The Public

After having some trouble getting our hands on a Television we managed to pull together and get our project setup on time.

The reactions from the general public were minimal but I think with time, and if it were left on its own it could have a small impact on the people passing by I would think.

Our setup was in the right place, outside the library. Not our original idea but it was as close as we could possibly get. I felt as though our project would lack something if it was in a different place because our tweets on our post-it notes seemed to related to the library a lot more than a place like a coffee shop.

Some issues with processing, however we managed to run the program fine and it looked great. The program ran as we expected and I am happy with the outcome. We ran into some issues during our creation process. Processing (the program) seemed to be inconsistent and had issues with memory usage. Due to this we had limited ability to filter what we originally wanted to and ran into several problems where the program would just decide to not start. Looking back, I would think that it would be a better option to create this program using tools that are built for it. I am not sure where to look for such a program, maybe using Flash would be the right choice. At least for someone who knew how to use it.

My biggest concern was my lack of trust towards the general public. Due to this concern I restricted my actions a lot because I had a natural fear of the things we used getting broken, stolen or damaged. These concerns are something I would look further into if I was doing a similar project again.

Urban Screams...

Seems as though we're having trouble with the locations we decided upon. Our lovely public library has decided to turn us down after asking them if we could use their utilities. It seems as though they are in it more for the money than I personally would have assumed. Attempting to get us to join the library before denying us, then using the excuse that they wouldn't gain from the project.

AUT library took it upon themselves to hang up on us and told us it would disrupt study. Big thanks to the kind man behind the phone who's in charge of the library.

We have had some luck however. After a mission of a day we tracked down the person we needed to talk to to get permission from to put a screen in the foyer, outside the exit of the library. All we need to do is tape down any dangerous cables and not cause noise (which we won't).

Still need to sort out the screen. I'm not going to use my own.

Urban Screen!

Okay so our presentation went well even without Kieran which I was something I was pretty nervous about. Kieran away on holiday and interacting with him via his cellphone isn't fun when you're trying to send a wall of text. Anyway.

We've taken a lot down from the presentation and personally we had some surprising reactions from the class. The class seemed to like our idea a lot and it reinforced my feelings behind this idea we had.
Some great ideas that were thrown out there were that location should influence the information on the post-it notes. So we should be filtering our tweets depending on where we place the screen.

The colours should/could relate to the information on the post-it notes, essentially that they could influence whats being said. So for example if someone was feeling sad the colour could be blue.

An interesting and helpful comment that the lack of names or identification on a message would allow us to anonymously present these messages, avoiding any trouble that could be caused with privacy.

The words and information that we filter would be very important. We cannot have any bad words floating around so this is a big priority for us due to the public not reacting well to lots of dirty words.

How the post-it notes arrive and leave the noticeboard could/would have the public take a different approach on our idea.

And some thoughts on how the post-it notes would be displayed in a sense that a heirachy could be used to allow more important messages to stay at the top of the image.

Some things I have written down, after asking myself several of the questions this project has given us are copied from my work book, below.

What constitutes a screen?

I would think that a screen is made up from a visual display. Designed to show any type of information to the viewer like pictures or text or video. Our question is, does a screen have a display if no one is around to watch it?

What constitutes the public?

People or persons who have the freedom to do what they want within a public boundary.

How does the screen relate to its site?

First thoughts would be that the screen would only be related to the site because it would be in a busy area, available for people to see easily.

After some input from others we have come to realize that our location for our project will have significant influence on the public's perception toward our screen.

For example some people may see things like advertisement attempts or a lot of retail, using a big company screen could have issues arise from it. Not only this, the public may feel more interested in the TV itself than what the TV is displaying.

If we were to position our screen in or around a library then the public's perception would change and more feelings toward note taking, study, information , a quiet place to let your ideas out. Libraries have a lot of information from the random to the important. This is the same as our twitter notes. Whether you take the time to read it all is up to the viewer.


Full Size

We had covered several ideas from where to place our screen to what colours would mean what. Placing our screen as I have already talked about became an important issue for us and prior to choosing the location we thought over several other places like a Food court, Retail shops and even Bars. We researched these locations and extracted ideas for what information we could filter in each location eg: Drinking safety, in a Bar/Pub. Our obvious choice was the Library however, followed by the possibility of using a Food Court.

After finishing with our thoughts about the above parts of the project we turned to how to create the brains behind the working machine. First thoughts were to use Flash, we talked about it and it seemed like a good idea. Our teacher Kim was kind enough to give us some in depth books about Flash CS4 and how to use it. After much fiddling around and a waste of a good couple of days however I talked things over with Kieran several times and we decided to take the processing route. Finding we managed to pull off the guts of the program within the day. All credit to Kieran for being such a pro with coding I myself looked toward the visuals of the display and took the time to get us images and a way to display them easily.

The majority of our workings were in place and the only things we were building on were the requirements of the programming.

Urban Screens

Urban Screens and what they are is an interesting brief which caught me off balance it seems. After quickly finding a group and discussing some (very) random ideas we came to a conclusion that we should attempt some sort of Twitter message board which would display "tweets" or Twitter messages in real time in a public area.

