Urban Screen

The final project for the semester/year has arrived.
The brief we received can be broken up into two pieces.
The First: Create a program/image/video that can be played on a screen which involves/interacts with people in that space.
The Second: Procure a space in which to do the display (ideally a space which already has a display set up).

Initially I paired up with Tapani for the project, but very soon our group joined another group consisting of Josh and Luke. We thought the knowledge they have of the city would greatly increase our chances of finding the perfect spot to display our project.

After a brief discussion about the project in our newly formed group, Josh presented the idea about tracking the colour of people's clothes. Immediately we all jumped onto this idea and development started. Soon we started disscussing how the results might change from day to day, and why. We agreed that one main factor might be the weather, and so our project started to take form.

The plan was to go to one space on multiple days and film in (hopefully) various weather conditions. This would allow us to compare results and see weather the weather really was a contributing factor in deciding what colours people wear.

How would people interact with this? We decided to go with a "unconcious contributor" approach. Most people filmed would be contributing to the final "artwork" without realising it, but if someone does notice what is happening, they are free to interact with the camera. Therefore the audience has a choice.

We set off to create this using two pieces of software, namely MaxMSP and Processing.
In the end, we found it wasn't needed to use both and settled on using only Processing, seeing as we were more familiar with the programming language it uses.

Our only failure in this project was procuring the presentation space.
Our initial plan was to use the Britomart transport centre, due to the sheer amount of foot traffic they get as well as the security already in place there. We did not receive a a reply from them...
Our second option seemed like a sealed deal until three days before our presentation. We spoke to the people at the AUT library and they seemed very interested in our concept, but they coudn't sign off on us using their screen, so they gave us the contact information about the person who could. So we contacted the person in charge and they seemed alright with the whole idea, but could also not give us the go ahead because they wouldn't be there on those days. So our information was passed along to the person who would be in charge. The reply was bleak. "The library screen can only be used to display library information."
Our third and final option was Esquires coffee shop, and there we had our first bit of luck. The head of Esquires coffee just happened to be in the shop on the day we approached them. Unfortunately they also denied us using there space because they feared our project might interfere with their customers.
This left us with one final choice: do it in front of the AUT tower.

Although this wouldn't be the perfect space, we made the best we could of the situation and everything went fairly smoothly.
I am quite happy with the results.

Semester 2: Sound Building

Semester 2 has started...
I had been looking forward to this first task as I had heard that we would be doing audio work, which is my area of expertise. For this we would be tutored by Phil Dadson, an amazing musician and instrument builder.
Unfortunately I was quite disappointed by the direction this task took. We were instructed to build an instrument, which is fine, but I had expected much more. We glanced over the important fundamentals of audio and most of the theory, and jumped straight into the artistic part of building and playing our instruments. Seeing as this is creative technologies, I thought we would take a more digital route, which would have added to the last project, film.

I played around with a few ideas for this project before settling on building an instrument based on one I saw in Madagascar a few years ago. The original was a simple piece of bamboo strung with many strings aroung it's length. This produced a very high pitched sound without much depth. I planned to change this by adding a bass resonator, which would allow for a larger range of sounds. This was to be a plucked or percussively played instrument. The instrument proved very easy to construct apart from a tuning mechanism which I finally left out of the final product to reduce cost.
With this complete, all that remained was the performance. I was very impressed by how well the whole class performed. It was really unexpected. My performance went smoothly enough.

I'd like to thank Phil for taking the time to come teach our class. I felt I learned a lot from my discussions with him.

Posters

Project 3

Planning:
I worked in a group of 3 for this project. After a few ideas being thrown around about what to do, we stumbled upon a interview with Ross Ching (rossching.com) which gave us our idea of using still photos to create a video. Our design would produce a product that would be able to move 360° around an object.
We started researching designs for our rail which produced some interesting finds. Most rail designs works on a 2 rail system for added stability. But to save on cost, weight and (seeing as we wanted the trolley on the rail automated) simplicity, we made ours a single rail system. By this time we had a vague idea about our trolley, but the design seemed to revolve around which wheels and motors were available to us.

Construction:
After an interesting afternoon acquiring some pipe for the rail and steel for the legs, we started building. The leg design was pretty simple to put together and the bending of the rail went very quickly. The first problem came with welding the legs to the pipe. It was a delicate process, seeing as the metal was quite thin. Luckily things went well and our apparatus remained un-maimed.
The construction for the trolley, despite all our planning, was kind of winged on the day. We strayed quite far from our original plans, doing it piece by piece.

Filming:
Our plan for filming revolved around the idea of nuture within the city. This brought up some very interesting ideas about locations and objects to film. The filming was a very time consuming process and very dependant on the weather.
Our motor failed us by not having enough torque to power the trolley, so we had to resort to helping the trolley along the rail.
If I had the do this again, I would definitely not use a still camera again. The time spent taking stills could be put to much better use in post-production and final editing.

Video Editing:
Video editing took a while for me to get comfortable with. The layout, although being similar to other programs I have used before, took some time to get used to. I don’t think I achieved exactly what I set out to do. I was very limited on time which caused me to make some compromises. I composed music for the video myself which, in the end, I had to scrap because of the time constraints. The main idea was to split the video into two parts: 1 - The split between nature and urban areas within the city and 2 – The co-existance of the two.

Project 2!!

Project 2. Our first solo project.

"Design a prosthesis"... This presented almost limitless possibilities. Unfortunately working on this solo was going to limit what can be done, due to time and finance constraints.

I had some trouble getting into this project. Too many possibilities, too few I would be able to accomplish. I wanted to make sommething that could be of practical use to someone and make it simple and accurate enough to be used on a daily basis.

I ended up spending way too much time on research and prosthesis that, in the end, wasn't possible to finish in time. One problem for me was how it was going to interface wwith the pc. I decided that a keyboard hack would be my last resort. I wanted something new and interesting.

Unfortunately, as time started running out, I had to fall back on things I know and am already comfortable with: a keyboard hack using audio. My prosthesis was to be a piano-like extension to the hand, but instead of playing notes, it plays instruments.

The programming presented few problems as this idea progressed, but the design of the prosthesis caused many. Flexibility was my main concern. A solid frame didn't present enough movement. In the end I had to stick with a very rough version of my idea. The usb keyboard also caused a few problems, with the soldering coming loose on the day of presentation.

I have mixed feeling about this project. I really enjoyed working on it and learned a lot, but I would have liked to work in a two or three man team. I feel I would have accomplished a lot more that way.