Some of the previous ideas I had gone through involved greenscreening – creating a virtual prescence based on actual people, capable of showing viewers how to access various data and such – though the workload to follow that would have been destructively immense, and I was disappointed by that idea because it had no relevance to the current world, it was almost too visual, and not interactively engaging enough.

I considered an interactive Wall, having already drawn many influences from Graffiti and Street Art, and from the greenscreen concept. I liked the idea of being able to drag things across screens, and the working concepts of digital blutooth tables and technology like touchscreen phones made me want to investigate this idea further.

Does this count?

Haaaah.

My Project for Idat 210: Strategies for Digital Art has gone far less than smooth. While I feel my original ideas were solid and workable, it just doesn’t seem that getting people to say what gives them hope or happiness is something that is so simple to achieve. While responses were sparce to begin with, they were often cynical or blasé, both on and offline. Given that we gained an extra week until the deadline, I thought that I could still get the feedback I needed, however had no success.

So I fall back onto the brief for this project, which as memory serves, was delivered to us thusly: “Make something cool.” I can’t get the idea of my original propostition for this project out of my head, so I guess I’ll just have to run with what I have, but from a different angle. I ended up working in After Effects, using paper and other mediums to physically visualise the low number of returns I got.

“There are so many people who lack confidence in, think poorly of, and are negative about themselves. A simple look at the statistics for the UK alone is enough to get depressed about.

However. There is always the bigger picture, filled with those little things that make you happy.”

GivesMeHope.com has been a very active motivator behind this project for me. It has made me realise how much the smallest of gestures can have a big effect – or like with PostSecret.com, the power that a message can hold.

What I have done is taken the sparce feedback that I got for my initial idea, and worked it into a short video, visualising the information. Rather than communicate them in a solely digital form, I chose too write some of the responses out into physical examples, somewhat akin to what you would see at PostSecret.com.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Going back to my proposal, my aim was to “compare… for their differences, similarities and associations” – the comparison being between both the physical(offline) and the digital(online) responses – to better understand the social personality applied between these two forms of interaction. Essentially I have done this, where offline there were no takers to a girl asking for a minute of their time, online there were nowhere near the number of responses you would find on either of the previously mentioned sites – however, there were responses within the online community. Evidence of this can be found here and here, hopefully these links are still live (the other threads died very fast) and the threads haven’t been deleted. What this shows is that socially, it would seem that people are more likely to contribute online than in the offline world to a kind of survey or interview. Naturally, the online world type survey would be much less time consuming and more likely to be oriented around predetermined answers, but there is more to it than that. In the real world, a survey, questionnaire or suchlike would be accompanied by the idea of confrontation – dealing with someone face to face outside can seem much more daunting than answering questions from within the closed security of your own home. This can tie in to ideas of being judged, even cause people to think they are being accused or being convinced into buying something. The idea of public humiliation or criticism in any shape or form must be very strong for this to be the case, which is interesting to note, the lead that societal influence has put into our lives can have negative connotations – it can be limiting, or restricting, where online there were by comparison many more returns in terms of feedback, the offline world remained almost untouchable. Whether it is down to social heirarchy through authoritative measures (Should I have tried to get a response in a police uniform, and would that have made a difference?) or just that they were too busy and had places to be (perhaps a trade would have worked, if they let me ask them two questions and came back to the same place the next day I’d give them a cookie?) I was avoided almost entirely, and as such can much better appreciate the work charity volunteers do in a similar situation.

What I wanted to avoid most was manufactured information: asking friends and colleagues to provide is like asking leading questions during an interview, the result is no longer quite true, and the applied demographic is always more limited. This is why I tried to use feedback from the internet, despite the limited return still erred in attempting to continue. My whole interest was designed to better understand how much people are different on and offline, and it has been somewhat detrimental in this case. I cannot create my installation implementation simply because I could not garner together enough material to work from, however despite this, I did learn about the ways in which social interactivity operates on and offline. In the online environment, people are more open, perhaps due to the lack of face to face – less confrontational – or due to anonymity, as anyone and everyone can operate under an alias of their own discernable choosing, but it is obvious that in both eventualities there is an obvious lack of  social interaction, given that either party of an online community cannot actually see the person on the other side of the monitor, nor can they discern who they are or appear like. This shows that despite the popularity of the online community and it’s success, it is also very limiting, better known as the developed lack of social skills.

