Packing and Unpacking

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...?

"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

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

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

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

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

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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