Isadora

Now I am busy practically testing round with what I want to present in a month. I have done a bit of everything involved. My project conceptually won't change much except for fixing the holes. These holes can be fixed by how I technically create the artefact. The more I show people what I am doing the more I can see how it is perceived to others, this makes me drive into other ways of showing this content in relation to my concept.

The Auckland Museum. My choice of filming location. View looking outwards. 

What is important right now in my content is the experience location I am trying to express. There are different elements that can affect it. For one I want it to be a place that is an impactful situation that I myself have felt. It also should be a place that is generically pleasing to the audience and gives this impression of wanting to be there for a sort of aesthetic reward. Once they enter and interact with the projection it changes to the perception of a camera that then needs to be interesting to explore and move around in. Right now I am looking at a place that I find rewarding personally while also a tourist location for taking pictures. It has a mix of everything to help with being generic. I think my photography skills and the technology used may influence how great this content is.

Isadora editing

An affect created using Isadora

I have been looking into installations that give similar effects as to what I want. The program I am using for the video editing will most likely be Isadora. It is simple to use and looks to do what I want it to. When playing around with both this and when using After Effects for the simulation video I realise how many variations I can create of my artefact. I am aiming to showcase my artefact as best as possible to fit my concept and this is where the technical components can be manoeuvred for that. Right now I have a close (but laggy) version created.

Right now most technical aspects are there and I have most of the problems and questions answered for. It just needs to be formed together as one.

References

About | TROIKATRONIX. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2013, from http://troikatronix.com/isadora/about/

In Order to Control | NOTA BENE Visual | Digital Experiences | Istanbul. (n.d.). Retrieved May 24, 2013, from http://notabenevisual.com/interactive-typographic-installation/

Isadora & Live Feed Video Mask [How to...]. (n.d.). Graham Thorne. Retrieved May 24, 2013, from http://vjskulpture.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/isadora-live-feed-video-mask-how-to/

Artefact draft concept

As a way to help myself and others understand what my artefact I plan is to be I have made a simulated version of the two screens involved. I don't expect what I plan now to be exactly what I show at the end of semester but it is in the direction I want to take it. When I thought of this idea I knew it had a lot of holes but I expect to fix that through development and feedback. I don't mind if people don't completely understand the meaning of the work, they can make their own meanings. I do however need to explain clearly how I see it. Verbally speaking about it can make it confusing. Hopefully the simulation video and a typed explanation is clearer.

Perspective Experience - Video simulation Here

There is a projector screen, the user and an interpretation of a camera (basically a screen that looks like a camera). The user is facing the projector while the fake camera is behind them. The projector screen displays out a video of a photogenic scenery.  To begin the experimentation the user first has to move into a specific position, one that makes them look as if they are holding a camera. The projector then initialises into a 'camera mode' perspective. What the user sees on the projector is from the viewpoint of what a camera would see when a person is taking a picture/video within that scene. As the user moves their hands around the camera view moves with it in the photogenic scene space. The user can choose to look at whatever they want, the scene itself is meant to be curious enough to look at things at different times in different places.

Projector > User > Fake camera

While the user is experiencing the perspective of a camera, the fake camera behind them is seeing from the perspective of a person as if they were in the scene taking pictures with the camera that the user is pretending to hold. The fake camera displays/outputs what the person in the scene might be perceiving/consuming in their mind. This output is a mix of what the person is looking at and past connections relating to the current experience. There is the displaying of the eye's focus point visual consumption which degrades as the focus point changes from one place to another. Think of it like a person quickly closing their eyes and briefly seeing the last thing they saw inside their head, eventually it disappears and comes part of their memory. The current focus point also pushes out what was previously there with this fresher view.

The fake camera's output also creates a mix of past experience with the current. It is to simulate the perception of the person's experience. This includes past experiences that are influencing the current one. This recollection of the similar experience creates an alteration in both the past and present experience. When the user goes over an area that the camera has already been to it triggers a recollection on the fake camera's output that was similar in area, merging the two experiences together. This relates to a memory being relived in present time and becoming altered to the orignal experience.

This work is still currently conceptually broken. I see there are parts of the work that are not fully threshed out and are technically holding me back. For one what I am explaining is just the simulation, and two it is still in its early stages of development. Lots of holes to poke through. I feel what the fake camera is displaying isn't enough. There should be more things happening at impacting the current experience of things. I also don't feel like it acts as the human eye intakes. It needs to look more like a human eye perspective just as the projector has a camera's perspective. I want recalls to happens not just around what the user is looking at but in other areas of similarity. Show a better feeling of mixing between current and past experiences. I think I can do this by relating objects on screen to similar past objects rather than just by location.  The installation will become more interesting the longer in time it is shown. The more users play with it the more there can be a mix for reappearances of what happened.