Concerning this project, were I to do it again I would have approached it much differently, and probably avoided contact with concepts of the psychological, regardless of my interest in the subject and associated material. This is not because it is a hard subject to get to grips with or work on, but to create a proper project out of the sheer amount of theory you end up working through and trying to understand, it is very, very hard to turn that unquantifiable data into something digitally visual or impressing. Finally, my personal criticism would be to better handle my time and pay attention to the how the information return was not going well, had I realised sooner that I was not going to get the return I had wanted, I would have been able to rearrange my project for a better purpose and utilised my resources adequately, but as such, the end result of this project for me is that I learnt a huge amount of things, that sadly can be condensed into a heap of sentences. The online world is a more prolific and open environment to work within, however, it leads to trends of social influence that reach out into the real world too. People are afraid to be caught bucking the trend or be singled out, especially when confronted with the inability to remain a part of the anonymous group in the offline world. The general trends are slightly different, online, more digital mediums are naturally favoured, and so too the reverse is true.

Additional Links:
Social Theory
University of Cardiff notes

Additional texts

Last week we decided that we’d each come up with an idea for the content of our project. Though we did decide on Mise en abîme – and it still remains a valid solution to our project content, though possibly obscure to the average passer-by or someone peering over from the traffic lights, the introduction of Arduino boards and their potential, in addition to some lectures relating to GPS and Hertzian spaces has given us cause to try and develop this idea further. With the Arduino boards, we can tailor our projection to be responsive to the traffic lights next to our projection space using light sensors.
A good point here is to mention that as the projection could be activated when the traffic is forced to stop, we won’t be distracting any drivers into crashing.

There are three main points to consider within this are: Who is seeing it, What it would mean to them, and Would it have an effect?

To start with, drivers would be the main audience. The road is so close by, and the traffic lights are right in the middle. Red light goes up and poof, we have active viewer potential. Just need to capture their attention.
Hopefully, watching our projection will make them either consider the space they’re passing through, and/or the building itself.
The overall aim is to generate a positive reaction from people, in one way or the other.

I have found that things like music that strives to be emotive, collectives like Givesmehope.com and even commercials about life insurance elicit a huge response from people.

This leads into my proposal, the idea of personification – following the contextual history of the Dance Academy – of the building itself as the content in our projection.

Why? For a number of reasons. The building is very old, generally ignored and left alone. Current political debates involve funding for giving the elderly aid and care (See? The BBC Parliament Channel is useful! And it makes breakfast just that extra bit more exciting!), a process that the houses of Parliament admit that they cannot accurately gauge how many people would opt in for the scheme so to get additional funding for care. A recent local news story covered the plight of a care home facing closure due to lack of funds, and not once did the story mention what would become of the residents or the state of their care. The nation has a ever ageing population, and yet if you look back in the news you will see that for at least the last seven years, care homes have been shut down and funding cut all across the board, and simultaneously not enough is being done to secure peoples futures in terms of retirement and care, moreso in an environment that is supposed to be recovering from recession.
I believe that the history of the Dance Academy, and the long term current issue of care for the elderly can be connected, and that a visual personification of the building to this effect would both raise the issues of politics and personal involvement, as well as bringing the site into the limelight within that concept.

New Palace Theatre

Completed in September, 1898, at a cost of £98,000 (£185,000 if you included the purpose built hotel next door) the New Palace Theatre was a magnificent addition to Union Street – the street that then linked the three separate towns of Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport; it was also the first Theatre in the area to be built to cater specifically for the celebrated Music Hall Acts that were filling houses all over the country.

As it stands today, comparatively little has changed in this marvellous entertainment emporium. Its distinctive handmade Italian tiles still dominate its exterior together with the fine, slightly faded, representations of Sir Oswald Brierley’s Spanish Armada pictures. The original wrought iron canopy has been replaced, but I gather that it’s still around and could even be restored some day.

In its 84 year history the Palace has seen a great many famous faces grace its stage; before the Great War, Marie Lloyd, Harry Tate, Harry (Any Old Iron) Champion, Florrie Forde and the Ten Loonies all walked the boards and the later Lillie Langtry Max Miller, Robb Wilton and Dick Henderson (snr) played here; so too did such diverse names as Louis Armstrong, Gracie Fields, Laurel and Hardy and Anna Pavlova the great ballet dancer.

The history of variety of entertainment has however been a chequered one this century; first hit by the cinema then the radio, then winning audiences back by presenting radio stars live – variety ultimately lost audiences in a major way with the advent of television in the 1950s.

Dwindling audiences then saw this magical palace resort to all manner of entertainment in a fight for survival, culminating in an all-time desperate spell when it functioned only as a bingo hall and strip club.

