Claire's BA Digital Media Design Blog

Dissertation Summary

2008-05-08T23:46:00.003-11:00

I really enjoyed my dissertation!
I enjoyed researching it, thinking about it, writing it, editing it, formatting it and even referencing it.

The subject I explored was anthropomorhism. And no, I did not look at animals dressed up as humans!
What I did look at was how humanizing technology helps us to get to grips with how to use it and makes user experience more efficiant and enjoyable. I explored and learnt so many interesting facts about anthropomorhism that I had not known before, and considered social, religious and design perspectives on it's use in digital media. I think it's emergence in technology design is a truly exciting field, and really found the psychology between human-computer relations fascinating.

Based on my research, I developed the opinion that Interactive technology is inherently anthropomorphic in its existence due to the roots of its invention and its purpose of improving relationships between humans and technology.

Triggering anthropomorphic thinking is a key way of increasing understanding of new technological artefacts and soliciting interest in them, which can be of benefit to a wide range of people. Therefore, consideration of anthropomorphic forms ( which can present themselves both obviously or extremly subtley) when designing and developing interactive technologies is an important factor in ensuring that they are designed in the most functional and user-friendly way possible. These forms should be considered whether they are being purposefully implemented or not, as it is almost dangerously natural for humans to cognitively apply mental models and stereotypes to new situation, including new technologies in order to develop an understanding of them.

Not all cultures view the world in the same way. Different groups of people have conflicting positive or negative opinions regarding both anthropomorphism and the development of new technologies, and there are also many religous groups that can be offended by the use of anthropomorhism (though this was an area I tried to touch on as minimally as possible, as it is such a complex area in itself and begs the introduction of theomorphism which is a seperate are from what I wanted to discuss).

Anyhow, I think it is important for designers to consider their target audience when developing interactive technological designs, to ensure that they will be used in the most functional way possible, and therefore be well received by their target audiences, and considering anthropomorhic form is a great way to help with this.

Spectacular Time and Comfort Thesis

2008-04-30T23:01:00.002-11:00

For todays session on Guy Deboards 'The Spectacle' I read chapter 6- 'Spectacular Time'. Upon reading over it for the first time, my reaction was a mental image of a cartoon question mark, and a very confused facial expression. Reading it over for the second time in more detail, I began to understand that he was discussing different 'categories' of time and their relation to human existence. From the second reading I extracted the impression that he was discusssing time as being a commodified, non human entity, and that humans are divided into workers and producers. The producers control the time of the workers, and rather than paying them with money for labour, they are rewarded with recreational time when they are not working. He talks about holidays and annual events as being false, periods of time that mark nothing other than human publicity of them. This ties in with his idea that only the present exists, and the past cannot live on in our memories, therefore memories do not exist in time.

Moving on to the class discussion, and gaining an understanding of the essence of the text as a whole, I still do not feel able to analyze the chapter in definite detail, however I did extract a better grasp of the meaning of the chapter I read, and began to interpret what Deboard is saying as the following:

Time is something that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time. It is a natural passage that cannot be denied, yet it is not human, and the 'boundries' that humans apply to define it are false. By boundries I refer to dates, monthes, years and public holidays. I think what he is saying is that these are all just names that humans apply to the concept of time as a way of trying to define, as it is something so vast and undefineable that humans cannot fully comprehend it.

From what Deboard says, time is an ever changing and developing 'present', and I have gained a better understanding of this by relating it to theories I have been reading about Guthries comfort thesis and familiarity thesis. Roughly summerized- both terms refer to anthropomorphism as the act of humans applying humanized mental models of the world to interpret unfamiliar concepts / objects / events. Comfort thesis suggests that the reason for this is that it's a way to make humans feel better about themselves, and more secure in our environment. It helps stoke our egos as a species. Familiarity thesis suggests the reason for this is to comprehend and control things we don't understand, or fear, to try and find some sense in them and make outrselves feel more secure in our existance.

I think these ideas can be used to interpret what Deboard is saying as the idea that the word time is a label which refers to a humanized understanding of something undefinable. This label is an attempt to understand the concept of time better, from a humanized perspective. The reason he refers to it as a 'spectacle', is because we as humans have no real control over it, and though we make a show of measuring it, using it, labelling it and talking about it, we can never fully control it.

In conclusion..... the text was very heavy in terms of comprehendability, and though I did extract some ideas from it as described above. I'm completely willing to admit my interpretation does not fully address everything he says, and may even miss the point he was trying to make entirely. Never the less, it was my interpretation, and I think the idea that humans try to define time in order to control it is an interesting one. Perhaps it stems from fear of death.

Exam Project

2008-04-28T13:21:00.002-11:00

Progressing well with the exam project. Really got into this afternoon and found a lot of inspiring research. I'm letting myself be flexible with my ideas this week and will commit to one to develop next week. At the moment I'm interested in stereotypes of technology and how they are a result of mental models that affect long term use.

Thoughts on exam brief

2008-04-18T13:05:00.003-11:00

It's been a while since I last used this blog, which is a shame as I do enjoy using it. I find it helps me focus my thoughts and ideas before I writre them up in my sketchbook. However, I've been really busy with lot's of 'extras' recently, mostly work experience opportunites( I was personally requested for for two of them, which was nice. It's great to feel that all the work experience I've been doing so far has given me a good reputation) and job hunting research for this summer, so I haven't had much time to post. However, that is not a reflection on my attention to the project. I've been quite firm with myself about making choices, and very introspective regarding what I would enjoy to do most/ what would benefit me the most / what fits in with my years work the most / what inspires me.... and I am keen on the idea of creating an animation that examins human / computer relationships in some way, possibly looking into peoples first impressions with each other, and applying that to first impressions of technology and the effect it has on userability in the long term. I don't want to be too specific in the brief though, as I would like the ability to develop and explore my research further with regards to the 'angle' I will have and the treatment I will write myself.

Regarding the dissertation, I feel it is finished now, and just needs grammer checking and a bit of fine tuning. I spent five hours harvard referencing and citing...I'm a bit worried I'm going to need to re-do that now after Wednesday!

Summery of current priorities

2008-03-30T22:50:00.003-11:00

Back at uni now after having been away for two weeks. Over that time I have spent alot of time working on an animation for SNS/SLN, and have been working on my dissertation. I also taught myself how to send an invoice and have been doing research into career paths and possible future employment.

My commitments for this final semester are university are:

- Completion of the client proposal project (evaluating my research)
- Finishing the dissertation and getting it bound
- Referencing and evaluating all my research for the dissertation
- The exam project
- Doing work experience with Wired Sussex (one day a week throughout April)
- Continuing to do work for Student Network Sussex
- Going to a college in Lancing to give a talk about my experience of Foundation Degrees with Aim Higher Sussex
- Going to Lewes College to take photographs of a foundation degree conference with Sussex Learning Network
- Re-doing / updating my online portfolio website
- Updating my CV and beginning to apply for work for after graduation

Easter Break Update

2008-03-19T08:45:00.002-11:00

Have been working every day of the reak so far. I got the D & A D parcel sent off, though I made some alterations first to improve the print quality. Since then I have been working on the animated information screen I proposed to my client for the client proposal project, which will be used in schools and colleges at career events being held by SNS/SLN later this year. I have also nearly finished the dissertation. I need to add a little bit here and there, and format it properly with creditied quotes, and write the conclusion, which will be about 800 words, as I have written 6000 so far, and I need 200 for loose ends within the essay. I will look into places to print and bind it over the break. Also, I taught myself to and wrote my first ever invoice, and have been doing alot of careers research as part of the client proposal project, so, very busy, despite it being the Easter break.

By the way, if anyone is interested in exchanging dissertations with me to proof read and get a fresh perspective on each others work please let me know.

Creative Catapult Review

2008-03-13T00:19:00.003-11:00

This was a wonderful experience. I'm really glad I signed up for it.

To re-cap, it was set up by Wired Sussex in conjunction with Kanoti, and held at the Lighthouse. Briefs were given by the BBC in January, and we, the attendees (students and graduates interested in aniation and illustration) were divided into four groups of four and given two months to work toegther on a pitch for the BBC.

Yesterday we had the final workshop, in which we all pitched to the BBC, and then given an evening seminar aimed to guide us in building confidence and start building our careers, whether or not we knew what we wanted to do.

The experience of working in a team and pitching to the BBC was not only a rewarding one, but an enjoyable one, and it was great to meet such a diverse range of professional practitioners and other students and graduates.

I left the event feeling truely inspired, enabled and empowered, and am very glad to have attended.

Status report

2008-03-11T06:00:00.002-11:00

Am confident about meeting the deadline. Have finsihed animation but still need to mount boards and tie up loose ends with my sketchbook and workbook. Have been very busy this past week balancing the project with the client proposal, and tomorrow am attending workshop two of Creative Catapult, so have not been ablt to blog as much as I would have liked. Will update more soon!

Boards and final preparations

2008-03-04T23:39:00.004-11:00

So, to update, I have finished my animation, but am having trouble exporting sound. It shouldn't be too hard to fix this, it's a problem I have had many times. I usually get around it by exporting the visual, and then matching it with the sound in i-movie. It is a nusiance though. I think it's a technical fault with the program, as my version of After Effects is rather old.

As for boards, I have nearly finished laying them out digitally (there are three), and will print them at the start of next week, to carefully mount and package. I'm not too worried about mounting as I have done it hundreds of times on previous courses, and will be using ready cut board so it won't take more than a quarter of an hour at most, packaging will be fine, although I am concerned over the sending of the package, as I have been warned it will be costly.

Regarding this, I will package the foam board between to rigid sheets of firmer cardboard, to protect them, make sure the CD is in a hardcase rather than a softslip, and then wrap all in bubble wrap, then brown paper, all tied up with string.

I aim to get this finished by the Thursday, as I am keeping next Friday free to meet with my client over client proposal, and I have a monumentus amount of work I need to get done for her over the next couple of weeks, alongside the client proposal, which is for a differet piece of work, that I will be working on later in the Spring.

My dissertation has not developed much beyond more research, as I am waiting to hear back from John who is reading over my draft.

How I will organise my boards:

2008-02-28T01:23:00.002-11:00

I have just written out for myself a summary of how I developed my character, 'Jitters', and evaluated what is relevant for the boards and what is not. Based on this, I have decided it will be appropriate to create three boards in the followiung order:

1 Development of personality
2 Development of appearance
3 Development/description of mannerisms and emotions

My next step is to create some rough storyboards of what text and images I will use in the boards. From there I can play around with layout, using pencil and paper, in preparation for creating the final artefacts. At the minute I am thinking A2, but it will depend on how much content there is.

Development of Character Boards

2008-02-28T01:04:00.001-11:00

As the requirements for the brief are quite strict, and I can only use certain sizes, I have decided to plan out exactly what I want to show on them, before I start selecting sizes or experimenting visually.

To do this, I will take my lead from the quote requesting them:

‘Creation: storyboards succinctly showing the process of how you created the character’

So, from this, I can make three important observations about what the content should be:

1: I need to be very detailed, and included each stage of

2: my character development processes, as opposed to the storyboard of the animation

3: I should make the boards specific to my own development process, and highlight how I approached the task of creating a character personality, as opposed to just highlighting the different stages of the characters appearance.

Though I can’t find any past winners boards on the site to look at, I remember being shown some in class last year, on the FdA, and they were all very visually eye catching and pristine. I think it important to remember that this could be the first visual taste of my work that they will see, as the animation will be on disc. So, I think I should strive to find a balance between making it eye-catching (not just using squares on white), consistent with the design of my character and animation, and also ensure it looks professional and not too over the top of cluttered. A couple of ideas I have had regarding this are to have lots of images of my character in different positions holding up pieces of paper, or to use a background consistent with that of my animation (parchment), and sequined pattern from the characters body around the edges as a border. I will decide first however, what the content will be.

So, I think it important now to summarise what that process was for myself, now, in writing, and work from there to develop possible layouts, roughly planned out on paper, that I can begin work on the finished artefacts.

Summary of workload

2008-02-28T00:53:00.002-11:00

Must be hasty here, as I have alot of work to get done.

Just to summerize my current working situation-

I think I may have taken on a bit more than I can handle, and am finding it a challenge to meet all my commitments and still sleep/eat/function like a human.

I will manage to meet all my deadlines, and all work will be of perfect quality, however this is a challenege that I am only coping with due to careful and rigid time planning, and a lot of late nights. Once my current workload has subsided, I shall learn from this and in future not take so much on at any given time.

At the minute I am:

- working on the dandad project

- working on a largescale poster and postcard campign for my client(v.timeconsuming!)

- working on the brief requirement of a proposal for my client, which is a project I will then be doing in full, though the work itself will not be finished at the date of hand on, as it is for an event in late April. The proposal will be finished though.

- working on a careers file to use next year when searching for employment, and also developing my CV

-working on the dissertation

-working with a team on a pitch for the BBC (Creative Catapult)

- doing work experience for wired sussex in the form pf photography. I need to ring up lot's of companies and organisations and travel about to them at certain times to do this. Next week this will include digital media companies that are involved in the Brighton Internship Programme. (BIP)

I'm also balancing this with a weekend job.

I feel quite proud of myself though that I have managed to balance all of this without harming quality of work. I feel that each project is being given 100% of attention required to it.

Client Proposal

2008-02-25T05:21:00.002-11:00

I have been focussing today on the client proposal project. As the brief is quite open, I have been tailoring the project to my own interests, to get the most out of it I can. This relates mostly to the research side of the project, which I am carrying out beyond the requirements of teh brief, and also to the proposal and work itself, which I have divided into two stages. The first stage is preparation work for teh project proposal. I proposed some work very informally to a current employer and it developed into a poster/postcard campign for a series of careers events. After this is completed the client would like me to work on an information screen for the event, that is animated and in keeping with the poster identity. For this reason, I am not producing a proposal fpor that until teh posters have been completed. So, stage one of my project is documented correspondance including an informal proposal and client written brief, and progression of the poster work . Stage two will be doing some rrsearch into event screen, and producing a more formal, costed proposal for the animation information screen.

What I plan to do/am doing for the project regarding work for the client is as follows:

HAS BEEN DONE

- I made an evaluative choice about which client to go with and why
- I wrote out exactly what my relationship has been with the client prior to start of the project, as she is my current employer, and some working relationship practices are already ion place.
- I made a brief proposition of work that I though could be beneficial to the client
- I corresponded and met with the client to determine what work could be done
- The client and I together agreed on a poster and flyer campaign consisting of 8 of each, the client then asked about an animated information screen for an upcoaming event that the posters will be used in.

AM DOING NOW
- I am now working on the poster campign rather than a proposal for it, whic did not seem nessecary as we discussed and wrote out a brief for teh work together

WILL BE DONE
- I am going to complete the print based work, and then have a meeting with the client about the animated information screen.
-I will then create the proposal requested by this brief for the animation screen, BASED on the identioty of the print based work I am undertaking for the client at the moment. When I do this I will use some of the resources on moodle that have been used in previous years, which includesa guide to what the proposal should consist of.

Regarding research and personal development in this project, as I am more interested in finding a job, perhaps with on the job trianing, at graducation, rather than freelancing, I am creating a research folder looking at jobs types within my chosen industry, interactive design, and rates of pay / locations / tips for finding work, interviews ect, and also looking at standard paratices for interacting with clients in any given situation. That section will feed into my project directly in the way I interact with my own client.

Reading Week Summary

2008-02-22T22:20:00.003-11:00

I've had a productive week since my last post. On Sunday I applied for the work experience opportunity at Wired Sussex, and then the next morning received an e-mail from the events manager there (who I've met now on several occasions, at Creative Catapult and the digital media job fair) who asked me to come in for an interview, and also wanted to offer me some other work, in the form of taking photographs for a conference. I went in on Thursday, and will hear back about the work experience I applied for at a later date, and in the meantime am going back on Tuesday to discuss times/locations for the photographs.

