Processing Week

Working with lines - the more I work with Processing the more it's clear that code art is all about experimentation and happy accidents. For amateur programmers like myself especially, I think it's quite difficult to plan something and try and code it - but experimentation in the code can actually produce some interesting visuals.

Multisensory & Multimedia (Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge)

"At the seashore, between the land of atoms and the sea of bits, we must reconcile our dual citizenships in the physical and digital worlds. Our windows to the digital world have been confined to flat rectangular screens and pixels --"painted bits." But while our visual senses are steeped in the sea of digital information, our bodies remain in the physical world. "Tangible bits" give physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible."
Hiroshi Ishii

(Taken from Multisensory & Multimedia (Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge))

I'm stepping away from the interactive projector idea and thinking about surfaces for now. Beyond the rectangle. Textures, tactile qualities; touch.

Experiment with solid watercolour

I'm really happy with how this experiment turned out. When I drew the watercolour this time I left the colours pretty solid rather than watering them down too much. This was scanned and the composition was split into 5 pieces using the pen tool in photoshop (but leaving the original underneath). I then used distortion in after effects on every separate piece so that I could control them individually. I went overboard with the effects mainly the complexity / amount and evolution of the effect to start getting the little pixels out.. they remind me of satellite pictures. The result is very similar to how one would see colour on drugs - which is why I think I'm beginning to make some steps forward...

Bernhard Gál

Sound Art Project 'stadtklaenge | klangstaetten', Allgemeiner Konsumverein, Braunschweig; May 7th - June 28th, 2009

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a short-notice guest lecture and performance by Australian sound artist Bernhard Gál. It was so much better than I had expected. He took us through this installations one by one and explained the difficulties he encountered. This made me realise how much work I need to put in the sound of my installation. I'm already asking some of my friends to make sounds to assist me with the creation of audio for the space. After yesterday I'm starting to think of not just WHAT sound to use but also WHERE and HOW. Where will the speakers be placed? Will the same sound come out of both speakers or can the audio waves clash together in some way?

Site-specific audio-architectural installation in collaboration with Yumi Kori. Minoritenkirche, Krems, Austria, April - June 2005

The above clip is a short video that I took yesterday during the presentation of 'Stadtklaenge' - quite bad quality actually but I was more interested on what he had to say rather than worried about getting it on video :) Performance at the end was nice and atmospheric with a few surprises here and there.

Besides the installations, what I really liked about his sounds is the way he plays around with voices and languages, mixes them together to create an intriguing audio piece.

Brainstorming

I have the basic structure of the interactive experience (still might change of course).

Stage 1: Neutral shots / unexpected cuts. Interaction is introduced.

Stage 2: Interaction / shots / introduction of visuals in certain parts of video

Stage 3: Visual Climax taking over video

Stage 4: High frequency sounds, flashing visuals 

The idea is to take the viewer through a journey, where it starts fairly neutral and viewer is encouraged to interact, becomes enjoyable and exciting, and eventually ends in frustration through annoyingly loud sounds (perhaps even distorted) and flashing visuals.

Animated watercolour

Plently wrong with these two experiments: framing, hard white edges and blinking. These are scanned watercolours, chopped in Photoshop, animated 2.5d layers, mirrored.


This one also has some Time Blending.

Enter the Void

A film I can't ignore - beautiful

A bit more structure to the interactivity

An interactive projector? Yes. A pen? No.
I have spent the entire morning looking for interactive projectors. I found affordable ones which come with a pen, and a camera/pen combination which can be attached to an existing projector and works via USB with a computer. I am still not convinced about using a pen however. Pens remind me of education - I think this would detract from the interactive experience. I wish I could find another method besides having to use a pen or a mouse.

A linear structure? Perhaps
So in my last chat with Andy he told me to write in more detail how the interactivity between the user and the visuals would happen. After some brainstorming I figured since the experience is based on a surreal trip - I would follow the same structure. The experience would start mild - with videos of everyday life (storyboards will soon follow). The user can click his/her way through by selecting target points in the videos. This would lead to more visuals - as the user clicks his/her way through the videos become more distorted and animated illustrations start to prop into scene. The climax of the experience / the trip is represented by various animated illustrations and distorted video. This then leads to darker visuals - the come down. This is the final stage. Essentially the experience starts normal and increases exponentially until it becomes so ecstatic that it starts to turn scary - very much like a drug experience. The structure is also a typical storyline of films by David Lynch. They start fairly neutral and slowly transport the character into a frenzied state.

Some unsolved issues.
So Can the user go back? Well... I'd like to give the user as much control as possible however going back is not an option if one were to take real drugs, if one was experiencing an actual dream (unless caught in some kind of loop) so I guess it would deter the authenticity of the experience.
Should there be multiple journeys one can take? Yes I would love to do this, especially if the application makes its way online - it can be a sort of game.

So what next?
I need to start storyboarding. 
I need to brainstorm.
I need to update my proposal
I need to update my plans.

But I'm happy I finally have a more coherent structure I can follow.

More from my journal...

The journal goes through bad days and good days - either way - it's a good source for traditional media to-be digitally manipulated. 

Reflective Writing on Chat Session 31/01/2011

After yesterday's tutorial - I found I need to be able to test my project on a separate audience rather than just students and other lecturers - just to have a series of people who are not necessarily creative. I also need to think about how exactly the audience is going to interact with the visuals. I will be conducting this research this weekend and reporting.

On another note, one of the fine art lecturers where I work gave me a link to some works of artist Wangechi Mutu - which I have found mesmerising, and of great inspiration to my work.

"Much of Mutu's work to date has been concerned with the myriad forms of violence and misrepresentation visited upon women, especially black women, in the contemporary world. Her paintings and collages often feature writhing female forms, their skin an eruption of buboes, mutant appendices like gun shafts or machine gears sprouting from the sockets of joints, their bodies half human, half hyena. They offer a glimpse at the perversions of the body and the mind wrought by forces active in the oppression of women. 

Mutu commonly works on paper or Mylar polyester film. Manipulating ink and acrylic paint into pools of colour she carefully applies to her surfaces imagery sampled from disparate sources- Vogue, National Geographic, hunting, motorbike and porn magazines. The resulting works are a rebuke to the conventions of aesthetics and ethnography and eroticism that underpin such publications, offering instead an existence that is riotously free of biological determinism or psychological conditioning. " (Victoria-miro.com, 2011)

a dragon kiss always ends in ashes, 2007

Non, je ne regrette rien, 2007