfortunately I wasn't able to achieve this by the deadline for presentation but now it is something I'd like to revisit and integrate into this project in keeping with the ideas we'd discussed already.

Even as I was working to describe and visualize this concept, my mind was already wanting to move past and keep developing it. So this is still in it's early stages to be refined and developed through further group discussions and seeing how other group members are choosing to approach the concepts.

The concept:
The suitcase is a boring, banal, everyday object, not unlike the others which come around on the carousel at the airport. It is the contents which make it unique and this is determined by the individual who is using it, where they are going and where they are going. We take a piece of our lives with us when we travel, pack it up, condense and compartmentalize it to sustain us through our journeys. Through our journeys, we collects things to pack away to remind us of our journeys.

The aim:
I want to open up the suitcase for the viewers to determine it's content, bringing to it their experiences and letting them pack it themselves.

How:
I want to revisit a part of a project from last year which was never successfully realized; I want to use a program written in Processing which pulls photographs using the Flickr API and searches through images licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (BY) and with a safe search filter.

Viewers would be asked to submit words by means of texting, or some other form of input, worlds relating to their experiences of travel similar. This word would then be put in as the keyword to search for images.

The first or a randomly selected image from those generated would then be displayed on a screen placed inside the suitcase, over time stacked up to create a collectively packed suitcase. In keeping with the restrictions of the license, the owner of the photograph's name would also be printed and perhaps also the title to give more insight into the experience linked to the image.

As the content displayed would be that of someone not actually present and most probably overseas, it would draw on ideas of the shared experiences of travel and bring a more global aspect to it. Alternatively (or alongside), viewers could also send photographs from their phone their own photos. The medium of photography is one we rely on to try capture the experience of travel and to try share it with our friends. Many years later we can still recapture the experience of the moment when we look over our photographs. We try 'pack' the experience of a moment of time in a still frame as a way of taking it away with us. With the emergence of camera-phones, this is also representative of the idea of a moment you just have to capture, even though though don't have a traditional camera with you. The quality is often poor but it is enough to capture the essence of the experience.

Why?
Such an interactive exhibition would result in the content displayed to be determined both consciously from the viewers and unconsciously from those who submitted the photographs in the first place. It is about the personal and the shared experience of travel and what take with us and take away from us from these journeys, whether it is our whole lives we are packing up or just a small bit to take with us for a day. They are asked to pack the suitcase and take away with them another kind of journey and experience.

Did you Pack this Yourself...?

2010-03-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

"A TEMPORARY GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY LIFE."

"DESIGN + BUILD AN INTERACTIVE EXHIBITION ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, NATURE, PLACE + MOBILITY IN A CHANGING WORLD"

Presented with this open brief by Charles, a group consisting of six students and Sebastian was formed to approach it with the only constraint being the containment of the suitcase.

Over two meetings, we brainstormed and discussed and unpacked the suitcase.

The suitcase itself can exist in various states; full or empty, open or closed, in transit or being carried.

The suitcase is instantaneously connotative of travel and movement and this too is comprised of several states; the origin, the journey and the destination. It signifies mobility, instability, temporarily - aspects of a modern life where we move around a lot more, mass travel, mass tourism. Refugees taking whole life into suitcase.

We take with us every day, on every journey, a part of our life to sustain us while we are away from our origin. The contents are never fix and are ultimately determined by the the origin, journey and destination. How do we compartmentalize, condense and miniaturize these aspects of our lives?

The mystery of the closed suitcase evokes mystery and intrigue and potential danger: security threats, bombs and terrorism; who is a terrorist, who are they? On person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. How do potentially threatening objects affect human processes? One potential bomb affects the entire customs process and the experience of airports and travel.

When opened, it reveals something: an experience, an insight - how much can you learn about someone by the contents of their suitcase?

And what about Duty Free - the in-between, almost 'non-place' at the beginning and end of a flight journey where we are tempted with high end, luxury items - tobacco, alcohol, confectionery, electronics and fragrance- but without the tax. In a euphoric, dazed state we pass through and are lured temporarily from reality and the scrutiny we are about to be subjected to in security. We are temporarily free from restrictions and 'duty' and allowed to indulge.

Discussing issues of possible interactivity ultimately impacts on how to best represent any of these ideas. One of the main ideas was to tap into the experience of picking up and carrying a suitcase around the gallery / exhibition space. It immediately evokes ideas of journey and travel and enables the suitcases become devices - they don't reveal anything but trigger them. Perhaps by walking into a room to trigger a projection or part of a story onto the walls to immerse the viewer and take them on a journey.

For my initial concept I took this idea but instead of carrying it, the viewer has the suspense and excitement of opening it which then would trigger projections on the wall.

Following a second meeting, ideas continue to develop so this is still really just a starting point...

Eletrosmog Reflection

2010-03-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

The Electrosmog festival and our related projects are finished and wrapped up for 2010! Due to the extremities of time differences, I was only able to watch two of the live streamed discussions; the introduction / preamble which led into Global Views on Mobility and then Energy and Information.

The introduction itself I found interesting and felt a surge of pride as they mentioned the students at AUT in Auckland, New Zealand doing a series of projects for Electrosmog. Even in such a globalized world, it is still a nice surprise when New Zealand gets a mention being as physically small and isolated as we are.

Even though we'd been working on our projects, it wasn't until I watched this stream that I actually finally began to understand what the festival was all about. It is about addressing the issue of how to lessen the impact on the environment caused by traveling by asking the question of how do you bring people together without travel?
It is about trying to find an alternative to how we usually bring people together physically as there are more and more stories from around the world about growing pressure on local environments due to increased need for mobility.

They discussed whether the connected experience is not rich enough which is why we feel the need to physical travel to experience other people and places. Personally, despite the guilty conscience attached to the environmental impact of travel, I still feel the need to physically travel and experience the world. After studying art history two years ago, I have been wanting to travel to some of the galleries oversees to see some of the works for real as it is a completely different experience to seeing it as a small jpeg file on a screen. Having moved to New Zealand from Hungary when I was three, I also feel the need to go back home and visit my roots and my family. Digital interaction I feel is not yet advanced enough to even match these experiences.

However, social networking sites such as Facebook have enabled me to keep in touch with people I have met while overseas, or even those from past schools I may not otherwise interact with so digital technologies have opened these doors.

Looking at the bigger picture, they discussed the benefits the availability of technologies we now take for granted in the impact they are having on cities such as Nairobi. This technology has been embraced with services which allow people to pay bills through their cellphones.

Ultimately what I got out of this discussion (before I started to fall asleep - one of the inconveniences of time difference) was a better perspective of mobility; mobility for me means an OE in the future and a visit back home to reconnect with relatives, where for others in the developing world mobility is the ability to travel to the next city or getting a car on the road. So I think to be able to bring people together without travel, it is important for digital technologies to be more widely available and advanced so as to provide an experience which is more fulfilling to the human senses; we experience the world through five senses and of these, most (widely available) digital communication devices only fulfill visual and audial feedback. Systems which support haptic feedback for example and more realistic and immersive visual feedback will be more successful at bridging the geographical divide.

There are also benefits in going local as it is also important to stay in tune with your local culture and environment. I have however found through my experiences during the festival, previous travels overseas and digital interactions that while sharing your local culture also makes you appreciate and understand it more.

During the Energy and Information stream, the actual discussion of Electrosmog interested me; Electrosmog is the information that's in the environment, flowing through the space; it is the energy structure we produce. We do not fully know yet the effects on human life or plants and how much is too much. When cellphones first came out, there was the same sort of concerns of the waves they emitted and to some extent there is an element of sensationalism. The waves emitted by electronic devices contain more and more information so the frequencies are becoming shorter and higher, therefore less penetrating. Wifi will only go through a few walls and light waves which we are bathed in every day and are the source of all energy on earth and that only penetrates a sheet or two of paper.

This reminded me of a discussion we had last year around the concept of what if we could see different wavelengths? Waves which aren't visible to the eye make it difficult to judge how much we are exposing ourselves to some unknown. Take the example of light, we know that extended periods of time exposed to sunlight can result in sunburn so we can make judgments based on how much light we can see and want to expose ourselves too. When we can't see the waves emitted from electronic devices, we fear not knowing how much we are being exposed to and how it is effecting us.

We want more information in the atmosphere and this is the trade off to trying to minimize physical travel and replace it with digital alternative. There needs to be more awareness and reliable information available to subside fears without sensationalization.

Overall, taking part in the Electrosmog festival was a good experienced and introduced me to some new concepts and idea which I feel will be beneficial and impact on future projects.

Backyard dance

2010-03-20T03:57:00.000-07:00

Backyard Dances’ transports the backyard as actuated space for live choreography using web cameras, chat rooms, transcriptions, the imagination, text to speech software and the dancing body.

Alongside my group project for Electrosmog, I have been helping out with a project by Becca Wood called Backyard Dance. It is about "being everywhere at once, while staying at home, in our own backyard." Becca is interested in dance so has taken submissions from people all over the world who were asked to provide a short section of footage taken by attaching a camera to a part of their body while dancing in their backyard. She has then taken this footage and transcribed a strictly visual interpretation of it with no personal or poetic influence. Dancers wanting to participate in the live streamed performance are given an mp3 of the transcribed footage narrated by computerized voice and will perform their interpretation of it in the form of dance in their backyard.

This was a bit tricky to get my head around at first and even though what I was helping out with the streaming, as I began to work with Becca and eventually the other dancers, I began to understand what it was all about. James did most the hard yards, nutting out the best way to take the video chartroom comprising of each dancer's chat window and send it back out as an accessible live stream and chasing up the IT people to allow us to work around restrictions of the AUT network. As we did a test on Thursday, I found myself in a video chat with people located in Australia, Germany, America and Becca just out the front of AUT. Most the people hadn't really met before and yet easily struck up conversations about their locations and the weather and general socializing which I think ran nicely alongside the concepts underpinning both the Backyard Dance project and the Electrosmog Festival as a whole; we can not only be enriched by digital communication with those from who we are physically isolated, learning about their country and culture, but we learn more about our own. The base of such connections can be in any common interest, in this case, dance.

Technical difficulties were afoot even two hours before we were supposed to stream; in the end we were unable to use the Max Patch James had developed to stream outside the AUT network so we needed a quick solution which came in the form of Livestream. Once this was set up, there was little time left to trouble shoot as we had to start setting up the video streams from the dancers around the world and arrange them on the desktop in a tidy appearance to be streamed. One of the dancers wasn't present by the start time but the show had to go on and off the dancers went.

The stream crashed a few minutes in and we worked quickly to restore it. The network and the computer struggled with four incoming streams and then sending it out again. It was also at this point we realized that any sounds we made were sent out as the audio accompanying the video. Oops. Visually with the four input screens from the dancers it was a very interesting effect. I did feel like they were each letting me into their space, their neighborhood and further sharing with me their personal expressions through their dance. Though they all had the same audio playing, their interpretations were all different but even besides the geographical and interpretive differences, even with the technical glitches and slightly less than sleek appearance of the stream, they very much appeared to be dancing together.

I would have liked to have seen Becca actually dancing in her space and the reactions she would have gotten. It is interesting to think that people around the world who would've been watching it knew more about what she was doing than those passing by; we have a tendency to stare and comment on anything out of the ordinary in our neighborhood when in light of the concepts of the Electrosmog conference, it is our own local neighborhood and area we too should be embracing and exploring.

Helping out on this project was beneficial for me in terms of picking up some technological knowledge for future reference if I ever want to work with live streaming again. I have however been thinking that it is strange that the Electrosmog conference aims to bring people together using these digital means and yet, the capabilities of live streaming is still quite limited by restrictions of one's internet access. It took me 10-15minutes to be able to load and view an earlier live Electrosmog stream and even through these they have technical difficulties with participants webcams cutting out or lagging. If we are to become more reliant on means such as video streaming, the capabilities of it needs improvement. Overall I enjoyed helping someone else achieve their vision and concept and being involved in exploring it with them and others around the world.

Lights On

2010-03-20T02:29:00.000-07:00

So it was just a normal Friday night as we found ourselves back in studio. The final cubes were covered and as it slowly got dark, we rearrange the space in the studio to set up our cubes to make it all more like an installation. As one of the torches had broken, we were limited to 7 cubes which we arranged in a circular form. We realized at this point we should've made the wires with which we extended the LEDs longer as they were only able to reach the next box over, meaning we weren't able to mix them up in a pattern and it wasn't a mystery who was powering each box.

When it was dark and we finally found all the light switches, the studio was completely dark but a test inside one of the boxes showed that where the LED was bright enough to shine through the box, it was only in a direct beam. A quick tip from Zak and we were attacking the LEDs with sandpaper which successfully resulted in the light dispersing and the boxes glowed.

10:30 crept nearer and the studio we had a few participant drift in and they were convinced to participate. It took a bit of trial and error before everyone was able to successfully light their neighbor's box and then it was finally show time. We started simply with sending a pulse of light around the circle which took a few goes as some of the people from outside the group weren't completely familiar with operating the torch and made more difficult by the fact that you couldn't actually see when it lit up. We experimented with a few more patterns and after a while I got my turn in the box.

For the main experiment, we started by all sitting in silence and darkness. Anyone could start a pattern and from there, if you got a pattern, you had to pass it on. This quickly did turn into Chinese whispers and the patterns which came back around were slight modifications of the ones before. By the end it had turned into a series of strobe-like flashes, followed by a constant stream of light.

I'd had a chance at the beginning to watch it and it was so exciting seeing it all come together and work out as we had more or less envisaged. It was an eerie effect seeing these static, inanimate objects light up out of the dark as if by themselves, the effect enhanced when the people inside the boxes were silent. Even when the pattern wasn't perfect, you still got a sense of that communication and the idea of power and light as a driving force of this communication and existence when you were otherwise isolated, in both the aspects of being isolated in the box and in the dark.

