Personal Research Abstract

This research studies how interactive design is becoming a universal language.
The focus of the research is around the recent rise in digital interactive exhibits and installations in museums and galleries. The research investigates how these works have the potential to become a universal language that goes beyond written and spoken language.

Various interaction design theories and reviews of various interactive artworks from museums and festivals such as Ars Electronica will be studied in this document. Further study will demonstrate how people have become accustomed to interactive devices and procedures in their everyday life so much so that different spoken language may no longer a barrier.

Day 2: Log and Capture

On my second day of editing at the new at exchange, i entered all the times which i had logged before in the excel file. i was then going to export these as an xhml file to import into final cut pro, however i then just manually entered the numbers for each log. this took up alot of space so it was time consuming to move files.

Day 1: Logging

For my first day of editing at the new art exchange i viewed all the tapes from the gallery open day in september. there were 5 tapes, at one hour each, so it was my job to log all the important clips from these films to use in three, three minute films.
Afterwards i don't think i was as selective of the footage as i should have been, however i hadn't seen the footage so as the tapes went on i realized there was a lot of repetition within the film. this could always be used as alternative camera angles.

example of film log:

nae open day
t1
00:00:54:19 00:02:04:00
00:02:08:00 00:03:27:00
00:03:49:00 00:04:12:00
00:04:18:00 00:06:12:00 interview 1
00:06:41:00 00:09:35:00 interview 2
00:12:53:00 00:13:50:00
00:14:12:00 00:15:28:00
00:15:57:00 00:16:10:00
00:18:09:00 00:18:18:00
00:19:00:00 00:19:28:00
00:21:02:00 00:24:52:00
00:25:18:03 00:29:52:00 drumming/audio
00:34:07:00 00:34:14:00
00:35:10:00 00:36:55:02
00:39:58:00 00:48:38:00 audio/soundtrack
00:39:58:01 00:48:38:01
00:39:58:02 00:48:38:02
00:49:00:00 00:50:00:00 workshop

evaluation

if i were to do this project again, i would do it completely different. in the beginning i thought i was making it simple for myself but i think i ended up making it harder by having i specific template to stick to. the small space that i had to write text, meant there was enough room for the text but not the images. in order to appeal to my target audience i think it is quite important to have images, however the background livens up the page a little, it does need some more images. i am pleased with the flash recycling arrows, it makes the website more 3-dimensional rather than being flat and motionless.

problems with testing

when testing my website on other computers the background i had imported did not show up. the reason for this was that i had exported the slices from photoshop as .jpegs that were saved for the web. however when i imported these into dreamweaver i assumed that when importing an image, that dreamwever copies it to the site rootfolder. however this didn't happen so i instead i had to not save the background for web but just import the .jpeg which worked fine once they were copied into the images folder.

implementation

This has been an extremely hard process for me as i am learning as i go along, and to make matters even harder, the dreamwever help isn't working!
I have realised that my design of the website has definatly made things harder when it comes to implementing my ideas.

Although, i did manage to use some actionscript to make my recycling symbol spin and then reverse spin as the mouse rolls off the image. i like this as it makes my website look less 2d. i have also made some of the text into flash buttons so the colour changes as the mouse hovers over the links.

if i had more time, and a little more experience i feel that i could have made this website much more user friendly. As it stands, the website is simple and easy to navigate to so my initial aims have been fulfilled.

website design

So far i have felt restricted in the design of my website. i should have had the navigation bar at on the left hand side, the text in the centre and the sponsors on the right hand side, with the main banner at the the top. this way the browser could have been expanded with the left and right side staying the same size, and the text expanding. however, the reason i didn't use this technique is because when i did this beofore, i found that when the text moved, so did the images (if there were any) would move too, looking out of place.

The way i have designed my website means that when the browser stretches, the text stays the same. it is possible to enlarge this text for people who find it hard to read small text.

As this is only my second time designing a website, i am still learning as i go along.
I would feel much more confident if i had done this a few more times, then i would know what works and what doesn't when it comes to design.

First Steps

Yesterday i went down to the New art exchange, although i have left it quite late i managed to secure a client for next year. After chatting to Pam we came to an agreement that the gallery is not known about by many people therefore through the use of multimedia, i will bring people to the gallery. However, when visitors get to the gallery, they tend to get lost in the space, so a map or 3d walk through would be useful to put on the website, so that visitors know there is a second exhibition. I am looking forward to starting this project and having the experience of a real client.