I've also done a lot of work on the client proposal project this week. I'm developing a poster/post card campaign for SNS, that will consist of 8 colour coded posters and 8 colour coded postcards, to be put up in colleges across Sussex and used at events. When this is done, I will write up my proposal part of the project for a 3 minute animation using the same identity as the campaign, to be used at the events as an information screen.

Finally, my character project is going well, and I'm on track with times, although I did change my storyboard due to time concerns and technical difficulties.

This coming week I plan to get the animation finished so I can work on the 'storyboards of how you created the character' which I assume is not referring to storyboards of the animation, but images and descriptions of the characters development throughout the project. I will check this though. Also this week I will be meeting with my Creative Catapult team, and need to prepare some work in advance of that re: our pitch. Finally I aim to have the rough poster layouts completed and fonts chosen with my client for the client proposal project, so that I can begin work on the final artifacts the week following.

AHEAD OF MY OWN SCHEDULE! (For this project at least)

2008-02-17T02:23:00.000-11:00

After a few days of worrying that I won’t be able to come up with an animation idea that would express my characters personality in full whilst still being a unique idea, and worrying about what sound to use, how to create the sound, and generally getting off track by starting to research into ways to ‘express the self’ via ballet, mime and music, and re-thinking my whole character personality to mould it around a ‘theme’ for the animation (such as mime, ballet or music) , I’ve finally come up with a full treatment and mental storyboard (several days before the schedule I set myself!!!) that I will spend the day getting down on paper.

I did this by keeping in mind the brief’s requirements, comments Angie and Michael made in class on Thursday about being strict with deadlines for yourself, leaving time to create a high quality final piece, and being self aware of when valid research becomes procrastination, as well as, most importantly, a belief in my character idea.

The brief requires that a character personality be developed, and animation be used to express this. It is not asking for an animation idea or plot for the character to be servant to, but the other way around. The animation is servant to the characters identity. Keeping that in mind, I decided to stay firm in my belief that I have created a good character. He is realistic, visually attractive and will be engaging of the audience in a way that triggers anthropomorphic thinking and a sense of believability that he has an off screen life and daily routine. My animation will be true to this, it will highlight the characters most common emotions and aspects of his daily routine, and use a sense of humour that I will try to spark with my characters facial expressions at certain events. I feel that the ‘script’/treatment I have written for the animation fully expresses the key points of the characters profile and will allow me to focus on using his emotions and behavioural mannerisms to bring him to life rather than plot events. As for being original, I am going to achieve this through my visual look. I have in mind an exact way I want the animation to appear visually, which will be in keeping with the personality of the character. I will be using After Effects to create the animation and will make use of 3d Space but with 2d objects, in a environment. All the elements that are important will be highly detailed and of excellent quality. I have already created all the components that form my character, and so will now create a detailed storyboard to work on using photographs and materials I plan to use in the animation.

Regarding sound, I will leave time to create this at the end, and will try and compose something myself in Garage Band. I will also record the diagetic sounds I need in the locations I am storyboarding to add a sense of realism to the soundtrack.

Character Development Update

2008-02-15T23:17:00.002-11:00

I feel that I am nearly complete in familiarizing myself with the character I’m developing now. The character is a cat, named Jitters. He pities humans because he thinks cat’s are the superior species, but he has a soft spot for them. He likes his own space, and when other encroach on it he slowly and subtly stretches his body our really far to claim space. He likes to sleep a lot and gets annoyed at being woken. He doesn’t like to be stroked without permission and hates water. He has an enemy in the form of the cat across the street and is generally quite secluded and un-social. He’s a bit of a snob and thinks a lot of himself. He hates water, loves flowers, and sees humans as his ‘servants’. I have been observing my own cat all week and taking photos, and then developing them into still cartoon like images just to brainstorm ideas of liked activities and places, and yesterday I fully created each body component. The brief stresses the importance of personality rather than appearance, but I plan to show personality mainly through postures and facial expressions. Now I am researching some classic body postures and expressions of humans and what they indicate for cats and humans, and am merging the two to create a ‘language board’ for my character that I can reference when storyboarding my animation. I have been thinking of ideas for the animation all week but have not decided yet, as I have felt it more important to develop the character’s personality, style and ‘language’. I will finish this by Monday and then give myself a day to write a treatment for the animation itself, which should be easy to do now that the characters personality and style has been determined, and another day to produce a storyboard, and then I will begin to create the components and think about how to produce the sound. I hope to be ready to start production of the animation itself, with all components ready and set up in after effects by Friday, and then will begin to animate next week. (This week I will be doing a lot of work for Client Proposal Project)

Angie Taylor Session - notes

2008-02-15T01:33:00.003-11:00

Firstly, I just want to say I really got alot from this session, I found it really interesting. Some of the points she made I already picked up from previous tutors / people I've worked with / Creative Catapult (at which she is one of the tutors). These were things like time planning, professional practices, the golden section, parenting, alpha channels ect, but I picked up a lot of really useful tips for stroyboarding, something I have done for previous courses but never really learnt specific ways to indicate things, and I found it really useful. Also, some of the software tricks she showed us were great. I really want to try out 'puppet' in After Effects, and I discovered a lot about Bridge, which I have but haven't ever actually used. (until after the session when I tried out angies tutorials)

For this project I will definately be using some of Angies storyboarding techniques, and I'll also be using some of her photography tips for doing panoramas for other projects.

DIGITAL MEDIA JOBS FAIR

2008-02-13T09:11:00.003-11:00

I attended the jobs fair today and found it to be worthwhile. It was very busy and not many companies were present, but I found it informative and did some networking. I also met a recruitment advisor that I had previously met at portfolio clinic, and I am really keen on working for that company. I gave an updated CV, and the advisor said it would definitely be worthwhile getting in touch a month or so before graduation. I noted down the contact details of people I did not get to speak to, and will aim to start researching what’s out there and applying for jobs after the current project ends, over the Easter break. I was also quite pleased at the event that one of the Wired Sussex organisers knew me my name- she is the person who also organised creative catapult, and the whole experience has made me feel more confident about networking.

CREATIVE CATAPULT

2008-02-13T09:11:00.001-11:00

Though this is not a course project, I feel it worth blogging a little about Creative Catapult, as I am finding the experience really positive. I am group leader for my team and yesterday we had our first meeting. In preparation for this I took initiative and went to Wired Sussex to get our materials from the workshop, and prepared a document detailing what we needed to discuss in the meeting. At the meeting itself one member could not make it, but the rest of us all worked well together and agreed 100% on a plan of action, and we are meeting again in two weeks time to finalise details for our pitch to the BBC. I took it upon myself as team leader to write up minutes from the meeting and a clear plan of what tasks each of us will achieve by the next meeting. I am really looking forward to the next workshop in itself too, as we will be pitching to the BBC face to face.

DEVELOPMENT OF MY CHARACTER

2008-02-13T09:10:00.001-11:00

The design of the characters personality rather than visual appearance is strongly emphasised in the brief, and I have been focussing on this in my research, looking at acting techniques for familiarizing yourself with characters, writing tips for developing characters (one of these is to leave naming a character until the end so you don’t have any name association limiting your creativity, I experimented with this in idea generation and found it works better for me to not have a name. The character is based on my cat however, who is called Pepper, and this has been a working title to avoid confusion when discussing different characters), and non-verbal ways of communication for expressing personality traits. Based on my research, I have come up with the following ideas of redeveloping my characters personality:

* I am going to research iconic cat characters and study what makes them unique and what they all have in common. This is to ensure that my character does all the right things, and also to make me aware of what has been done that is unique to each character, so I can strive to do something a little different and give my own character a sense of unique identity. I will start out looking at silent cartoon cats, and this will allow me to also pay attention to ways of communicating without dialogue.

• I will observe my pet Pepper and making notes and images that portray unique mannerisms and ideas for characterization.

• I will come up with a new name, based on the character personality.

• I will develop a visual style for the characters appearance, based not solely on the personality, but also on a comment made in the brief; ‘styles that will work within the commercial and music industry’

• I will keep a scrapbook of images of the characters life that will depict rough images of the characters habitat, friends, belongings and lifestyle.

• FINALLY, I will fill out the character questionnaire I composed previously and also include a list of bodily mannerisms and postures, as a sort of reference profile that sums up who my character is, and be referred to when considering how the character would behave in certain situations. This will aid me in developing a treatment for the animation and storyboard.

• Once the character has been developed, I will familiarize myself with it by adopting the personality in second life and seeing if it offers any inspiration for animation ideas.

Development of D&AD project

2008-02-13T08:29:00.002-11:00

I am progressing well with the project. I have set myself the goal of being firm with myself over making key decisions quickly and not ‘umming’ and ‘arring’ about them for long. This has worked well so far. I developed 3 ideas as required by the brief and logically drew up a pro con list, and did some research into actor movement theories, character design, character theories and writing tips for character development, and then made the final choice based on which idea fitted in well most with the brief.

My final choice of character is a cat which views humans as servants (name unconfirmed) which was inspired by my own cat, and I am going to develop the personality this week in a number of ways (See next post)

As the timescale is quite tight for this project, and there is also the client proposal project to consider, I have developed a colour coded cross project time plan, in which I am recording all meetings dates and major events I need to consider when time planning, and letting me see how much time I have for each project comparatively. It has been really helpful so far, as I can refer to it when time planning each project individually, and then plan which weeks will be more productive for a particular project and which weeks will be more focussed on other projects, so that I can plan out my work load realistically. This has prompted me to set rigid goals in this project, and the main milestones are as follows:

WEEK 18: This week I will be focussing on developing the personality of my character (See next post), and then the appearance. I will at the end of the week draw up a document that has a complete profile of my characters mental state (i.e likes, dislikes, habits, environmental preferences ect) and a list of behavioural mannerisms and personal postures that I can refer to when storyboarding, and also when creating boards to show how the character was created.

WEEK 19: During this week, reading week I am going to be working a lot on the client project, but will ensure I write a treatment for the final animation, produce a detailed storyboard, and begn to make all needed components for the animation, which I will do in After Effects.

WEEK 20: This week will be dedicated to the actual production of the animation

WEEK 21: This week will be focussed on creation of the boards and rendering of the animation

WEEK 22: I will be ensuring my sketchbook is bound and finishing off loose ends.

D&AD Project - Chosen Brief

2008-02-04T01:26:00.001-11:00

I have chosen to work to the brief of character animation for this project, because I think it is important for me to choose one brief at the start, fairly quickly and then get started on developing ideas as soon as possible to make my concept and standard of completion stronger and more professional. In the last couple of projects I have become self aware of the fact that I can at time be pretty indecisive, and in this project I am going to start out rigid about making decisions. There were several briefs that interested me, and I will describe why in my sketchbook, but ultimately, now that I have returned from Berlin, I am going to choose one and stick to it. I have chosen character animation because the brief talks about the spirit of a character and attention to bringing it to life. I think that the research I am doing for my dissertation on anthropomorphism will feed into this well. I enjoy using After Effects and feel confident in creating an animation to a good standard with this piece of software, and the challenge of creating a character will require a lot of attention to detail that will help me in future projects and working with clients. Starting inspiration for me is 'Buddy Bears'(see previous post), that I saw in Berlin, because although they are inanimate objects, they seemed to me to have a full, rich life to them that spoke out with emotion about the origins of the city and it's views to the future, whilst also displaying symbols and messages from other countries around the world.

Buddy Bears

2008-02-04T01:22:00.000-11:00

Buddy Bears are fibreglass, 6ft tall statues that were created in 2001 and painted with the colours and symbols of different countries world wide, and placed for a short period of time in a circle around the Brandenburg gate before being redistributed around the city, so that spotting them becomes an interactive game in itself. The form of the Bear is a symbol of Berlin, and the colour represents a tolerance of other cultures and the ideas of unification and peace between nations. They tie in the old with the new. The old being the form of the Berlin Bear and their placement around d the Brandenburg Gate (which itself has also been the spot of Nazi Rallies), and the new being the modern colours and the material. They seemed to capture the spirit of the City today, a harmonious look to the future with an acceptance and remorse for the past.

I myself spotted them in fish tanks, fountains, street corners, museums, animal cages, and restaurants.

See image here

Tiffany's Cafe

2008-02-04T01:19:00.000-11:00

Tiffany’s café was another highlight for me, it was built so that the seating area was the centre of a fountain, and the edges were lined with plants and the water full of metal sculptures of lily pads. Unfortunately I never managed to have breakfast there, just ice cream. To get to teh cafe you have to walk along wooden bridges over the water. Will post image soon.

The Aqua Dom

2008-02-04T01:16:00.000-11:00

“The AquaDom is a 25 meter tall cylindrical acrylic glass aquarium with built-in transparent elevator. The Aquadom is the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world, with a diameter of over 11 meters, built on a 9 meters tall concrete foundation. Filled with about 900,000 liters of seawater, it contains some 2600 fish of 56 species. The feeding of the fish and the cleaning of the fish tank is performed daily by a pair of full-time divers.” - Wikipedia

Visiting the Aqua Dom and taking a ride in the lift was an amazing experience, it felt quite magical, as if I was travelling on Willie Wonkas Glass Elevator, or had gone through Alice’s Looking Glass. The design of the lift was also unique, as it was the only lift with a staircase I have ever seen.

Take a look here

Berlin

2008-02-04T01:09:00.001-11:00

I learnt a lot in Berlin. Not from the festival alone, but from the trip and the city itself as a whole. In my time there I attended several events at Transmediale (see post Transmediale’) and also visited the Cathedral, old Berlin, Charlottensburg Palace, the TV Tower, the Aquarium and the Aqua Dom, took a boat ride, went to the Zoo (the famous one, not the new one), walked around beautifully built buildings with unique architecture, explored several markets, went to the Reichstag twice, the Brandenburg Gate, the Sony Center, Checkpoint Charlie, La Fayette, William Echhart Memorial Church, the Europe Center, The Jewish museum, the Jewish Memorial, took a walk from Alexandraplatz through to Tiergarden station along Unter Den Linden, and generated over an hour and a half of film and 785 photographs.

I found the city itself to be breathtaking and ever so interesting. Walking through Mitte I thought it was so unique to be able to really see what existed pre war, what had survived the war, and how the city itself has been re-developed to still present it’s past whilst making way for a more unified and culturally excepting culture. Buddy Bears were a great symbol of this, and were to me extremely inspiring products of design. The Berlin Wall itself (the postcards and remaining slab on Unter Den Linden illustrated) I thought was also remarkable in the sense that although the wall itself was a badly formed and ugly construct, it had been repainted over the years by the public, and really expressed the city’s dislike for it. To see these postcards lining the streets of Unter Den Lindin, and to see the way that the whole City has been re-developed since it’s demise, I could really get a taste for the feeling and the spirit of the city, and the strong emotions the city has been privy to over the past century were so strongly present in it’s design. Walking along the river near the Cathedral I stumbled upon old cobbled streets and the original monument of the Berlin Bear, a beautiful statue that looked so lifelike, and as if it were real, and weary of the past. The Sony Centre at Potsdam was another amazing example of this. To see the way it has been developed from an urban wasteland in the 1960’s, to the eye-catching new commercial haven was astonishing to me, and I left the city with the feeling that it is an undiscovered gem that will continue to develop further until it receives as much tourist attention as places like Rome or New York. I could write about so much, but am picking out just three highlights to post about that have all inspired me and however I can see myself creating work this year that is influenced by so much of what I saw on the trip.

