Testing application

Testing out the final animation before leaving the show build! Low quality video unfortunately but this is just to give a brief idea of how the final application should work.

...And a preview of the book documentation using the Blog-to-Book Blurb service:

Putting the show together

Day one was spent painting and putting together the plinth. Luckily Jonathan found a large plinth for the screen and laptop and we just had to attach the back of it on the top, so to have more area for all the equipment. I was still a bit disoriented and trying to find my way around the college so decided I would go back tomorrow and start testing out the application.

Day two:

Connecting everything

Making sure the touch screen reflects the laptop exactly

testing the application once more time

Everything seems to be working!

Jonathan had the idea to put the light in the corner which worked out quite well.  This is how it will look in a dark environment. Better than in brighter light in my opinion.

Day three:

Connected everything once more and brought the book and instructions.

Testing the multi-touch, zooming in and out, panning etc...

Testing sound

Visuals looking good even zoomed in

Day four:

Last day, everything seems to be working fine, just need to hide the cables!

Hidden cables, and slightly tilted for easy access to laptop

Videos soon!

Stable Outbursts

So this is the result of a hard day's work yesterday (and the weeks before) of chance processed sounds. Florian then decided to layer various sounds to see how they would sound like together (since there is a chance that water colours might overlap in the interface). Surprisingly even when the musical key was different, the overall sound is very dreamy and curious. Have to say I was quite worried about the sound and music especially since it was a slow process, however now that it's done I am very happy with the outcome. Have a listen:
(The title of the sound piece was randomly generated online)

Stable Outbursts by Josefflorian on Mixcloud

Sound

Concluding the chance processed sounds using the stories as a starting point.. this time using real instruments! Just one more to go and everything should be done.

My Space

So this is my space, kindly sent to me by Jessica Barr. I have also managed to get two Clamp LED flexible lights from my workplace:

Just some updates..

Getting closer to the final show! I have created a new sketch for how my work will be displayed according to Jonathan's suggestion. I have also been allocated a space that is "dark-ish" so I have arranged to get an LED light from my college so viewers can go through my book.

Yesterday my friend Florian came over and finished another audio piece for the water colour. There are 5 left.. it will be a race against time, however we know the processes we just have to get to it. In the meantime Maria is working on finalising the interface.

Book has arrived!

The Book printed with Dust Jacket from Blurb

Front

Back

Application online

Here's my application online. I still need to change the play icon and some things are still a bit buggy.. loading is also slightly slow since it's on free hosting but in general it works! (This does not include the fixes mentioned in my previous post)

(Please give some time to load)

Interface fixes

Had one of my final meetings with my developer today. She's fixing the last few bits after I showed her some results from the case studies. This is what she will be looking at:

1. Changing the percentage of the time that a story will stay / change.
There is a 70% chance that the recorded story will keep going when the user clicks.
There is a 30% chance that it will change to another story.
The reason for this is that there are some stories that are quite long, and some of the users were listening to the story without interacting with the rest of the interface.

2. The parameters for the width and height of each video are going to be more extreme, now ranging from a minimum of 10 (% of the screen) to a maximum of 70. (Before these were set to 30, 50)

3. Since the user can now pinch to zoom in and out, sometimes when the interface is zoomed out completely, one can see the edge of the application and it is aligned to the left. Maria is going to try and centralise it.

4. Hiding the scrollbar using a Chrome plug-in.

5. Now that the water colours have sounds attached to them I'm going to give them a lower chance of coming up, something like 30%. This will avoid too many overlapping sounds that might cause frustration.

6. There doesn't always have to be a recorded story in the background.

7. Resizing and moving videos will not be available during the show but will be an option when the application is online (due to the touch screen multi-function).

8. Automatic refresh will happen every 30mins, otherwise the user can simply click F5 to restart the application from the beginning.

Source

Video Chat with Jonathan

Just finished my video chat with Jonathan and it cleared out a lot of things that I was worried about as well as made me reflect about some new things for the Interface.