Visually the effect was also like looking down on a city at night: the buildings which are in darkness are assumed unoccupied and blend in with the darkness, nearly non existent. Those windows which are lit up, you imagine there is someone behind that window. Though you can't see them, it indicates presence, activity and life. Or if you think about being lost in the dark, we connotate any light as a sign of hope or a guiding light, indicating safety, rescue, a sign of life and potential rescue.

When inside the box, it was a different experience altogether. The box was big enough to sit comfortably cross legged and upright, but you still definitely felt that the walls were around you. When all the lights were off, you were in complete darkness. It was always such a shock when the light came on because it was so bright and you immediately felt more comfortable being able to see, even though it was just the walls around you. What was interesting was that when your light was off, you could faintly see the flashes of light in the other boxes, muted through several layers of newspaper and the distance between them but you could see where different boxes were lighting up. This is connotative of the idea of a guiding light when you yourself are powerless.

The participants from outside our group seemed also to enjoy the experience and the challenge of cooperative immobility. Even though we weren't able to accurately pass the patterns around the circle, the idea of working cooperatively to sustain the circle and collective as a whole was successful overall. At times I was sitting in my box and thought that yes, I did have the power to just stop and not do anything and hence as a result, the pattern would break and everyone would be left without power, waiting for the one before them to send it through. When you are otherwise isolated without means of communication, the actions of individuals can have a huge impact.

Overall, our project explored the concept of the importance of power, communication and the collective in a globalized society; the ability to communicate through the technologies we have developed to bridge a physical geographic divide is crucial but we must also consider the implications of both our consumption and input of power. In whatever context you want to interpret 'power' , whether as electrical or figurative force, we need to understand the implications of it's use and lack of to truly be able to achieve sustainability immobility.

Photographs and footage in this post are courtesy of Ryan Smale.

Co-Immobility

2010-03-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

As our project takes shape in it's physical components, it continues to give shape also to our concept. A lot of the materials and components we have been using are things we have reused and recycled; the wood used to construct the frames for our cubes was discarded and then found and salvaged by Seamus; the torches are adapted rather than built from scratch; and now we are contemplating what to cover the cubes in.

Construction of the frames for the cubes once we could finally get into the 3D lab went surprisingly smoothly and rapidly. The dimensions we chose ( 1m x 1m x 1m ) were for both practical and coneptual reasons; we only had a certain amount of wood but we also wanted a reasonably confined space so the participant inside the box felt isolated and closed off.

To covering the boxes to visually obscure both the participant and the participant's vision, we were considering originally rice paper or baking paper as it was opaque but thin enough to allow light to pass through. We began later to consider again the sustainablility issue and the idea of using instead newspaper so we are reusing something that would otherwise be discarded. The connotations also of using newspaper are also link to ideas of global communication as it is a form of media which communicates of national and international issues. It is interesting to point out also that it is not a digital form of communication.

We were uncertain whether the LEDs would generate enough light to illuminate through the newspaper so I experimented with small boxes and they seemed sufficient so long as they had enough charge. We were originally going to try run our project in a dark, isolated field but as the finished cubes proved to be very cumbersome to transport and time constraints we have decided just to do it in studio. We hoping that the it will be dark enough to show through the newspapers.

So with the cubes constructed and covered, the torches soldered, all that's left to do is to wait for it to get dark tonight so we can see how it all comes together. It will take some experimentation to see what works and what doesn't in terms of sending around the pulses of light, especially if we have participants from outside our group who are outside of the project and approach it with fresh minds. It will be interesting to see what experience they take away and visually what the effect will be - if any!

Sitting in a Box

2010-03-15T02:10:00.000-07:00

The Project The project began with Seamus' original concept of 'Co-operative Immobility' where participants are confined in individual boxes with electronic devices as their only communication method which were powered by means of kinetic generator. The twist here is that each person is responsible for the power supplied not to their own box but that of someone else.

When placed in a public space and run for a continuous period of time (i.e. a day, week etc.) would communicate ideas relevant to the Electrosmog Festival such as reliance on power to allow us to be mobile and to communicate when otherwise isolated from the world around us. It would raise questions about who controls and holds the 'power' and make one consider their own levels of input and output.

The project overall seems feasible but when taking it in terms of a two week deadline to complete and present, we were forced to scale it down a few notches. So the concept remained and even though researched showed it was possible to build kinetic generators which can power laptops and charge iPods / cellphones, we decided instead to build smaller generators with magnets and coils of magnetic wire to power a light bulb. The light bulb simply serves as a representation of power and an easy way to immediately see who had power and who didn't.

The set up would be similar where each person supplies power to one other person's light bulb and the objective becomes to work cooperatively to send a pattern of flashes around the circuit.

"A series of boxes in a dark room light up. Each box contains a small kinetic generator to supply the power to the light bulb in one other box. The subjects inside the boxes are immobile and isolated, their only connection to the outside world is through these lights. Without the light, they are cut off and powerless. Each figure is responsible for another as they work as a co-dependent unit to send a pattern of light flashes around the circuit. It takes only one person to stop and break the pattern and the system breaks down. This project explores the relationship of cooperation and the sustainable immobile lifestyle. It highlights the issues around our reliance on electricity to communicate when we are physically isolated, made possible by the use of electronic devices. In a system of co-dependence, one is forced to consider their own levels of usage and input."

As the idea developed, we were once again back at boxes, this time simple cubes covered in opaque rice paper which, when the bulb inside was lit, an indistinguishable silhouette of a figure inside would be visible. Taken to a dark and isolated location would once again communicate ideas around reliance on power to be visible and able to communicate and with lack of such power is almost to not exist when one is in physical isolation from the world around them.

Construction
The original plan was to build our own generators from scratch with help from a handy step by step video but sourcing the correct objects began to prove difficult and costly. After trekking as far as Albany and back to New Market, we managed to get 8 kinetic torches at $6 a pop and decided the best option was to modify these.

In the work shop, we sawed off one end of the torch so we were able to extend the wires to the LED so the light can be switched on from however long we made the extension wire. We were concerned whether the charge would still be able to carry through the extended wire but it seemed to do this with no problems.

So with the prototype completed, we will do this to the other 7 torches and also try find some way to re-house both ends of the wires to ensure the soldering doesn't get pulled out.

We will also begin construction of the boxes which we have decided will be 1m cubed for both practical (construction, materials, transport etc.) issues but also they will light up more successfully and to constrain movement within the box to emphasize this idea of immobility.

All the while, with every decision we make, we stop to consider the implications of each decision and how it impacts upon and relates to our concept and our overall aim. We are now also contemplating ideal locations in which we can set it up, ideally somewhere dark and isolated so it fits in with the idea of being away from the security of power, that we are solely relying on the power we are generating ourselves as well as emphasizing the visual effect of the boxes lighting up.

So currently, concept and construction is all on track and the aim is to get it constructed so we can do a test run and be ready in time for the festival which commences in just three days on March 18th...

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2010-03-14T22:50:00.001-07:00

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The final show

2009-11-06T20:20:00.001-08:00

So our final presentation, exhibition and critique has come and gone. Similar to last semester, we were to select either Sound Building or Urban Screen to present on a space of wall in and around the studios. In addition, we were also to collate documentation pages of all three of the studio projects (including the week long 'Ideas, Concepts and Visualizations.'

I began with the journal pages as an opportunity to revisit the previous projects before deciding for concrete which one I wanted to present. I felt that I had explored my Sound Building brief quite thoroughly, even with a further reflection a few weeks later as part of one of the idea generation activites. I didn't feel there was a lot more I could get out of this brief without redesigning and rebuilding the instrument according to some of the reflective ideas I brainstormed but this didn't fit into the short space of time in preparation for the presentation.

When revisiting the short Ideas, Concepts and Visualisations Brief, I went back and completed the activities which I had missed while I was away sick that week. The first one was called "What’s an Idea? What’s a concepts and where do I get one?" which was focused on using the process of creating art as both subject matter and concept as means of generating ideas. I chose from Richard Serra's verb list "to tighten" and explored it by use of photography, as shown below (left). An extract from my analysis of this activity is viewable by clicking on the image.

The second activity was exploring the generation of ideas through a matrix and 'cross pollinating' platonic solids to create new and hybrid forms. As this activity was originally intended for a group of three, I scaled back the 6x6 matrix to a simpler 3x3. The result was the image above (right) and my analysis of the activity is viewable by clicking on it.

Finally, I returned to the activity which I had started, where we had interviewed each others precious objects with no knowledge of them and then based on common ideas that arose, we were to develop a visual signifier for our own object. I didn't complete this because I was completely stuck for ideas but after completing the other two activities, the ideas came more easily. Final result is as below with more detailed analysis viewable by clicking the image.

So that left Urban Screens as the one to present. I had been hoping to successfully complete the programming as we had intended it to be but was again constrained by the lack of time. So instead I made a dummy version of how it was supposed to look with preloaded headlines, Tweets and Flickr images but using content which the program had generated over our trials. By finishing up the journal and documentation work for this project, I was able to look over my initial research again to generate some new ideas as to how it could be improved.

Our current visual aesthetic of the screen output was, as we had established from trials and presentation, pretty static overall so not very eye catching. It was constrained to a very geometric format as we had tried to stick very closely to our concept, something the viewer would only be able to take in if they stopped to look at it. If I was to develop it, I would find perhaps a more abstract way to visually represent the 'data' (i.e. text sources) to make it more dynamic and eye catching, so the viewer would WANT to stop and look at it, and then take in the meaning.

As we were no longer retrained to the A1 poster format for presentation, I chose to present my project in several simple glass frames to give the impression of several screens on the wall. My main two 'screens' of content I literally added the image of a screen frame around it while I used invididual frames to highlight and simply explain visually how the programming worked.

I expanded upon the visual imagery of the circuit board which I have been using throughout by mimicing the connections of a circuit board between the frames. These visually worked very successfully and I feel helped unify the individual frames and convey one of the key concepts of the project, that is, the global connection made possible by technological advancements. (Click on image for other documentation photos from this project).

Overall, I felt it all came together well but was taking it off the wall again before I knew it. I realised later that the space of wall where I had set up my exhibition was the exact same spot of wall I had used in the very first activity this year, the social mapping. It was a nice connection to make and even in the space of a year I feel we have come so far from programming the Lego NXT robots. The Urban Screens project served also as an introduction into year 2 with the logistical challenges of sourcing outside assistance and I am pleased we managed to make it work. This too was a reflection of one of the years' initial activities where we were out on the streets of the Auckland CBD in the situational shuffle.

I feel more confident now in moving to bigger projects outside of the direct university sphere and I look forward to continue to build on what we have learn so far this year and take on the challenges of Year 2.

Urban screening

2009-10-26T14:15:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we once again arrived at Dick Smith and were left on our own to go ahead and set up and run our project. Even though it resulted from a technical glitch that we couldn't have our content on all the screens, it was interesting to have for comparisons sake to have the three variations of content displaying simultaneously.

One third of the the screens had the usual content of music videos from C4 TV, a third of them were completely blank and the other third was displaying our content. This gave us a good indication of whether customers were interesting in the screens as a product for purchase or whether they were watching the content.

We were interested to find that regardless of the content, it was actually the screens themselves people were more interested in, rather than the content (or lack there of) which seems almost contradictory to the purpose of the screen. (One man seemed particularly interested by my laptop sitting in amongst the screens.)

Despite it being during their rush hour (12:30-2:00), there seemed to be few customers in the store and not many of them interested in the screens in the first place. Regardless, the RSS content happily went and it was the videos which kept causing the program to crash.

The original idea of the screen in Dick Smith appeals for the mesmerizing nature of the mirrored content filling ones field of vision completely. Once our content was up there, we realized it wasn't enough to simply have the content displayed on multiple screens but the reason the music videos worked so successfully was because they were filled with movement and energy, where ours was mostly static. If the refresh rate on the RSS had been faster it would've possibly improved this but we were limited by the speed of the network, despite the fact that it was programmed to refresh every 4 seconds.

We managed to get video documentation observing people interacting with the screens and screen shots every 4 seconds which, when played in sequence, is also white interesting as it provides footage also from the webcam point of view.

After one last attempt to get the Flickr RSS element of the programming integrated and working, the slow progress meant that I was unable to have it done in time for presentation so on Thursday we went ahead regardless. Despite also the fact that I was suffering from stomach wrenching pains and had to curl into the foetal position halfway through, I feel it went quite well. Once again the program went on happily with only the video crashing.

Discussion with Kim and Charles during presentation prompted us to consider things such as the nature of the content, which brought us back to the ideas we had during our first city exploration in the four different purposes of the screens (advertising, entertainment, surveillance, informative). We realised that in it's current state, ours reflected only two of these (informative and surveillance) which then also presented a nice parallel in that the other third of the screens were still displaying the music videos (entertainment).

If we were to keep developing our project with this in mind, as well as integration of the Flickr images, it could be interesting to integrate also videos from YouTube RSS (using the same keyword which triggers the Twitter and Flickr feed) which could fulfil this entertainment purpose. The problem with this would be overloading the limits of the program which as we discovered, we have already pushed when integrating two videos and the live webcam.

I wouldn't want to integrate any elements of advertising but rather based on our observations the screens are in fact, advertising themselves in this context as a product available to purchase. This was an idea we tried to reflect in our concept as the screens themselves were available for the viewer to purchase so in that, the content was 'available' to the viewer; everything in the virtual public sphere is readily accessible with the screen as a window or vessel. The screen as a consumable product was another idea they prompted us to discuss and explore.

They also asked us to talk about the challenges we encountered during the project which were mostly logistical and technological; Organizing the use of the location and writing the program to make it do what we wanted it to demanded that we be flexible in adapting our ideas and concept. Similarly, other things out of our control also came into play, such as the limitations of the program and the network.