Navigation Bar Hotspots

I have sliced the jpeg images in photoshop so it can be imported as sections in dreamweaver. However, when i imported the slices into dreamweaver when i the middle section to add the text, the whole image distorted.

For the navigation bar i added image tags onto the text. I am aware that this probably isn't the best way to do this, however it does what i want it to do, so i am not going to jeopardize time to to something more complicated. If i have time during the testing stage, then i will alter this problem then.

The next stage is to add the links and the text to my web pages in dreamweaver. i am finding dreamweaver quite hard to actually put sections into my website because it means that the slices i created in photoshop move around because there is not enough space on the page, making everything take alot longer to do than i had expected.

New Website Layout

Following the new layout for the home page, i have created the other pages based on this layout. On each page i will change the navigation bar to match the colour of the page.

Web banner initial ideas will have to be left.

The 'sustainable student' unfortunately didn't work when I put the website template together on photoshop. Because it was a photograph, when the banner was in dreamweaver it became pixilated and it didn't co-ordinate with the rest of the website template. including a navigation bar. i have now come up with an idea which will stick to my handmade theme, but it will be alot easier to co-ordinate now i have simplified the logo.



I am much happier with this idea because all the design elements have a sense of continuity, but still have a more handmade look. The 3d recycling symbol is from i-stock royalty free images, so in order to actually use this on my website I will need to buy the rights to use this image.

VIP at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham

i have just become a volunteer at the New Art Exchange Nottingham. On my induction i met the two curators for the exhibitions, and found out a bit about their history. we also had an in depth talk about the artwork at the exhibitions and how to respond to any comments by the general public. we were given basic health and safety routines and even got a free lunch buffet!

Personal Reseach Project Title

How interactive design is becoming a universal language

I aim to focus my research around the recent rise in digital interactive design exhibits and artworks and its potential to become a universal language, which goes beyond written and spoken language.

The research will investigate various interaction design theories and review various interactive artworks from museums and festivals such as Ars Electronica. I will investigate how people have become accustomed to interactive devices and procedures in their everyday life so much so that different spoken language may no longer a barrier.

I will also research examples of how interactivity is used as a universal method to bridge the spoken language barriers between people as a new form of communication.

Web Banner Initial Ideas

This is the original photograph i took of the motherboard with the wire wrapped around to read 'sustainable'.


I cropped the photograph to a suitable banner size:


I added 'student' to the end although i wasn't happy with the font or the colour:


I gave the 'student' text something light to be written on through copying it from another part of the photo in adobe photoshop cs3. i am much happier with the text and the colour, although there are now two pale blocks on the motherboard.


Here i got rid of the original rectangular pale block on the motherboard and filled in a similar pattern instead. This will be the final banner.


Here are some rough sketches of how i would like the section banners to look like:

Ars Electronica, Linz

As part of my travels around europe over summer, i ended up going to Ars Electronica in Austria. Before i went i had a rough idea about what it was going to be like, but i didn't realise i would learn so much from the visit.

As my time was limited i headed to the main ars electronica centre first. Here, the first exciting installation i saw was 'Humphrey 2' involving a man flying virtually through Linz. The technology was similar to a flight simulator, although the user controls the simulation. Slight arm and leg movements allow the user to glide through the city - and even under water. Various feedback from people who tested this said they did actually feel weightless as if they were flying.



Next we were called to the 'cave' by Dan Sandin. We all put on some LCD glasses and travelled through various 3D worlds, from Linz to Rome. There were three screens which emerced you in the visualisation. The technology was pretty impressive, however the graphics were sparse and i ended up feeling quite nauseous.

The 'diorama table' by Keiko Takahashi was quite fun to play with, there were various ropes and shapes that could be arranged to trigger a variety of virtual animations, such as flowers and water. The concept was that real objects could communicate with new fantasy worlds through an overhead camera. Although we didn't see this happen, apparently, if a sweet is put on to the table, the tracking system recognises the new object and an animated dog eats the sweet.



Another fun installation was the 'phantasm' by Takahiro Matsuo, and was one of my favourites in this section. The concept is simple, which I appreciated but it was aesthetically pleasing. The installation was at the back of the ars electronica centre, cordoned off by white netting. There was a red LED ball and a sensor camera above the installation. The ball could be thrown anywhere around the netting and virtual animations would follow the ball real time.