I'm very keen on trying on the documentation and tests suggested where it would involve the user seeing him/herself trying out the application on video. I will need to read more about this in the email that Jonathan had sent Mariana a few days ago.

I will also need to think about what happens if the user zooms onto one of the videos if the interface will revert back to normal after a few minutes or not.

There will be two scenarios at the final show; a busy one right on the opening, and a quieter one after the opening, so I will need to check that my application will perform appropriate on both.

I had already had my doubts about the monitor stand and now that I have spoken to Jonathan I am quite sure that the stand is not going to look right. It might look too blocky and big and hide the slender frame of the screen. I will therefore use a backless plinth and the laptop + cables can be hidden there.

Finally I was slightly worried about the documented paper, however now that Jonathan has cleared it out it should be fine.

The paper should ideally include

1. Final reflection and evaluation of the work.
2. Summary of my work (that can be included next to the project itself)
3. Future development.

Ordered Book Documentation & New Audio processes

I have just sent the book for printing on Blurb.com so it comes back in time for the final show. Unfortunately my final posts will not be able to make it in the book, however these are just the finishing touches. The major development has finished by now. I wanted the book to be available for viewers who were interested to see the thinking process behind the project.

Here are some details from the latest audio that will be linked with the water colours compiled by my audio person, Florian:

Story 1



Andrew Robert

It was decided that for this recording, key terms that make up the essence of the story are cut and put in the recording timeline up till a maximum of 1minute.

The cut terms are put in the timeline next to each other with a gap of silence in between. The amount of silence in each case varied according to a random number generator found online.


Times cut


Moira

00:07 - 2003
00:34 - America
00:47 - Fat individual
01:07 - Possessive
01:59 - Sister
02:13 - Garage
02:18 - Jumped off of it
02:26 - Drastically
02:28 - Point
02:35 - Panic Attack
03:01 - Dying from
03:13 - Gay
03:19 - Ethics


Josef

00:28 - boyfriend
00:19 - Obsessed
00:34 - America
00:39 - Photos
01:07 - Possessive
01:15 - Noticed
01:19 - Confident
01:59 - Sister
02:13 - Garage
02:26 - Drastically
02:37 - Hyperventilating
02:46 - First
03:13 - Gay
03:16 - Incompatable
03:30 - Depression
03:36 - Sprung back
03:50 - Void


Dude

00:15 - Live Journal
00:19 - Obsessed
00:27 - Official
00:34 - America
00:42 - Head up
01:07 - Possessive
01:25 - Invisible and Unloved
01:41 - Aaaaa
02:18 - Jumped off of it
02:36 - Panic Attack
02:38 - Back alley
02:45 - Come around
03:16 - Incompatable
03:30 - Depression




00:07 - 2003
00:15 - Live Journal
00:19 - Obsessed
00:27 - Official
00:28 - boyfriend
00:34 - America
00:39 - Photos
00:42 - Head up
00:47 - Fat individual
01:07 - Possessive
01:15 - Noticed
01:19 - Confident
01:25 - Invisible and Unloved
01:41 - Aaaaa
01:59 - Sister
02:13 - Garage
02:18 - Jumped off of it
02:26 - Drastically
02:28 - Point
02:35 - Panic Attack
02:37 - Hyperventilating
02:38 - Back alley
02:45 - Come around
02:46 - First
03:01 - Dying from
03:13 - Gay
03:16 - Incompatable
03:19 - Ethics
03:30 - Depression
03:36 - Sprung back
03:50 - Void

Total: 31


After we chose all the terms we opened them in Ableton and put them after each other. The effect was similar to a summery of his story, so to randomize it further, we decided to use a random number generator, so as the terms would not have a particular order, creating different possible meanings.

Story 2



00:38 - Vapur (Ship horns, sonar)

00:46 - Nibza mill-bahar (underwater bubbles, wind light)

02:16 - Daru kollha fuq naha wahda (underwater sloshing, metal strike)

02:18 - Cafcifa (splash soft)

02:21 - Qbadt it-tfal

03:15 - Biza (panting male)

Up till 31.5


Opened Ableton, and found library sounds that in my opinion correspond to what the woman was saying in the above times.