In preperation for exhibition week, I hope to be able to finally integrate the Flickr feed and perhaps alter the visual aesthetic of it, especially as it will be exhibited in a different context. In the end, I enjoyed some of the beautifully random interplay that came from the random selection of words and Tweets, which is why I am also eager to see it bring up a similarly related (but possibly unrelated!) image. The passive interaction from the global public sphere is what drives our content and this part of it, I am pleased with as it is unexpected. We are merely providing the window to it through the vessel that is the screen.

On Air in 3, 2, 1...

2009-10-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon and we got our first chance to try our content out on the screens at Dick Smith Electronics on Wyndam Street in the City. After a few minor issues, we can get our content displayed on eight of the display screens, about 1/4-1/3 of all their screens. We has issues arrise around the inability of the signal from the laptop to travel into the splitter which then daisy chains into another splitter and 8 screens. This is unfortunate but we could find no way to make it work otherwise. Regardless, it still has a good effect.

We are able to place the laptop among the screens so at least that is one more screen present and also the inbuilt webcam is able to directly record the viewer as they engage with an respond to it. We have the program set up to take a screen shot every few seconds which will make for interesting documentation. An example is shown below from our trial on Friday. The news headlines and Tweets shown in this example are from prerecorded feed as opposed to live.

Finishing up the last bits of the programming in time for our actual run tomorrow, I am disappointed to say that I have been unsuccessful in combining the various elements of the content into a single program. I have used quite a roundabout way to stop the live RSS feed from making the videos and and webcam lag but was unable to amalgamate the program to incorporate the Flickr Feed. This is particularly disappointing as that particular piece of code was tricky but I managed to make it work by itself. The problem arose with incompatibility between the two programs in use of different versions of XML libraries and my inability to rewrite one to the other. I came very close so there still is the potential to fix it up in time for presentation to the class or exhibition week which I will definitely aim to do.

So on the eve of our real run, I have let the RSS real time feed run for a while and some of the results have been interesting in terms of the relationship in the news headline and the Tweet pulled only by relevance of randomly selected keyword:

'Fake' passport seller to stand trial
23:30:08
@JosephJonasFans hey ! i just got a news that i don't know if it is true ? nd i just wanna know if it is true !! i know u can answer me !

Plunket distressed by RNZ decision
Plunket
@mcquillanator Rubbish. Once I realised it wasn't Plunket the organisation but the person, it was sweet! Haha
23:32:43

Hit-and-run driver may be showing nerves, say police
say
Just wanted to say that I love KTU and @paulcubbybryant is amazing!! http://myloc.me/164dN
23:35:18

NZ potter Dame Doreen Blumhardt dies
dies
RT @Bristolnews: Bristol woman dies after being hit by car on zebra crossing: http://bit.ly/xV37H Zebra outside Orpheus, Henleaze.
23:37:52

Court upholds five's P convictions
five's
Counting crows? One's bad, Two's luck, Three's health, Four's wealth, Five's sickness, Six is death.
23:40:27

'Ignorance' behind Nazi Facebook photos - council
Facebook
New facebook page http://bit.ly/2iJG8y
23:43:02

Morrison shapes up for action movie
Morrison
@empiremagazine RT On the subject of 24, did you know that James Morrison, aka Bill Buchanan, runs a yoga class in LA? - Amazing fact!
23:45:36

Man threw daughter, killed her, court hears
hears
is looking for around 4hrs a week part-time work in London. If anyone hears of anything let me know
23:48:11

Search for missing trampers on hold
Search
gmn cara searchnya? lah wong g ada kotak search!
23:50:45

Inmate murder accused in court
murder
did they conveniently avoid Omprakash ? @rkartha: How the Muthoot murder has hit the Trivandrum airport development http://bit.ly/4ighTD
23:53:20

New Plymouth Airport wins best regional
regional
For any railfan followers I may have: I'm taking Amtrak Northeast Regional train 95 from Philadelphia to Williamsburg. 12:03p EDT departure.
23:55:58

Call to TVNZ weatherman as friend only - therapist
weatherman
Why cant the weatherman not come down on his wee pony and tell me its gonna start pishin down before i walk to asda?
23:58:33

Climate scientist oblivious to media policy before sacking
in
Common word was filtered
close
What's the current #webos version for the #Palm #Pre in Germany? Is it 1.13 ? Thanks for the help in advance!
0:1:07

Depending on the keyword chosen, sometimes the headline and the Tweet are directly related, as with the headline "Morrison shapes up for action movie" where Morrison was selected as the keyword. Other times, the two are completely unrelated as with the headline "Man threw daughter, killed her, court hears" which then pulled the Tweet: "...looking for around 4hrs a week part-time work in London. If anyone hears of anything let me know" by keyword of 'hears.' I do not see this as a disadvantage or fault of the program but rather sits within our concept around the technologies of the virtual public space, where often when searching for something, you find something completely different.

My favourite of the ones above is quite possible the headline "Court upholds five's P convictions" which then became "Counting crows? One's bad, Two's luck, Three's health, Four's wealth, Five's sickness, Six is death" by keyword of "five's". Though not directly related, it seems almost ironic and yet poetic.

So though I am still not feeling entirely prepared for tomorrow, we're going to go in with what we have and make the most of it. The program is far from refined but I still feel somewhat pleased with what we have been able to achieve so far.

NullPointerException

2009-10-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

The last week or so has been spent focusing on putting together the programming for pulling and displaying our content as well as the logistics of getting permission for use of said content as well as the use of the location and screens. Last week we visited electronics stores and spoke to the managers and passed on a hard copy of our project proposal. At James advice, we have been attempting to follow these up with phone calls, emails and visits in person and finally this morning we have gotten the go ahead from the area manager.

We have also been soldiering on with out programming so once our content is ready, it will be easy to adapt it to the premises and their setup. It has been interesting to see our concept develop seemingly naturally as we have begun programming. After our experiences learning Java (i.e. which we all found extremely challenging), it was to be feared as possibly the most complicated part. I have however found that I have gotten to the point in my understanding where I can pull at my knowledge from both programming papers (Processing and Java) and combined with common sense and helpful resources (and the indispensable aid of Kim) has been sufficient to work out and achieve the outcomes we set out to create.

My absolute moment of joy came at about 11pm on Monday night where, after about a week of searching, experimenting, trial and error, I finally managed to work the Flickr API to display and image on the screen. This was configured to search by tag and creative commons so it will relate to the content pulled from news headline feeds and Twitter, while ensure also that we do not breach copyright restrictions.( Images are licensed under 'BY' which require attribution only so from here it is a matter of displating also the username of the creator of the image.) It was the point where I realised that I have begun to enjoy programming the same way I enjoyed maths in that is it something really quite challenging and requires careful and precise calculations, but when that successful outcome is achieved, it is absolutely rewarding.

We have at this point about four seperate programs to perform all the functions which generate the various aspects of our content, including:

- Generating and placing in pre-recorded content,
- Reading, displaying and saving footage from a live webcam feed
- Pulling a keyword from the news headline to feed into the twitter feed and Flickr search.

Now, this is where we are starting to have problems with integrating the different parts of the code so they don't interfere with each other. My concern also is with the demands of the program on the computer once all the elements are integrated as already with two videos, the live webcam feed and the rss feeds has caused it to crash.

As it is visually coming together, it is exciting to see how the elements are begin visually integrated and imagining how it will look and the effect it will have when in context. As outlined above, we are beginning to have an idea of the meaning it will convey. At this point, our intended effect on the viewer is to make them stop and engage with the screens and the content. It could be interesting also to observe how viewers interact with the screens when the usual content is on and compare the effect as ultimately, with this project we are trying to create a conversation between the space, the screen, the content, the passive contributor and the viewer.

Back in the streets of the CBD

2009-10-06T22:17:00.000-07:00

Since presenting our concept last week and establishing our fundamental concept and logistical possibilities, this proved to be a good base on which to plan our visual aesthetic. At this point we have chosen to focus on the electronics store as our location and have begun seeking permission from such locations.

The screens in these locations display identical content on all the screens visual concepts have been prepared for this sort of set up but also in the case where we are able to display different aspects of our content on different screens, as shown in the image below.

It also shows two different potential treatments of the content. The image to the left reflects the traditional form of media formerly used to inform the public sphere of important societal issues and concerns. With the technological expansion, many if not most newspapers have had to reinvent themselves in a digital medium to stay in business. The scrunched nature of the newspaper reflects that for many newpaper business, the printed word has become uneconomical to maintain and is slowly becoming obsolete. This reflects one of the impacts of the digital age.

The layout, which reflects the newpaper style, displays content from news headlines and / or Twitter feeds, periodically updated and refreshed.

The second possible treatment came by realization that the multiple screens in a space was reminiscent of security systems where multiple areas could be surveyed at once. This idea prompted the idea of using several webcam feeds of the surrounding area in and outside the store to tap into the idea that this virtual space is still interlinked with the awareness of the physical space we occupy, both in immediate and wider surrounding area.

This design more successfully reflects the technological aspect of our concept and if we are restricted to the same content on all the screens, it can be adapted to suit this layout also by repetition of the layout shown below.

This combines the same elements of content with the same visual aesthetic, possibly also more successful as it shows a clear link to the idea that technologies have allowed us to be globally interactive. We have already begun to try composing this in Processing and bringing in feeds. We have enquired not just at potential locations but have also contacted Flickr, NZ Herald and Twitter to ensure we follow all requirements to avoid breaching any copyright restrictions on displaying content accessed through feeds.

With time starting to run short, we need to have this up and running on site next week but the wheels have been put into motion.

Delving futher into the space

2009-10-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

To work on padding out our concept, we narrowed our options down to four possible locations and expanded on the possibilities of these in terms of the meaning behind the screen, the location and the impact the context would have on the content of our screen.

The "outdoor arena" which I discussed in my previous post presented itself as a setting which, like a screen, can offer an escapism from your immediate surroundings, in this case, a chance to stop, slow down and sit down away from the bustle of the city. The screen in this context is reminiscent of the traditional domestic ad private use of the screen in the home where everyone would escape the outside world to sit around the TV. In this sort of situation, our content would bring the notion of the virtual public sphere into the pysical, showing the viewer that while they were in this physical setting, it would be showing the wider physical world changing which we can access through the screen through the expansion of technology. We have however had to write off this idea as the logistics in getting a screen and powering it outdoors would be beyond budget, as well as risks with the weather.

The screen in the shopping mall too had to be written off as it's predominant focus is for advertising which would put an entirely different meaning to our content, as well as the fact that the nature of it's location is that it is only glimpsed for a few moments by passing people and would be difficult to hold their attention.

The two ideas we are focusing on at the moment are The Link Bus and The Electronics Store. Again, as outlined in the previous post, the Link Bus already contains existing screens to provide a diversion from the everyday mundane activity of the commute. The public space is only accessible by paying a fare and the passengers which occupy the space often facilitate little interaction, focusing instead on the screen. The disengagement experienced with the immediate physical space is substituted with the engagement of the virtual world displayed on the screen, that is the virtual public sphere. The notion of the bus and transport enable easy access for the commuter to the wider public sphere, the same way that technology has integrated into our lives to enable easy access to communicate with the wider world around us which we may not otherwise easily be able to physically access. This is relfected in our content and runs parallel to the existing content on the screens which display information about the businesses and services offered near the bus route.

Where this one of our strongest ideas so far, it carries a lot of potential logistical problems which we will look into before writing it off completely. Otherwise, we have also identified electronic stores as another potential location. These store often have entire wall displays of television screens displaying the identical content, often for entertainment such as music videos. The effect is that the viewer is confronted with these screens, filling their entire field of vision in what is almost a hypnotic effect. This quite literally represents the presence of screens in our everyday life but on a scale which is unignorable; one may think that it is an exaggerated example but just walking down Queen Street, the viewer encounters probably the same amount of screens. The content also raises the idea that where it is there for the customers entertainment, it is at the same time displaying and advertising the product itself and keeping the customer in the store longer. While the customer watches the screens, they too are also being watched on the store's surveillance system.

The setting also literally places the viewer in amongst the technological advancements which has resulted in the expansion of the public sphere into the virtual. The main kinds of people who go into electronic stores are the younger generation who have grown up with the technology, and the adult population who has seen the exponential growth of the technology. The product appeal to our 'want' instincts: we WANT the latest and the newest gadgets, we WANT to be in touch and keep up to date, we DON'T WANT to be left behind. By having the latest, we are convinced we are in touch with the expanding world. Despite their high price tags, we often sacrafice to have them, or just go inside the store to have a look around at the things we want, even if we know we can't have them.

Logistically this is the most feasible idea as we would be dealing with more directly with the people involved in their operation and location and we have several options with the city area.

Presenting these ideas to the class on Wednesday, I realised we broke the rule of presentations by placing far too much words and content on the slides (which are viewable by the clickable links above) which makes the presentation less successful as the audience is conflicted by trying to focus on the exessive content on screen and the presenters speaking. I also realised as soon as we got up there that we had not yet put any though into the visual aesthetic of the content. We had focused on the concept, the locations, the logistics, how to pull the content together but I had only very quickly and crudely thrown together a vague visual representation of our intended content. This was quickly called up during presentation and so our next phase is to plan how we will visually present our content in a way which will unify our concept, screen, location and content into a coheive whiole. I see this as an opportunity too to pull at my design skills which I haven't used much this year.

Next step too is to put the wheels of the logistics in motions by writing up letters outlining our intention and requesting permission from both locations and potential rescources (such as news websites, Flickr, Twitter etc.) to ensure we don't encounter problems around copyright. This way, once our concept and visuals are soundly established and we get the go ahead from lecturers, we will be ready!

Link to the world

2009-09-25T16:24:00.000-07:00

We once again take to the streets of Auckland City, this time looking for what has so integrated ourselves into our public spaces that we hardly notice them. When you actually begin to look, you find screens everywhere, removed a recontextualized from the traditional domestic setting, sitting around with the family. Once we began to think about it, we notice four predominant purposes and uses for these screens: providing information, entertainment, advertising and surveillance.