Today of course, its future is still by no means secure, however, the prospect of its closing down for good must surely be unthinkable. Since its extensive redecoration in 1978 the Palace has repeatedly proved itself to be an excellent venue for all kinds of stage production – pantomime, pop, drama and variety.

Plymouth has already lost too much of its pre-war heritage and a place such as this, that has given so much pleasure to so many people, deserves a better fate.

Amateur actors are as important to their art as amateur footballers or amateur artists of any kind – and quite often more entertaining. So let’s hope that the Carmeniens Annie Get Your Gun is a better indication of the Palace’s future than the not untypical revue that took the boards some 25 years ago – starring the glamorous Julie and ‘Funny Face’ Alec Pleon and billed as the most talked about show of the year, it was called Fanny Get Your Fun.

Plymouth As Time Draws On – Chris Robinson (1982)

Some other random facts and quotes collected from old newspaper cuts:

The Palace Theatre turned to Bingo in the 1970s.

The Theatre has seen well over 500 miles of wiring, nearly 500 lights and a 600 sq ft neon fan following refurbishments in 1984, and thats just the light and sound system. It also housed a restaurant in the upper floors, a Chinese bar (with Chinese barmaids) and VIP boxes. Entry for all nights was between £1.50 and £3.

“The coming of the Academy was a much needed shot in the arm for the social life of this city, which has been practically nil since the end of the war.” Patrick Ghillyer (19.7.1984)

Dennis Dicker (Con, Plymstock Dunstone), a former Lord Mayor said: “I was very sad when it ceased being a theatre, like many other people. It was such a lovely old place. Perhaps it will be one again when the present craze for very loud music dies out.” (29.11.1991)

Micheal and Janice Pattemore had a project budget of £750,000 to turn it into a disco. (Feb 1992)

It reopened in October 1992 after extensive renovations following the purchase by Lancashire-born Graham Blow.

My project proposal is to build upon this idea, and contextually consider social mind mapping – using a word or a thought from a starting point, many people from all walks of life congregate together through the medium of written word and form a collective and developed conscious stream of thought borne from a single notion. There are two ways in which this is to be implemented, both through a digital (Twitter feeds and, if possible, Facebook) means and physical (handwritten), to compare the two forms of thought for their differences, similarities and associations.

//Context//

There is a difference alluded to by what appears to be general consensus between the online personality and the offline presentation of the self, and the use of a mind map may show this, which also raises the question of how open people really are to each other and suggestion through total removal of self and anonymity in comparison to a more direct sense of involvement, despite remaining anonymous.

What is also interesting to investigate is the idea of association – discovering what different people think and react with when presented with a concept.

Social Psychology is a key component to many things, such as advertising, designing an effective interface and even (obviously) in terms of games. Social interactivity is a natural part of our lives, and as such generating an insight is almost invaluable as a means of understanding the nature of people – the people who as digital artists we are and will be designing for.

//Inspiration//

Givesmehope.com – a site where people can write up their own thoughts and experiences on what gives them hope. I found this site sometime last year, and only just showed it to my friends. The reaction was explosive, and spread from one to many within a very short period of time… a number of minutes. This site is something that represents therefore a great potential, not only in subject matter and topic that instigates a response from people, but elicits a kind of snowball effect, people want to join in and share with the people who have shared their experience. (It GMH)

Aside from the previously mentioned missing source of inspiration, works of typography, paper installation and street art are my main inspirations, with Twitter and Facebook as the digital forms of idea development.

Street Art has long been a source of inspiration for me, the concept of “writing on the wall” and free speech/thought is a very powerful idea that can lend to people a mass of inspiration and food for thought. Moreso that the term “Street Art” is so broad it covers a wide range of activity, as can be easily identified when reading a book such as Guerilla Art – it includes not only the typical idea of ‘graffiti’, but also mosaics, clothing, and performance. Street Artists – such as Blek le Rat, who integrate their art into what is already there in the urban environment, and WK Interact, who incorporates movement into his work, as well as on differently levelled surfaces, like corners of buildings and over frames – can use their sense of personal anonymity to represent a thought visually, even though it may not be shared by everyone, and still make an impact.

For Paper installations, works by people such as Jonas Samson (light wallpaper) are influential through their presentation and visual style, and additionally Pablo Pardo’s Ventana lamp.

The idea of this is very much aligned with what I plant to visually implement through a social mind map.

//Implementation//

The actual way in which I wish to collate and present the final piece of my project is through a hand-written and printed, paper installation. Since half of what I intend to do uses Twitter and Facebook, a digitally made installation may be appropriate, but for the time being my intention is to take each form of mind map and collate them as a whole, a web of concept and development. If possible, I would like to make a stop motion version of it, so that the progress from one thought to another can be properly observed – however this is highly dependant on the amount of content generated, a large return may even require a more 3D working visualisation.