Our first idea seemed solid, something that's not to common in the work I try to do and we were quietly confident that it would be an interesting idea.

Some main things we had noted down and thought to ourselves are, first of all. How we would display the message board and where. Requiring something that could update in real time we took the obvious route of an LCD television which was new enough to connect up to our laptop directly. This would allow us to directly feed our future program onto the LCD and display it as we imagined.

We did some short scouting for Televisions that we could use in the public area of Queen street and found several we could use.

Thinking about the program itself and what we expected to end up with was something visible and colourful. We need the twitters to be read-able and possibly display them as a single or as many on the one screen. From these thoughts we went over some ideas like having the tweets displayed as huge singular quotes, placed in the middle of the screen by themselves. They would fade in and out in some relation to the new tweets coming in. This idea seemed nice, but was too straight forward and didn't seem relaxed enough for me visually. Twitter is a spontaneous interaction with the world and we thought it needed a more visual representation of these random overflowing small bits of information.

It took until the following day to hit me that we could use Post-it notes as a colourful representation of the quick and short interaction that is Twitter. Post-it notes in short feel like a physical tweet where someone leaves a message to the world but not everyone always sees it. It felt like it all fit.

Following this we went over ideas related like... Our notice board, we would need images, high-res images to use due to the size of the LCD screen. The post-its would be random, as if they had been placed without huge thought but in a location with other messages. We thought over filtering options and the requirements that we would need to cover. Things like swearing and bad links we thought would need to be removed because we did not want any trouble with the public due to displaying the profanity that can be found on Twitter.
Our notes needed to be displayed so they could be read easily but we wanted them big enough to overlap and conceal older notes. These thoughts had us thinking of just using two images of post-it notes. Which soon grew significantly.

Other ideas like the positioning of the screen came to mind, as we had previously viewed an LCD tv which was sitting on its side so it was taller than it was wider. This (we thought) gave a more noticeboard "feel" too the image, however it was too risky and too insignificant of an idea to try.

On top of these ideas the content that we could put on the post-it notes could be anything. However we began with the thought that displaying messages from people talking about Auckland and tweets from Auckland it's self we were taking a huge public interaction tool and cramming it all into our LCD. Bringing the larger Auckland into our small public sphere.

My Headphones...
Why is it important to me?
What values do you attach to it?

My headphones are important to me because I have an appreciation for sound and music and I like to have a personal experience when I wear them instead of blowing up the house with my 5.1 surround sound system. It gives me a chance to tone out from the world and enjoy the bits I like, listening to the music I like or involving myself in a game. Sound is important because it is a human sense that is critical to people all around the world and to human interaction and having a heightened appreciation for it is something I think I will always have. I worry sometimes that I could lose my hearing or damage my ears somehow which would ruin any chance to further enjoy my headphones and the cool things they can do!
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A set of keys which have a dangerous looking ridges and is attached to a purple metal pig which is well worn.

Who do you belong to? I cannot tell you that!

What makes you unique? Obviously the ridges on my key, every key has a unique arrangement to access its own lock.

How do you feel about being attached to a pig? I could do better… But I could do a lot worse!

Is there anything you would say to your owner if you could? I would tell my owner that I require more keys on my chain, I get lonely sometimes, sitting around in dark pockets and such.

Does the colour have any reference to the owner? It could... I seem more female but could be related to any sex.

What do the words engraved in the back of the pig represent. Does your owner like Meat buns? I think they could, or it could relate to a nickname or real name.

Could the way the name has been engraved in the back of the pig mean anything more? The font seems rough and hand written, with purpose and intent. The owner feels deeply toward the
name that is written on this set of keys obviously.

Does the pig, attached to the key have any relevance? No, I wouldn't think so. I don't think they are pig farmers or any type of farmer.

Would the type of metal give away any information? Yes, the metal tastes like it comes from a location near Botany in Auckland.

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A modern looking phone which looks well used and somewhat abused, black in colour with a guitar pick hanging from a strap attached to the corner of the phone.

Why are you a phone? Because I was created this way, not by choice.

What makes you better than other phones? I would have to say the applications and overall interactivity. You have many more options with me than with the phones that have come before me.

Do you consider yourself better or more superior than other phones? Mostly, yes. I’ve been on the Batman movie and rival the iPhone in a lot of places!

Speaking of iPhones, you look little less appealing than an iPhone to me, would you agree you’re less aesthetically appealing? No, I have a little more self confidence than you obviously think. I am just as much of a good phone than the iPhone.

Do you enjoy the fact that your owner seems to use you extremely often? It’s a pleasing thought actually. I would be worried if someone purchased me or any phone for that matter, and left it lying around unused.

Do the finger marks on the screen give any clues to who could own this phone? They would if I took the time to investigate and get some scientific people to extract the fingerprints and check them on a database.

Part of the screen is peeling off, why is this? Probably because the owner is careful about the screen and wants to continue to keep the screen from being damaged by small scratches and the like.