Post clean out

So I have been getting a lot of post info bundled up and never completed. With the constant call for my exegesis to be written it is time to keep a track of things. There are topics and research that didn't have the best place to publish so I have decided to fill it out here while it's still relevant.

Healing pool - Brian Knep

Around a month ago I found an interesting interactive art piece using projectors. A glowing pool is projected onto the ground which allows for viewers to walk over. When they do it creates ripples in the pool, breaking up the patterns of what was there. The patterns will eventually repair themselves but now are formed in a different way, causing for what has been done to be a permanent alteration in the artwork.  

http://www.blep.com/healingPool/

These "alterations" I find interesting because the more the people interact with this pool the more it changes into something else. Similar to a memory being interacted with or recalled, the more it alters from the original experience. I want to know if I can allow the user to interact with something they perceive as a memory and show it visually changing into something it originally was not.

Enter The Void - Gasper Noé

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4IdVXI09pswBB4Ipn5GRNnHPsy_rpFtwXoNZlosq70gxXt_C2EvCdkSyzAtp8AUwgSCscwqcrQzgJszUxHWMJWcYpWJyJupoElSiHh8-GVYjrLykWaXkMCdC0dg8IfzRPns6lenfSie6B/s1600/Enter-the-Void-18-31770.jpg

Well, a week ago I watched a very unique film (do not read this paragraph if you plan to watch it). This film used POV camera techniques for the entire film, getting the perspective from a single individual. It plays through out of body experiences of a persons memory that are almost completely linear. All memories seem to be big parts of the person's life. This film I see as being someone's life flashing before their eyes, taking the biggest memories the person has. The reason I am typing about this is because I think it is similar to what is possible for my artefact but on a smaller scale. I want memories coming from a specific experience timeframe, most likely around the time someone would be recording using their camera. This film also allowed the audience to be a character while also watching themselves as that character, this may have also influenced my current ideas. 

Technology as Experience - John McCarthy and Peter Wright

Some old research from the book I read. First there is a brief cheesy statement on the aesthetic experience, followed by the threads of experience. These threads are useful to be conscious of when I create and discuss my project, they could be used for or against what I state and I need to be aware of that.

Aesthetic experience:

There is the self and the other. The other is the experience and is what is formed by the self from the self's perspective. The self requires for the other/event/object to respond back to the self to gather authorship. It gives the self unity and completeness. The relationship between one consciousness to the other is part of the aesthetic experience. How much is sent and received between the two will change the overall aesthetic quality.

There are four threads of experience, all of which are happening simultaneously:

Sensual threads

Sensory engagement can become fractured when the person is distanced with the subject at hand. If a product has been developed and sent on to someone else who wasn't the one who developed it then they have become part of a process without feeling the initial part. On the other side the person can become enclosed with the product and take away irrelevant senses when they are so absorbed with it. The way our senses interpret objects or people can change our experience of what is happening. Our interpretation is from our history, culture etc.

Emotional threads

How our emotions work in an experience is dependant on what is there and how that relates to the person. The person doesn't just create an emotion from themselves but rather it is created from how an object might respond to the person and how the person responds back. If the situation or object did not exist than the person would not have that same emotional response in the experience.

Composition threads

If the aesthetic part of the experience is to exist than there will be some effort from the person to think about it. They have to be thinking about what meaning it gives them, how they see this experienced framed, such as if an object gives them pleasure or just functional use.

Spatio-Temporal 

This I believe gives a bit of reasoning to my cinemagraphs. The experience itself can change what the time and space relationship is. The amount of time an experience goes for can feel like it lasts a very long time even if it only lasted a few seconds. A ball being thrown in a football game to score the winning touch down might seem to be forever in the air for the fans. The same can be thought for the feeling of space. What is happening in the experience can give the person an awareness of being crowded or restricted from a space. What I find interesting is how we can connect time as being one moment. Past, present and future all happening as one.

References

Brian Knep : Projects : Healing Pool. (n.d.). Retrieved May 12, 2013, from http://www.blep.com/healingPool/

Noé, G. (2010). Enter the Void. Drama, Fantasy.

McCarthy, John C. Technology As Experience. MIT Press, 2004.

Inception App

I found an Iphone Inception application. It takes in the sounds around you and distorts it in different ways that is outputted into your headset. It takes a bit to get into but when it's used in everyday activities it can disorient yourself with what is around you and what is real and what is not, especially when the Inception soundtrack plays in the background. Depending on where the person is, acts and moves with their phone will change how the device responds.

http://evolver.fm/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/inception_promo1.jpg

I found it interesting for a device to react and shape the experience output. This constant change in sound distortion has a similar lining to how I want my project to act as a distortion or change to a persons recollection. How the person acts or remembers will be connected to what visual output happens.

References

Inception The App | Experience your life as a dream. (n.d.). Inception The App. Retrieved May 9, 2013, from http://inceptiontheapp.com/