After this we made our way to another museum in the city, that claimed they could take a photograph of your eye and then when the photograph is processed with the help of technology they could visualise the last memory you were thinking of. we felt quite apprehensive about this, although this kind of technology is supposedly used on murder victims to visualise what their murderer looked like.

The camera:



The photograph of the memory:


Personally, I really don't know how they could claim that this was real, because the photograph did not trigger anything from my memory, and this was the same for my two friends i was with at the time. It was although they had a file of archive images which they then manipulated together with a photograph of our own eye to make it appear more realistic.

The next day i visited the OK centre where most of the entries for the interactive, hybrid art entries were held. This was the most interesting part of Ars Electronica because the work entered was so advanced, it was pretty impressive.

My favourite was the 'golden nica' of the digital musics category called 'reactable' by Sergi Jorda, Gunter Geiger and the Music Technology Group, Barcelona. The entry could have been part of the hybrid art genre, or even interactive art as the table was pretty versatile. The table adopts quite a user friendly interface, with graphics that people of any language, any age and any ability could access with no difficulty. It can be used, by 1, 2 or up to 10 people, and it gives the users a chance to compose a song together.



Here is the video i made whilst i was watching people use the reactable table, which demonstrates how easy it is to use, and the amazing results that can be achieved when people work together. There was no communication between the people that were using the table, it was purely made through mutual understanding and experimentation. The table has even now been used by Bjork on one of her tours around Europe.

First ideas for Client Project

I've been thinking of ideas for my client project and will keep it up to date on here so i know where i after christmas when the project begins.

I have an idea in my head and once i get it, and know that it is going to be a challenge, i have to do it. the basis for this idea began when i was travelling around europe in the summer. when we arrived at our hostel in warsaw we assumed that it would just be another city visit, like all the rest. however, we were greeted with a vibrant, and very useful map which was made by young locals and designed for young travellers. it was like a breath of fresh air that made the day that we had in the city a lot more useful than it would have been without this map. There were illustrations of all the buildings and main points of interest with honest opinions from the locals. It was all colourfully coded so we could tell what was a restaurant, what was cheap and what art gallery was worth going to. There were also photographs of the locals at the bottom with their opinions in speech bubbles. Next to this was a logo of the design company and a tag line explaining how to do this for your own city.

This triggered off a few sparks and i really wanted to do this for nottingham. for my research i would speak to the locals, including students and young people of nottingham and make another useful map for the new freshers and to bring travllers from london to nottingham, so they would get a good feel about nottingham as a city.

i would like to make the map more than just a paper map. i want it to be paper so it can come in the induction pack for the new students, but also as a web version, so it is possible to click on all the sights of nottingham which will link to a page with information and a video of the sight. I will see if the idea is good enough to take to the SU or even to Nottingham Council so i can promote this idea further.

New Term, New Project

Well, it's nearly half way through the first week of term and i am just trying to get my head around ideas for the project briefs we have been set.

I will begin by thinking about my personal research project because i know this is something i am going to get quite easily excited about when i pinpoint exactly what i want to research.

My first ideas are based around my visit to ars electronica over the summer. it is a digital arts festival involving lots of competitions and art work all around the city of linz, austria. it was an amazing experience to see all the programmes that are being developed this year, and to interact with all the different entries was definatly an experience which inspired my ideas for this project. alot of the entries for the competitions were designed by people that didn't speak english, which is one thing i particularly noticed when playing on an interactive music table. this was an amazing experience as all the people that gathered around the table did not speak the same language, however, it seemed that everyone had the same ideas about making a song together. i was so surprizing to me that people managed to make a piece of music together without being able to actually speak a sentence to each other. this made me realise how increasingly dependent we are on the ability to use our other senses that we don't need to talk to each other.

At the moment this is the beginning speculations to my personal research project and i intend to research this area in more depth before i begin to write a specific title for my project.

Texturing

3D Modelling Screen Shots

War of the Worlds Research

After reading the book and watching the first War of the Worlds film i selected the chapter I wanted to model in 3D. To get an idea about the situation of the house I higlighted all of the places that were mentioned in the chapter. I downloaded a version of google earth to pinpoint the exact place.



I also found a more detailed map of this area which would help me with the forests and the the sandpits in the scene.