And in fact screens are often used as a form of "Out of Home Advertising", which encompasses other forms of media such as billboards, have proved to be a much more effective at providing instant impact and appeal, in particular to people and consumers on the go. It is a highly visible medium but tends to appeal more to people through engagement rather than intrusion such as other traditional forms of advertising and, based on the context, is tailored to maximize communication with target audiences.

Though screens in urban spaces aren't necessarily always purely for advertising, it is important to remember that someone put the screen there to get something out of it. Many retail stores down Queen Street have screens with what would be classified as entertainment for the shopper but in each store, the content of the entertainment is relevant to the 'theme' of the shop (i.e. content of outdoor activities in sports equipment stores, pop music videos in clothing stores targeted at teens) and has the underlying purpose of keeping that shopper in the store longer which increases the chance that they will purchase more. Venues such as bars often screen big events (often sports) to create a communal, social space to bring together people of common interests, and if they are having a good time, they will stay longer and buy more drinks. So even when screens seem to be for entertainment, it can still act as a very subtle advertisement for the location itself.

Though we aren't focusing for this project on urban screens purely as a form of advertising, the concepts of contextualization are important. The other important aspect is that of the public space. Where the public sphere used to be a literal physical space for coming together to discuss important issues, we have chosen to take this idea of the virtual public sphere which has emerged through the internet; the virtual world has become the place where anyone can discuss their opinions and thoughts on important issues to facilitate change.

We are wanting to make this connection between the virtual and physical public sphere through the idea that despite what physical space you are occupying, the virtual public sphere enables to you be connected to what is happening in other physical spaces around the world. Our basic concept at the moment is based on periodic photographs taken of a space to show how it changes and what happens throughout the course of the day. When each photograph is taken, a program will pull RSS feed from a recent newspaper headline (traditional informative media), occurring as close as possible to the time the photo was taken, and take a key word from the headline which will then further pull from other RSS feeds from sources such as Flickr (images), Tweets (comments) and Blogs (opinions). This combination of media will represent the ways in which we process, understand and experience events, unlimited by physical distance to interact. It is the idea that we can almost be everywhere in the world at the same time.

Ultimately, the content and conceptual meaning will be impacted by the context in which we choose to use our screen. Possible locations (with logistal complications aside) for this are parks or public transport.

Public open spaces within the city can tap into that idea of the traditional domestic use of a television as a place to stop and sit down and engage with the content as these parks within the city offer that chance to escape from the fast paced rush of the city to sit down and engage with a different setting and atmosphere. Interestingly enough, we also noticed the large open space outside the shopping mall is overlooked by the upstairs food court where diners sit looking out the window at this open space with the same sort of fixation as one would a television screen but rather the physical space outdoors has become the content.

Public transport raises ideas around public sphere within the context of public transport; there is a borderline of the public space as you have to pay a fare to access it and once on it, you often don't engage with those around you. Busses such as The Link are equipped with screens which provide all four types of content which we have identified (advertisments, new, weather and location information, surveillance footage and snippets of movies) and the context creates the perfect situation for engagement as people often have nothing to do during such commutes, giving them something to focus on. At the same time, the idea of transport and movement links to the idea of events happening in the world around you, as though you were moving around the world.

The next step now is to focus more in fusing the concept with what is logistically possible in preperation presentation of concepts next week.

Reminissions

2009-08-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

A bit of a belated continuation of the activity from last week where we looked at What's and Idea? What's a Concept and where do I get one?, I interviewed my object the same way in which I was required to approach the objects which belonged to other people, that is, removing all assumptions and associations, letting the object speak through the qualities which I can perceive.

I found this a little bit easier and worked around adapting the questions I had asked for the other objects. I think some of my bias and familiarity did come through in the end but I tried to answer based purely on the visual aesthetics and their connotations. Interview can be found by clicking here.

Next step now is to look at the interviews conducted by other people with my objects and from there I found it interesting to look at the different styles and approaches other people had taken to this activity.

I liked that Jason made assumptions on weaving together almost a character for it, giving it a set name (pillyD) and experiences ("I came close to being lost while on school camp") I do not know if this was the case, but I am wondering whether he was relating it to a similar object he has or once had and basing his answers around that whilst still basing it on physical features of it ("Have you always had an image?; No, my owner gave me a transfer"). I thought it was daring to try guess at fairly specific details of the object which are in fact pretty open ended to guess at correctly but I enjoyed reading about it.

I felt that Lisa tried more to personify it, giving it more human characteristics and reactions to her questions (" I’m old enough now though i feel young as I’m in a good condition.") Though I feel like she kept some of her questions fairly obvious ("what colour are you?; Creamy white"), with a few of the questions she began to tap into some of the less obvious connotations behind the physical characteristic and letting the object speak for itself ("I’m a blanket i was used to keep warm, to comfort a child, to be an important object in the life of a child that is my use and will forever be my use for generations.")

Ryan seemed a midground between Lisa and Jason, trying not to stamp it with any fixed meaning or assumptions ("Does your owner like Donald Duck?; All kids like Donald Duck..."), but evidently also trying to find some meaning from the physical ("you're in a good condition, were you well looked after?; yush my owner loves me") and the connotations of what it was ("is the current owner the intended recipient of you?; "Probably it was made for the family.")

Overall, the related words arose repeatedly from all three interviews were faded, frayed, thinned, old, unstitched, delicate, repaired which related to the immediate physical appearance of it from which everyone could understand that it was an old object which had been in someones posession for an extended period of time. The other main idea came from the words precious, comfort, reassurance, emotionally, depressed, child, relationship, small, Donald Duck, and cartoon which began to read past the physical into the connotations of the object and letting it speak for itself and the sentimental value behind it. They were all able to understand it as a momento from childhood which had endured many experiences and emotions.

From these common ideas and words, I now have to develop a visual signifier to communicate these same qualities without directly representing my object, which I feel the purpose of which is to explore the symbols and triggers from which understand both established meaning and associated meaning from contextual factors.

Interview with the self

2009-08-20T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today's activity was useful in exploring the creation of a concept. It was a good chance to revisit the meanings behind our instruments after having a week to disengage from it and reflect upon it refreshed. I will also take this opportunity to post my final video of my performance.

So I suppose what immediately stands out, why Coca Cola Bottles?
Several reasons, in terms of an instrument, the shape of them gives a really good sound when pressurized. In terms of concept, the Coca Cola contour bottle has become an icon, it is instantaneously recognisable and designed to be as such. You can look at my piece and even though the bottles have had their labels removed, there is no doubt what they are.

What sort of comment is this making on Coca Cola?
It is making a comment not specifically to Coca Cola but large scale companies and the marketing measures they put into place to enforce consumer branding and awareness. It is like instantaneous recognition young children make with the Golden Arches to get that branding in at a young age and imbed that loyalty into them.

In what other ways does your design reflect this?
The structure which houses the bottles is to allude to the shelf presence of Coca Cola, the monopoly if you will. You walk into any dairy or supermarket and there will be an entire shelf or fridge just top to bottom with the different sizes and ranges of Coke. You know with a supermarket that nothing is ever placed accidently, shelf space is like property, each shelf position has it's own value based on it's position relative to eye level and distance down the eye, all calculated in terms of studies of the psychology of shopping. It is all about marketing, consumerism and consumption, we are being manipulated to buy. My instrument takes the Coca Cola fridge out of context , it is taken in isolation to reflect this idea that you are manipulated to see only the Coca Cola and no other brand. Physically you are confronted with the presence of it, it fills your entire field of vision.

So was your use of the bottles initially for their sound or the concept?
I started with the concept, simply consumerism, that which I have been interested in for a long time. I worked through some ideas around this but none which I could really apply musically. I was thinking of using multiple of an object from looking at Andy Warhol's work, in particular his Soup Cans as these alluded to the same umbrella of ideas, so from there the Coca Cola bottles seemed the obvious direction with suggestion from Phil Dadson. His musical experience was a great help in applying my more visual idea.

Why are you so interested in this concept?
I have been working in retail for over three years now so have seen first hand some of the chaos of consumerism. Working in a large scale homewares store over Christmas one year I saw not just the mad rush, the inflated emphasis on buying, the sales, the stock going out as faster than it came in. It seemed unbelievable with the amount of stock we were selling that people still needed to buy more. It didn't seem possible that the supposed need for all these objects was never fulfilled. I am also quite environmentally conscious so when I began to look at the other end of the objects life-span, the mindless disposal into landfills is directly related to this mindless spending and buying which we are manipulated to do.

So who is the target audience of your work?
I don't make any bold positive or negative statements, this particular work is quite neutral, mostly stating the facts that we chose to ignore. I actually have a level of respect for those who come up with marketing tactics because they really are clever. It isn't necessarily a bad thing but I want to make the general consumer aware of why they consume the way they do. We all know excess consumption, such as that of Coca Cola, is bad for us but wonder why we do it. I like to understand things and like to create things that help people open up to something they may not have been aware of, think of something in a new way.

You've explained the visual aesthetic but how does it relate to the fact that it is an instrument?
Music and jingles also play an important part in marketing. The high pitched 'ping' noise alludes to the tone adopted by Coca Cola in their advert, they portray magical worlds, happy people on beaches, celebrations, special ocassions; all part of the positive images and experiences they want you to associate with consuming their product. The particular advert my instrument is a reference to is the magical journey which takes place in a fantasty world inside the vending machine. This seems to have very little to do with Coca Cola but emparts a cute, happy feeling enhanced with the sweet, music box like tones.

How does this piece relate to previous works you've done?
In a previous project to design and build a wearable human interface, I created a stark white plaster human face with switches, which, when triggered would set off a stream of images relating to emotions. This relates to the 'facelessness' of consumerism, we are perhaps a blank canvas so open to manipulation. We are at the mercy of clever marketing who can control how we feel to make us want to buy a product. We are the white plaster face, our inputs are triggered by advertisments, the output is an evoked emotion.

How would you build on this concept in future projects?
I want perhaps to make something that makes a stronger comment because the hot issue at the moment is in creating a sustainable planet, a goal we are far from. I want to make something people can interact with, take art off the walls, something people can physically interact with and take some understanding with them to change some aspect of their life.

20 questions

2009-08-19T23:15:00.000-07:00

Despite being struck by plague and having to have missed two lessons of this studio project, I was pleased that the days' activities were self contained so I didn't feel like so behind, though it was interesting trying to make sense of the shapes and constructs around the studio.

I liked the sound of today's activity which began with bringing in a personal object which required almost no thinking as to what I brought along. When asked to pull them out, it was suddenly strange bringing it into this new context, writing about it proved to be much easier as the personal significance of my object again didn't require much thinking.

A personal object of personal significance - something you value because of it's meaning to you, not its worth. Write an explanation of why your object is important to you and what meanings you attach to it. (click on the below image)

The objects were all then placed upon the table for scrutiny. We all seemed perhaps a bit hesitant, due to their personal significance perhaps leaving us feeling vulnerable. My gentle Mimi seemed out of place amongst the half a dozen or so electronics. Upon given the task of having to 'interview' the objects, each object was taken for scrutiny. It was strange to have my object taken away from me but then it was interesting watching Ryan as he interrogated it, analyzing in great detail the physicality of it, exploring the texture, the shape, the nature, but he handled it gently, valuing it for this physicality and the meaning behind it. I liked this as it explored the character which I had recalled in my analysis of its significance to me. Jason similarly asked my permission before picking it up which showed the same level of respect for the object.

I also noticed more people were inclined to interview the digital object, perhaps because we engage better with technological objects; they are more customizable, easier to engage with and understand, we can associate with a similar thing we posses ourselves so can relate to. Some of the other object, perhaps like mine are fairly ambiguous and we lack the contextual understanding of the connotations and associations, bringing to it their own instead. This was an approach I took in my interviews, trying to imagine as though the objects as though they were mine. Click on the below images to see the interview.

I felt this activity was useful in exploring the potential conceptual meaning behind an object by using our own experiences and objects as a starting point. From here now, we have to go back to our own objects to explore it as though we had no emotional link to it, the way the others in the class experienced it and then attempt to represent it based on our own interpretation and the interpretations of others.

Showtime and reflection.

2009-08-14T15:50:00.000-07:00

Two hours before we were due to perform I found I was lacking inspiration in playing my instrument. I found that I wasn't coming up with anything new, exciting or different everytime I went to play it. After having a bit of collaboration with Ryan and Seamus, I found that my instrument works quite well when played by two people and the scale allows for it nicely.

Come time for performance I started out playing it solo and then invited Seamus who so kindly went up on stage for the third time that night to play duet. And in fact, I am seeing and discovering over and over again the benefits of the nature of the many levels of collaboration that occur within our group, not just in the final performances but in the nature of the shared studio space. As our ideas and projects develop, we learn from and offer our individual talents and skills to those around us. Seamus, being quite naturally and by developed skill a musical had a lot of offer to the class but even as our instruments neared their finished state, we began to experiment in playing with each others instruments hence we all learned more about our own.

As usual, I was amazed at the range of different ideas and shapes and forms we had all explored to each come up with something different and unique, often reflecting our interests and existing skills. The final result I think left us all quite amazed at what we had achieved. The range of musical ability was greatly varied in the class but the overall level of performance I think, as was the consensus, greater than what any of us were expecting. Even those who weren't used to the nature of performance were proud of what they had created that they managed to come through as confidence.

What else I found really interesting was that where I'd seen some of the instruments develop from concept to finished product, there were a few I hadn't seen at all so even at the end I saw new object and ideas emerge. On top of that, one of my friends came along to the performance with her little brother and two of his friends in tow (they'd been enticed along to 'a free music thing in town') so it was also exciting to see that reaction from people the outside who were seeing it all for the first time with not a lot of background knowledge on what the project was all about. All of them were from quite musical backgrounds and really enjoyed it. I could tell that at first they were having the same sort of reaction I had when I went to see Phil's performance but they soon got into it. My friend said that she even felt inspired to go home and make something.

