Urban screening

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...

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

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

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

a

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!