War of the Worlds Research

The War of the Worlds: Chapter Eleven: At the Window

I have already said that my storms of emotion have a trick of exhausting themselves. After a time I discovered that I was cold and wet, and with little pools of water about me on the stair carpet. I got up almost mechanically, went into the dining room and drank some whiskey, and then I was moved to change my clothes.

After I had done that I went upstairs to my study, but why I did so I do not know. The window of my study looks over the trees and the railway towards Horsell Common. In the hurry of our departure this window had been left open. The passage was dark, and, by contrast with the picture the window frame enclosed, the side of the room seemed impenetrably dark. I stopped short in the doorway.

The thunderstorm had passed. The towers of the Oriental College and the pine trees about it had gone, and very far away, lit by a vivid red glare, the common about the sand pits was visible. Across the light huge black shapes, grotesque and strange, moved busily to and fro.

It seemed indeed as if the whole country in that direction was on fire--a broad hillside set with minute tongues of flame, swaying and writhing with the gusts of the dying storm, and throwing a red reflection upon the cloud scud above. Every now and then a haze of smoke from some nearer conflagration drove across the window and hid the Martian shapes. I could not see what they were doing, nor the clear form of them, nor recognise the black objects they were busied upon. Neither could I see the nearer fire, though the reflections of it danced on the wall and ceiling of the study. A sharp, resinous tang of burning was in the air.

I closed the door noiselessly and crept towards the window. As I did so, the view opened out until, on the one hand, it reached to the houses about Woking station, and on the other to the charred and blackened pine woods of Byfleet. There was a light down below the hill, on the railway, near the arch, and several of the houses along the Maybury road and the streets near the station were glowing ruins. The light upon the railway puzzled me at first; there were a black heap and a vivid glare, and to the right of that a row of yellow oblongs. Then I perceived this was a wrecked train, the fore part smashed and on fire, the hinder carriages still upon the rails.

Between these three main centres of light--the houses, the train, and the burning county towards Chobham--stretched irregular patches of dark country, broken here and there by intervals of dimly glowing and smoking ground. It was the strangest spectacle, that black expanse set with fire. It reminded me, more than anything else, of the Potteries at night. At first I could distinguish no people at all, though I peered intently for them. Later I saw against the light of Woking station a number of black figures hurrying one after the other across the line.

And this was the little world in which I had been living securely for years, this fiery chaos! What had happened in the last seven hours I still did not know; nor did I know, though I was beginning to guess, the relation between these mechanical colossi and the sluggish lumps I had seen disgorged from the cylinder. With a queer feeling of impersonal interest I turned my desk chair to the window, sat down, and stared at the blackened country, and particularly at the three gigantic black things that were going to and fro in the glare about the sand pits.

They seemed amazingly busy. I began to ask myself what they could be. Were they intelligent mechanisms? Such a thing I felt was impossible. Or did a Martian sit within each, ruling, directing, using, much as a man's brain sits and rules in his body? I began to compare the things to human machines, to ask myself for the first time in my life how an ironclad or a steam engine would seem to an intelligent lower animal.

The storm had left the sky clear, and over the smoke of the burning land the little fading pinpoint of Mars was dropping into the west, when a soldier came into my garden. I heard a slight scraping at the fence, and rousing myself from the lethargy that had fallen upon me, I looked down and saw him dimly, clambering over the palings. At the sight of another human being my torpor passed, and I leaned out of the window eagerly.

"Hist!" said I, in a whisper.

He stopped astride of the fence in doubt. Then he came over and across the lawn to the corner of the house. He bent down and stepped softly.

"Who's there?" he said, also whispering, standing under the window and peering up.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"God knows."

"Are you trying to hide?"

"That's it."

"Come into the house," I said.

I went down, unfastened the door, and let him in, and locked the door again. I could not see his face. He was hatless, and his coat was unbuttoned.

"My God!" he said, as I drew him in.

"What has happened?" I asked.

"What hasn't?" In the obscurity I could see he made a gesture of despair. "They wiped us out--simply wiped us out," he repeated again and again.

He followed me, almost mechanically, into the dining room.

"Take some whiskey," I said, pouring out a stiff dose.

He drank it. Then abruptly he sat down before the table, put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotion, while I, with a curious forgetfulness of my own recent despair, stood beside him, wondering.