Transmediale

2008-02-04T01:08:00.000-11:00

I did not feel that this festival was quite as good as it could have been. I found the exhibition quite dry, and the videos in the main hall rather dull. Below is a list of some of the things I saw and my thoughts on them:

Chop-Bot

I could not find a link between this machine and the theme Conspire. I did however think it seemed to be a bit of a health and safety issue.

Breeding Fear

This talk started out well, it was about the affect that the internet and terrorism has had on fear personal identity, and I thought that some of the points one of the speakers made about airport security being performance art to be interesting. The idea of the worker going through the motions of making things look secure, and the traveller going through the motions of trying to look innocent was quite interesting to me. However, I did feel that this talk centred to much on just the idea of terrorism, when the whole ideas of ‘conspire’ and ‘breeding fear’ could have also gone into a discussion about intent filtering and counties that censor areas of the internet for control and to breed fear of stepping over the lines in totalitarian countries.

Faceless

This was a talk by an artist about her inspiration from Busby Berkley, the pioneer of top-shots, and her attempts to create similar works with CCTV footage. She focussed a lot on her research and the legislation that allows people to use CCTV footage within certain boundaries, leading to the facelessness of her characters. The legislation ruined the result of her work really, and I think she did not fully think out ways to get around this or making the piece as artistic as Berkley’s. I really liked her influences, but not her work. I think it would have been interesting to place a CCTV camera directly above rather than at an angle, and control the lighting to play with the shadows of people, rather than the people themselves.

The Cubic Viewing Stations In The Exhibition

I did not think these were very disabled people friendly, not very interactive. I would have liked to see more interactive installations in the gallery rather than just static objects and computer screens.

Lots and lots and lots to do!!!

2008-01-09T11:17:00.000-11:00

Okay, so to briefly summerize my progress for the past tw days- I have now finalised all the details of my installation, and created a proposal/guide to work from. I have also created the Flash interface, but need to get the timeout function to work correctly. I have pushed myself really hard to research as much technical set-up ifo as possible, going as far as to research average user heights for the screen display, floor panel size and overall material sizes required, how to dismantle a keyboard, how to map a keyboard encoder, how the installation will function ect, and I am happy that I have applied enough consideration to these issues. I now want to create illustrations depicting this, and translate my written info into a flash based slideshow. It will include these categories:

SYNOPSIS OF IDEA
AIMS BEHIND THE IDEA
CONCEPT IMAGES
LAYOUT OF THE INSTALLATION SPACE
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SAMPLE INTERFACE BEING HANDED IN, AND THE INTERFACE AS IT WOULD BE IN A GALLERY
TECHNICAL SETUP AND SAFETY
CONNECTING THE PRESSURE SENSORS TO THE KEYBOARD
RIGGING THE PRESSURE MATS TO THE FLOOR TILES AND ENCASING THE WIRES
USERABILITY AND DISABILITY CONCERNS
REQUIRED EQUIPMENT AND COST OF SELECTED COMPONENTS OF THE INSTALLATION

I also had plans on a 3d animation of the space, but I am now not sure if this is needed, since my concept images will display this perfecty well, and I would rather devote my time to perfecting the flash interface.

I also need to log my construction progress into my work book, print and bind it, and write source pages for each item of research in my workbook detailing why it is relevent.

AND, I need to write the 500 words required by the brief

AND, I need to print out my blog enrtires from this project

AND, write a self evaluation and a contents page

EVALUATION OF CHRSITMAS PERIOD AND GOALS FOR WEEK FIVE

2008-01-04T00:12:00.001-11:00

I have not been able to achieve quite as much as I had hoped deliverable wise over the break, but am really pleased with the state of clarity I have reached regarding my dissertation, and this project. I know exactly what I want to achieve, and how to do so. I also think it conveys very important considerations regarding interaction, and will be a successful and appropriate realization of my research and ideas/thoughts. I still need to clarify a little regarding the visual style of my final outcome, but I know what needs doing and will be able to get right into it. With that in mind, my goals for the new week are:

- Brainstorm ‘visual themes’ for installation space- pick one

- Create the Flash interface (5 - 10 screens, time dependant: quality will be more important than quantity)

- Create the space in After Effects as an animation, or as an interactive space that can be navigated via DVD.

- Create the document detailing the way the installation will work technically.

AIMS OF MY FINAL OUTCOME (in order of importance)

2008-01-04T00:09:00.000-11:00

• To use digital media as a tool to encourage good communicative interaction between humans. They will need to work together to complete the task (this is human – human interaction, and human-computer interaction)

• To produce mental interaction with one user and physical interaction with the other.

• To encourage trust. One user will need to do as the other user instructs, and show complete trust in order for them both to win the game. The other user will need to rely on their partner to follow instruction in order for them both to win the game. A balance of power will be installed in this way. (This trust is mainly human/human, but will mirror my ideas about balance of power being important with regards to interactive media.)

• To get across the idea that interaction is not just sitting at a computer screen- it is psychical, mental, and human.

Opinions I have formed about interactivity that I want to convey in my final outcome

2008-01-04T00:08:00.000-11:00

I think that in order to create a meaning full final outcome, I need to be clear about my aims. These will be to show what I have learnt and opinions formed that I consider most important about interactivity. So, in a nutshell:

Interactivity is something we engage in within every aspect of our lives, it is often perceived as computer/person relations, but in actual fact can be created in simple mundane tasks such as turning a tap on. It is not just physical either, enjoyable mental interaction is crucial to a satisfying interactive experience, and sometimes the user is not even aware of this. Computer games are hugely interactive mentally, and yet they are mostly seen as interactive because of the technology that they are created with. A physical game such as football is not really regarded as an interactive game in the same way, yet in actual fact it requires much more physical interaction, human interaction and possibly just as much if not more mental interaction.

People can interact with each other simply by having a conversation, and this is a very important part of human / human interaction. Early interactive machines that have led to digital media were created for the goal of aiding humans, not replacing them, and so perhaps we should see digital media as a tool for human/human interaction to improve, rather than try desperately to humanize the machine itself.

Control is also a big issue in terms of computer interaction. Many people see interactive applications as threats of manipulation, or cleverly disguised ploys to control people’s thoughts. True, interactive media is a tool can easily manipulated and abused, but it can also be liberating and unique in the experiences it offers. To me, the essence of good digital interaction is a balance of control between the author and the user, much like the shared power in a human-human conversation.

These are thoughts that I want to convey in my final piece, and so having now explained them as simply as possible, I will draw up a list of AIMS.

Choice of idea

2008-01-04T00:07:00.000-11:00

After much consideration, I have decided to go with the idea I previously wrote of at the end of term, about a two person installation puzzle game. The deliverables will be:

1. An instruction manual on how to technically set the installation up, including price projections
2. An animation/interactive 3D area of how it might look
3. The flash game interface, but working with regular mouse or keyboard clicks for presentation purposes
4. And maybe a demo of a sensor activating a button to show I am capable of creating this, price/time dependant.

I have chosen this idea despite earlier doubts and dilemmas because in the time I have had over the past 2 weeks to step back from the project and come at it again from a fresh perspective, I have found myself able to visualize the creation of this one a lot more excitedly. A comment I read in ‘Simplicity: The art of Complexity’ about simplicity being not about simple processes or meanings, but more about the simplest way to get across a complex meaning, inspired me to think that this is something I should be applying to my own work. I have been in quandary somewhat recently about trying to decide exactly how complex or simple my final outcome, and have found re-evaluation my idea of ‘simple’ very useful. I need a clear meaning and a piece of work that tailors itself to this directive. I think that this is an idea that can do that, even if I am unable to fully create the installation. It is how well that my ideas shine through in the final outcome of my work that is important, not the complex simplicity of my practical deliverables. With that in mind, I think what is in order to do first is assess exactly what my most important discoveries about interactivity have been in this project, and list them as clearly and simply as possible. The aims of my piece will to be to convey these as simply as possible, in the most appropriate way.

Hurrah! Completion of Dissertation plan

2008-01-02T06:34:00.000-11:00

So, I have spent the day researching and reading and going over all my ideas and notes thus far, and have managed to hammer out a well structured ( I hope!) essay plan that I feel extremely able of following and getting into. It's quite a few pages long, and so I won't post it, but below is a general outline of what y dissertation will be about:

“What are the key themes and ideas connected to anthropomorphism, and how important is their relation to interactive media, looking at modern interactive examples?”

My aims will be to illustrate that anthropomorphism is a multi layered subject rather than one simple way of thinking. The dissertation will identify what areas within the subject can be related to the development of interactive media regarding the way it functions and the ways it is still developing, looking at both positive and negative impacts that it has had.

My main argument will be that anthropomorphic ideas regarding the way humans relate to technology are important considerations in every aspect of interactive design development because they are crucial to the understanding of it’s practical use and therefore it’s success and development.

I will look at not only the dictionary definition of anthropomorphicism as the idea that the act of humanizing inanimate objects or animals, but at the idea that it is a subject area which relates to thoughts, emotions, psychical acts and religious beliefs in a way that has a profound impact on the way we develop our media technologies. It is not enough to say that humans try and make machines more lifelike inb their apperance or by giving them names. Actions themselves within a human/computer relationship are results of design decisions based on anthropomorphic thinking. Just the way a website works can be asscoiated with the studies of anthropomorphism because of the way in which it was designed. The author puts a level of human thought into it's structure, and creates if to appeal to a humans way of thinking, rather than a computers. This is avery raw comment, as I'm still researching and have not yet fully formed my argument, but I am going to look into various areas within interactive design, and at how they can be realted to theories that I will be presenting as anthropomorphic themes/theories, including form, interaction, social studies, psychological studies, theory of the mind, primitive categorization, ANT and the theory of social construction of technology.

My time plan is as follows:

21st of January:

Completion of note making from all research so far regarding section one

Research visual examples for use in section two

Research visual examples for use in section three

Plan out which theories can be related to which examples to best support my argument

Creation of a 4000 word draft for submission at end of January (I will include a completed introduction, completed conclusion, and each other section will be half completed)

20th of February:

Further research based on feedback

Creation of a full second draft

31st of March:

Further research based on feedback

Creation of a final draft

14th of April:

Completion of final dissertation
Binding of dissertation
Research to be organized and bound

21st of April:

Hand in date. Any loose ends tied up

Current Project and the Dissertation.

2008-01-02T00:27:00.000-11:00

I am finding the dissertation difficult to get into. I love writing, and I can easily form opinions on most subjects, and get very verbal about things I am passionate about. I loved the essay projects for the last two years, and am really looking forward to writing the dissertation. MY problem is that I have been doing so much theoretical research, and am feeling so involved with my interaction project, that all research I do in prep for my dissertation ends up becoming research for the interactive project. In a way this is fine, I can use it for both subjects, howevcer this leaves me feeling like my dissertation is created from crumbs and leftovers of thoughts regarding my interaction project, which is bad. It needs it's own 'spirit' I suppose, to inspire me.

With that in mind, there are a couple of links to recent news that I have been considering in relation to interaction, and skirting around in the ideas of my dissertation:

1. BERMA -

It recently came to my attention that Burma is a country that does not have free internet access. The authorities there have put impossible resrictions on it's use, because it sees the internet as a weapon. It does not want it's inhabitents to educate themselves on the ways of Westurn free will and democracy, because it wants to keep control over the population. I thought this interesting in terms of our class debate on free will on the internet, because this is an exampe not of manipulation and false ideas of free will through site design, but of actual eradicated free will regarding the internet. Further research led me to discover that in total, 45 countries have similar restrictions on it's use. I think this is a subject that could easily be give alot of consideratin for this project, and gives alot more food for thought on the ideas of how the internet is perceived from other cultures aside from our own perspective.

Twenty Enemies
Internet Filtering

2.

Someone recently infromed me that the Popes Christmas message was about how he wants to start training up a team of excorsists to get rid of evil spirits that were being encouraged by rock music and the internet, which gives people to much oppurtunity to think for themselves.

This angered me greatly, I think the internet is an amazingly powerful tool, that can do as much if not more good than it does bad. ( See post on control/freedom ) However, I did some research and discovered this information was not entirely true in the way it was presented. I have not found any evidence of him saying that we should not think for ourselves, and I am not going to research the subject further because it would be too off subject for the project in the limited time left, I need to focus on production and directly relvent research now, however below is the actual quote from the paper:

"The Vatican is particularly concerned that young people are being exposed to the influence of Satanic sects through rock music and the Internet. Quote taken from the Daily Mail

Quick Update....

2007-12-28T01:39:00.000-11:00

So, been busy with Christmas related family commitments this past week. And the one before that I was in Paris. Saw a really tought provoking exhibit on Remenance painting, and a 3D illusion exhibiton. Will post in more detail about them and write up my thoughts in the New Year. Just to say here that I'm thinking about my dissertation and doing lot's of reading/research, and that my other project work is on hold for a week because of that, but I feel confident about it and in conrtol of my time management.

My Very Own Individual Thought

2007-12-14T09:54:00.000-11:00

I've been thinking a lot about the question: What is media? I think in order to understand what interactive media is, it is an essential question. Alot of theorists argue about interactive media, specifically about freewill, manipulation and control within it. The term media is just a word, it implies multiple mediums. It is not a thinking, opinionated entity, thus it cannot be accused of manipulation. Any manipulation exemplified by media is the fault of the USERS. The digital age we live in has allowed for a lot more users of the tool 'interactive media', and this is making us more aware of issues regarding freewill. But, it is my argument that these issues are the blame of society in general, and the history of the human race. Interactive media is merely a tool, one that makes us more aware of a debate that has been around since the dawn of communication- does freewill exist? Perhaps this means it can even be argued that interactive media gives us MORE chance for freewill, because it is a tool that is letting us educate ourselves more than our ancestors and appreciate a board range of perspectives, rather than a limited few presented to us by politically tampered with newspapers.

As far as I'm concerned, there is no manipulative media, there is just manipulative USE of media. I think that it could be argued that Interactive Media it is a tool that makes manipulation easier, and encourages the decline of human morality and ethics, but it itself is not the CAUSE of this, it merely makes the representation of problems in society more evident.

Furthermore, on the matter of limited choice in terms of hyperlinks and games....so what? Interactive media is technology, not magic. It may subtly influence us to think logically in the way of the creator, but the creator thought of how to lay the site/game out in a more logical way for us during development. It's a two way street that can't be avoided due to technical constraints. It is NOT manipulation. It can be used for manipulation, yes, but just because SOME people misuse the media, it does not mean ALL Interactive media is an example of this.

Also, you may notice the title of this post- My Very Own Individual Thought, entitled so because it is a thought I have derived from weeks of reading a WIDE VARIETY of texts, and educating myself to devise MY OWN opinion. It is not an idea that I have seen anywhere. Maybe other people have had the same thought, but that doesn't mean it is not individual or self thought out, as this scientific article on free will and brain patterns describes. We may not always be aware of subconicous influences, hence the use of the prefix 'sub', but that doesn't mean we are not capable of making our own decisions based on the facts. I can FEEL, in my inner slef, that this is MY opinion, not one I'm channelling, hence my firm standing on this issue.

I am considering looking into the idea of expanding these ideas for my dissertation, and exploring early forms of media and manipulation to argue that interactive media today is just making us more aware and broadening our minds about an issue that has been around since the creation of old media newspapers (in 1400) rather than being the actual cause of a reduction in new ideas. So if anyone has any opinions or relevant research re: my ideas......please feel free to tell me.

Misuse of Media Manipulation

2007-12-13T23:39:00.000-11:00

I just received a text from a friend informing me that a software tool called 'CyberLover.re' has just passed the Turing Test. Intrigued, I looked it up, and discovered that Cyber Lover is a Russian chatbot program that infilterates social networking sites to cyber-seduce female web users, up to ten at a time, into giving out there personal identity information, including phone numbers.

