Quick Update....

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

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

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

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

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.....

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.....

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!!