A lot of constructive feedback came from crit the next day. Feedback to mine was again the logistics of the upright position of the stand and that it would've been more successful in terms of playable ability if the bottles we horizontal and more spaced apart. We discussed my concept and that the stance I had originally taken on the marketing effect of Coca Cola ended up being more neutral one rather than any strong statement. Suggested ways to improve this would be to have perhaps one odd bottle out to allude to the monopoly of Coke or to link it back to the effect on the consumer, as I had looked at with the Coca Cola robot presented by SWAMP, perhaps by use of my impliments I hit it with such as a syringe. I definitely feel my design could be improved in many ways if ever chose to, whilst taking this feedback, from my personal experience playing it I'd also increase the scale of it so that it could be played by more people.

Overall I found this project a bit more challenging that the other, just because it was outside my sphere of skills. I was forced to think of design outside my usual focus on purely the visual to think also about the sound. Though it was suggested and encouraged we use Solid Works when developing our designs, I chose not to use it as by that point I was feeling too rushed for time to try pick up a new piece of software but I do see it's potential and that it would've been helpful. I am keen to learn it for future projects, especially as I would like to experiment with using the 3D printer at some point, if appropriate to a project. Otherwise, there was a less of a focus on the digital side for this project compared to the other as really it was only Ryan and Zac who chose to manipulate digital aspects to create sound while everyone else focused on the acoustic, with the occasional contact mic. I enjoyed having performance as a part of assessment and hope we have more like this again.

Preemptive performance post

2009-08-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

It is performance day and this week has finally brought together a a myriad of interesting noises as the instruments have begun to reach completed states. We started to experiment with sounds with some improvisation activities which linked back nicely to the introduction activities we did where we paid attention to the sound around us and began to think about how we could add to this sound on the basis of listening.

We started by listening to the existing sounds in the greenroom and then we had to add something. This activity was a lot more successful when we turned out the lights as we became disengaged from the physical to focus more purely on the sounds, and hence we able to communicate and res pond more successfully. It also enabled us to escape any self consciousness. What resulted was a composition of sounds of movement, interaction with objects arou nd us, vocal sounds and some even began to incorporate our instruments. Other activites included just the use of vocals and holding a note for a breaths length which created some beautiful harmonies.

I was glad I went along to Phil's performance last week as I felt I had a better understanding of the approach we are supposed to now take with our instruments, as well as a better understanding of the way in which Phil's group were able to interact without verbal communication to create cohesive sound. It was a similar sort of effect we began to achieve in these activities an d it begun to get me excited again about this performance.

My instrument is more or less in a finished state but given enough time or another opportunity, there are still ways I'd refine it. Some of the bottles are unable to hold the compression for a long period of time and I always have to retune it. Three or four of the bottles leak completely and are unable to hold any compression so James discussed with me the need to calculate for a 'failure rate' when designing and constructing and have some spares on hand. Both James and Phil discussed with me the physical logistics of performance with my object in that it would be easier to play if the frame was horizontal or if the bottles are on an angle. I see the point they are making but for this performance I am going to stay with the vertical stand as it is more in keeping with my concept and my original focus on something which is more physically performative.

Now that we have the performance space available to us, I was able to start thinking more about this performative aspect in terms of using the space. I have experimented with setting up lighting with a red gel behind my instrument with the rest of the room in darkness so that the light shines through the bottles and the frame is mostly obscured. I will be behind the instrument but will attempt to set up the light so that my movements are shown by long shadows thrown on the ground. This is what I have to experiment with before tonight as well as becoming more familiar with my instrument and the tools I have developed to play it with.

Construction...and deconstruction

2009-08-10T01:21:00.000-07:00

The latter half of last week following confirmation of final design was spent in the 3D lab; the holes were drilled for the bottle caps to sit in an suspend the bottle from, recesses were cut to act as slots for the 'shelves' to slide in and out of for easy removal to change placement of bottles and it was all then put together, all in relatively hasslefree manner. Where my calculations for the height of the bottles was correct to determine the height of each shelf, I hadn't accounted for the additional height to the bottle by addition of the valve.

Seeing no other or easier way around it, it was pulled apart, recalculated and painstakingly reconstructed. The best way to test the strength of a join is to try pull it apart, a task which in itself proved difficult. From there, I had to cut new recesses, fill the old ones and attach additional lengths of wood to add extra height, then put it all back together, sand it down and paint it. All made possible with the ever vigilant and helpful 3D lab technicians.

I am pleased with the overall visual aesthetic, especially when finally came time to put the bottles on. The visual impact is exactly what I'd been hoping for from the relatively simplistic design with the repetition of shape and graduations of size. Where I'd been hoping to reflect the organic shape of the bottle in my design, the geometric shape of the structure actually works quite well in contrast to it. It is a presentation of the bottles not unlike that which we're used to (ie shelves and fridges in stores) but it is decontextualized from this location. The labels have been removed from the bottles but it is still instantaneously recognizable as the product it is. I feel the implications of this are a comment on the techniques employed to emforce brand and product awareness as means of boosting sales, in the short and immediate, as well as the long term.

I was very glad to have found my bike pump which makes the process of fine tuning the sound a lot easier than having to get access to the air compressor everytime. I managed to get some sort of tuning done, varying tones across the sizes. In preperation for performance on Thursday, I can now focus back on the performative aspect of it and what sort of sound I hope to create, perhaps in collaboration with someone else.

Under Pressure

2009-08-04T23:21:00.001-07:00

To inform my own research and design, I went along Tuesday night to see a four hour non-stop improvised experimental music performance. One of the performers was non other than Phil who is taking us for this studio project.

I was interested to see him perform as he had already impressed me with his ability to pick up anything and make it musical and he'd shown us a few of his own experimental instruments so I was keen to see these in action.

Upon first entering the back room of The Wine Cellar, it was strange to walk in where it had already started. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was almost unnatural to listen to at first, perhaps due to the fact that we are conditioned into a type and misconception about what music 'should' sound like. But I found that as I relaxed into the deep couches and absorbed the atmospheric lighting and space, the sounds just started to sound right. Even without communication, the three performers always seemed to thinking in tandem and creating something as though composed, at times almost like a conversation between the instruments. Imperceptible transitions changed the mood from tense, to calm, to suspenseful, to even comical at times. We found ourselves commenting on what the mood reminded us of, from chase scene, to horror movie, to walk in the park. It was a very ambient sound and I found myself absorbing it in almost a trance and, in fact, the performers seemed to be in a trance and working intuitively. I didn't stay the full four hours but was sad to leave.

Back in the studio and my own construction, following some calculations I began to doubt the feasibility of my intended construction, in particular the metal coils. I decided to go ahead and try it out with minor modifications but following a class 'show and tell' session with Phil and James, they confirmed my doubts and helped me move in another direction. I have scrapped the coils and now going for a simple wooden shelf frame with different sized bottles on each shelf. This is in fitting with my concept as the marketing of Coca Cola has reached such a point that in any store which sells it, it takes up a larger shelf presence in it's range of sizes and flavours so that it engulfs the potential consumers vision. They are forced to confront it, increasing the chance they will purchase it while adding to brand awareness and familiarity.

In terms of construction, I have my materials purchased, holes drilled in the shelves for the bottles to sit in, held in by the caps ( to reduce dampening of the sound) and the valves have been inserted into the caps. Armed with an air compressor, I began experimenting with pressurizing the bottles. Most of my joins held and I was very pleasantly surprised at the sound given off which sounded nothing like a plastic bottle. It was more of a 'ping' sound which resonated loudly even when I simply struck it with my nails so once constructed, it will be a matter of experimenting with different beaters. I managed to get a range of tones across the same sized bottles but until my support structure is completed, it is difficult to experiment with tone variation across the different sizes, but at least I know that it will work and it will be simply a matter of fine tuning.

Brainstorming and Brainwashing

2009-07-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

This week has been slow going in the design and development phase. The most difficult part has been trying to think of my design in terms of something that will be acoustically successful. This may be a bit obvious given the basis of the project is to create a sound producing instrument but I've found myself thinking more in terms of visual aesthetic and performative capability.

Initial ideas were to create something large scale so I could really physically interact and perform with it. Aside from a few smaller ideas, my main one I though about was revisiting an earlier side project where I controlled an animation on screen by tap dancing, wired up and programmed with a keyboard hack. I though about applying these same concepts through a large scale xylophone like structure, capable of supporting my weight. Where this would work as an acoustic instrument, I could also add a digital element by wiring up the different notes and the plates of the tap shoes, perhaps to somehow manipulate the sound.

From there, I began to link it more to a conceptual basis. and context. I have always been interesting in ideas around consumerism and thinking about this enabled me to start developing my ideas. The xylophones turned to cans with product labels on them, reminiscent of Andy Warhol's 100 Soup Cans which reflects this idea of mass production, consumption and availability of consumer products and brand awareness and marketing. After discussion with Phil, he suggested a way to use this same concept but helped me fill in the musical aspect of it. Instead of cans, it changed to Coca Cola Bottles which can be pressurized by inserting tyre valves into the caps to produce sound when hit. Similarly like, again, with Andy Warhol's Coca Cola Bottles, it presents the same idea but also in a product we are perhaps we can associate with more.

I felt additonally inspired by the exhibition and artist talk we went to last week which linked to my ideas and enabled me to develop them further. The work by SWAMP (Studies of Work Atmospheres and Mass Production) focuses around these ideas and in particular I was interested in the project Coke Is It which featured a robot programmed to search for puddles of Coca Cola on the floor which it would then suck up and spray over itself. The acidity of the Coke would eat through the umbrella above it and leak into the circuitry of the robot, causing it to short circuit and break down. Essentially it is an explicit commentary on "the routine destruction we do to our bodies" by consumption of the product which we know if bad for us, but continue to consume anyway, almost like we have been programmed to do so.

To translate the concept and acousitc element back into a visual and performative instrument. Researching further into the design and marketing of Coca Cola, I discovered that the unique design of the bottle is designed so that "a person will recognise as a Coca-Cola bottle even if he feels it in the dark. The Coca-Cola bottle should be shaped that, even if broken, one could tell at a glance what it was". Similarly the unique curve which has become integrated into it's marketing has also become iconic and instantaneously recognizable. From there, I was thinking about the nature of marketing and the methods companies go to to encourage brand awareness was not unlike brainwashing. To play on the curve and contour bottle, I am wanting to create a spiral which will hold the 5 different sized bottles and spin when hit to give the illusion that the bottles are suspended in midair while the spiral is spinning. This design came from the idea of garden wind chimes, shown in the image to the left.

I intend to make five of these spirals giving me 25 different sounds to use. The only thing now I am brainstorming is the best sort of support structure to build to suspend them from. On possible idea was a child's mobile-like structure to allude to the young age from which we are targeted, like how icons such as the Golden Arches of McDonald's for a young child become connotative of good experiences.

Mission now is to collect materials and experiment on a smaller scale to ensure it will produce the result I want before embarking on a larger scale.

Exploration

2009-07-24T02:02:00.003-07:00

Part 2 of 2

On this note, we once again took to the streets of Auckland City in a 'Sound Walk', another way to add to our growing repertoire of ways to explore and experience the city. This time, we went on the same pathway though on our own, listening and recording the sounds we hear in terms of distance, volume, frequency and other similar aspects. There was no sort of set format in which we were meant to record it so I chose to do it in terms of a timeline / graph with different colours.

I have never extensively studied music so describing the nature of sounds it isn't some I have a lot of experience with. When encouraged to think of it compositionally, as though putting together a musical score with harmonies, gave me more to think about as I went along. Though most the recurring sounds were the same with only about five or six dominant sounds, what I found more interesting was in fact how they seemed to be composed. Thinking past just listening to what the sound itself was, the challenge was to listen to how it was and how it changed.

Like a musical score, I found interesting occurrences in the city sounds. Some noises followed patterns which seemed to repeat at more or less regular interval, such as the sin or cos graphs. The most dominant noise in the city is of course that of traffic but even that rose and fell, both in distance, volume and pitch. Then, other sounds seemed to reply in conversation with this, as the car noises died away, the more subtle noises such as peoples voices, footsteps and birds rose in apparent volume and distance, then dying as the cars dominated again, creating an inverse graph.

In terms of the journey itself, this can be expanded further depending on the location. Directly alongside the streets would be a strong introduction, softening as I entered Myers park where the streen noises were a faint accompaniment to the people's voices - imagined as though the vocal accompaniment - the wind in the trees, footsteps and other sounds occuring as the result of physical movement, the singing of the birds, and even the trickling of water into the drain. Exiting the park and up the steps which would gradually take me back to the bustling streets of K' Rd, the music of the cars would once again intensify and dominate, yet with a gradual transition between the two.

In contrast to this activity, the next day's project instead took us to the architecture department where we were sealed inside a Anechoic Chamber to experience the absense of sound. We found that with all noises from outside the room completely sealed off, we were able to focus completely on our internal noises, such as the high pitched squeal of the nervous system, and the low pitched thud of the heart. Noises inside the room as people moved, breathed and spoke were experienced in a completely different way as the accoustics of the room were designed so that sounds didn't reflect of the foam walls. When the lights were turned out, the mind was completely disoriented with no reference points with which to place sound and even a cough from across the room sounded like it was in your ear.

By developing a greater understanding of how we experience and register sound, we will be able to take this into the context in which we create our sonic objects. I felt these activities were helpful as they helped me think about sound in new ways by removing some of the filters we apply automatically in everyday life. I will use these to inform my research and develop my initial ideas and concepts.

Back to basics

2009-07-23T02:57:00.000-07:00

Part 1 of 2

Given the task of creating an instrument from a cardboard box, I saw everyone approach it hands on and just go for it, armed with scissors, glue, knives and whatever else they could get their hands on. In my usual methodical approach, I had to sit down and think about it for a while and jot down some ideas. I think everyone else had the right idea, especially when the project was compared to that given to pre-schoolers and in that sense, I thought about how pre-schoolers would feel less inhibited, allowing them to fully unleash their creativity and see what comes out. Perhaps this is the approach required if I am to experiment with more risk taking.