I loaded these sounds individually in Izotope Iris. On each spectogram I wrote the time of  but chose the size of the effects based on a random number generator online, and on the last two numbers of where the words were placed in the recording.

The sound 'Ship horns' was used throughout the 1 minute, but the effects were done according to preference. Pitch was modified throughout to bring out the effect created.

Research

This is just an excerpt from Paul D.Miller (DJ Spooky)'s Rebirth of a Nation that was performed live in various locations. I found this example from the book "New Media Art" by Mark Tribe / Reena Jana. Unfortunately when I took the book home from the library I realised it was in Italian, but fortunately (thanks to Italian TV channels in Malta) I can read Italian and understand it!

The authors say that most New Media artists are criticized for now being familiar with historic art movements that have contributed to New Media such as Dadaism and Popart. Most of the time this is untrue, and this is reflected in some works of New Media artists, in this case Paul D.Miller's Rebirth of a Nation(2002) that was a live performance when he remixes D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, whilst assembling improvised sound.

In the same book I have also come across "Brandon" by Shu Lea Cheang, that is a true story about Teena Brandon who was a twenty one year old girl who was raped and killed after trying to be passed on as a man. (I have also seen this interpreted as a film in "Boys don't cry" (1999).

(The following in an English translation from the book)

The artist Shu Lea Cheang was commissioned by the Guggenheim to produce a web-based work of art that expored Teena Brandon's story in an experimental manner, non-linear, in order to communicate the fluidity and ambiguity of sex and identity in contemporary societies.

"Shu Lea Cheang's 1998 work "Brandon" is a multifaceted web project that uses the nonlinear and participatory nature of the Internet as a means to explore and illuminate Brandon Teena's tragic story. From the opening image of morphing gender signifiers, Cheang propels the viewer into a probing investigation of human sexuality. It is an inquiry that utilizes hyperlinked images of a disembodied human form, once-live chat rooms on the subject of crime and punishment, and graphic moving images in order to illuminate the wide-reaching effect of Brandon's life and death. Exploiting the highly mutable "skin" of the Internet, Cheang reveals how this emerging virtual environment enables individuals to inhabit and play with different gender roles and characters. A prime example of "cyberfeminism," Brandon utilizes technology as a means to break down social assumptions about gender in both the realm of technology and in society at large." Guggenheim(accessed: 2012)

Unfortunately the website does not seem to be available online, however I found it to be relevant to my body of work since it deals with true stories, interactive imagery and non-linearity.

Yet another website that my programmer found and that reminds me of my work is this one and this time rather than in Italian, it's in German. I believe it is a preview of various artists / student works. Each pictures can be dragged around and can be clicked to direct to specific works. I really like the white space however in my case I fear it might not work because it uncovers the somewhat ugly borders of the videos.

Schedule

Less than two months left!

So hopefully this will be my final schedule and I will stick to it! I am determined to stick to it especially since this last month I had been working on 2d animation for an architectural projection for the final show at the college where I teach, and it took all my time (since I was also teaching and grading at the same time!). Ok I'm done ranting here, I will now explain what I will be doing in the coming weeks.

I will be presenting my final essay with my documentation in a book using Blurb's Blog-to-book (see previous post). I will try to finish this book by next week in order to send it for print. If I don't manage to write my documentation I will simply present it in a separate paper rather than in the book. The book will basically contain my two-year process that is now present in the blog. It will be presented together with my application.

This week I will carry out some final research from a few interesting books I got from the college library. I will also be starting the book (structuring / cover / layout).

Next week I'm meeting my programmer to show her the touch screen and see what we can improve. I will be meeting the sound guy so we can have some sort of sound schedule.

In the third week I want to review and finalise all the water colours. I will also be working on improving the interface and speaking to a carpenter who will create some sort of stand for the touch screen.

In the fourth week I will be finalising all recordings, working on the interface and the stand. During these two weeks I also want to run some tests to see if the improved interface is working or not.

