Project Proposal - update

Abruptly, I was given a flash tutorial very recently by our tutor, which compelled a rapid flash through everything I have done since I presented it on a chilly day in January while I was functioning on very little sleep...

Not at all that much, really.

But because I had been making a second home out of the sound studio and the facilities of the Bonington and Waverley buildings, it's been a matter of realising that I have on a subconscious level pursued my own personal project of study. For a start, the Light Night and Castle projects are greatly informing my own development in this MA program as it is. It's just that recently, I've started paying attention as to what's going on with it when left with the sole essence of my being here at Trent.

As pointed out, I've been playing with Isadora a lot. The traditional art medium (line drawings) have not yet been displayed due to my lack of activity with getting a space. I would say it's been difficult, but I'd be lying. I'm sure that if I swept everything going on with these other projects and my job out of the way for a day or two, I'd easily find a public space to conduct this proposed experiment. Thankfully, my tutor has pointed me out to a piece of labour that can help with this project endeavour in its later phases (so I don't have to build one myself). That was just from showing him a quick drawing of a unit that could possibly host a camera that inputted to a screen which projected the Isadora stage and whatever effects I applied to it, like so:

Upon finding the thing sat in the Waverley building today, I have claimed eternal dibs. So now it's just a matter of breaking out into the public space for experimentation as soon as I get this potential display unit into the Bonington building and storing it somewhere and cramming it with computers, wires and cameras. 

Interactivity - the gallery experience

"Many interactive artworks are designed exclusively for one person at a time, which presents a challenge when showing interactive works in conventional gallery settings. However, works also exist where multiple users actually enhance the works, for the audience can not only interact with artworks, but with each other too." - Beryl Graham (Colson, 2007)

Memory Mirror from Kupfer on Vimeo.

When I visit a gallery space, you could say that I am now definitely a part of its audience. Judging from my past case studies, a visitor's actions in an interactive setting are also studied. This is certainly more the case in a linear set up, as there are more specific expectations as to what one does, which makes one more conscious. This is less the case in non-linear environments. 

In similar situations, ask yourself what it is you do when viewing a traditional medium of artwork like a painting or sculpture. Do you keep your thoughts private, or comment and make conversation with other spectators? Do you attach humour to ease the tension in the quiet air of awkwardness that is often found in these settings, or simply move along and additionally snort in derision if you also didn't like the piece? 

However one reacts to an artwork, it may affect the actions of others. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but part of the dynamic public role assigned to the viewer. These considerations form the basis of interactive artwork, which are by their technical nature demanding of maintenance. But they attract a lot of attention and a level of involvement from the audience that is very different to viewing traditional art, because they combine a multitude of media by stimulating the senses on visual, auditory and tactile levels. This altogether culminates to more intimate feelings that the gallery space can provide.

Reference:

Colson, R., 2007. The Fundamentals of Digital Art. s.l.:AVA Academia.

User involvement (HCI)

As evidenced, project work has intensified over this month (not that I'm one to complain). However, this doesn't mean that I haven't had time to keep up with all the theory behind interaction design. I've still been reading up on Human Computer Interaction and have picked out some points that strike critical reflection.

One such issue is user involvement. There has been debate as to whether it is a good or bad thing. HCI highlights an example by The Open University (UK), in which users were given more significant roles in developing a computerised system of network support due to the huge numbers of students and staff. One user was even appointed project manager. This confirmed that involving users can make things more difficult than necessary.

Good points:

• Involving users made the system closer to what all users wanted
• It made the system easier and more user-friendly

Bad points:

• There was a lack of continuity, because users were not involved from beginning to end
• Other users who were less involved did not feel that their needs were adequately met
• Lack of decision-making and ownership (by ownership, I mean the "I don't know, you decide" attitude)

Microsoft on the other hand, have a much more thorough and varied user involvement, and continually monitor the user interaction with a product throughout the entire development. There are a variety of ways in which Microsoft employs, and particular techniques such as the 'activity-based planning' which involves studying what users do to achieve a certain task and using that data to choose a product feature accordingly. They also test what a developer believes to be a finished product by inviting outsiders to perform certain tasks on it, and the performance is observed and recorded. Microsoft however have a massive consumer base, so they are in a position to be rectifying issues with their products. It is noted however that around 30% of them call their support lines with issues and frustrations resulting from errors and poor features (Cusumano and Selby, 1995), but that still suggests that the company focuses a great deal of effort and resources into usability and user experience.