As it was, I found myself sitting surrounded by an assortment of film canisters, metal and plastic strings, metal hooks, balloons and, of course, glue and scissors. Taking the basic anatomy of an instrument, the cardboard box acts as the amplifier or resonating chamber. Beyond this, I found myself fairly uninspired at first.

After brainstorming various methods of creating the various features which make an instrument, I decided to take the more hands on approach and learn by doing, and just explored the potential of the shapes and textures made possible with the film canisters. I also experimented with some metal wire which had been a spiral binding for a note pad and experimented with the pitch given when uncoiled to different lengths, and with some plastic wire stretched out with metal hooks and a styrofoam bridge, I used film canisters as movable bridges. This resulted in varying degrees of success in terms of sound, the most successful of which was the metal wire.

I found it hard to work with the cardboard box as I found it hard to present something that wasn't visually refined; every time I looked at it, it was to me still just a kettle box with film canisters stuck to it. It was important to try remember that this was still purely experimental and not meant to be a refined final product. Essentially, it was where were all at anyway and like with my experiences, we were all at varying degrees of success.

Through presentation we discovered that we had all experimented with not just the potential, but the limitations of the cardboard as a material. Some had established that their designs would work better with a more rigid material such as wood, but others found that the limitations gave it a new shape or other unexpected result which they wouldn't have thought of but gave an overall successful outcome. This reinforces the experimental approach as the best results can be unplanned, then taken to be refined.

To add another aspect to our instruments, we constructed contact microphones simply by soldering wires onto the required plates and plugs which were provided. The purpose of adding these was to pick up sounds and vibrations we might not be able to hear other wise, enhance and otherwise alter and projects the sounds in a different way. I didn't use the potential of the cardboard box too well as an amplifier, so it didn't work too well acoustically but the microphone amplified the sounds and gave more of a distinct tonal variation between the different sized film canisters which was distinguishable acoustically. What I would be able to improve on is to experiment with different tool with which to play it to give more interesting variety of sounds.

Overall what we got out of this activity is an initial understanding and basis for what is and isn't successful for creating sound from our own experiences and each others' presentations. From here, I believe this will serve as a basis to develop on and experiment with for the sonic objects which we will design, build and perform. I feel I've definitely learnt from it as music and sound isn't an area I've extensively studied in the past so this next brief will be a challenge but I am looking forward to the performance aspect.

Preemptive reflection: Semester 2

2009-07-20T15:22:00.000-07:00

Following a briefing on what semester 2 has in store, we were also given some pointer based on last semesters' projects and presentations as to what had to be improved overall. They were points we'd briefly highlighted before but it was good to be refreshed and go more in depth. The challenge this semester is o extend our ideas with more thoroughly developed and thought out concepts by linking to context which will help us approach our ideas with more confidence, which will then lead to taking more risks to achieve an overall more interesting outcome.

In some of my more final reflective blog entries from last semester, I had recognized this (having been pointed out by James then as well) and once again I relate it back to the process I followed in my art making last year, particularly in art design. Where, given a brief, we came up with our initial ideas and context, generated a range of concepts, chose one or two to develop and refine, go back and evaluate, then go back and do it again, developing on to achieve a more refined product from seeing what works and what doesn;t work.

Following our introduction to our new theory paper, Maths and Art, when presented with a complex sentence and situation to deconstruct, analyse and think about, I feel it provided a good sort of note to start on by encouraging that sort of critical thinking, looking for further ideas.

I feel I need to keep these ideas and skills in mind during the semester to extend on what I achieved in semester 1.Though they were processes I was already familiar with, I think I instesad chose to focus too much the introcudtion of the new context of a higher and different level of study, not thinking to incorporate these skills I already had. Now more familiar with the process of the studio projects, I can integrate the two.

The other big challenge I think everyone struggles to overcome is that of time constraints and that can only be overcome with careful planning, motivation and the right mindset, or, like me, not trying to do everything. I need to work on pacing myself in terms of what is possible within the given time frame. Having also only done only one group project so far, I know that where I prefer working on my own, it is vital I learn to work in a group as well.

Overall am looking forward to the upcoming projects and papers and after a long holiday, am ready to get back into it.

The end

2009-06-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Preemptive reflection: Having already heard from a few people and read a few blogs in reflection of their final crits, I am feeling at mixed levels of prepared. I feel confident about being able to discuss my ideas and concepts behind my projects, especially the main project I am presenting, as for me the concept is always primary and determines the form and the function. Hence I feel, everything I have created has justification behind it as it is the method I have learnt to work from in 2-3 years of art and design.

The week spent in preperation for the crits, as usual went faster than one would've liked and felt less than adequetie, leaving emotions tense and sleep left as perhaps a secondary priority. I chose to present my Apparatus for Cinematic Flaneur as I felt it works quite stronly visually with the bright colours and I was pleased with my concept and overall outcome. Looking back now, the night before presentation, I wish I'd taken this opportunity to go back and rework and refine my Body Interface with the suggestions I'd been given at the crit, that is, to make it an interactive piece. The difficulty in this would've been the lack of Max MSP but could've overcome by using the uni computers or possibly been reworked with other software such as Processing. I do feel I missed a chance by trying to stay with what was easy.

Otherwise, after some minor design difficulties in creating my A1 poster, I am only moderately satisfied with it. My A3 pages I feel are coherently and concisely collated but that I let myself down with messy presentation which could've been refined with only a little extra effort. Despite almost giving up on it, I managed to pull together a DVD of video documentation for all three projects, including Robo Dance which was the product of a late evening effort by me and Ryan even after we never wanted to look at the NXTs again after presentation (though I did have a bit of a laugh at some of the outtakes). This too was a little roughly put together but is something I will refine to keep as record for future reference with more footage I want to add too.

Post - Crit: In a nutshell, I feel my crit went well. First up, I enjoyed seeing the presentation of the second year in my crit group as even though I keep close contact with one or two or the second year students, it creates a useful reference point in regards to where their work is at, a year ahead of us. Looking at the motion sensor glove he and his group had developed, I began thinking about the function and practicality we attempt to create in our projects. It was something I began to notice in the prosthetic assignment were the two main categories of objects we were creating were either for the purpose of serving some functional purpose in everyday life, perhaps for those disabled in some way, or for gaming purposes, to make them more physically interactive.

In fact, perhaps this is a reflection upon our degree and industry, in the integration of the 'creative', that is the more playful and adventerous side, and the 'technologies', finding new and innovative ways to augment or enhance our everyday lives. In fact, looking at popular products and innovations on the market, they are heavily focued around these 'needs' and 'wants.' Taking this in reflection of the semester's work, it is the synthesis of these ideas and techniques we are trying to find and I feel I have already been equipped with a large range of tools to be able to achieve this, though at this point we have barely tapped into the potential of it all and I am merely splashing in the puddles.

Regardless, I am proud of all I have achieved and created this semester and I feel I was able to confidently and coherently discuss my ideas, methods and concepts with my supporting evidence and presentation material proving to be adequite. I am looking forward to showing all this off to friends and family at the Friday night open studio and having a proper look at my classmates' presentations as we have all come a long way from Day 1. I am excited to see where the next semester and next two years will lead us.

Collation

2009-06-10T14:48:00.000-07:00

Frantic preperation is now on to get our semester's work together for our final presentation and crits. It has been interesting, even at this relatively early stage to revisit the previous two studio projects which now feel like so long ago. They had been dismissed to the back to ones mind upon completion which is perhaps is a good way to do it as the distance means you can revisit and reflect with a clearer mind and perspective. Like I mentioned in reflection of my presentation on Friday, you get so close and personal to a project whilst working on it that it is difficult to stand back, disengage and really think about it and it's implications. This is something I am intending to do in my supporting material, take just a few paragraph to look at the wider implications and potential application of what I have achieved with each project and think about their potential to take it further. In fact I think that is what James is encouraging us to do, rather than dismissing projects which didn't work out completely, to go back and rework them and make them into something you're proud to display and confident in talking about.

Each project was not without it's constraints, the most commonly identified one being time. Even some of the small feed in projects I think I'd be keen to revisit one day, even outside the context of a brief which too can act as a constraint. I don't think I'm going to do much at this point for reworking any of my projects but I do want to explore some of their future potential, even if to incorporate as part of a future project as the skills we have acquired with the software and construction are easily adaptable to different briefs.

There has been a lot of confusion around the class as to exactly what we're supposed to do for presentation and crit but I see it quite simply as a concise overview, as an answer to the question if someone asked you 'what have you done this semester?' As our grades so far have been only summative grades, I also interpret it as showing what may not have come through. As the example I gave before, such as if perhaps the final product wasn't the best possible outcome, or even the other side of that if you started at point A, the brief, and ended up at point Z, the final presentation, by winging it and making up the night before and still managing to bluff a reasonable outcome. I see this as the opportunity to show the points in between A and Z; the ideas that didn't make it to presentation, the influences, the side roads, the detours, the construction. It reminds me of the additional optional scolarship paper which accompanies Level 3 NCEA art boards, where one present 8 A3 pages of journal work alongside their 3 A1 art boards to show exactly that; their thoughts, explored ideas, artist influences.

Even though I got a fairly abismal marks on both my scholarship entries for photography and design, I am feeling pretty confident. I am looking forward to showing off my work on the open studio on the Friday night and seeing what everyone else has put together. If nothing else, it will be another integral part to our constant process of reflection and learning from each other's skills.

The final roll

2009-06-05T02:53:00.000-07:00

In a retrospective look back at this project, I feel (like many others in the group) that a lot of my time was put into construction, a decent amount of time put into filming (the fun part!) and the final part of putting it all together was a tight squeeze in the last few days. Preparation for presentation - despite my goal following last presentation - was nothing more than mental dialogue on the bus to uni on the day. Only consolation was that this would've proved to be more or less redundant anyway as we were running tight on time but at least I will have a proper chance to present this and my other projects at the final crit.

From presentation, I did get a bit of feedback which surprised me, in questioning of my use of music and some of my composition of my video. I suppose like with any project, you get so close and emotionally attached to it, you have to step back and have a better look to be able to accept and identify with the criticism you receive.

I still believe my choice in music is justified as I felt that the simple accoustic guitar helped provide a pace and rhytm, like footsteps, without being overpowering. Sitting watching my video on a large screen, I felt like it was something I could just sit and mediate to, reminiscent of colourfield paintings where you respond to the interplay of colours devoid of recognisable subject matter, and hence, any assigned meaning. In reference to the city setting, I was trying to make a reference to the music of the buskers around the city and the glimpes of music you hear as you move through the city, perhaps coming back to later in the day from your subconscious experience of it, where you're not quite sure where you heard it but it is there.

Looking at my video again, I can understand and see how the compositions of my smaller strips were perhaps less successful as they are a bit more detached than the meditative effect of the full screen movements which engulf your vision. I was trying to make a reference to pathways and the more literal streets and paths through the city and the experiences along the way, visually also providing almost a bird's eye view.

On the whole, I was pleased with how my final result came out, especially as for at least half the project I wasn't even sure my risk would work out at all, potentially leaving me with nothing. I am glad I took this risk as I too often stay too close to my comfort zone and it is a much more satisfying result when you've taken a risk as the out come is less predicable.

Never the less, here is currently my finished outcome. I used finished lightly as going by a quote I once heard and taken to heart, 'An artwork is never finished. It just stops in interesting places.' With the chance to continue to develop and refine our projects in time for our final critique, I feel this is very apt.

Also, to aid my explanations, here is my documentation of how it all works!

Patterns and Pathways

2009-06-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

Following my predicament with the lack of continuity between the colours of the exposures, automatically adjusted by the negative scanner, I managed to find a way to more or less successfully weave them together into the strip I wanted. Definitely starting to look more like a Darren Glass Reference!

To turn this into a video, I was inspired by the 'Scratch Films' of Len Lye who would scratch directly into or paint onto film reels which were played back on a projector to creating patterns of moving lines, patterns, and colours, such as in his video 'Colour Box'. Despite lack of a movie projector, once I started playing around in Final Cut Pro, the way I imagined I'd make my idea work was deemed feasible. It was simply a matter of playing the still image into the timeline, extending it to the desired length and then using motion to adjust the x or y coordinate of the center point to change from one point to another over time. Hence it would move across the screen vertically or horizontally with only a section of it in the frame, giving the impression of the movement.

Image: Section of film from Len Lye's 'Colour Box'.

Once I managed to get them moving, it was a matter of composing them into a 2-3 minute sequence. It was these composition which would work in tune with the feeling of movement created by the individual films. The pathways, interactions and interceptions of the films are to reflect the infinite number of pathways and potential ways in which one can experience and move through the city, as with the infinite amout of ways I could combine and compose the films.

All, essentially for the purpose to linking back to my concept of capturing and conveying how the light and space shifts around us as we move through the city which taps into the way in which we psychologically experience the city. As it is almost completely abstract, the original subject and setting is indistinguishable as it is redundant, we remember more from our experiences how we felt at the time. We may not remember the exact paths we walk through the city but we recall the sense of movement, speed and constant turbulence.

As with other studio projects, there were a few bits of software to pick up. I found Final Cut Pro relatively easy to pick up as I'd done video editing in media studies for two years in high school, having created a short horror film and documentary. Final Cut was definitely more advanced that the software we'd used there but it was obviously the same concepts and mechanisms behind it. I disliked having to use Live Type as a separate piece of software to create the titles as it made it a lot more fiddly with the extra process of importing and exporting but I suppose that is often necessary with the overall complexity and vastness of each standalone program, of which we were only using what was probably just a small fraction.

It was good to develop on from these existing skills I'd previously developed and especially when I got to using DVD Studio Pro to create the menu which would enable it to burn a readable DVD. Even though menu functions on DVDs are a commonality, it never occurred to me as something that was possible for me to create as well so that was a really satisfying result and greatly improved the aesthetic of the final DVD.