It was a long time before he could steady his nerves to answer my questions, and then he answered perplexingly and brokenly. He was a driver in the artillery, and had only come into action about seven. At that time firing was going on across the common, and it was said the first party of Martians were crawling slowly towards their second cylinder under cover of a metal shield.

Later this shield staggered up on tripod legs and became the first of the fighting-machines I had seen. The gun he drove had been unlimbered near Horsell, in order to command the sand pits, and its arrival it was that had precipitated the action. As the limber gunners went to the rear, his horse trod in a rabbit hole and came down, throwing him into a depression of the ground. At the same moment the gun exploded behind him, the ammunition blew up, there was fire all about him, and he found himself lying under a heap of charred dead men and dead horses.

"I lay still," he said, "scared out of my wits, with the fore quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell--good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before--then stumble, bang, swish!"

"Wiped out!" he said.

He had hid under the dead horse for a long time, peeping out furtively across the common. The Cardigan men had tried a rush, in skirmishing order, at the pit, simply to be swept out of existence. Then the monster had risen to its feet and had begun to walk leisurely to and fro across the common among the few fugitives, with its headlike hood turning about exactly like the head of a cowled human being. A kind of arm carried a complicated metallic case, about which green flashes scintillated, and out of the funnel of this there smoked the Heat-Ray.

In a few minutes there was, so far as the soldier could see, not a living thing left upon the common, and every bush and tree upon it that was not already a blackened skeleton was burning. The hussars had been on the road beyond the curvature of the ground, and he saw nothing of them. He heard the Martians rattle for a time and then become still. The giant saved Woking station and its cluster of houses until the last; then in a moment the Heat-Ray was brought to bear, and the town became a heap of fiery ruins. Then the Thing shut off the Heat-Ray, and turning its back upon the artilleryman, began to waddle away towards the smouldering pine woods that sheltered the second cylinder. As it did so a second glittering Titan built itself up out of the pit.

The second monster followed the first, and at that the artilleryman began to crawl very cautiously across the hot heather ash towards Horsell. He managed to get alive into the ditch by the side of the road, and so escaped to Woking. There his story became ejaculatory. The place was impassable. It seems there were a few people alive there, frantic for the most part and many burned and scalded. He was turned aside by the fire, and hid among some almost scorching heaps of broken wall as one of the Martian giants returned. He saw this one pursue a man, catch him up in one of its steely tentacles, and knock his head against the trunk of a pine tree. At last, after nightfall, the artilleryman made a rush for it and got over the railway embankment.

Since then he had been skulking along towards Maybury, in the hope of getting out of danger Londonward. People were hiding in trenches and cellars, and many of the survivors had made off towards Woking village and Send. He had been consumed with thirst until he found one of the water mains near the railway arch smashed, and the water bubbling out like a spring upon the road.

That was the story I got from him, bit by bit. He grew calmer telling me and trying to make me see the things he had seen. He had eaten no food since midday, he told me early in his narrative, and I found some mutton and bread in the pantry and brought it into the room. We lit no lamp for fear of attracting the Martians, and ever and again our hands would touch upon bread or meat. As he talked, things about us came darkly out of the darkness, and the trampled bushes and broken rose trees outside the window grew distinct. It would seem that a number of men or animals had rushed across the lawn. I began to see his face, blackened and haggard, as no doubt mine was also.

When we had finished eating we went softly upstairs to my study, and I looked again out of the open window. In one night the valley had become a valley of ashes. The fires had dwindled now. Where flames had been there were now streamers of smoke; but the countless ruins of shattered and gutted houses and blasted and blackened trees that the night had hidden stood out now gaunt and terrible in the pitiless light of dawn. Yet here and there some object had had the luck to escape--a white railway signal here, the end of a greenhouse there, white and fresh amid the wreckage. Never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal. And shining with the growing light of the east, three of the metallic giants stood about the pit, their cowls rotating as though they were surveying the desolation they had made.

It seemed to me that the pit had been enlarged, and ever and again puffs of vivid green vapour streamed up and out of it towards the brightening dawn--streamed up, whirled, broke, and vanished.

Beyond were the pillars of fire about Chobham. They became pillars of bloodshot smoke at the first touch of day.

3D Research

The first time i used 3D Studio Max was last year in a few seminars with Andy and i think we animated something like a squid. However, with Roma we have practised making a train, some picture frames and a fruit bowl, so how hard can creating two rooms be??!??!!

I decided to look at what other people have created in 3D studio Max to see what the standards are.