From these two examples, you could say that it is both good and bad, and really depends on how and at what point of development you involve users. I wonder how this might be an option for the Castle Project when the Discovery Surface is built and finished before the launch of the exhibition. I personally don't feel that we should until the exhibition, because that's what it is: an exhibition; not a Microsoft product. It may also slow things down, which I would find immensely annoying. We have a better luxury of time that I think should be used wisely for this project. However, I don't think it will hurt to invite outside users (or maybe students) to come along and interact with the table for observational and testing purposes.

Castle Project (previously called the Museum Project) - a fairly detailed update

Light Night aside, this project has also been developing. As far as my brief goes, we have in the works what is called the Discovery Surface (or two), which will be part of a wider exhibition called RIOT 1831 at Nottingham Castle (hence the name).

The last time I posted about this was in December 2013, but the theme remains the same, albeit more detail: it revolves around the riots that happened in Nottingham in 1831. Some of the key points of this period were:

• Extreme poverty and cramped living conditions
• Limited voting rights
• Rioting figures and their backgrounds
• The Reform Bill, and its key opponents/supporters.

Other themes of the exhibition generally include democracy, justified rebellions, standing for one's beliefs and against unjust authority and unrepresentative systems. One could say that we've contextualised on the widespread riots that happened across the UK in 2011 with historical ones in comparison, namely the aforementioned riot of the 19th century. These videos summarise the event and illustrate the potential of the Castle project.

Again, things are being added to the other blog by myself and the others involved. The Discovery Surface is as detailed below, by the brief we were given:

It has now come to the point of who does what. Seven of us, including our tutor, have divided a set of tasks between us. We also divided ourselves into pairs to pursue said tasks. I'm feeling quite gleeful to say that Ula (another lovely student) and I are focusing on two things:

• Display of information
• Language

The latter has easily been solved with the image of national flags (with the name underneath already translated to the corresponding language). But I strongly suspect that we won't hear the last of it in terms of user interface and incorporation yet. But this is the kind of thing we have in mind:

We have a particular idea on how the information is displayed, which comes in the form of a timeline that we also want to make non-linear in nature. There were other intentions of making this table function as an animated 3D map, but so far I'm not as keen on that than I am with this idea: an animated, interactive lace that acts as an expansive timeline. To distinguish this further, call it the Laceline. Here is a very roughly drawn diagram of how this Laceline theoretically works:

Obviously, this is a rough drawing, but say for example if we went for a simple black lace pattern against a white background, then imagine the one below flowing in the way it is in the diagram (I swear I'll do this on Illustrator soon):

Content-wise, the current idea is for the Laceline to embody this information in a fluid and accommodating style. The table below highlights significant events that happened in this period. Again, Ula and I have divided the amount of research between us (the areas not highlighted in blue are to be researched by me). 

We've all been meeting regularly about this, which is good given the deadline in May. There will be another meeting about it tomorrow, in fact. I'm expecting debates and changes, depending on what everyone else has been doing. But we'll see.

Magic Light - Reading passage

Last Thursday saw me engaging a creative activity that I've never done before: audio reading. Naturally, I had no clue as to how I would do it, but then I did know those who could show me and provide the facilities my student privileges yielded. Again, it all boiled down to the lovely Boningtion sound studio, aka my second home. 

The studio also had sound booths that I could use for clear and concise recordings. This was practically insightful and very useful for the task I had volunteered for the Light Night project. I basically had to record myself reading this relevant passage from The Rainbow, by D.H. Lawrence:

'Already it was a history. In every phase she was so different. Yet she was always Ursula Brangwen. But what did it mean, Ursula Brangwen? She did not know what she was. Only she was full of rejection, of refusal. Always, always she was spitting out of her mouth the ash and grit of disillusion, of falsity. She could only stiffen in rejection, in rejection. She seemed always negative in her action.