"As a tool that can be used by hackers to conduct identity fraud, CyberLover demonstrates an unprecedented level of social engineering," Sergei Shevchenko, Senior Malware Analyst at PC Tools, said in a statement.

I think this is an awful misuse of media, and it raises the questions for me; do media companies somehow see themselves above the guidelines of moral ethics? And how far are we as a society going to allow such practices to continue?

Puzzle Game

2007-12-13T05:51:00.000-11:00

This is the puzzle game I mentioned in my last blog entry.
I used a tutorial that supplied the code and some objects, and then manipulated the objects to my own taste, and altered the text responses. The tutorial finished on a simple 'Well Done', but I used some extra code from a QA section of the tutorial and altered the game script so that the solution of the puzzle triggers a move to the next frame.

It's a bit flawed....the message is over clouded at the end dependant on the piece chosen last. Nothing I can't fix if I do decide to use this in my final piece though.

Mental Hesitations - my weak area

2007-12-13T01:36:00.000-11:00

Over the last couple of days, I have been focussing more on idea generation and what interests me rather than research.

On Tuesday........
I decided to go with the idea of an immersive puzzle book, created as a touchscreen in Flash, that would be part of an immersive installation and also use sound and lighting. I decided my aims would be to to further my technical knowledge of flash, and examine the immersive, almost magical effects that interactive media can have on a user, in order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between humans and computers. This would also demand my consideration to practical aspects such as information architecture and design principles. The piece would aspire to blur the lines between a storybook and a game, and invoke a high level of mental interaction and immersion

On Wednesday afternoon.....

I wrote this into my 'Digital Doodles' interactive flashbased sketchbook:

"for the purposes of this project, I will create the touchscreen puzzle interface itself (my main
deliverable), and an animation of someone using it. I will plan out how the rest of the installation room would be set up and learn all the technical details, perhaps even creating a scale model out of foamboard for presentation purposes (I realize the brief says everything needs to be shown on screen, and all the important features will be- this is just for my own sake, and can be photographed as a slide show) I could also create a proposal with this pitching the complete idea to the museum. To give my deliverables an edge, I will also consider creating a mock-up environment of the installation at home, setting up a webcam and getting people to have a go at the puzzle. If I can use a touchscreen pane this would be great, but not essential. The point will be to film the facial reactions of the user to examine the immersive effect of my work, and consider ways of improvement based on this and questioning the test subject."

I then made some decisions about my audience:

the identification of an audience is dependant on the gallery that the installation is based in, because this says something about the type of person that will visit, and the age. I want my piece to appeal to a wide range of users, and for the sake of this project I am envisioning it to be for a small fictional gallery in brighton, and after some un-fruitful attempts at researching target audiences for galleries here, I have decided to use my own knowledge that brighton has a strong art and digital media reputation, so think that it would appeal to a lrge audience of students and exhibition lovers. I am going to pick my target audience based on casual puzzle game audiences, which according to research is 65% of women between 25-30, and 35% of men. However I am going to try and ake th egame gener nuetral, to try and interest as many men as possible as well as women (this could be done by the idea of a quest), and also take into account that brighton has a very youthful population, and the idea of a storybook immersion could easily appeal to yougner people too, so based on my research and own opinions, my target audience is men and women, aged 15-35.

I then brainstormed ideas for themes, and found it quite hard to come up with a story. I did some technical research and managed to get a drag drop feature working, so that a key can be dragged and dropped into a lock, and trigger the next frame....a script I could use to trigger animations in more ways than a key/lock, and make my touchscreen a bit more advanced then just using touch/activate buttons. However, this took me along time to learn. If I go with this idea, most of my time wll be spent coding, and I don't think this is very productive for my proffersional development, because I don't want to be a Flash coder. I'm more interested in visuals. I considered making my puzzles more basic, and putting my effort into creating a more diverse narrative, so there is more choice between different storylines, and the option of failing to pass the puzzles, and having something bad happen to the story character, and the story/game end, an okay idea, but it does not really grab me.

I then thought, what if I try and engage the viewer more by reverting back to another idea, and bringing teamplay into action. I could have two people in a room, and one (person action) is looking at on screen puzzles, and the other (person screenreader) is in front of the computer screen, on a large mat with squares on it. Each square has a pressure sensor in it, which correlates to a square on the screen. P.ScreenReader must instruct P Action on how to move back/forward/left/right based on the puzzle they see on the screen, in order to get the player to stand on the correct answer to the problem. The screen puzzle will be formed of rollover buttons that do nothing other than show a cartoon person standing there when that square activation key is pressed. They will work by hooking up each sensorpad to a keyboard key, so that the position of P.Action will appear on the screen. When P.Action reaches the correct answer position, the next level will activate. I could have 5 levels that work like this, and a 30 second timer for each puzzle. If the timer runs out, the game ends and the curator asks the players to leave through a losers door, and if they win they will be asked to leave through a winners door. There will be no difference, but I think the POSSIBILITY that there may be a reward will urge people to try and win. This would mean the players have to work together to suceed. P.Screenreader must be good as a speaker, and P.Action must be good as a listener and show trust in p.screenreader. I would make the environment quite cold and chilling, to encourage the players to focus attention on each other and the task at hand. I am hesitating to proceed with this idea becuase the deliverables for this project will end up being

1. an instruction manual on how to technically set the installation uo (which I am comfortable about the challenge of writing)
2. an animation of how it might look
3. the flash interface, but working with regular mouse or keyboard clicks for presentation purpopses
and maybe 4. a demo of a sensor activating a button to show I am capable of creating this

I think this is a perfectly resonable end result, so long as I think out all the puzzles well, and make the animation very well, but Im worried it's too conceptual.

So, I started to think, what am I really interested in about this idea? and I answered myself......examining the relationship between people and interaction. I like the thought of seeing how they react to my installation, more than creating an installtion itself, and am liking the thought of getting a fully working installation/interface working so that I can film and examine the users reactions.

SO... new idea.......what about a flash interface that makes no logical sense? I will play with design principles and makes navigations difficult, and touch on puzzles to mentally challenge the user to figure out how to get from start to end. They will simply use the keyboard and mouse, and I will then get a test subject, and record there reactions, to each myself about the way the user responds. I can then create a deliverable website or DVD that decsribes my experiment and shows the video of the interface being used, and my own commentry on what is causing challeneges and barriers to ease of use, in order to teach myself, an aspiring web designer, what is good and bad about interface design.

Each idea has pitfalls becuase what I want most s to builf a full installtion of my sensor rigger game idea and film this as an experiment looking at trust between people. But I do not have the resources to do this, and I don't just want to propose something. I want to do it.

So, desicions desicions..... I need to start making them! I am self aware of the fact that this is my weakpoint and need to address it, even if I make a mistake in my choice, at least I will have thrown all my energy into makig the best of it, rather than hesitating constantly about a way forward and ending up with a weak final outcome. SO, I aam taking a few days to consider my choice, and am going to vists an exhibtion on interactive media in Paris, and then in a week I will come back to this with a fresh perspective and commit myself to one of the three outlined choices above.

If you have any comments , please tell me.....( I could do with the input!)

Holiday Crit.....

2007-12-12T10:56:00.000-11:00

Had some good feedback, great, about the idea of meeting up for a group crit over Christmas, so just throwing a date/place idea out there....I am away for the first week in Paris, and then there is the actual 3 day event of Christmas, so how would people feel about THURSDAY 27th, at 10.30AM, in a coffee shop in the lanes. If anyone has any ideas for a quiet one please suggest it!

Please post a reply to me here with your e-mail address / phone number or e-mail me (claire.a.johnson@hotmail.co.uk) if you want to come so I know who I'm meeting! Or if this is a bad time we can come up with a different one. It's nice and in the centre of the holiday though, so should be pretty useful.

Change of heart.....

2007-12-11T11:21:00.000-11:00

I blogged earlier that the theme of ideas I have selected to develop is 'People and Interaction'. Having analyzed the comments made about my last project, thought about ideas for deliverables, and considered the areas I have researched that I am most interestd in. I have CHANGED MY MIND, and selected my third theme: Immersion and Interactivity (the relationships between people and interactive media. Specifically a book/story) This is similar to the topic of my dissertation and will be helpful to my personal development. The key themes in it that appeal to me are:

fantasy
mental interaction
people
books
installation
puzzles
stories
magic
familiar aliens
immersion

I am now using a digital scrapbook in Flash to generate ideas (partially because my workbook is so overflowing with paper that I fear a whole tree will need to be cut down if I don't start to use alternate resources!!!) to look at my inspirations in more detail and discuss the four main variations of the idea, and brainstorm ideas for deliverables. Over the next day or so I will become ruthless and choose one idea to proceed with, and start developing my ideas for deliverables. I would like to start generating a timeplan for creation of these over Christmas, and think once I've chosen my idea, it would be a good time for a crit, and so will ask around over the next few days to see if anyone wants to meet up sometime during the holidays, just for a couple of hours, to talk about work and present the idea so far. If any of you are reading this and are interested, please post a comment!!

Interactive Magic

2007-12-11T04:33:00.001-11:00

I just participated with an interactive magic trick, on this site and then the computer read my mind! Logically, I can see how this was done (I won't tell you in case you want to try...but I'll post it as a comment below, so you can click if you want to see) but it was still pretty interesting. Have a go yourself. The trick is called 'Psycho Test'

TUTORIAL WTH DANIEL PRYDE JARMAN - notes

2007-12-11T02:04:00.000-11:00

I talked through my three key ideas with Daniel and identified that my favourites are ‘two’ (intersperson interaction) and ‘three’(interactive book). He suggested that three seems a bit too similar to the last project because of some of the technologies I mention such as e-paper. I don’t fully agree with this, as the emphasis would not be on the technologies used, but on the idea of having an object that seems like ‘old’ media- not very interactive, being surprisingly interactive and becoming ‘new’. However, I too agree it might not be the best direction to go in, as I feel I have more material and ideas to use with option two. Daniel suggested research areas for both idea one(memory/time travel) and two, but I think all would be relevant to two, as I have not totally eliminated the idea of incorporating a memory theme into idea 2. I am going to look at all these areas and develop some new variations to the ideas I have already proposed, from which I will pick one to start working on the deliverable for at the end of the Christmas break/start of week five. I like the idea of not just presenting my work on screen as a proposal, but also perhaps creating it for real if possible and filming people using it (if it is an installation) I will see how my ideas develop and start to consider presentation/deliverable over Christmas.

Comments from Dan / Research to look at-

- Guy Debord – Society of the Spectacle
- Situationist Theory
- Deriva
- Churchill quote: “We design buildings, but then they design us’
- Be productive I games. Don’t just have a threat to defeat
- Systems between people
- Limitations between people
- Geo-caching
- Pervasive gaming
- Psycho-geography
- Blast Theory (Day of The Figurines)

Ideas not to forget....

2007-12-11T01:51:00.001-11:00

At the end of the project, it would be a good idea to write a glossary of all the new theoretical words I have learnt and my own explanations of what they mean. Also, because I am finding lots of refernces to research I have already done (names/theories/subjects) in new research that I am doing, I should make my sketchbook more interactive in a way similar to early interactive books, by putting 'See page ?' by each mention of something I have already looked at, or will look at in the future. Will be quite time consuming but tie in well with the theme 'interaction', and make it easier to read and fun!

For all you mac-lovers....

2007-12-11T01:47:00.001-11:00

I just discovered a really useful shortcut in Word. If you hold the apple key down and then click your cursor once in the middle of a word, it will auto-select that whole sentance for you. Saves time on making sure you manually select the whole sentance and nothing else when you want to copy a quote.

SELF EVALUATION

2007-12-11T01:22:00.000-11:00

SUMMARY OF WEEK THREE / GOALS FOR WEEK FOUR

This week I have been mainly looking back through my work so far and re-organizing my filing of it all. This has helped me to gain a self-awareness of where my strongest research lies and what my best ideas are. After having a tutorial with Daniel Pryde Jarman at the end of this week, and taking into account my ideas for the dissertation and conversations that I have had with Michael and some of the guest speakers, I have decided on the topic of ‘interperson interaction’, and am going to spend this next week (which technically will be only 4 days…my ‘weeks’ are more periods of time that start on a Wednesday because of the date we began the project. I will alter this after the Christmas vacation so that week five begins on the Monday.) doing some specific research to advance my knowledge in this area, based on some tips given to me by Daniel in my conversation with him. I will also take a closer look at the tv show Knightmare which has been of influence to my development of ideas, but has only been mentioned in my blog thus far, and start generating specific, developed ideas for my final piece. I will also read through and make notes on the excerpts from texts that I have this week photocopied, and start looking at the issue of interactive design architecture and principles.

SELF EVALUATION OF PROGRESS SO FAR

I have still not started putting examples of visual research on my blog, which I should be doing, and will aim to start soon. My research is very strong, and I have started looking at counter arguments for issues I research and developing my own ideas. I am also aware of the fact that soon out ‘Client Proposal’ project will start and am keeping an eye open for work opportunities.
I have started generating a lot more research for my dissertation this week, but feel I should be further along with this. I am confident though that I can have a detailed essay structure/plan written up by the end of the Christmas holidays, and am currently doing some reading for that. I want to have sorted out my question by the time we break up. Once my structure is written up I will be able to write a draft fairly quickly I think (as my blog indicates, I enjoy to write), it is just the starting and evaluating what material to use and what not to, and which themes would be best to discuss that is what takes the time. This is what I will spend the Christmas vacation concentrating on doing.

Thoughts Regarding The Disseration

2007-12-10T04:15:00.000-11:00

One week left of term. Getting a bit worried. Had a plan for myself to get my research together, and get an essay plan done over Christmas. Now there is rumoured talk of having a first draft done over Christmas, something I had envisioned working on from January until roughly the middle of Febuary. I think I can pull together some of the research I've been doing and get a detailed essay plan done, with a specific question and argument outlined, and themes to discuss and a conclusion all planned out by the end of the Christmas holiday, and will work hard to get a first draft finished by the middle/end of January. I do not want to rush this though, because I think that would be quite harmful to it's development. I have been keeping interesting texts for my research folder, so I do not feel it is something that needs me to suddenly rush into action, as I have decided now to go with the topic of relationships between humans and computers, and have alot of material in my blog already that I want to use. Some interesting ideas I think I might want to address in my dissertation and wish to research further before I start writing or turn my topic into a specific question will include cyberfeminism, cybernation, cybernetics, walter benjamins 'the age of mechanical reproduction', interaction theories, anthropomorphism, and cultural differences in relationships with technology.

Evolution of the project- trying to choose one of three main ideas....

2007-12-10T01:34:00.000-11:00

I've been thinking alot this past week about the difference between 'art' and 'design' in interactive media. I don't want to get too caught up in this thought, because it is such a vast topic/discussion, and I want to start focussing more detail on my actual concept development, however this question mark is creeping up in my decision making regarding how to move forward because alot of my research and ideas for installations could fall under the category of 'art' rather than 'design', yet considering my on-going development, I feel I ought to be focussing more on 'design', because of the career path I want to pursue. But then I think, this year is about exploring and being open to new ideas, and I am enjoying that because gaining a wider understanding can feed really well into my knowledge of interactive design

So, what I am thinking is that I might create an installation, and that would fall under the category of art becuase it will be very idea led, but will hopefully convey alot of meaning derived from what I have been learning, but will also be relevant to my aspirations for a career in interactive design, because it will use interactive technologies and I will look in detail at userability, and the way I present my information. I am going to look at (possibly touchscreen based) installations, but use standard design principles that are applied to the web to help with it's development. One way I could do this is to set myself a more exact brief fom a supposed client, perhaps a museum, and approach the final product in the way I would need to if I were actually working in an interactive design company. I could create a proposal for the actual installation, and use the computer to create some working elements to demonstrate how it would work, and an animated overview of the space.