I was particularly impressed by these images, especially the level of detail in everyday scenes and objects. When creating my scene in 3D studio max i want a lot of detail to help make the scene look more like reality than just a computer generated image.

Sodaconstructor

Sodaconstructor is a construction kit for interactive creations using masses and springs. By altering physical properties like gravity, friction, and speed, curiously anthropomorphic models can be made to walk, climb, wriggle, jiggle, or collapse into a writhing heap.

Play here: http://sodaplay.com/creators/soda/items/constructor

Noel Coward's Brief Encounter Live on Stage

Just thought i would write an entry for this as it's not really realated to interactive design but i loved the way it was made. Just before the production began with a cinema screen and a live band, i noticed the two actors sit on the front row of the cinema. In the first scene, the actors got up from their seats and performed in the isles of the cinema. The first scene of the film was also playing at the same time on the cinema screen (which was just slanted blinds. One of the actors then climbed through the cinema screen which was made to look like she had just climbed into the screen.

I havn't seen a style like this before and it just amazed me the different approach they took on the scene. From this point on, most of it was a theatre production following a young couple who met accidently at the station cafe every thursday due to a similar routine. They ended up falling in love eventhough they were both married, and the play follows their troubles and trauma of their fleeting romance.

In the interval the actors who worked in the cafe servinf tea and bath buns on stage in the production, came round to the audience serving cakes and cucumber sandwiches. This approach made the audience feel much more involved with the actors and therefore more involved with the narrative.



http://www.seebriefencounter.com

V&A Museum: China Design Now

Yesterday I visited the V&A Museum to see the design exhibiton about China. The exhibition was in three sections, representing three different cities in China, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing.



Shenzhen: Frontier City

No longer than 30 years ago graphic design in China did not exist. Before the design industry began to flourish Shenzhen was nothing more then a cluster of fishing villages on the northern border of Hong-Kong. In 1980 these were converted into the countries first Special Economic Zone, which is now the worlds largest manufacturing centre. Shenzhen, could be called the 'birthplace' of contemporary Chinese graphic design due to endless printing resources available.

Typography became very popular in Japan due to the unique pictoral Chinese characters, which is rather different from the 26 letter alphabet in Western tpyography.

My favourite piece of design work from the exhibition were these two posters. The first called, Graphic Design in China, by Chen Shaohua, 1992, and the second called Design and Lifestyle by Alan Chan, 1998.

Dexia Tower, Brussels

The dexia tower can be found in Place Rogier in Brussels where each day and night is ensured to be the cities best landmark attraction. The building is made from 6,000 windows and at the bottom of 4,200 of these there is a rail which contains 12 lightbulbs, with LED's in red, green and blue.

Each window in the building acts like a pixel and can make shapes, adverts or type. For the building to work successfully each window blind in the building must be closed as the light will not cover the whole surface of the window.



To make this all happen the bank teamed up with lab[au] who helped build an interactive station which was installed at the bottom of the building. This meant that members of the public could create interact with the building in real time to create their very own light show. Furthermore, their compostition could be photographed from another tall building in the city by a push of a button and then forwarded via email or printed out and taken home. lab[au] refer to the work they produce as 'MetaDesign'. 'Design' is in reference to the Bauhaus and 'Meta' is coming straight from computer science.



By many this building may be seen as a waste of resources and just another contribution to global warming. However, the building is not as big of a waste of energy as it may be thought to be. In actual fact, in recent tests the Dexia tower uses a third less electricity than the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The building effectively uses an LED lighting system (electro luminescent diodes) in which each LED only uses one watt of electricity.

Information Architecture

I found this map quite interesting as it is a map of the internet as if it was the train system of greater Tokyo.

The full map can be found at
http://informationarchitects.jp/start/?include=1
with links and thumbnails of websites included.

Particles

tutorial review

Besides realising that our interactive group is quite small and we all have similar ideas, morag and i received some positive feedback from the group.

we decided to develop our idea, which involves some ideas which at the moment morag and i have no idea whether will be possible or not.

the first change is to have less phidgets. we are hoping to keep it to at least 4. one being a joy stick which the user can actually draw their own pictures on the screen. one vibration sensor. one slider. and one stop button. we also thought it would be quite a good idea to include a stop button so the picture the user has created will be able to be printed out on a business card sized card with the details of the art gallery on the back which would be sold at the till for £1 per card. kind of like a souvenier.