That which she was, positively, was dark and unrevealed, it could not come forth. It was like a seed buried in dry ash. This world in which she lived was like a circle lighted by a lamp. This lighted area, lit up by man's completest consciousness, she thought was all the world: that here all was disclosed for ever. Yet all the time, within the darkness she had been aware of points of light, like the eyes of wild beasts, gleaming, penetrating, vanishing. And her soul had acknowledged in a great heave of terror only the outer darkness. This inner circle of light in which she lived and moved, wherein the trains rushed and the factories ground out their machine-produce and the plants and the animals worked by the light of science and knowledge, suddenly it seemed like the area under an arc-lamp, wherein the moths and children played in the security of blinding light, not even knowing there was any darkness, because they stayed in the light.

But she could see the glimmer of dark movement just out of range, she saw the eyes of the wild beast gleaming from the darkness, watching the vanity of the camp fire and the sleepers; she felt the strange, foolish vanity of the camp, which said "Beyond our light and our order there is nothing," turning their faces always inward towards the sinking fire of illuminating consciousness, which comprised sun and stars, and the Creator, and the System of Righteousness, ignoring always the vast darkness that wheeled round about, with half-revealed shapes lurking on the edge.

Yea, and no man dared even throw a firebrand into the darkness. For if he did he was jeered to death by the others, who cried "Fool, anti-social knave, why would you disturb us with bogeys? There is no darkness. We move and live and have our being within the light, and unto us is given the eternal light of knowledge, we comprise and comprehend the innermost core and issue of knowledge. Fool and knave, how dare you belittle us with the darkness?"

Nevertheless the darkness wheeled round about, with grey shadow-shapes of wild beasts, and also with dark shadow-shapes of the angels, whom the light fenced out, as it fenced out the more familiar beasts of darkness. And some, having for a moment seen the darkness, saw it bristling with the tufts of the hyena and the wolf; and some having given up their vanity of the light, having died in their own conceit, saw the gleam in the eyes of the wolf and the hyena, that it was the flash of the sword of angels, flashing at the door to come in, that the angels in the darkness were lordly and terrible and not to be denied, like the flash of fangs.'

It took quite a few takes to read it all correctly, but it was easier when I recorded each paragraph separately. After finishing in the sound booth, I then uploaded the wav. files to the usual mac suite computer I use in the studio and started editing on Adobe Audition (yet another very pretty software by the company, which acts as a digital workstation for audio files). This was a fairly short task, given that I only had to trim the intervals at the beginning and end of each recording and then appropriate them into the same composition. Lo and behold (I had to make a SoundCloud account because embedding an audio file into blogger is infuriating and stupid):

I was meant to get a recording of a female voice as well, but correspondence had gone awry and thus, the female voice talent could not make it to the recording due to other commitments and limited time related to this project. 

I recognise that there is a general disappointment about this project already. To elaborate, there was at first confusion as to the actual date for showcasing our piece in front of the Arkwright building - it was meant to be on the 28th, coinciding with everything else happening on Light Night... but then as one can see on the publication in my previous post, this was changed to the 26th. There was also an issue with the duration and maintenance of the piece; was it on for just a night or was it running until the 28th? The latter suggested an alternative rearrangement on displaying the LED lights, which involved a few health & safety hiccups from the university. But it turns out we were only doing it for a night anyway, and thus we stuck to the original plan of laying the LED strips of light across each step. Then there was a lack of technical insight, as our tutor had little time to show us how to program and handle the hardware/software required for the display. So it was mainly a matter of discussing ideas, which eventually became a boring norm of these meetings. Personally, I'm not that disappointed, because my own technical contribution stemmed from this recording. I feel like I've learned something from this project, and I feel like I may also gain another insight from the event itself. 

Light Night 2014 - A week and a half away.

Light Night is in progress, and the theme is D.H Lawrence and Alan Sillitoe; the former I'm not overly fond of. But that doesn't hinder my enthusiasm when I get to play with Arduino microcontrollers and expensive infrared cameras, as well as getting my learning curve on with programming via Processing.org. At least, that's how I hope it turns out with my involvement.

