The end

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

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

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

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.