Over the last week I have also been reveiwing my research ideas, and identified four areas that have been constant and re-inventing themselves throughout my whole project. They come under these headings:

1- Memory and Time Travel -how a collection of objects can be interpeted by each person in a unique, personal way that relate to memory and cause a feeling of time travel due to the thought patterns activated by the brain)
keywords: Memory / time travel / eisentstein / montage / science /brain / thoughts / personal / unique

2-Interperson Interaction -an installation that gets people to work together to get the best experience. Possibly an installation that uses people to show how freedom of thought does exist and should not be dwarfed by an authors own ideas....will play with the ideas surrounding control/freedom in interactive media. mental interaction would be a huge factor to consider, possibly a game installation with people as players and pieces, trust would be a big theme.
keywords: people / social interaction / barthes- death of the author / teamwork / games / psychology / control / freedom / ideas / individuality/ mental engagement

3-Interactive Book - an installation that uses an existing (preferable really old) storybook and makes it seem magical through use of interactive technologies and breaking of the fourth wall. Would have sensors in the pages, and also somehow behave differently with different people. Possibly could be a touchscreen book made from e-paper(if that is possible) which allows for diverse choices in plot. The space would somehow mirror the themes/landscape of each page, and would make the user feel like they were IN the book. Turning the page would change the surrounding landscape. Could even be possible that the user can talk to the characters in the pages. OR an interactive digital book on screen, where you can't proceed to the next page, until you've solved a problem on that page... the solution would make the button apparent.
keywords: mental interaction / magic / children / espen areseth / digital storytelling / non linear narrative / pyschical interaction / ubiquitous computing / cybernetics / physical interaction

I'm so keen on all these ideas that choosing one is quite a task. I think I've narrowed it down to either 2 or 3, and am aiming tol make my final choice by the end of Tuesday(tomorrow) so I can get a structured idea of what to get done over the Christmas vacation, and how long I can develop the idea before I need to get practical and producing the deliverables.

If you have any thoughts on what sounds best, please tell me!

Reaction to Systems Theory text

2007-12-10T01:06:00.000-11:00

What I took Systems Theory to mean, based on the text:

Systems theory is the idea that any system can be transferred to any group/medium. For example, key ideas or laws from physics systems can be applied to the workings of computers, and in the case of this text, this idea is being used to create systems aesthetics, a system thats allows us to judge a piece of work that is fair to it's context and media, but can be applied to all art/media. The writer suggests this can be done in three ways:

1- Looking first at the way a piece of work relates to the audience it is aimed at. (sociological context)
2- Looking at the piece of work in relation to other works of a diverse, post-modern nature. (i.e, not just looking at paintings when your judging a poster, but looking also at new medias such as digital imaging)
3- Using a flexible definition of New Media to judge it by (because new media is so diverse and constantly evolving that it is unfair to poinpoint certain aspects of it to define)

Inspirations derived from the text

I did not find the text very engaging or inspirational, however I did take an idea from the writers remarks about radical new technologies/media/objects becoming quite old quite quickly and the retrospective way people look at them. The idea is to take an old(it can be an old 'new media') media, and examine the way it was perceived at the time, the way is is perceived now, and look at ways to update it, and make it new again, applying interactive features if it has none, or updating them if it does already.

I also made note of the word 'hermeneutics' which was used not in the text, but in the class discussion of the text, quite frequently. I looked up this term, and discovered that-

'hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook. Hermeneutics is the process of applying this understanding to interpreting the meaning of written texts and symbolic artifacts (such as art or sculpture or architecture), which may be either historic or contemporary' [from http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermenutics"]

This is an idea that ties in quite well with one of my own ideas of exploring relationships between people and teamwork in interactive installations. Using interactive installations to get people to understand one another could be a way forward with the project.........

theory texts

2007-12-08T22:25:00.000-11:00

I was just doing a google search for the exact name of a piece of text I wanted to recommend to someone, and stumbled upon a list of media theory texts. Reading through, I have picked out a list that I want to read over this year, some for this project, some for my dissertation, and some just for my own development and knowledge. The annoying thing is, one I found whilst searching cam up in google without an author. I THINK it may be Lev MAlovich, and will have a look at his books in the library to see if it is his: "From Participation to Interaction: Toward the Origins of Interactive Art." If anyne knows for sure, please let me know!

The list of texts I want to read, and some of you may also enjoy, are:

Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1997.
Braidotti, Rosi. "Cyberfeminism With A Difference."
.
. "Memory: Hologram of Desire." Lucille Nelson, Trans. Trivia 13 (Fall 1988): 42-47.
Brown, Julian. Minds, Machines and the Multiverse: The Quest for the Quantum Computer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.
. "Becoming...an Introduction." Becomings: Explorations in Time, Memory and Futures. Ed. Elizabeth Grosz. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1999. 1-11.
---. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994.
Hamilton, Sheryl. "Thoughts on Cyberfeminism." Maid in Cyberspace. 12 July 2000. .
Hovagimyan, G.H. "Notes on Immersion." 08 April 1998. .
Kirschenbaum, Matt. "Truth, Beauty and the User Interface: Notes on the Aesthetics of Information." 1997.
Kluitenberg, Eric. "The Politics of Cultural Memory." Online posting. 21 July 1999. Nettime. 21 July 1999. .
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Toronto: Signet, 1964
Malloy, Judy. "Hypernarrative in the Age of the Web."   (1998).
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Feminism & Film Theory. Ed. Constance Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 57-68. _______(read this already but want to read it again)
-. "100 Anti-Theses of Cyberfeminism." 1997. 13 June 2000.  .
The Object of Post-Criticism." The Anti-Aesthetic . Ed. Hal Foster. New York: The New Press, 1998. 83-110. [1983]
VNS Matrix. "Cyberfeminist Manifesto." . 08 Jan 2002.
Wertheim, Margaret. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.
Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine. 2E Cambridge: MIT, 1961. [1948]
"The Future is Femail." Online posting.18 Sept 1998. Nettime. 18 Sept 1998. .

Cybernation to Interaction: A Contribution to an Archaeology of Interactivity

2007-12-06T05:35:00.001-11:00

Doing reasearch for my dissertation, I came across a brilliant piece of text, called 'Cybernation to Interaction: A Contribution to an Archaeology of Interactivity, by media research Erkki Huhtamo. As the title may suggest, it is also of relevence to this project. It ties in really well with the text we just read as a group by David Marshall, and looks into where the roots of some existing theories about interactivity lie. I'm only halfway through so far, but found it gives a great explanation of the difference between "automatic machines" and "automation"(which later was given the new name of cybernation), and the ideas it discusses on this subject can be eaily applied to the idea of interactive media being about empowering the user. The term cybernation is an alteration of the word automation and it also comes from the idea of cybernetics. The reason for this change can best be summed up with a quote:

The demarcation line between mechanization and automation was never as clear as its spokesmen wanted to make one believe. This can be discerned even from Bagrit's scruples about using the word: "I am dissatisfied with it, because it implies aucornaticicy and automaticity implies mechanization, which in its turn implies unthinking, repetitive motion, and this . . . is the exact opposite ofautornati~n."~~Sit Bagrit preferred the word "cybernation," because "it deals with the theory of communications and control, which is what genuine automation really is."" The word "cybernation" had been used before-for example, by Donald N. Michael-to refer to "both auto- mation and computer^."^^ Although Michaei justified the use of the new word (derived from Norbert Wiener's concept cybernetics....

So, cybernation is basically about the idea of computers adapting themselves to human needs, rather than humans enslaving themselves to the computers.

The text is mainly relevent to my ideas on the dissertation which I am writing an essay plan for now, but I will be copying it over to my workbook for this project too, because I think it ties in really well with everything we've been discussing in class.
It also talks about Marshall McLuhans ideas on mechanization, so if that interest you, have a look at it!

I really recommend this text to anyone interested in interactive theory, particularily the ideas surrounding human/machine relationships, or mechanization in the industrial age! Brilliant read!

Plan of action: pulling my research and ideas together

2007-12-06T05:20:00.000-11:00

In response to my chat with Ellie, I have decided to hold off doing anymore research for a week, unless I find inspirational material in which case I will certainly save it, but I'm not going to source stuff out, as I think I need to take some time to go through the materialI have already generated and start deciding where to go from here. I will write up all my most favoured ideas in one document, and start to analyze which one(or two) will be best to proceed with, and set myself some boundries regarding what new developed research I will need to generate, and what decisions I will need to start making to develop my idea and make it more informed and mature. One way of doing this will be by writing up what each piece of research has taught me and what I have taken from it, something I normally do at the end of a project to show I have not just stuck stuff in without reading it properly. It will have the benefit for me in this case, if I do it now, of letting me re-fresh everything in my mind, and clarify where my keenest interests and knowledge would be best chanelled in terms of my varied and instinctive, research reactive, whim-y ideas.

Control/Freedom- a symbyotic relationship?

2007-12-05T23:57:00.000-11:00

This morning we had a class debate over author control and the empowerment of the media, and what a huge issue this is in interactive theory. My perspective, although it is an obviously big issue in interactive theory, is that it seems to invoke only one way of thinking about control- that it is bad. This might not be the case, but judging from all the material I've seen so far, that idea seems to seep through. That bothers me, becuase I think sometimes control can be a good thing. It's all about balance.

[ At this point my post was saved, and I incorporate the point I was going to make below in my section- 'Talk with Ellie Rees' ]

Guest Speaker: Ellie Rees - influential points from lecture

'Context is what makes art, art, and non-art, non-art'
'Context is everthing'
'Fine art depends on the artists intentions'
'Ellie Rees likes to control the way her work is presented because to change it's context changes it's meaning'

Talk with Ellie Rees
I've just been talking to Ellie Rees about her perspective on the project, and discovered it was quite refreshing to re-cap over everything theoretical I've been learning with someone who doesn't know much about it. My motivation for having a chat with her came mainly from something she said in class, about wanting to have control over the way her work was seen, and it being for the reason that if it was seen in a different way, it will change the meaning(to a point at least). I found this an intelligent perspective on the issue of control.

As I said earlier, it seems that alot of what I'm reading and hearing is geared towards an argument on whether freedom exists in new media or whether all is controlled because of it's set boundaries. I still personally think that all forms of old or new media has a degree of freedom, in the sense that the user/reader/viewer/lurker has control over their own thoughts and emotional response to the piece. Art, film, installation ect can always try and provoke certain responses, but the user always has the end say on how they react emotionally. To get back to the point, most of what I'm reading and hearing seems to stem from an idea that being controlled is a bad thing, but I don't buy into that. I think that boundaries exist for a reason, and what Ellie Rees said about her work exemplifies my point. She creates art pieces that have meaning, and she NEEDS some control over the way people view them, in order for the pieces to be true to themselves, much in the same way that the audience needs some control over their own perspectives and emotional reactions. When she tries to control the context of her pieces, she is trying to create a truer, better experience for her audience. With interactive media, I think the same can be said, to take for example a website, control exists in the from of boundaries and the author decision on where the buttons to be pressed will be, and freedom exists in the users ability to decide what order to view the pages. Yes, this freedom is a limited one, but it is for the purpose that what they are reading belongs not to them, but to the author. In a way the idea of freedom/control in new media both contradicts AND supports Barthes ideas on the death of the author. It supports it because the user is becoming the prosumer/protagonist and therefore the text/object belongs to them as an individual, but also contradicts it because it has boundaries that are set by the author/creator that allow the author/creator to still be able to claim some part of the object/text as 'theirs'.

To clarify my opinion on the control/freedom issue, I would say that yes, there is a big issue there, and yes, both arguments are valid, but I don't see it as an issue that needs any sort of resolution, and I don't side with either perspective. I think that in order for interactive media to be the most effective that it can be, 'control' needs to be a shared privilege between both the author and the audience. When either side gets too much control, it can be detrimental to either the audiences 'right(?)' to freedom, and the authors 'right(?)' to lay claim to their work.

To bring my argument out a little bit away from the world of interactive media, I would like to consider shock art. It is created by an artist who tries to provoke certain reactions in the audience. Is this really taking away the audiences freedom of emotional/mental interaction, or is it a necessary 'evil' in order to let the meaning of the pieces apparent? To a degree, people EXPECT an art work to have a meaning, part of the challenge of looking at some pieces is to identify it, and read what the author is saying, does this mean that that the shock artist is invading their thoughts by invoking a certain reaction? No. The reaction is part of the work. The artist can have an idea of the reaction they want to provoke, but free will is part of the human spirit, and their will always be individuals that react in an unexpected way, and while this is true, it cannot be said that the shock artist has total control. I think that different 'pieces', and 'medias' should all be judged on their own merits, as each type has a difference balance of power between author and user control, and this can be integral and often beneficial to both. So to me the keyword in this issue is BALANCE. It is true that in certain situations the author can impose such rigid control and manipulate mediums to try and mentally engage the user to thinking the way that they do, and that this can result in a bad thing (e.g, Hitler and propaganda in the war), but it is unfair to say that just because some individuals misuse media, that ALL media has hidden control. Context and meaning should always be taken into account, but generally speaking, I think that BALANCE OF CONTROL BETWEEN THE AUTHOR AND AUDIENCE will always come through as a positive thing.

So, to get back to my discussion with Ellie Rees, she heard what I was saying, and asked me about my ideas for the project, and basically helped me by letting me discuss my thoughts on control and clarify them in my mind, and suggested that I look at using installation to teach people that don't know much about interactive theory or interactive media about these issues, and about my own thoughts. I thought this was pretty similar to my existing idea of having an installation that explores freedom and control, and think that would be a good underpinning 'aim' for the piece. I also talked about my idea of having a screen based puzzle piece that needs mental attention to figure out how to proceed, and she pointed out I would need to make a motivation for the user apparent, something I have already noted by that idea to consider at a later point if I pursue it. Also she got me thinking that I will need to decide how 'challenging' I want the piece to be.

Basically Ellie Rees got me thinking that I have lots of idea already, and a lot of research, and that to progress I need to start making decisions so I can develop in certain areas, which I will start to do as planned at the end of the week. (Oh, she also reminded me the video artist I wanted to research earlier in the project but could not remember the name of is called Tony Oursler)

I am now very aware that the idea of control, and my thoughts of balance between author and user is a big issue for me when thinking about interactive media, and I think that I can definitely come up with alot more ideas related to this theme before I settle on one to develop.

"A New Era In Internet Shopping"....but do we really want it?

2007-12-05T04:55:00.000-11:00

I read an article in the Metro this morning, about a virtual shopping mall, theMall.tv, that will be online in the UK next year. Skeptical, but intrigued, I looked up their website, and was dismayed to find just what I suspected....a lovely 3D space, with pretty primitive forward/left/right navigation, and shop fronts that seem to just lead to online stores. Really, what's the point? From the perspective of a busy person who can't get to the shops, and hates being caught in a crowd- 'hurrah!', but we do have this already in the form of internet shoping, with sites that let us compare product prices, see what clothes look like on avatar reps of ourselves, and let's face it, it just takes a few clicks. So why enter a virtual mall where we are bound to spend a lot longer navigating the virtual world, for essentially limited choice of dressed up links that take us to online retailers that we already have? And if you do like going to a mall, this will take away the experience of bumping into friends and having lunch while you shop, getting excercise, strolling past shop windows, feeling out the merchandise, ect. To be fair, all I saw was the promo vid, and experiencing it may prove it to be better than expected. I can see the novelty value, and the idea of being able to stroll into virtual shops with a little avatar and seeing virtual products to order, with other little virtual customers around you in a second life style environment could be very appealing to some, but sadly this is not how TheMall.tv seems to work. Still, to be fair, they do have some good points listed for it, but I guess it depends on your perspective. Personally, I'd rather steer clear...so, a new era in shopping, or not?.......what do you think? Please post a comment and tell me!