Trippy Blobs

this reminds me of lights in a club. probably a bit to trippy to be having in a gallery cafe.

Alternative Idea

This is just another thought to the visuals for the mixer. If each sensor was connected to a word and you have to make up your own sentences. A bit like fridge magnets. But this animation is just using a random word and making a bit of a loopy pattern. Not really sure where I am going with this idea but it was fun to make. I think if our visuals were to be words rather than pictures it seems a little more intellectual for our target audience. The reason I wanted an alternative idea is because I told my mum the idea who is a typical art gallery goer and she was like....'yeah so whats the point'. Maybe if the animations did have words the it would have more of a 'point'. But then should they have a point, isn't the purpose of all art that you make your own point??

BHF Food For Thought

This website is for the British Heart Foundation by the Design Company Fingal and aims to promote childrens awareness to the mass amount of advertising aimed at them for junk food.

The website creates a whole virtual 3d world with 20 tasks designed to educate the kid aswell as entertain them. The games include the 'burp-o-meter', 'grub tub' and 'vending machines'. Once I completed a few of the tasks I realised slowly that the website was getting me to enter quite alot of personal information. I made it up because I wanted to get to the end of the challenge for the chance to win some anti-gravity boots! But on the other hand children may not be as clever. To my surprize their was then a warning to the kids to be careful about how much personal information they actually disclose on the internet which I thought was definalty something which needs to be warned to everyone who uses the internet.



http://food4thought.bhf.org.uk/

White Void

White Void is an company specialising in interactive design, product design, media design interior architecture and electronic engineering. The company created interactive products for museums, exhibitions, trade fairs, fesitvals, clubs and concerts.

The website is pretty cool to use as it is all in little 3d folders with each different area of specialism in different boxes:



White Void designed a pretty interesting interactive kiosk for OTICON Denmark, and OTICON USA called 'Head Over Heels'. 'Head Over Heels' is a stand alone Kiosk system and has intergrated computer and video projection systems. There are touch sensors at the bottom of the screen to allow for complete user interaction.



http://www.whitevoid.com

Animation Review

The blue circle animations are two rough ideas for the animations we can use as part of our visual mixer interactive kiosk. The idea is that it doesn't take up too much of the screen so that other animations can be mixed on top of this. I don't think this looks particularly pleasing on the eye, it is just somev rough ideas so when Morag and I meet up tomorrow we can play around with some animations and then use some scripting to see how it works with each of the sensors.

Vibration Sensor Ideas Wobble

Vibration Sensor Animation Ideas

Design Ideas 2 - Visual Mixer

This is our intitial idea for the project.We hope to have this on a table in the cafe. The fidgets we intend to use are touch sensors, vibration sensors, sliders, a joystick and a light sensor. We will use Actionscript 3.0 scripting to link the fidgets to the computer screen (which in reality would be the table in the cafe). When the fidgets are activated there will be 4 short animations which can be mixed visually because they will be able to overlap. The slider in the middle will alter the colour of all the animations. We will either make the animations opaque or just quite sparse so they will be able to mix smoothly.

The picture in the middle of this diagram is taken from this website:
www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/onlineexhibits/index.htm


It is made in a similar way to how we would like our first animation to look, although we would make it look more like smarties falling and put the circles in different colours and not have any text.

Design Ideas

Today things started to get exciting for Morag and I in our project as we made quite a few significant decisions.

The brief is to 'Design and present your ideas and working prototype for an interactive kiosk/advertising with AV content'.

We decided to make our kiosk for is the cultural industry, inside an art gallery’s cafe. We will not be conveying information via our kiosk; neither will we be advertising a product. Our kiosk is purely for the purpose of art, to incorporate interaction into the gallery café.

Sometimes café’s are a let down for the gallery as they provide no inspiration for the customers. They are usually just clean and clinical looking with no real thought behind the decoration, and often quite overpriced.

However with our idea, we propose to add something a little more exciting to the experience and hope to continue the creative sparks flying before the customer leaves the gallery.

Interactive Kiosks

The photographs above are a few interactive kiosks I found around Nottingham. The Kiosks are very user friendly and serve their purpose very well which is to entertain the public. However, for my interactive kiosk I wouldn't want to make something like this because it has been done too many times before, I want to create something new and innovative that uses interactions in a different way.