Specifically so, what I am aiming to design is something along the lines of utilising a holographic image on a shop window, much like this example:

However, my aim in design is to create something that will serve a greater purpose than just a visual element, I would like it to be more engaging, and relative to a range of potential audiences – i.e. where some may be intrigued by the holographic element, others will be put off by the actual content/feature, so for something to be more generalised and again serving a purpose, the idea of advertisement spaces and interactivity with the surrounding elements, such as movement, or environment sensitivity (like the weather/temperature). This can be more engaging for varying audiences, and will support the store behind the holographic glass.

Additionally, having something that intrigues and reacts to people reciprocates a positive effect: people will be more likely to happily return to the space and engage with it again, whereas a standalone visual holographic may have less of such an effect. When implicated on something like a shop window, or building, there is likely to be a beneficial effect on the store, and the ones around it as well.

The programs I will be using for this project include Adobe After Effects and Adobe Flash respectively, using a combination of real life footage and drawing ideas from street art and advertising.

Looking at this video, I quite like the idea of incorporating sound and information, to add another level to the visual elements as well, though it still remains an idea.

Okay, so back to module 209. Much like stage one module 106 of last year, this module has also moved into the spread of hertzian space and digital signals. Additionally to dealing with this information is also the addition of a more developed visualisation of the data recorded – such as wifi signals or bluetooth.

Data visualisation can yield some amazing results, enough to make the casual viewer awed and confused as to how the data morphed into an image of wonderous abstraction, and simultaneously persist in showing the actual data. As part of this, I spent a while looking up references for data visualisation from many sites.

To start with, we were shown this video as an example:

Which is a pretty cool way of visualising wifi data, firework colours and all.  

Looking at a couple other blogs which talk about data visualisation, I came across the CompSci.ca Blog, which makes a short post about data as an art piece. It also highlights a use for Data visualisation beyond just a visual, the visualisation itself can help to identify popular trends mush easier, as well as being an expressive piece. The blog links to a digital version of a Japanese based magazine called PingMag, which has an article on an infosthetics interview with Andrew Moore, the owner of the blog infosthetics.com.

Infosthetics.com is a blog that has a huge volume of data, with posts concerning the subject ranging all the way back to 2004.

‘info-aesthetics: information & form’ is a semi open-source book by Lev Manovich.  i assume the term ‘information aesthetics’ is thus coined by him, although the connotation between the two concepts (~information) has been known and studied for longer. the book started in 2000, and you can read its current state online. manovich.net

Another blog that may make a useful reference is Vital Signs, which links to an article, and notes some tools that can be used for web data tracking, as well as some data visualisations. Though a short post, it is very informative.

Smash Magazine has a list of data visualisation examples and tools used to create them, which was linked through Journalistopia, which talks about using XML and Flash as a data visualisation tool.

InformationArchitects.jp have taken a different spin on the topic; one of the things they have done is create a web-trend visualisation using the Tokyo Metro Map. This form of trend mapping appears to be very accurate, and also relates to the real space of Tokyo in terms of generalisations, and complete coincidence. One of my favourite lines from this blog is along the more revealing coicidences list, at number 6: “Skype has conquered a place that doesn’t exist.”

Mashable.com has an extensive list of different types of visualisation tools, such as twitter posts visualisation and mapping, flickr image tag visualisations and more. A couple ideas that I like are those of walktoweb.com - enter an URL and then visually browse the sites that are linked to that URL in something that looks like a big mind map, and crazyegg.com, which is a tool that shows a heat map of user clicks, effectively allowing for a quick anaylsis of user behaviour on a website.

FlowingData.com is a good reference for ideas and creation in terms of infosthetics/data visualisation. The aim of the site is to explore how data can be interpreted and used, mainly through the use of visualisation techniques.

One of the cool things on this site is a visualisation of keyboard use, to show typing efficiency.

 Lastly, I want to reference my first post for this module, and necro up a link that I posted several months ago. It relates to this youtube video, which is one of the first types of data visualisations I seem to find whenever I go searching for things to reference and research.

The data mapping and visualisation of air traffic seems to be a popular subject for data visualisation, not only for its practical uses but also for its scale and capacity for movement tracking on a 24/7 hour basis. As previously stated, I put a link in my first post for this module, linking to some of Aaron Koblin’s work, in this case air traffic patterns and visualisation. This part of his site shows the sheer size and extent of movement or air traffic at different times of the day, as well as being able to identify different types of plane model, manufacturer and altitude during flight. There are several varying visualisations of the same data, and on the whole the culminative effect shows the practicality of data visualisation alongside being a piece of creative effort. What can be learnt, and indeed shown from models like these is not only trends but the way in which space is utilised, allowing through anaylsis of such information a better manufacture of design for the future, and a much more effective form of design process.