I filled in a feedback form on the site to ask a few questions, and will post their response when I get it. This is what I asked:

"What restraints will this mall have...will the doors serve as links to virtual 'stores', with 3d merchandise? Or will they be links to websites for that retailer?
Do, do the retailers pay to be here?
Why do you think this will be more beneficial than just googling a store or product and following a hyperlink? Surely it is just a more elaborate way of online shopping that will end up being more time consuming?
Are any 'mall sounds', like music/chatter/promotions heard?
What benefits do you think your product has in relation to replace person to person interaction in a real mall, and person to computer interaction in the home?"

note2self:links

2007-12-04T22:56:00.000-11:00

to look at after class, in response to interests derived from the texts-

http://videogames.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_video_games_matter

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009442.php

http://ase.tufts.edu/gallery/shows/newmediawall.html

http://www.hf.uib.no/hi/espen/

http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/cornucopia

http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/393/part3/paradiso.html

Self critique of progress so far....

2007-12-04T02:29:00.000-11:00

I have just been evaluating my progress so far in this project, and it has come to my attention that something I should be doing is demonstrating my ability to work on multiple projects. I am doing the working on multiple projects bit, but just not demonstrating so, and I will do this by blogging about other areas of my professional development, aside from just this project.

THE DISSERTATION

I am generating some research for this, but probably not enough as I should be. I have decided to focus on creating an essay plan for it over the christmas holidays, and so will make sure that I do alot of rsearch over this period. o prepare for that I will talk to a tutor in class about my ideas before breaking up next week.

CLIENT PROPOSAL

This has not yet been formally introduced but I have approached one company, whom I used to do graphic design work for, to see if they would be interested in me re designing their site, which they are unhappy with, but have not yet received an answer. I will wait to see exactly what the brief entails before making any definitive decisions.

OTHER WORK

Client:
I am about to take on some work for a man putting together a business proposal for sponsorship for his child's sporting activities, this will involve photoshop work.

Student Network Work:

I am continuing to work for Sussex Learning Network / Student Network Sussex and have just submitted a magazine advert which will be printed in XYZ magazine sometime soon. I am also about to start working on web updates for our site, which was visually designed by me and another girl, but has been in the care of another web development student for the past few months, so I could concentrate on uni work. I will now be helping with regular updates. I have also been asked by SLN to act as official photographer for the foundation degree sympoisum in Lewes in the Spring. I have also recently done work for sister company Aim Higher Sussex, in the form of a student rep at a skills fair, and going to Stenyning Gammer School to give a talk about my experience on the FdA course. From January, I will be working with the event management team at SNS to help generate promo material for the student learning event we are holding in March. That work will begin once the venue has been determined. I have also been creating the visual template for our monthly newsletter over the past month.
Our site has lot's os useful info for students mainly in lower level courses, but is worth look anyway. We also have a student forum if your interested in getting involved.

http://www.studentnetworksussex.org.uk/

Creative Catapult:

I have applied for the Creative Catapult workshops, but have not heard back yet.

DScape:

I attended Portfolio Clinic

ITV:

I did a days work experience for ITV last month which is featured here.

Personal Projects:

Sometime by the end of the year I want to re design my own site and change it from Flash to HTML/CSS.

MY SITE

Job Hunting:

I have been working on my CV and keeping an eye out for potential companies to apply to for work next year. I am going to start e-mailing and asking what they would except to see in potential candidates, so that I can prepare myself to start applying for work in May/June.

The Girlfriend Experience- unique idea or badly formed concept?

2007-12-03T04:09:00.000-11:00

I have just looked into The Girlfriend Experiment,and realised that it was in fact something Emma DID discuss with us last year, although the name did not ring any bells when I heard it. The project is basically a game that uses real people as avatars, and you can log on a control them, although you need to gain their trust first. The project raised a couple of points for me.

To start with, I have thoughts about the way they look. The avatars are presented in their undergarments, all very basic and with arms limply at their sides, as expressionless as possible. It is a classic look of an avatar that is being customized, and has not yet been instructed how to look. This to me raised the question: 'Why?' Surely the point of computer avatars modelled on the human form is, for alot of people, to appear as human as possible. So why, then, are these actually human avatars playing down their humanity? Obviously it is to make them appear as characters in a game, but surely letting them stand more naturally, with more human expressions, would be more in keeping with the point that the avatars they are trying to look like are trying to appear as - humans. OR, maybe this is a parody of the fact, maybe the game is making a parody of computer avatars trying to be human, by making humans try to be avatars? Would not then, it be more in keeping of this idea to get the humans do to as instructed without having their trust gained first as avatars do. Avatars have no free will. Being 'tools', they are a conduit of the free will of the game creator and the free will of the game player. The avatar has no existing 'will' to speak of, becuase it does not exist beyond it's visual representation. So why then do the human avatars here get a degree of free will? It is because they are not, and cannot ever be, just tools. They will always be humans, they can act as avatars, but will never be that simplistic in nature. In the 'game' they will not do any wrongdoing, they will tell the player to leave, and the idea of gaining their trust suggests to me that this might be an experiment, the purpose of which being to get the player to start relating to computer avatars in a new way, and to bring a human set of ethics to games. We would not ask this human avatar to kill, so why should we a computer one? Because the computer universe is not real...because computer universes allow us to dispense of our agression in a way that does not harm our reality....are two reasons I hear you say, but who is to judge what reality is? Surely ANY unhappy act can be seen as a harmfull blow to our universe, cyber or otherwise...bad thoughts breed bad actions. I am digressing from the point here slightly, so to backtrack, the girlfriend experience uses human avatars and presents them as close to the same as a computer avatar is presented, perhaps for many reasons that can be pondered and argued against. Another point raised for me, beyond the presentation, is the purpose. I have touched on the idea that it could be an experiment challenging the the relationships humans form with computer avavtars, but what if it is instead challenging human to human relationships (human interaction). This could be why the element of trust and the building up of a relationship is such an important factor in it's gameplay.

Unfortunately this game only works wed-fridays, so I have not played, so perhaps experiencing it will make its purpose more evident than just reading about it and looking at images from it. Either way, I can see why it was suggested to me to look at, it is similar to Knightmare in the way that it works, i.e, having a human avatar with whom trust is an important factor. It differs however becuase there are no puzzles to solve or end goal to work towards. I really like the idea of using a human character in a computer game now, but perhaps one with narrative and obstacles, and will be looking into performance art if I decide to take this idea further.

To end, if anyone has played this game or has any differing perpsectives of it, please feel free to post a comment for me to consider/argue against/agree with/debate.

Tutorial with Micheal.....

2007-12-03T03:34:00.000-11:00

I spoke to Michael about my project so far and the research that I have been doing, as well as a couple of the themes and ideas I have been exploring. Before noting his comments, I’ll just give a brief overview here of what that was, because I did not go into my research in full, or explain all of my ideas as detailed better in this blog.

I spoke about the following research areas:

- psychical interaction
- control/manipulation
- mental interaction
- interaction between people
- Knightmare tv show
- Non linear storylines / parallel universes

And discussed the following ideas:

- interaction between people (controlling the person as a character in a game)
- installation using montage to provoke memory related experiences
- installation using montage materials arranged in two ways, one to give free will over interaction, one to manipulate and control, to show that free will is better than control in terms of producing more beneficial experiences
- touch screen application using clues in page to mentally engage the user in figuring out how to stimulate the page and proceed to the next.

RESPONSE:

Michael fed back some of my ideas to me in a way I had not considered/been aware of. I am thinking a lot about using installations to experiment on people and prove a point. He says that I sound like I have an opinion on issues such as free will and control in interaction, and could perhaps be exploring differing opinions or thinking about ways of communicating that to prove my point, however, I do not really have a set opinion….I have read a lot of texts and can see a lot of peoples different points of view. If I HAD to choose, I would say that it can be dangerous to use the media to manipulate public opinion, but I wouldn’t say it’s always wrong. His comment made me wonder….am I falling into the trap I have been reading about, of mistaking other people’s ideas as my own? Am I just voicing what I’ve been reading into my ideas rather than judging different sides and drawing my own conclusions? I don’t think this is true, it is still early and my research is quite wide ranging, but I think these are points I should come back to and consider when formulating my main idea to develop. I certainly will come back to the idea of using installation to prove a point or explore a point. One that comes to mind is that ‘interaction between people is good’, which is another comment Michael took my words to mean, though it was not my intent, but perhaps, it could be a theme to pursue, and use installation to prove. Other comments included suggestions to research ‘The girlfriend experience’, the argument that maybe it is not actually possible to completely remove freedom of thought, the artist Lorenzo Hemerr (who created an installation where light would beat at the same rhythm as the hearts of the people watching), and Deleuze’s ideas of repetition. One area I forgot to mention was my research into the fourth wall, and the idea of breaking it, which is something I am going to consider in more detail.

Brain Overload....

2007-11-30T08:05:00.000-11:00

Got alot of research now, it's going to take me a full week to read through it all fully and commentate and draw ideas from it. Got loads of ideas just from skim reading things. Alot of the feedback has been really thought provoking too. As has looking at other peoples blogs and giving them feedback. I made one comment about a show called Knightmare that has been echoing in my mind since I made it. The show is about 15 years old, and was about a dungeon master, a fantasy world, and groups of kids who would have quests in the world, which was a VR simulation. One kid would wear glasses and see parts of the wolrd, and his team members would watch on the screen and have acess to extra perspectives, and would guide him through the puzzles and offer help. There would be monster like bad guys, like evil wizards, out to sabotage you in the virtual world, and it was a really immersive game. Anyway, recalling it has got me thinking more about the idea of using the computer just as a tool, like so many texts I have read suggest, and placing ephasise on person to person interaction, so that people have to work together to get full use from some sort of interactive installation game. A bit like Sohelia spoke about last term, except I'm thinking of a more fantastical environment rather than robotic, or even no environment at all, just some sort of mentally challenging puzzle. I've also been thinking about the idea of forcing your opinions on another, and having them mistake the ideas as their own, another point made in a lot of the texts I've read recently (although I've looked at so many they are all beginning to blur in my mind- will be re-reading in full with lots of note making next week!), and was re-enforced by a comment in a Carlos Casteneda text that was recommended to me, about why forcing your ideas onto another is a bad thing. I have come up with a couple of ideas related to these ideas, to do with stories told through montage installations and lighting that guide one user to follow a certain narrative, but then using exactly the same images and lights, re-arrange the materials to be more mysterious and allowing of multiple narratives. It would need to work so that both users have someway of comparing experiences afterwards, but would explore the idea of how physically non-interactive materials can be arranged to really provoke mental interaction, dependant on the way they are presented, and how the user who could get the most mental interaction would benefit more and have a better experience than the user that couldn't. Perhaps this could even be in the form of a website where the user is asked to choose one 'portal' from the splash page, and then at the end reaches a forum where they can interact with others and discuss the experience. I'm thinking on my feet a bit here, as I find this blog most effective for typing out my ideas as they come to me, and then working them out in workbook, partially becuase all the feedback I've gotten so far has inspired me in one way or another.

However, time planning concern, by about Wednesday I think I'm going to stop sourcing out loads of research/inspirations for a bit, and review all my ideas and research so far, to figure out what direction to go in for the final idea, and start to develop/research it in more specific detail, although I'll keep an open mind the whole way towards change, I just think I need to give myself a little time to let what I have been inspired by and researched so far to sink in a little and brew, and it would be good to write more structured report/essay for my work book about what I have learnt about interactivity so far, because it's such a vast amount!

note2self-print later

2007-11-29T05:48:00.001-11:00

http://www.sushu.de/free/PDArt_Su_Schuricht.pdf>
http://slippingglimpse.org/>
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/>

Brainwave...

2007-11-29T05:28:00.000-11:00

...new idea. Have been drawn recently to the idea of parellell universe and quantum physics, becuase it reminds me of the idea of interaction between non linear narratives in animation, as I have demonstratede in previous posts. Have been questiong whether I'm going to far off subject by thinking about it though. Now I'm reassured that it's okay to let the mind wander, because that idea has lead to the discovery of an article about 'Mental Time Travel'. The articlke is about how seeing something from our opast can trigger brainwaves that we have experienced in the past, essentially, we re-live the past in our brain. I think this would be a great idea for an interactive exhibit. The creation of something that produces a user to time travel in their own thoughts.
(This is not my 'idea', just ONE of MANY....I'm still researching!)

Discussion with Lucy Irving

2007-11-29T04:30:00.001-11:00

I spoke with Lucy about my experiments with IQ testing the chatbot ALICE in reference to the Chris Crawford text, and she suggested that I look into 'The Chinese Room Argument', and 'The Turing Test'. The later is a way of measuring intelligence that I have looked at before, which I will do if I decide to create something that uses AI, or mental interaction, but will leave alone for the time being. The first I had not heard of, but after a little research discovered that it is abouit the computer being a tool in the mind, and the idea that they could one day think. Have only glanced at the article I found, but will read through it fully over the next week.

Also, we discussed the idea of getting together in a small group with others and having a mini-crit about our ideas sometime next week, maybe one lunch time or otherwise in class whenever it is possible. So, if your reading this and are interested...post a comment!

Discussion with Sarah Strickett

2007-11-29T04:22:00.000-11:00

Today Sarah Strickett spoke to us about her animation work. In the afternoon session I spoke with her about my ideas for the project, to be specific, I said that I'm enjoying the theories behind interaction, and the ideas of playing with mental and physical interaction. Also I spoke about my idea of having a book that interacts someway, perpaps with sensors in the pages that trigger animated projections, maybe with a web camera in it. I like the idea of breaking through the 'fourth wall', and looking deeper into it. I asked if she knew of any interactive animation I could look at, but she didn't. What she did suggest was that I look at the film 'Being John Malkovich', becuase of the way it plays with realities, she said my explanation of the fourth wall to her reminded her of it becuase it's about walls between fantasy and reality. I will look into it.

End of week one. Progress so far....

2007-11-28T23:20:00.000-11:00

We're about a week and a day into the project, and I've got quite a bit of research and a range of conceptual ideas so far. I'm enjoying the theory side of it alot, and am going to spend the next week continuing to research anything interactive realted over the next week that interest me, perhaps arranging my research into categories...'web interaction'....'game interaction'.....'installation interaction'...'psychical interaction'..........'mental interaction'....ect, I have ideas that fall into all these categories, and I'm enjoying being open minded about where the project could go and brainstorming lot's of ideas. I think at the end of next week though, or in two weeks at least, I should start to focus on one conceptual idea, and begin to develop it.

Some of my research so far has included relating Chris Crawfords ideas on the threee key elements of conversation, 'listening', 'understanding', 'speaking', and asking ALICE about his ideas. She did not know. She also failed. She said she had a human IQ, but I tested her with a question from an actual IQ test, and she failed to comprehend the question. So, clearly ALICE does not fit in with CC's ideas as well as she is meant to.

This week I am also going to examine the idea of the forth wall and identify whether breaking it is actually a good thing or not. The microsoft paperclip in word does begin to break it, by confronting the user, and most people hate it. I am going to examine in whatcases NOT breaking through the forth wall could make the interactive experience better.

Ultimately, I am still most interested in creating some sort of interactive installation that does break the fourth wall, and plays around with the ideas of mental(or 'emotional') interaction and physical interaction. Howeve, I want to learn as much as I can about general interaction before I focuss on this task ,and give myself the option of going in another direction.