You have a guitar pick strapped to your side, how does this relate to yourself? Well it would be used to press things on the screen... It would not actually be used to as a guitar pick, probably not strong enough. Judging from the amount of finger prints though it is not used a lot.

You're black could this relate to your owner? Yes and no, only in an aesthetic sense where the owner would prefer the colour black over another.


Pictures on the phone obviously relate to your owner, how come you don't have these locked? Because the owner would be comfortable with other people getting a glimpse.

Does Nokia mean anything to you? No, just who made me, who sold me. People who sell others obviously have no respect for anything, they're just out to scratch up any dollar they can.

I would assume that the word(s) "XpressMusic" mean you're a very sound or music related phone? It would mean that, yes. But having other applications to do many things than just listen to music.

You look powerful, games are in full 3D. Why is this? Because a lot of people like to pass the time by playing a game on the bus and things.

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A shiny but well used "PSP" (Play Station Portable) has a broken finger stick and the buttons are well used.

Why are you called "PSP"? Because I am a portable playstation, the creative guys at Sony slapped "portable" on the end of the name Playstation... They're so genius...

You seem quite fragile, are you? Yeah, not shock absorbent and I have a lot of moving parts.

Why did they change the playstation colours from white/grey to black? I guess sony thought it was more sleek and sexy, I just thing its because grey is a boring colour.

Does the size change of the disks make you feel inadequate? Yes, in comparison to the real playstation my disk feels tiny and less powerful.

The sweat marks covering you give away some idea of the use your owner gets out of you, would you agree? Yes I would agree because I am well used and taken care of. I always say that if you buy something and don't use it in the way it was designed toward, why get it in the first place?

Well, some people could buy things like yourself for display or collecting purposes? They could, but a PSP is not really a collectable item, and usually I would only be on display to be for sale.

What do you want to be when/if you grow up? I always wished of being a Playstation 3 Slim. They look very sexy but the odds of that happening are slim... Oh, see what I did there.

You're bigger than I imagined. Do you agree that your advertisement made people believe you were/are smaller? Sony, being someone trying to make money would obviously go out of their way to try and sell their products. Making "portable" things look more portable than other things would attract more customers I would think.

Why do you think Sony chose to build you when they had a strong console line? Because gamers lives became busier and people were suggesting a want for something they could play on the fly. Plus playstation fans will buy anything.

Do you think you're screen is an ideal size? I think its enough to display what needs to be displayed. The distance at which I can be held could be related to the size of the screen so the size does not matter a huge amount.

Sounds

My project ideas are running toward building a wind instrument which follows the principles of Phil's PVC flute design. The concepts of using two pieces of pipe meeting at one end with a membrane stretched over causes a unique and powerful sound. Essentially what I am looking to achieve is to deconstruct the instrument shown to us and remake it in a style which is different and unique to me.

Early thoughts are to make consecutive flutes which would play each other. But I soon discovered that ideas like this would not work to the extent I imagined. A membrane to play a membrane would be a fun idea and produce a sound that would certainly be one of a kind, I think it would require some type of air pressure device that could force enough air to the last membrane.

After discussion with Phil I've settled on a smaller pipe flute type build which consists of the inner pipe being a mouth piece on one end. And the outer pipe being the exit for the air where the finger holes will be placed. It works almost in reverse of the instrument we were shown in class yet produces a similar sound.

New Semester Begins

Hi.

Again it begins. Not so much feeling new and extremely lost this time around though. Its a good feeling getting back into routine and getting a chance to catch up with everyone that I haven't spoken to over the holidays.

The start of the week on Monday was a small shock to the system for sure. Although I was expecting Math I wasn't prepared for how much information and sifted from my head over the years and was left scratching my brain over the majority of the questions in the quiz. I am still curious to know how the discussion earlier on in the day relates to math and the things we will do with Barry.

For once I am actually looking forward to learning math and I might have to kick myself a few times to keep up if I'm not.

Tuesdays lecture with Phil started off slow for myself, although no offense to Phil and his work I found myself trying to imagine all the images he had shown us. How would they work and what sounds would they make. A lot of the interesting looking contraptions seem extremely over the top and could have made sounds unlike I would expect, like the tongue thing for example. I had not heard of anything similar and it woke me up as I burst into laughter. Quite brilliant when you hear sounds you have not heard before because they force you into a reaction you would not expect. I found myself thinking it was rude to laugh at the sound this instrument makes, but maybe it was intended to be this way?

Phil has an amazing knowledge of musical history it seems I look forward to seeing more of his contraptions and inventions.

Making these box instruments really is not as easy as I thought it might be starting off. I had a great idea to recycle some cans and expected them to make some less than amazing but still audible sound. I've found that the sounds these cans make while attached to my box aren't as ... intense as I expected and it obviously just sounds like I'm striking a can. Although Phil mentioned to us we need specific aspects to our box to make the sounds like membranes and other things I cannot yet understand how they all fit together to produce such wonderful sounds with some objects. I will probably look toward a more string related instrument next time.