From the meeting we had today as to where things stood, however, I had a lot to catch up on and the most distinct focus of my involvement lied with my increasing use of the sound studio. Given that my familiarity is growing with the equipment and software in that basement, my critique of the current Light Night piece was sought in terms of incorporated sound. There is to be a set of passages from the works of the late Lawrence and Sillitoe incorporated as audio recordings, in which the volume increases based on how frequently it is interacted with. I'm presuming a lot based on how often people will walk on those steps anyway. Children will probably be more involved and will run up and down the steps even more. 

So, the idea is to have a recording of a male and female voice reading the same passages played out in a loop. In the meeting, it was discussed whether the male and female voices would be sequential, or layered on top of each other. I suggested both a separate recording of both and one together. Triggering the sounds would be a matter of increasing the volume. Basically, interaction = volume.

As it happens, I've volunteered to be the male voice as I fancied putting myself out of the comfortable zone of being a soft-spoken individual in general.

The steps, as I should point out, are located at the entrance of Nottingham Trent's Arkwright Building (as pictured below); a building that has preserved all of its Gothic features, despite the once-quiet Shakespeare Street becoming the scuttling hub of an international student body. 

The LED lights, as they stand, will be linked to the infrared camera which will determine where everyone steps. The current idea is for the spectators to leave a path wherever they've walked with multiple colours. And of course, the more steps they make will hopefully increase the volume of the recorded readings.

As far as I also know, this is for one night only now. Where initially I was of the understanding that it was on for a week. But anyway, here is the publication on Nottingham City Council's website. Second page down under the title: Magic Light.

More playing with Isadora

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, but then I found how annoyingly hindering it was to use two computers and a memory stick to handle certain formats of video files. Saying that, though, it was just a matter of converting MOV videos to MPEG-4, but that hadn't occurred to my idiot self until very recently.

Anyway, as I've been saying to dear readers, this software is becoming more and more fun the further I delve into it. In fact, I find myself being fascinated by all the other software such as Reason, Ableton Live and Reaktor and more; to the point that I might as well have lived in the Bonington basements that accommodates this sound studio.

Lately, I've missed out on what's been going on at uni and my own project due to work commitments, but I've finished my training now, so I'm freed up again (and it feels great to be at uni and in a somewhat more viable routine). Here are a couple of video examples I took of the interactive results I've been taking. The movements and activity within these videos are of me moving my head around and waving my hands in front of the in-built camera of the Mac:

The effects employed in this example involved varied tiles, stretches and ever-shifting colour balances (the function applied in this instance being a wave generator). The more drastic changes are due to my motions in view of the camera.

This was the result of further experimentation with "time layers" (layering video capture over itself in whatever length I want) more constantly shifting colours and distortions that I've driven right up to abstract imagery. At this point, my impression was that if I had too much going on in the video in-watcher, I would be uncertain if the spectator knows that he/she is having an influence on it. I may need to be careful about this in terms of grabbing their attention. Suffice to say, I still like the effect here.

Reverse Engineering - circuit bending.

Following on from the brief glance of physical computing, reverse engineering has been another avenue I've come across a number of times in digital and interactive art. Circuit bending is one of the forms of reverse engineering that I've had some practical insight to during my undergraduate Fine Art course. I also saw it in a performance context, which I can only describe as a plethora of glitchy sound rhythms and pretty lights - nonetheless entertaining (and audibly harsh).

Defined as a practice, circuit bending is the application of short circuits on electronic devices for the purpose of creative improvement. It's frequently done with cheap products that usually have an audio output. There's no end to the possibilities in which it is applied, which I can personally confirm from one workshop that use of animal meat can also work to alter the sound produced by electronic hardware. 

Reed Ghazala - The Father of Circuit Bending

You'll spot in this video how even human flesh can be used as a conductor for cheap circuit bent hardware, but this work with simpler items like crocodile clips. 

Circuit bending extends broadly into music as well, and flourishes with results rooted in chiptune, 8-bit music and others. The Bonington basement sound studio has other software like Reason, Logic, Reaktor and Ableton Live, which will undoubtedly prove helpful in this respect. You don't necessarily need software like that to bring sound into circuit bending, but they may help in generating an extensive multitude of sounds that can be incorporated into circuit bent devices. These devices in turn can probably react to external influence and alter accordingly, depending on what is produced and applied.