I feel I have taken away a lot of skills from this project, in both metal work and technical and with software. As with other projects I have found I am starting to think of other projects I can incorporate these into or how I can keep developing my ideas. I think that is actually something I need to work on more towards the beginning of the project, that is, pushing more of a variety of ideas. It was a process I actually conformed to a lot last year in the method and criteria of NCEA where art design, always you had to generate a range of concepts, pick one or two to push and develop and change, but always bringing it back to regenerating ideas to create something new and more refined. It is something to keep in mind for next project or to think about in preperation for the final crit.

Moderate successes.

2009-05-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

First test run of my apparatus was not without it's flaws but that was to be expected. I did four separate exposures in a variety of locations and methods to get an idea of what works and what doesn't. My first exposure was standing outside AUT tower and just spun and rolled it in my hands; second exposure was rolling across Aotea square; third exposure was a multiple exposure where I aimed the pinhole at several brightly and different coloured fixtures; fourth exposure was rolling it down a steep hill covered in bright yellow leaves.

The main technical difficulties was in that as it rolled, the opposing holes would get misaligned by either the two cylinders turning or becoming pushed closer together or starting to come apart. If I were to reconstruct it, I'd create some sort of mechanism that actually locked it in place. As a temporary measure, I used strong duct tape to stop it from turning and drilled another hole to ensure that it would stay within the vertical range of the pinhole.

I cannot express the extreme joy and relief that I felt as my first film came through the C41 and I saw that there was something on it. At that point I didn't particularly care what. Once all four half films had come through, it was into the scanner which, designed to read individual frames, protested at the lack of said frames. Regardless, two of my four trials gave good results with relative continuity between frames and variations of colour and light patterns.

The most successful ones were actually my two more controlled exposures, possibly because it was on the uncontrolled ones that the aperture misaligned and got closed up as these ones were more or less unexposed. At least I know from this that my method of changing and storing films is successful and my canister is light tight. Below is the result of this exposure and what the exposure was of. The colours are at this point a little inconsistent due to the nature of the scanning so the method of scanning will require some experimenting.

My next exposures were planned and taken with these ones taking into consideration and, despite many technical difficulties with the temperamental machines at work, they came out again with varying degrees of success, giving another reference point to again work from for my final trial.

The important thing at this point is to not lose sight of the brief and original concept. Where my most successful trials so far have been my controlled exposures, ideally the more random ones where the path of the apparatus takes over are more fitting in my exploration of light and space. The controlled exposures can perhaps be justified in terms of drawing attention to the normally overlooked fixtures of the city as dynamic in their own aspect but my initial idea is more focused on movement through and around the city. Perhaps I need to bring this back to and reevaluate my brief before my next round of trials to clarify what I am trying to achieve and what these exposures show so I can then bring this together and convey it more successfully in my video.

Ready to roll

2009-05-25T00:47:00.000-07:00

It's what you can't see that will make the magic. Both in the operation and construction of my apparatus and in the way in which my footage is captured. Today I completed construction and so tonight is the eve before I take it for a test run. All that was left to do was to adjuct the height of the holes so they lined up and glue in my foam circles which will keep my interior cylinder in place.

Armed with four rolls of film, tomorrow I will take to the city for a few rounds of experimentation and then out to the photolab on Wednesday, and after analysis of results, further experimentation thereafter.

We were from the word Go, Day One of the BCT, encouraged to take risks and this is definitely one of the biggest risks I feel I've ever taken with a project. I always like to do relatively simple concepts which I know will work. In theory, my apparatus follows established principles and methods of pinhole photography and I have taken every care to construct my apparatus according to these; from the light tight construction, to taking into account calculations of aperture, focal length, and ISO, to painting it black, to the fine tin foil pinhole, to 'borrowing' a dark bag from work to enable me to change film on site without need for a darkroom.

At this point perhaps what I'm most apprehensive about are the things which are now more or less beyond my immediate control; the spin of the interior cylinder, risk of over/under exposure, and even damage to the exterior appearance (ie chips in the paint job).

At this point only have vague ides around how to compose my final video but this is something which will inevitably be based on the result of my apparatus. I have a few ideas and am actually thinking about using processing again to perhaps create something where the physical movement of the apparatus will have another element of control over the immediate visual result. I also have a potential artist model in mind but will be doing more research on video art. Workshops on Final Cut Pro will also give me a better idea what I have to work with and what I am capable of in the remaining amount of time, how to best use it to my advantage. I have used very simple video editing software before so I think it will be more or less easier with this background to adapt over the the new software.

But first, tomorrow we go for a roll around the town!

Stuck on you.

2009-05-22T17:01:00.000-07:00

Despite a slight apprehension towards welding, what with the sparks and the bright and potential damaging light, it proved to be mostly painless. It wasn't too hard, just a matter of developing technique and perhaps my project wasn't the easiest one to work with. After attempting to weld the first cylinder to a circle (with the help of a technician of course!) it proved to be a rather messy result, even somehow managing to, rather counter productively, weld a hole in the cylinder. This was most inconvenient as I need my apparatus to be completely light tight so for the second half, we decided perhaps to just spot weld around, enough to hold it in place and then fill around the base with a filler later.

I was unhappy at this point at the two cylinders didn't fit quite right within each other any more and looked rather haphazard. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some paint, and of course the filler, so it was off to Placemakers for some metal primer which, as luck would have it, was coloured as well. I was intending to paint it black in any case so as to avoid light bouncing around, though it could have an interesting effect also, but it is not my intention at this point.

The black finish was a definite improvement and the fill was then added around the edge. It was at this point I realized that during this process of fabrication and construction, where it's form was ultimately determined by its function and purpose, the aesthetic value of it was still also and important driving force. The fill also significantly improved the appearance by not only sealing up the bottom to ensure the inside would be light tight, but smoothed out the rough ridges created by the welding and now it merely awaits another once over with some black paint.

On the final stages of construction now, it awaits the final touches to ensure it's intended functionality. The holes need to be altered slightly to ensure they line up to actually let light in, whilst checking that there are no unwanted light leaks. The interior cylinder needs to be secured inside in such a way to ensure it spins freely to expose all around it as it rolls, whilst restrained so that it doesn't actually make contact with the edges to avoid damaging the negative. Again, this could prove to have an interesting effect but it is not the effect I'm after. Perhaps when I have achieved the goals of my initial intention, I can then modify my apparatus to experiment with these elements.

Pinwheel camera

2009-05-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

To represent my concept through a physical apparatus, I have chosen to approach the collection and presentation of video footage in a slightly different manner. Rather than creating something in which to mount a video camera, the apparatus itself will act as the camera as well as the vessel. I have taken the concept of the pinhole camera which, like artist model Darren Glass, I will use to capture the effects of light as the camera itself moves, exposed onto negative film.

To allow for ease of movement, I have designed a light tight cylinder which can rotate to open or close the pin hole with a smaller interior cylinder which spins a bit more freely within the canister. to ensure a relatively even exposure of the film. I will need a dark bag with which to change the film in between exposure to more easily get a variety of exposures in different locations and lighting conditions within the city. It will be relatively lightweight and small for easy transportation. It may also take some experimentation and calculations to figure out the ideal exposure time.

A few hours, several different machines and a shower of sparks later, I had my pieces cut out. Not exactly to my calculations, however careful though. The equipment in the 3D lab was easy enough to use with the introduction workshop with James and the extremely helpful technicians. At this point, the most difficult thing was putting enough pressure on the blade / guillotine which cut the metal sheet into usable strips.

Beginning to assemble it required a bit more careful thought as to the smaller details, such as drilling the pinholes, and figuring out the best and best possible order to do them in. The pinholes were drilled and the metal strips were curved to shape and spot welded together, ensuring they locked into place when the holes lined up. Despite a slight reluctance to brave the welder, it was all go ahead and ready to them weld the cylinders down to the circular plates. This proved to be even a little more daunting by the fact that each technician seemed to be giving me a different bit of advice as to the best way to approach it, but in the end I found myself kitted up with the arc welder in hand...

Where at first it seemed an interesting combination between the video and the use of metal, perhaps that is part of what is making us again push our creative potential and come up with something new and different. Where metal does seem somehow a little more intimidating to work with than, say, wood, it's potential is perhaps a lot more. It also seems to link a lot more with the location of the city in the base of it's construction. When you think city and construction, you think loud drills and sparks and metal scaffolding and solid metal structures and skeletons. A lot of interesting bits and pieces seem to be under construction in the 3D lab, the cylinder / circle / wheel / sphere seeming to be a popular choice. I feel confident in my idea that it will give a different outlook as I have chosen to explore the depiction of video in a different way.

That's how I roll

2009-05-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

Introduction to our new studio project immediately set me off in excitement when we stared off in a discussion of art history and the distinctions in pre to post modernism in relation to what was happening in society and with people at the time. As with the large project, I am going to look at and bring in aspects of art history to explore and deepend my conceptual ideas.

The idea of exploring or depicting the city in a new was is reminiscent of the Situational Shuffle introduction activity where we look at different methods to move around and interact with our immediate and everyday surrounding environment. Similarly this project is to be undertaken in the city and experiencing it in a new way. So I was thinking about the psychology of the city, the common perception being that it is a centre for turbulence and movement. The city itself is a collection of static buildings and fixtures, yet moving through the city, you feel like you should be in rush just because of the subconscious effect of environment and the movement which epitomises it.

Maybe it is as a result of recently having been to Wellington to see the Monet and the Impressionists exhibition but I started thinking about depicting fleeting effects of time, light and weather conditions. With my background understanding of film and darkroom photography, I thought about the essence of photography is in simply just light. It is how the light is captures and present which gives us photography, from the roots of photography in pinhole cameras, to film to the digital medium today. Like the impressionists, it can be a different challenge to somehow convey the fleeting moments in time, the qualities of light. The simplest example of conveying this in photography is that of extended exposures. I have previously explored use of extended exposures as means of conveying movement and in fact, the city is filled with many different types of movement.

To expand upon this further, we take photographs in terms of the final image, the containment within a single rectangular frame. Why not expose an entire reel of film in one go? Artist Darren Glass has taken a similar idea in creating abstractly shaped pinhole cameras, such as a circular shell in which the negative is contained which is then rolled down a hill, capturing the space, the colour, the light around it in a new and different way. So then it seems to almost negate the idea of movement to capture it in a single image but from the introductory Bullet effect exercise, it made me think about how really film and movie is also just a multitude of single still frames composed in sequence to give the impression of movement.

Also closely related to time is the idea of narrative, a beginning, a middle and end but like Glass, I prefer the element of the random and the abstract nature of the outcome. It gives a larger scope of possibility for composition into a final video into what is more conceptual and subtle. I just need to be careful to avoid it being too overly complicated like my last project so still need to keep it relatively simple yet effective in how I construct my apparatus and resulting video.

Bullet

2009-05-13T18:46:00.000-07:00

I've always been interesting in expanding beyond the constraints time and space of a single photographic image. What we experiemented with yesterday as our warm up activity was perhaps another sort of way of thinking about these aspects in relation to film and viedo, which is essentially composed of a multitude of single still frames which, when combined create movement. Inspired by the likes of The Matrix or an ad by Toshiba, we were to create our own bullet effect by setting up a series of cameras to go off in sequence around a moving figure.

Even though I'd been hoping for a group activity for a change from the individual but our group of a dozen or so proved to be a little difficult to co-ordinate. We began by attempting to find a way to set up a dozen cameras spanning across a spectrum of brand, quality and models, no two cameras alike. We went into the logistics of timer, resolution, zoom, aperture, focus and the like before decided to just go for it and give it a go. We quickly abandoned using multiple cameras in favour of one SLR shooting on burst. initial ideas including everyone in a chain moving around the camera to emulate the movement of the camera but this did not have the indented effect.

We only managed to deviate even further from there from there with everyone having their own vision as to how we could approach. After experimenting and tossing around ideas as bit more, we simplified it back down with the single camera moving around a single figure, rising up from a crouch, perform a movement to return to the crouching position by the time the camera had completed a half circle around him.

As usual, artistic license and individuality came out in our chosen movement which we would then attempt to weave together into a video. I was perhaps a little too ambitious and managed to strain my legs a bit. Each individual persons' segment went something like this:

I thought it would be quite funny to put these together as some sort of cheesy superhero team , but then ended up attempting to shoot a playground as my setting in which to place the people. I used the same method to moving around it while my camera was on burst to give that sense of space and perspective so as to not lose the effect of the movement of the figure when the original background was chroma keyed out. I chose a playground as the movements were quite playful and it would provide different elements and levels to place the figures.

This to was abandoned due to my not having taken enough shots to create a fluid enough back ground and simplified it down instead to the figures starting outside a paper box which would then close on them and when it reopened, it would be a different person inside. If I chose to develop this further, it would be fun to play with different timings so as to have more than one box at a time and having people almost teleporting from box to box.

The overall effect was quite rough as a result of the original images with jagged transitions and the background not entirely keyed out. It was an interesting effect which could be interesting if controlled and worked for the nature of the relatively simple one day activity to introduce an idea. I personally would want to keep my images more crisp and refined but I do like the simplistic sort of stop motion effect of composing the images, which again relates to the content of the video. Even if this can't specifically be integrated into the next studio project, the concepts will undoubtedly have potential to carry over.

More cheese

2009-05-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

So what I ended up with at the end was perhaps not very experimental as much as calculated and methodically planned out. I was always thinking about what I could add on rather than just playing around. Regardless, what I came up with was a simple game. Content with my interaction between the mouse and the player, I integrate more of an aim for the player vs. the aim of the program.

Whenever the mouse reached the edge of the screen, the image of a cheese would be replaced with another image of the same cheese but with a chunk missing, progressively getting smaller with every success of the mouse. This was done with the method of creating an animation, with each frame triggered by the x value of the mouse. I introduced counters which added the successful hits of the mouse and total hits which I was intending to set up as a percentage score of how accurate the player was.