Idea Generating Exercises

2007-11-28T00:39:00.000-11:00

Ok, so, I spoke earlier about some of the ideas I'd developed from the digital storytelling text we were all asked to read. Now we've been asked to do the excersises, which I already read through and those are what inspired me to develop those ideas. To be more specific, here are my responses to the questions:

1: What traditional ritual have you participated in that reminds you of an interactive narrative?
Pantomine- actors address audience, you address them- similar to digital tv shows that tell you to 'press the red button', to interact with the show and vote ect.
Kids puzzle books- your meant to solve puzzles on the page for the character, so it can proceed to the next page. quite mentally engaging for kids in a fiction al way- similar to computer game.

2: What game or sport have you played that could be adapted tp a form of iinteractive entertainment?
Chess- a computer game. Sounds basic, but I'm thinking of having it from the perspective of ONE piece, so you don't see the whole board, and have to work as a team with other pieces, perhaps as an online group game. would excerise the mind and induce interperson-interaction ( teamwork!)

3: What work of trad. storytelling have you read that has a narratve technique that could be aplied to digital media?
The Jane Austen Book Club (book) compares a number of characters to different Jane Austen books, telling their tales over time as the group meet, discuss and grow via flashbacks, Jane Austen quotes, and present day plot. It would make an excellent film, following the goings on of different people, and cutting it up to reveal the plot from different peoples perspectives. But altering the question to relate to Int.Media, I would say perhaps developing a DVD only bersion of a film, where you select the charcter you want to view the whole perspective of the plot from. Would be quite weak interaction though, mainly just one choice you can make, but would lead to altered perceptions of the media. wouldn't really work out though for finanical reasons. If all tv started being filmed from every angle, so many sub-plots would dvelop that it wouldn't be worth watching.

4: Describe how hyper text can deepen the characterization of a character.
Pretty obivous answer- links. Press on a name, go to a page about them. Wikipedia does it as do alot of other sites. To dwell on this a bit though, I think it is a shame that this idea of fictional characterization isn't a bit more exploited comercially. On Home and Away, if you miss an episode, you can go to the online blog of one of the characters- 'Sallys Blog' and read about the episode from her perspective (or at least used to be able to. Not certain if it still exists) This sort of idea doesn't break the fourth wall of interactivity, but I think it get's close, as the blog is being written and directed at the audience. It is a nice idea to build up a charcter online, and really give them an identity, and I think that this could be used more to generate interests in tv shows and films.

5: Can you think of any work of traditional entertainment that breaks the 4th wall? How could this be done in Int.M?

This question brings to mind a cartoon where a little boy would draw a perons or animal each epsidoe with chalk and the character would come to life and they would have an adventure. Not really breaking the 4th wall, but the idea within it is that the little boy is interacting with his drawings. Also, I am reminded of a book about a boy that has a character come out of a book, and has to convince him to go back and end the story. Think the boy then goes itno the book. These kind of magical experiences always seemed appealing to me when I was young, and I think modern interactive media is really making experiences like that seem possible, making everything in old media such as tv shows more lifelike. I'm not really answering the question here, just noting down thoughts related to the project that the questions has sparked in me. I really like the thought of making a plain book into a much more interactive object.

And finally.....
a little off subject of the text, but the idea of narrative has reminded me of a tv show I watched the other day on quantum physics, about the man who invented the theory of paralell universes and hopw they work. To recap extremely sketchily, because I'm not so sure on the specifics myself, and didn't agree with his ideas exactly, he developed a scientific idea that atoms can be in two places at once, and addressed a scientific problem about a cat in a box. If some of the atoms that form poisen react one way, the cat dies, if they react another, it lives. The spectator cannot see in the box, so it is plausible that both things happen. The cat is both dead and alive at the same time. It prompts a paralell universe. Every tiny change in the world prompts an inumerable number of them. I'm not explaining the theory too well, but that's beside the point. The whole idea of paralell universes makes me think of DVD's that offer us multiple endings, or games where we can do one thing, but know other people may be doing something else at the same time in the same game. I'm sort of typing as I'm thinking here, but I think exploring the concept of parallel universes could produce some ideas for digital narratives to use with my ideas for this project.

Digital Storytelling

2007-11-27T21:12:00.000-11:00

So, this past week has been spent mainly researching and scribbling down rough ideas. Haven't really developed or stuck with any. Still got lot's of research leads and want to keep an open mind a little longer. I'm a bit confused too as to whether it's okay to develop a 'concept' or an interactive object/installation, and then create an animation to show how it would work, which is what I'd most like to do. Perhaps making the animation a bit like a powerpoint in the sense that you click to slide onto the next step of the animated explanation or something. If we have to create the fully finished object, then I won't be able to create a lot of my ideas as some are installations or would be v.expensive to buy the materials(like a touch screen pane!) so I would need to change the way I'm thinking a bit. Will ask tutors about that this week.

Sat up quite late last night doing the reading for today. Really enjoyed it. Found it really inspiring. Had hoped to do extra research to prepare for class and read up on some of the leads I picked out, but sadly don't have the time. I will look into them after class, they include:
William Burroughs,
James Joyce, and
Eastgate systems.
I really enjoyed 'Digital Storytelling' and am quite keen on the idea of exploring an 'old' medium, like a book, and turning it into a 'new' interactive medium in some sort of installation, somehow draining the persons mentally into the story, but also getting them to hold it physically. I did the idea generation exercises included, and they really opened my mind up. I recalled puzzle book I had as a child, similar to 'Where's Wally' but more complex, where the character could not proceed to the next page until you'd solved a problem for him/her. I'm going to dig them out if I still have them, and consider creating some sort of digital version of this, in a an animation, or the book idea I just mentioned. I think it might be quite fruitful to look at lot's of old mediums, and examine the 'schwerpunkt' of them, and then try and alter this or make it digitally interactive somehow.

Also, I really like the term ' fourth wall of interactive media' coined in the third text, and I like the type of interction it is referring to. I hope to create something that breaks through this wall.

note2self: check this out later-

2007-11-26T03:18:00.001-11:00

http://www.mentalmodels.com/

Note to self- print this later

2007-11-23T07:01:00.001-11:00

http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/ostweb/manovich.htm

Weird Interactive Site

2007-11-22T08:09:00.000-11:00

The below link is to a site that is a sort of story that gets the user to navigate the site by choosing pictures and words... I don't hink it's particularily amazing, and the content is pretty bad quality, but it's a good example of interactive 'web art'
http://www.teleportacia.org/war/wara.htm
It is by Olia Lialina, and it was recommended to look at in a Lew Manovich essay I was reading on Russian New Media.

Talk with Alastair MacDonald (Kerb programmer) - notes

2007-11-22T05:55:00.001-11:00

I asked Alastair MacDonald about audience engagement in interactive media, and if he had created any games that incorporate sensors or physical interaction. I also told him about my reactions to the brief so far. Comments he made in our conversation are:

He has not incorporated physical interaction in games, but has in installations and other bits and pieces.

He talked about a piece of work that used floor mats and connections to the mouse that meant the feet were using to click rather than the hand.

He confirmed that it is possible to have the user in the work using web cams and code that allows for motion sensors, and that I should look for free code on the internet, because it might be too complicated. He gave me this link relating to it-

www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/webcam_motion.html

Also, when asked about control in terms of who has it, user or creator, he said that although there are boundaries, it can also be said that there are physical boundaries such as the keyboard and screen itself that can be considered, and that making things happen that are unexpected can be a great way of making something successful, and humorous.

Thoughts /Inspirations gained from the talk:

It is encouraging to know that it could be possible in this project to create some sort of interactive installation, such as a flash based application that allows the user control in the sense that they can bring something totally unique and individual to the interactive experience they, well, experience.

It also got me thinking about the idea of having an installation that has the computer screen embedded in a screen, and allows the user to explore beyond the boundaries of the screen, and navigate the space around it, perhaps having a projection of an extended screen. Or perhaps a humorous approach could be a ‘behind the scenes’ sort of projection around the edges so you veer off into a dark, mechanical space with lots of matrix style code where odd things happen to the cursor.

It also got me wondering if I can get an old mouse or joystick or keyboard or sound or microphone and experiment with hooking it up to interact. I will have a look over the next week at bits and pieces and explore ideas regarding this.

Also this talk prompted an idea about creating something that uses a touch screen to get the user to mentally figure out how to proceed to the next page of a website/program. i.e, parents use blocks and shape holes in a box to encourage learning in children, and I like the thought of having to stimulate the page in a certain way, so you have to touch it in a variety of places or with a certain shape, to proceed, and the clues are within the page, so the user has to interact mentally to proceed. (would need ideas on what to make as an incentive to do so). This also led onto thoughts about an interactive puzzle, as it’s quite similar, and the idea that the tv show ‘lost’ is quite interactive, because to get the most you can from it, you have to really be alert and observant. There are so many connections between characters in thier flashbacks that when I watch it with my family we almost turn it into a game, trying to observe all of them, and pause and rewind to watch them because as individuals, we can never notice them all alone, it is watching in a group that means we all get more from the experience. It has turned into a whole web movement, almost, lost connections websites and people theorizing what all the weird clues could mean. They even advertised fake products in the show that people looked up. EVERYTHING is becoming interactive. EVERY media is encouraging user participation. MENTALLY.

Jumbled thoughts (but pretty important ones)

2007-11-22T03:57:00.000-11:00

Am starting to research the brief. Have read an interesting Manovich essay on Totalitarian Interactivity which examines pseudo-interactive games among other things, and how even the most interactive applications that seem to allow for free will, such as games where you can control your character, have boundries, because everything that you can do, has been pre-written by the creator. The space has been created by another person, and all the options haave had boundries drawn. Every decision that you CAN make, has had the tools created by the creator. Similarily, websites are all narrow in terms of the choices a user has in terms of navigation. An argument against this can be taken from Barthes Death of the Author, in the sense that a reader interacts with websites and goes from site to site, reading texts in a way that only they can decide to do. They can take snippets here and there, writing there own text, in a sense, although I think exploring readerly/writerly texts might be going a little off subject here. But it brings to mind the idea that perhaps free individuality in interactivity can exist becuase the user had their own perceptions and reeactions that can be provoked by the creator ( in the sense of shock art installations perhaps) BUT the user will always have their OWN inner view of a work. In a way evrything can be interactive, in the sense that a user reacts mentally.
To start researching this project on a deeper level, I want to try and explore what 'interactive media' actually is. So....initial thoughts.....

basic interactive applications: touch screen: kiosks/dvds/websites/computers/software/games/virtual reality

more thought out examples of interactive media:
interactive installations (camille utterback)- these can allow the user to have a unique effect on the way a work actually appears. This could include using sensors to alter works based on users movements, or cameras to place the user into the piece.
the set-up of a piece of work: this could be done in a way that forces the user to observe the work in a certain way, e.g, projected on the ceiling(forces user to crane neck upwards..perhaps the projection of a piece could move so that then the user has to move themselves, and interact wihg the piece, to see the end)
3d glasses like the ones seen in the grande parade exhibition yesterday, would cause the user to interact with their movements(physical interactivity) to bend down and see the piece properly through the glasses.
mental interaction i.e, works that force the user to engage mentally

These are just a few ideas running throught my brain, not fully thought out in terms of how the ideas could be applied to this project yet, although I do like the idea of having something unusual, and not relying on just have a basic mouse clicking interactive applications. I'd like to go in the direction of forcing the user to interact either mentally with a storybook type animation, or to interact physically, perhaps using some kind of touch screen or cameras or sensors if it is possible for this project.

Other extremely random thoughts:

Digital mirrors. (as theorized by Ian Pearson from BT and loooked at in the last project) When these exist(I think a prototype already does) they will really encourage physical interactivity in the sense that users will be using eye movement, projections and psychical actions to interact with the mirror in a digital way.

Leading on from that.....I'm going to try and not let my ideas in this project get too theoretical, and keep the idea of digital media in mind. For example, psudeo interactivity (the theory that mental interaction can be applied to ANYTHING) is such a vast subject and I could really explore it, BUT, at the same time, I don't think doing a painting and then arguing about how it's interactive because it's forcing the user to interact mentally is going to be the right outcome for this project. Not that I'm suggesting there is a defined 'right outcome', but I think the project is asking us to look into all these ideas on interactivity, and come to some kind of synthesis of ideas that relate to digital media, since at the end of the day, that is the course we are on.

Memories- and having a digital experience that prompts the user to connect with their own memories might be a great way of demonstrating psudo interactivity, although I'd need to think alot about how to successfully approach this.

Userbility- is a VERY IMPORTANT factor in interactive media. I could approach this project in a sense that I explore these existing guidelines and restraints and try to alter/push the boundries regarding them.

Control- I could look a the project from the perspective of finding a solultion to the problem/question about exactly how in control a user is and explore ways that allow for more freedom of will. Or even create something that has the purpose of NOT allowing much freedom of will. But would that make it less interactive in a way.

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So, as I expect this post shows, I do have a LOT os ideas, but they are all pretty jumbled, so I'm going to plan out a rough time frame for what I need to get done by when in this project, and a rough starting structure of what do research. Which I'm going to start on now.

Initial reaction to new brief

2007-11-21T05:05:00.000-11:00

Have looked at the new brief, and will read it again in full detail later.
Thoughts off the top of my head to start with are that it looks like a project I can really get my teeth into. I like the sound of it. I like interaction design alot and I like the fact that we can choose any type of interactive media we wish. I like the thought of experimenting and pushing the boundries too. One book comes to mind to get from the library that I read in the first year, which explains interactive design principles and shows exampls of good sites and bad sites, including experimental sites that just don't work, becuase even when trying to be different, there are some design principles that always need to be considered. I will make sure I look into this issue fully, and try and determine how far I can push boundries and make my work unique without actually causing it harm in terms of userbility. I am also thinking that I would like to use after effects and dvd studio pro to create some kind of interactive animation, but no ideas exactly as to what/how. But I don't want to immediately limit myself to using computer software alone. I will give some thought as to other ways the idea of an interactive project could be perceived, such as perhaps creating something that forces the user to interact by standing in a particular way, or using their wholel body. (motion sensors?) I will look into the work of camille utterback when considering this. The thing that puts me off that idea though is that I would need to create something that shows my idea, but depending how ambitious it gets, might not be able to actually CREATE the final thing, and so would have to create an interactive demo off it on the computer perhaps, wheras I would like in this project to create a finished, complete piece. I missed one of the talks this term by Rona (surname?), but heard her speak last year, and remember her showing some work that used a camera, so the person looking at the work was actually becoming a part of it, and I'm sure she explained the setup as being quite simple. I may be able to purchase something that lets me be a bit adventurous, so I'm definately going to let my ideas run wild initially and then start to narrow them down in a couple of weeks.

Other comments.....

Enjoyed visiting the galleries this monring. Liked the grande parade exhibiton, not so much the other two, that kind of installation art isn't really my cup of tea, but I appriciate the value of learning about other areas and people pespectives, and everything in life is inspiration in one way or another.

Dissertation....

Am going to start keeping a research folder, looking at bits and pieces related to my different ideas.

Self-Evaluation of Presentation

2007-11-19T22:42:00.000-11:00

Yesterday I gave my presentation. It did not, unfortunately, go as smoothly as hoped. I practiced it twice over the weekend to try and make sure the timing was fine, but did not allow time for technical difficulties, which I had, and so I ran over by a couple of minutes. I also feel that I read to much and did not express my enthusiasm as much as I should have. I was so determined to get all my info out there, that I think I did not fully sell just how popular my product could be. Also, I noticed most other people had a lot more content in their power point presentations, just with key-points to prompt their speech, something I felt needed to be avoided when creating my own presentation, because I was trying my hardest to put more effort into my actual idea and show I was thinking about other ways of presenting, rather than falling back on a tried but trusted method. In retrospect though, I was I had done that, because I think it's tried and trusted for a reason. If I had to present again, I would have bullet points and talk about the product more freely, and just mention that I have the research facts to back it up, and that they can be seen in the proposal, which is probably a better way of approaching it. Then I could have focussed more specifically on what it is and how it works, and why it would be popular, and summed all my other pricing/enviroment/health ect concerns into a more liberal speech, to say that they exist, but not explain their research unless asked.