Additional Links:

Hertzian Space -

http://varnelis.net/articles/architecture_for_hertzian_space - historical context

http://www.slideshare.net/dw.scott/hertzian-space-frequency-hijack - information slideshow

http://future.iftf.org/2006/05/hertzian_space_.html

http://art-history.concordia.ca/cujah/issue03/6-fashion-victims-visualizing-the-hertzian-space-through-critical-design-and-wearable-computing.htm

From that, I considered how my local environment would be affected by some kind of augmentation – be it high tech digital equipment like the advertisement “boards” in Wall-E, or the use of sound in space as found in Valve’s Portal (I’m talking about Glados).

Both of these ideas work, however, the cost of physical implementation is beyond me, and possibly beyond most people. So whatever idea I settle on will have to be a visualisation of it, as opposed to real live documentation.

Note how both of my ideas so far centre on augmenting the space around myself and others. It is a more generalised concept that I am working with at the moment, one that can be in some ways considered less invasive – less strictured to one person having the experience. This works from the basis that despite living in an age of technology, many people remain unaware of the capabilities of their computers, or restrict themselves from technology at all. Grandparents especially, since they have seen the rise of computers from what could be considered the start right up until this current point in time. At least, my grandparents seem to have been/are afraid of computers, saying that they are machines that are confusing and too complicated. Much like the oft repeated mantra of schools today, inclusivity is a core element here. Going to @Bristol and seeing kids and their parents play with each other games of virtual volleyball is an example of such. There is a lot of amazing technology out there and available to us, but a lot of it is restricting to a separated personal level. The consideration given to interactivity on two levels, of the individual to the technology and the interactivity between the individual and other individuals – actively so – is something that I’m sure has given things like the Nintendo Wii such popularity. It is by following an idea such as this that I think I can create a successful concept for the Augmented Reality Brief.

Environmentally speaking, though I consider the city where I live to be a generally bleak and grey cityscape, and that a splash of colour or the addition of a more modern design would be a benefit, I wonder if the idea of designing something of a more high tech standard to introduce into the space would actually augment it truly, or prove to strengthen the contrast between the more updated elements of the city; the Mall and the Plaza, for instance, are things that can be stated as “new” and “shiny”, whereas the rest of the CBD (Central Business District) provides a definite visual contradistinction, as a greyer and less distinct component of the environment. If this were to be the case, I feel that creating some kind of augmented reality may…

Since this is post is pretty much a thought process in action, I’ve just thought about an “augmented” photo project I could delve into, bringing the concepts of both the high tech and wealthier environments to the the low tech and poorer environments. Anyway, continuing on.

… be of detriment to the space, as opposed to adding positively. From a personal point of view, this would be unethical, as the equivalent expense of that project would likely have been better spent on improving the environment of the area in which it is placed first, raising the whole standard.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this brief I wish to create an augmentation, designed for use within the CBD. Quite simply, my initial thoughts are based off of the adverts that you find in Wall-E – however, drawing inspiration from animated street art, to create a visual that appears more aware to its environment. Much like in Module 106 as well, the idea of creating something that can be responsive to the space directly around it, like weather and temperature.

To then be combined with the ideas of something like this;

In the mean time, have this amazing piece of cool to watch. I really admire the work and dedication put into this.

In case my writing most probably is illegible to an external eye (i.e. not me), here it is typed:

First design plan:                                   4:3       60 sec

0.00 – 0.20

Focus on stained glass window, light shines through it.

0.21 – 0.25

The glass shatters as light intensity overwhelms it, and as the glass breaks it the light immediately dims.

0.26 – 0.55

Each shard morphs into a floating, blurry orb.

0.56 – 1.00

Credits as the orbs fade out.

———————————–

More conceptually oriented than direct my intention is for the viewer to seek out meaning rather than it being laid out in front of them. The Digital issue of what is tangible alongside what it is you are actually seeing presents the question of reality with a visual experience that does not aim to answer the question for you.

Having run through some verbal concept ideas with various people – friends, lecturers, my mother – I wittled down the concept of peripheral vision and lighting into more of a light oriented creation, as seen above.  Much of my ideas to do with light have been drawn from my interest in artworks related to glass works created by aspiring artists, pieces digitally created, manipulated, or photographs of things like stained glass church windows.