The game then seemed too basic so I introduced the element of the random. Triggered by a timer, a segment of cheese would appear at a random position which, when clicked upon, triggered a random number. Each random number changed an element of the game which would be reset if another segment was clicked on. These elements included manipulation of the speed of the mouse, the remaining amount of cheese, invert the colour of the screen, make the mouse change y coordinates randomly, generate a distracting back ground and generate a second mouse. This was how I approached the idea of changing elements of the program whilst incorporating them into my original sketch. Other elements I would've also like to play with would've been changing the orientation of the screen or other colour manipulations.

This last part I actually found surprisingly easy to program, and throughout the process it was always the things I thought to be more simple which proved to be more complicated. I personally found when I approached Processing with logic and rational thinking, especially the more mathematical aspects. Though it was difficult program to get the hang of, especially not having dealt with any programming language before, it was an approachable challenge I enjoyed and think would come in useful in future studio projects and enable me to grasp more of what is potentially possible with it.

Whack-a-mouse

2009-05-07T01:47:00.001-07:00

Given new brief, we were to expand upon and experiment with our sketches created in Processing last aweek. We were directed to just take risks and have a play in approaching this, to just change number, manipulate and modify to see what we get. I have found this a difficult way of working as my style is more deliberate, methodical and calculated - I have to think about and approach logically what I am doing so for the first day on the brief was quite frustrated.

First day on the brief, I thought about the connotations and meanings behind each individual element - which I then realized was perhaps getting too conceptual about it, as is, my usual method of working. Feeling a little overwhelmed by all the individual elements in my sketch, I figured I'd start by taking the individual elements and manipulating them, before eventually bringing them all together again in a final sketch.

So I then decided to start with making my bende dots a bit more dynamic and tried to make them bounce around the screen. About five hours, three or four examples and a lot of frustration later, I had one red ball bouncing around the screen.

I ended up getting bogged down with the complexity of the examples I was trying to adapt as they had some more complex bits of programming I am not yet familiar with. Therein I do understand where Kim was coming from in his recommended approach that it is better to experiment and see what happens rather than coming up with an idea of what you want to do which may be beyond your capabilities. As an example, he gave us a simple sketch consisting of a loop which filled the screen with identical, organized, uniformly spaced squares. I admit I thought this was very basic as I was familiar with the loop and what each part of it controlled but after a bit more encouragement from Kim, I ended up with a pulsating mass of coloured circles which keep changing colour, creating a shimmering curtain. Still a very simple sketch.

From there I decided to start a bit simpler first with the cheese instead, heading in the direction of a game like interplay between the mouse and the cheese. In a short while, I had created sketch which created a randomly sized and coloured hole on a yellow background - Make Your Own Cheese! Until I figure out the proper way to upload the sketch, you can copy and paste it from here.

Upon learning how to import images and sounds, the scope of possibility widened again so by the end of the day, I had a mouse running horizontally across the screen, reappearing at a different Y-Coordinate each time it disappeared offscreen. An image of a mallet is attached to the cursor which upon clicking, swings the mallet down. If the mallet successfully hits the mouse, Roy Lictensteins 'Whaam' appears on the end of it - a bit of a joke following on from my adaptation of his use of bende dots. By the end of today, it had developed into a game as such, where by successfully hitting the mouse, it's position was reset to the left of the screen but it's speed would increase with each successful hit. If the mouse reached the opposite end of the screen, it would come up with a game over.

After getting away from Processing for a bit and thinking it over and even discussing my ideas with people not directly involved in year 1 BCT over a coffee, they were quick to offer more suggestions on making it more interactive as well as how to bring back the cheese. So from here, I'm continuing on trying to make it more of a game with more of a complex objective and with counters though need to keep trying to incorporate a bit more creative play and experimentation.

Say cheeese.

2009-05-03T01:15:00.000-07:00

New half a semester, new paper, new project - new piece of software to sink my teeth into! The concept of programming with processing seemed a little daunting at first but walked through in baby steps definitely made it a lot more feasible. At the same time it was rather frustrating in that it seemed like an overly complicated way to create an overly simplistic image - one which could have been created in the simplest of imaging programs in maybe five minutes - but it is important to keep the bigger picture in mind.

From learning basics such as creating basic colours, shapes, lines and curves, opacity and placing them on a x y coordinate window, the possibilities began to expand rapidly as we introduced movement and other variables. Always we were shown examples of what is possible with processing, hence we are only splashing in the puddles. I found it relatively easy to keep up with it all and keep adding onto my creation, content with the relative basics and only minor frustrations which will eventually enable me to tap into the greater potential of the software in the endless varieties of combinations of numbers and characters.

Day 1 I was not content with creating some simplistic image composed of a few mere shapes and colours so trawled through my collection of art history images for inspiration which was found in the genius of Roy Lichtenstein. A well known name and body of works, synonymous with the pop art era, consisting of cartoon like images made up from repeated circles applied with a toothbrush through a perforated screen to create patterns, background and shading. Images were often appropriated and the scale and methods related to ideas of mass production to simulate the effect of commercial printing, like a magazine or newspaper image blown up to reveal the method of printing with dots. I chose to use an image of cheese as it was relatively simple to construct and had possibilities to expand upon. With the new techniques we learnt, I developed animated 'stink lines', flies which moved when the mouse came near it, and a mouse which followed the cursor, set against and detailed with a series of bende dots.

My biggest source of frustration so far has been trying to work out a mathematical formula to make the animated lines reverse direction - something I still haven't figured out and I'm sure there's some terribly simple way to do it I've managed to overlook. Besides from that, I've enjoyed using processing so far as it works on concepts of logic, such as mathematical equations. In that sense I find it easier to use than MAX/MSP because it is more easily laid out exactly what is controlling what and points out more simplistically where your errors are coming from. At this point, errors are still very frequent.

Image: Untitled (Paper Plate) 1969
Image: M-maybe 1979
Image: Close up of bende / benday dots

In a nutshell.

2009-04-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

My functional prosthetic device:

My prosthetic device is simply a plaster cast of my face. It symbolizes both the physical and metaphysical side of me. Physically and visually it is recognizable as a face by which you can read my internal emotions. You are human and you are in my physical space, hence you can understand, relate and respond to the emotions which are conveyed through my face.

But this face is white, stark and blank and reveals no emotion. A computer in my physical space knows nothing of my facial expressions or what they mean and represent. Even when I have programmed the computer to respond to my physical gestures with this face, it only understands what I have told it to understand as it cannot possess let alone understand what these emotions mean.

I however have formed an emotional bond with my laptop. It is named Mrkusich and I say good morning to it and share my emotions with it. I give it human characteristics and pretend it responds. Hence, I feel a bond and a trust which leads me to using my computer as an expression for my emotions available for anyone around the world to access, bound not by the physical but by rather the vastness of universal emotion, whether my fleeting thoughts on Twitter, my photos and status updates on Facebook, my artwork on DeviantArt and Flickr and my blog entries. My virtual identity has become an integral part of how I express myself and my plaster cast represents this disembodiment of this express from the restraints of the physical.

When we are in different physical spaces and communicating through a computer. You cannot read what emotions I am conveying physically through my body language but you have access to the emotions I have chosen to convey virtually. You know nothing of my physical existence merely from my virtual identity as I can chose to share whatever I want, perhaps hence focusing more on my inner self than my physical self.

To bridge these gaps, my prosthetic reads and understands the physical triggers I input, each linking to a primary emotion. It then triggers a stream of images and words relating to this emotion and the resulting secondary and tertiary emotions. Any human sees these images and can relate to their connotations to trigger in them the same emotion and empathy, hence conveying my mood and enhancing our communication.

I chose four out of the six primary emotions to convey and explored how we express these using just the face and a hand and then wired up according triggers on my plaster face.

The moving stream of images and words relating to each emotion spins at an increasing or decreasing rate, depending on the duration of the connection or the amount of times the connection is made with the emotions cross fading in and out of each other.

Full Image Credits
BIG thanks to all those who provided permission to use their images and for kind wishes on my project.

Joy of Happiness - Mani Babbar
Happiness - Swamibu
Just a matter of happiness - Stefano Corso
Children, full of happiness - Hamed Masoumi
Happiness - Sabrina Campagna
The Pursuit of Happiness - Dima Bencheci
Happiness! - IIsaías Campbell
Perfect Happiness - Robyn Flett
Joy.Youth.Sky.Blue.Sun.Shine. Sunshine.Happiness - Irina Iordachescu
Rainbow Umbrella - La Valina

Medo / Fear - Xaime
Deamon of Fear , Fear - H Koppdelaney
I feel cold as razor blade - Anna Visini
Fear of the Dark - Stuart Anthony
do u fear love ? - Ahmed Saeed AlDhaheri
Fear - Christophe Dessaigne
No Fear - Bernat Casero
Teenage Fear , Teenage Fear - Michael
Fear - Meredith Farmer
Fear - Sara Pirovano

Sad Old Woman - Hamed Saber
Sad Eye - Rafa Puerta
I get Sad When I'm Alone - Adam Foster
Dora Looking Sad - Jon Burney
don't be sad little bear -T.SC
sad bokeh friday - Harold Lloyd
Sad snowman on Commonwealth Ave. - Mick T.
The Sad Sight of the City - Gúnna
Sad Thoughts - Angelo Domini
Sad Flower - Chris Jones
Sadness - Pascal Steichen
Sad Little Friend - Sarah Azavezza

Anger!!
anger. hostility towards the opposition - Sascha
Anger , Anger 2
Joy or Anger? - Geries Simon
Anger - Ferran Jorda
Anger - Evan Leeson
Yelling - Adam Herdman
Stress 39/365 - Mike Hoff
day 12 - artistic frustration - Michael Verhoef
Stress - Leeroy
Anger Management - Sam Scholefield

If you're happy and you know it

2009-04-09T16:22:00.000-07:00

The final sort of stages of pulling together my project saw a few problems encountered, mostly in the process of wiring up my prosthetic. The plaster face proved to be quite delicate, despite using up the remainder of my plaster to try reinforce it and stick in my circuit board from my key-hack. Further problems were encountered when some vital wires came out and required re-soldering.

The programming actually continued to become easier as I went and I found solutions in my previous patches which I could then integrate and manipulate with the jitter example patches. The very first patch we made to control Animata with the Apple Remote, I took the sequence me and Ryan figured out where we had two metros inputting values to control one overall value, to either increase it or decrease it. I used this to control the rate of a movie, to speed it up or slow it down depending on whether the switch was open or closed to represent the intensity of emotion.

It seems logical and was probably intended that way, but I like how with each feed in project and patch created, it became easier to adapt and build on what I'd already experimented with in Max MSP. I mentioned when I first started using it that it was unlike anything I'd used before and I felt like I was working blind but I definitely feel I have more of a grasp of what is possible with it. Like with the NXTs, again it is incredible to imagine that there is so much possible with the software and we only really know a small fraction of it. I liked how Josh mentioned that it was really amazing how everyone came up with something so completely different even though we were all essentially working with the same software, materials, on the same brief and deadlines. This was something I first noticed when we started with Animata, that everyones' each individual interests, backgrounds and talents were coming through in what they were creating and this is definitely what I feel is a driving force behind the whole Creative Technologies course and the industry we've been studying in our theory paper (Intro to CT).

With the introduction with Jitter, I chose to use crossfades to alternate between my four videos, though for the longest time I wasn't sure whether it was possible to even cross fade four. In the end, it was achieved by crossfading two lots of two videos and then crossfading between those two. Essentially, when a key was triggered, say happiness, it would increase crossfade value between the 'happy' and 'sad' video until it reached the maximum so only the happy video was visible. It would also trigger a decrease in the crossfade value of the second video so again, only the happy video was visible.This would then output into a movie window so at any given time, only one video and one emotion was depicted between crossfades. I chose to use crossfades as it could depict the transition between emotions which can often be unexpected and sudden but often also how we can feel 'mixed emotions over something.

Even though for my presentation everything worked as it was supposed to it (which I was immensely relieved about - no unsoldered wires, no plaster falling apart etc.) I still don't feel it was entirely successful overall. I feel that my ideas were too complex and perhaps a bit hard to grasp. I think that my concept would've been better grasped if people could see the videos closer up to get the full interaction and emotional impact of the words and images so the nature of the presentation was something I should've considered. I put time into planning and developing my concept, prosthetic and patch but next time I will allocate time to how I will actually present it all to ensure that the hard work I put into the other three is best shown off.

The nature of the presentation is something I feel we all still need to adjust to. One thing in particular I realised often let the presentations down - and yes, I'm guilty too! - is the confessions of 'I ran out of time / if I had more time...' What I learnt from doing a lot of performing arts and stage shows is that so long as you look confident and keep going and present as if you yourself thought it was great, it makes a bigger impact.

Otherwise, after thinking about the feedback on my prosthetic, if I were to refine it, I would look at projecting the video so as to make the pictures and words more visible to help get my conceptual idea across. At the beginning, I though about looking at ideas around personal space and boundaries around touch and a suggestion got me to think about physically removing myself and instead having others go up to interact with my prosthetic, physically touching it to trigger the switches. This sort of interaction would also help get across the message as it forces them to confront it and then see the result of their interaction. The sensor points would probably have to be relocated as these I also feel were unclear in conveying the body language I wanted. Perhaps by introducing other elements of the body, disembodied from the actual confines of a literal body to represent the disembodiment of the emotion from the physical, as is what happens through communication in a virtual means. This could also link to meanings around the personal space barriers we place around ourselves, still relating to body language and physical communication, and the cultural differences around touch and physical interaction.

This would require a lot more plaster.

The documentation of my final result is still a work in progress. All the images I used were licensed under creative commons but I am just seeking the final okay from all owners' of the images to repost them. No one has had any problems so far but as I myself post a lot of my photography online, in their shoes I would always prefer people ask especially when dealing with images with what could perhaps be heavy with personal emotional significance.

So for now, here is my completed patch which I am actually quite proud of.