However, I contained my nervousness well, I think, and I beleive that my proposal itself is very strong, thorough, well though out and considered from a range of perspectives, and I fully support and stand by my concept idea.

Portfolio Clinic

2007-11-14T03:42:00.000-11:00

Handed in project this morning. Am going to spend rest of week doing some research for the dissertation, and re-charging my batteries for the next project.

Last night I went to the portfolio clinic at Grande Parade. It was a really useful experience. The room was quite small and dark, with lit tables packed close together, and people hovering around whomever they wished to speak to, and due to the crowded environment, I only got to see half the companies I wanted, but I saw a few others I hadn't planned on speaking to, that actually turned out to be much more useful than I had expected of the ones that I did want to see. One rep from Nixon Mcinnes took my CV to shreds and told me how to re arrange the content, and what to cut, and what to add in. She also said that the covering letter when applying for a job is almost more important than the CV itself. It was also suggested that I look into facebook, which I personally don't like, becuase if applyoing for a job with her, she would expect potential web designers to have 'experienced' all aspects of the web, and to be active about participating in it.

Everyone I spoke to agreed that A3 is the bext size for a paper portfolio, but that it would be better to stick with a digital one.

NOTE TO SELF

2007-11-08T03:24:00.001-11:00

must check this out over reading week. might help with dissertation idea selection:

http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/staff/sw/stuarts_papers/theoryofmind.htm

Presentation Development

2007-11-07T23:35:00.001-11:00

Have been re-thinking my take on the presentation. I still think 'pitching' it as a product is the best way to proceed, but have decided instead of using still images in a powerpoint presentation that I need to keep scrolling through, I will jazz it up a bit by having my three 'concept boards' play on loop as an animation, which I will create in After Effects or Flash, and then export this as a movie to play looped on a single slide in power point. This means I can have a title page, and when I'm ready to unveil my concept, will only need to press next slide once, which will allow me to concentrate on my pitch and stand away from the keyboard, in a position where I can face everyone, which I think is very important when presenting in such a verbal, formal manner.

Thoughts on the dissertation

2007-11-07T03:17:00.000-11:00

I found the session today regarding the dissertation really helpful. Especially thinking about how someone else could approach it, because it helped me re evaluate my own ideas objectively.

I have been trying NOT to generate ideas about the dissertation so far on this course, because I wanted to wait until our first session to gain a better understanding of what is required, what limitations there are ect. I have also been worried about needing to stick exactly to the proposal I handed in at interview, because I don't really want to go down that path now. It was about challenging accessibility issues and identifying where guidelines/ principles are right/wrong and how they will develop into the future.

Thinking afresh, I have taken into account alot of comments made on the course about thinking outside of the box, pushing the limits and experimenting with other areas of design, not just areas one is especially interested in. This current project has been about the future, and has got me to think not only about media, but about other worldly factors that impact on it and shape the way different aspects of it are. Like energy, economy, psychology, science ect

I want to finish this year being able to look back on my work and see that is has led to my development in the areas I'm interested in, but also to show that I have explored new realms of knowledge and explored subjects I might not get the chance to again.

So, my three leading ideas for a dissertation are as follows:

relationships between people and technology

closely studying the way interaction works in this context, from a psychological perspective: how/why do people interact the way they do?
Also looking at anthropomorphism, what is the root of human compulsion to associate emotion to inanimate things.
japan has no fear of new technologies, some countries do though, what causes this difference? is it nature or nurture?

new technologies do not just change the world, they change the way people perceive the world

the above is a quote made in the tv show 'the genius of photography' that in context refered to a realisation prompted by the development of the camera, but I would like to see how it relates to other media, by choosing a few examples from different times in history and analysing how true/false this observation is, looking at what effects have been caused by this idea of a new perspective

wikinomics and a new era of authorship

Last year I wrote an essay on Barthes Death of the Author which I got really interested in. Since I now have a good idea of what that essay was about, I think I could happily discuss his ideas in relatiion to the idea of wikinomics, and consider the questions: who gets credited for authorship? who has the 'rights' ? I could look at the ideas of copyright and copyleft and incorporate these, too.

TUTORIAL WITH MIKE BLOW RE: PRESENTATION

2007-11-05T22:04:00.000-11:00

Yesterday I discussed with Mike Blow my dilemma about how best to present my work. So far this project, as my idea has developed and changed, I have been working towards presenting it in different ways. At first I thought a website promoting my concept, then as I realised my concept would involve a piece of software to work with it, I decided I would create that piece of software (a look/feel of it anyway), developing the idea to consider creating pieces of software. I then decided It would be better to create a 3D model of my concept itself, but after a week trying to produce it, I decided it was better to abandon that idea, since my skills were not very good, and it made the concept look bad. Then I narrowed down my ideas, and decided again on just creating a flash ‘look/feel’ of the piece of software, but my problem is that I have such a vast amount of information to deliver ( I have created a 7 page proposal to print and hand in, explaining my concept in relation to all relevent factors such as disabilities, the environment, what countries it would sell in and why ect..) , that I think just clicking through the pages of a flash software application and describing the idea would end up hurting my concept, as I am not able to create a functioning piece of software, and if it is just a selection of look and feels, still images, like my concept image, then a power point presentation is my most obvious, logical choice so that I can really TALK about my conept. However, I want to be creative about the presentation. I have been working hard NOT to use power point, but it seem like it is the most logical and best idea, because predominately I just want to talk and ‘pitch’ my concept as a future product. I could use foam mount to display my images, but where to do so could be tricky, power point would let my just project them

Mike Blows comments were:

- To create a 3D model (physical not digital) Which I have already considered, but I explained that my photo shop mock-ups developed from this ended up looking a lot better than it would if I tried to sculpt a model.
- To invite questions about my product at the start. I replied I would rather do this at the end because I want to ‘pitch’ the idea as a product, and as the time is limited, I want to make sure I deliver all the information logically, and don’t have to repeat things.
- To envisage the audience as a sales pitch panel, and come in wearing a suit. I will definitely dress smartly, but I think a suit is a bit over the top.

Ultimately Mike agreed with my thinking that it was best for me to present my product by talking about it because I have such a clear idea of my concept, and to use power point to project the still images (I am still in the process of creating these).

I still think I might develop some sort of flyer to hand out promoting the concept as a product though, and maybe use the foam board idea to just hold up the relevant images. Then I could stand at the end of the room and face everyone at once.

Nearing end of week five - progress report

2007-10-31T23:24:00.000-11:00

I'm now approaching the end of week five, and do realise that I haven't 'blogged' for a week and a half, which is not for lack of interest, but simply becuase my intenet connection has been playing up, and I like to use class time to take advantage of doing web research and printing.

So to summarise where I am:

I am feeling very clear minded about what I want to get done and how to achieve it. I have decided to focus my attentions on strengthening the concept rather than trying to teach myself to create a flashy 3D presentation. So, I am working on creating a rough presentation now written in word, and then I will create some visual aids in photoshop to illustrate it. Then I will get friends and family to look over it and ask critical questions, that I can then consider and compose answers to in case I am asked in the real presentation. I will then organize the information I want to deliver into either a power point presentation or a flash microsite that promotes the concept. I have now created some mock up images of my product, 2 of the 4 I have planned, and am also wondering whther or not to create a screen grab of teh software program (or 'settings') it would be supplied with, which is challenging me because it envokes the question: what will software look like in 30-50 years time? I might instead just create a site map of what options and pages would be in the software, and show how it would be organized.
I still have a little research left to do, but it is mostly complete. I plan on producing a written 'proposal' of the product to hand in along with the presentation, that will EXPLAIN the product and JUSTIFY why each design/technical desicion has been made, offering links or quotes to research 'evidence' that backs up my decisions

As for time, I hope to finish all my visual aids and and generated all content for the microsite/presentation by the start of next week(6). I am also hoping to work towards completing by the original hand in date of next Thursday, so that I have the reading week leftover in case anything goes disasterously wrong!

I would also like to note that I found the BBC4 TV show 'The genius of Photography' which is on Thursdays at 9pm, and recommend it to anyone interested in the area. It had a really great quote last week that relates to this project:

"New technologies don't just change the future, but they change the way we perceive the world around us"
I think this is a comment worth considering, becuase it has been true of many past technologies uch as photography, moving image, the internet, satellites...ect

PRESENTATION EVALUATION: FEEDBACK RECEIVED & MY THOUGHTS

2007-10-19T03:54:00.001-11:00

Presenting my progress thus far has proven to be extremely helpful. The process of preparing to and presenting what I have learnt so far and what I have been thinking about has helped to clarify how I should proceed with the project. The main idea I have had throughout this project that I liked most is interactive holograms, however, it is something I have tried to work away from continuously, because of concerns it is too ‘science fiction like’. However, my research has shown me that it is something that can be developed, and could be made available about 25 years into the future, around the time that holographic TV is set to emerge. I have also discovered it is my strongest idea, and that it was overwhelming preferred to all my other ideas, which were not very well received by the group. Most of the comments were fair, and were issues I pointed out myself that I would have worked on if I decided to take those concepts further, however I did find a couple of comments unfair, and they got me thinking about the presentation at the end. Until this point, I have assumed that we could imagine a target audience, and present how we would to the imagined target audience. For example, my pedestrian sensors have genuine research to back up the idea that they would have a small impact on cutting down accidents, however no one in the group seemed to take this on board, the response was more like, ‘Well, I wouldn’t slow down because of that’ or ‘ I wouldn’t want one of those’ however, I feel that given the chance to research the correct target audience, i.e mothers with children in the car or road safety organisations, the technology could catch on. However, what I have realised is that my idea needs to be something that will appeal to the group in the presentation/crit at the end of the project, as well as my suggested target audience, and based on the strong enthusiasm and comments people made about them, I think that the holograms(with a lot of development) could become really marketable. I am now going to brainstorm my new ideas on how to develop the concept into a desktop feature. I am also thinking about how I can present them, and am looking forward to the 3-d tutorial we will be getting next week, as it seems the best way. I would also like to create a concept website. It will have links to active pages, and all the graphics, but buttons such as ‘buy now’ won’t work. It will be a sort of working model of how the holograms would be supported and sold online.

Summary of week two and plans for week three(in progress already)

2007-10-17T22:31:00.001-11:00

The last week has gone quite well, I transcribed and researched ideas from BT's Technology timeline, and generated quite a lot of concept ideas for the project.
This week, I have set myself the goal of researching three or four of my best ideas in more detail and to brainstorm more ideas to improve each one. I am then hoping to select my final concept idea at the start of next week. These ideas include:

Interactive Holograms: Using chatbot technology with eye tracking software and voice recognition, so that the hologram can always be looking eye to eye with the person who asks it a question - could be used as an information resource in libraries, museums, train stations ect
Critical thoughts about concept:
Is it too futuristic? Would it be financially worth it? Is it needed or an excesive waste of energy? If so, how could I alter it not to be? How could it be developed into a success. Could the idea be developed to become a smaller screenbased 'cyber pilot' rather than a hologram that helps people navigate the internet, like a face for search engines that you speak to instead of typing in, that talks to you. Is that too much like a chatbot? If so, how could I develop it into a future application?

Empathic TV: Using emotion reading device to assess a viewers emotions, and offer up a selection of tv shows / films that match. Would mean each programme has a mood tab applied to it
Critical thoughts on concept:
Is this too basic? How popular would it be? Should I carry out questionnaire research to see how people respond to the idea?

Pedestrian Sensors: Product added to cars, that uses blue tooth type technology to alert drivers when they are entering a new speed zone, and to ask them to slow down.
Critical thoughts on concept:
Is it too much like sat.nav systems? What is the projected statistic for how successful this could be in road safety, cutting down on accidents? How could the idea become more futuristic?

Empathic Fridges/Cupboards: Using Reznet technology, would sense health and suggest posible dietary options for food.
Critical thoughts on concept:
Would this be too novelty? Therefore, un-needed? If taken seriously, would should be thought about to ensure it gives safe health advice?

Later today I will be presenting my progress so far, and hopefully getting some feedback related to these thoughts that could help. By the end of the week, I hope to be settled on which concept to choose, so that next week(4) I can research it in more detail and develop ideas around it, and collect evidence to justify and strenghtan my decisions related to it's development.

Useful link

2007-10-10T04:54:00.000-11:00

http://www.btplc.com/Innovation/News/timeline/

The above link has some really intersting information about BT's futurology research. It is a flash timeline for how the wolrd will develop over the next 50 years, and although it is mostly speculation, the predictions are based on their research, and some of them seem quite logical (a few are a little daft though). The different events effect one another and could be a valuable resource in checking when any concept ideas created in the project could be viable. Demographic and environmental predictions may also help with this.

WEEK ONE SUMMARY / GOALS FOR WEEK TWO

2007-10-09T00:05:00.000-11:00

So far I am on track with my project. I have done a lot of initial research and developed a brainstorm with many different thoughts about the project and beginnings of ideas. I am trying to keep an open mind to many different ways to approach the project, and not settle on one particular technology concept to research, but many. I am thinking about environmental concerns, disabled people interacting with their environment, motion sensor holograms with speech recognition, and possible interfaces that could develop in homes in the future.

This week I plan on researching technology around the home and brainstorming ideas as to how it can be improved or how it will evolve over the next couple of decades. I then want to expand my brainstorm and start thinking up more developed concept ideas. I will then choose four or five of my strongest ideas (ones as different as possible) and begin researching how the technology behind them might work, how useful they could be, what the impact on the proposed market would be, and any ethical, economic, political, or environmental factors that might be relevant.

My research to date has included many websites, New Scientist Magazine, The Economist Magazine, Technology Review Magazine and I am now going to be using photographs to draw inspiration.

I would recommend the New Scientist periodicals in the library to everyone, as they are very inspirational and got me thinking about alot of angles to approach the project that I hadn't previously considered.

Module One: Design Futures, Week One.

2007-10-04T00:55:00.000-11:00

INITIAL REACTION TO BRIEF

My first reaction to this brief was that it seemed intimidating. I have been trying to figure out what sort of concept I am supposed to produce. Having thought about this for a couple of days and having it discussed in class has helped me start to think about what I would like to work towards learning from this project. That is to say, I think it would be good to spend the next six weeks researching a concept related loosely to interactive design or animation, because those are two areas I would like to learn more about over this year. However digital media in general would be as beneficial. Other thoughts of the top of my head are to consider the environment. I think doing some research into future digital technology that’s is more environmentally friendly could be worthwhile. Also, I have always liked the idea that one day perhaps some sort of printer could be developed that prints images that you have stored in your brain. Or a computer that types based on your words, so you can speak and it will type what you say. However I think that last one is already an invention of the present.

TIME PLANNING FOR THE PROJECT

Below is a rough guide, which will probably change and develop based on the decisions I make over the next couple of weeks, of what I will do in each week of this project, to ensure that I finish in time.

Week one

01 – 07 Oct

Initial Research (starting point: recommended reading)

Initial Ideas

Week two

08 – 14 Oct

Developed research based on selection of best ideas

Evaluation of ideas based on research

Idea development

Week three

15 – 21 Oct

Selection of concept

Treatment created (if applicable to idea- otherwise a mood board)

Developed research

Concept development

Week four

22 –28 Oct

Concept development

Ideas about what presentation should involve

Week five

29 – 04 Nov

Presentation development

Week six

05 – 08 Nov

Fine tuning of presentation and concept

Evaluation

Print and bind sketchbook

TIME PLANNING / GOALS FOR WEEK ONE

This week my goal is to look at all the suggested research to gain a better idea of what this project is about, and then to generate a wide range of initial ideas.