August will be dedicated to finalising the interface, and if there's time, to film some extra stories that can easily be added to the database.

Blog-to-Book

Have been thinking of various ways of how to display my blog / documentation, and have now found a blog to book option using the Booksmart application on Blurb.com. I have tested it today and it's really easy to use so it shouldn't take me a long time to produce. There are various options for layouts and if I prefer I can even design my own in InDesign or Illustrator and import them directly.

I think that this way the process of my project will be presented in a clear and concise manner.

Madonna Cat

Just finished editing another video and it's all about stray cats. I was lucky to find a whole bunch of them very close to where I work.

Case Study

Today I conducted my first case studies at the college. These can be found in my Manifesto and Process Page. Below are some of my first observations, based on my Beta-version of the application.

Case study results:


1st look general comments: 
"This is quite addictive"
"It feels like a puzzle"
"the creepy sound makes you think that something bad is going to happen to the little girl"

2nd test observation:
Participant 1 (mature Photography student):

The participant was not told what to do and was not told what the application was about. The first observation was that he simply looked at the visuals without pressing anything. He commented that he felt absorbed into the water colours.

He commented that the sound effects coming from the water colour made him feel like he's in space. He even said that he saw faces in the moving water colours. With regards to concept he said that the subject seemed to be about different aspects of life / identity and personalities.

He was slightly confused by the moving and dragging and found the jamming of the videos to be slightly annoying. Finally he said that he wished to be able to go back to certain videos to hear all the stories and that he wanted to see and hear everything all at once.

Was playing with the application for more than 15 minutes and only stopped when I told him to explain what he thought was happening.

"To me it seems like it's saying, whilst something is going on in my life, something is also going on in yours."

Participant 2 (Photography student):

The participant found the application very confusing. Almost immediately she started to try and organise the videos. The constant randomisation seemed to frustrate her. She commented on how the sound stopped half way through the video (she did not know that the videos in fact had no sound and the sound recordings were randomised).

She seemed to want to find a certain closure and to order the chaotic environment. Subsequently she was quite annoyed with the application. She did find the stories interesting and funny. She also thought that the water colours were filmed floating 3d structures.

Participant 3 (Photography student):

Found the application to be "disjointed". She tried to figure out if the sound and visuals are connected / synched. Correctly guessed that some videos had corresponding recordings, whilst other didn't (since the application is still unfinished). She felt that the stories were about life and traumatic events that have caused some kind of impact on the individual. She stopped the sound attached to the water colour to be able to listen to the story.

Participant 4 (Media Lecturer & Producer):


The participant was trying to listen carefully to the story and seemed to have figured out the pattern quickly. He stopped clicking after a while, seemingly scared to lose the story. He states that he feels that the concept can work (he was not told what the concept was) but that the execution was "one big mess". He did not want the stories and videos to stop when others were clicked. He stated that nothing made sense and that he would have liked more control; buttons to choose and control sounds and effects.

When asked what he thought the concept was about, he said that he thought that I was trying to create sounds that put one in a certain state of mind. He didn't get the water colours but said he understood the link when he saw the one with sounds effects.

Participant 5 (Fine Art Assistant Lecturer):


This one was quite interesting to observe and she played around with the application for quite some time. She listened to the first recordings until the end without clicking anything; she seemed to be quite immersed in the story. (Does the sound distract from the visual?) Most people seemed to be scared to click through in the beginning and in fact did not get to see most of the stories.

When the story ended and she played another visual, a few things changed in the interface and her curiosity seemed to arise. (Participants immediately assumed that the recordings were attached to the visuals.)

The participant stated that the top-right screen was more appealing (although this was changing randomly). She found the scrolling to be distracting (this will hopefully be eliminated). She found the various accents to be creepy and made her feel slightly uncomfortable. She said that she first tries to focus on the sound to figure out what was going on, but once she realised that the stories were not so dramatic she started to focus on the visuals. "First it makes sense, then you're confused, but then it clicks". She also thought that the water colours were warped videos.

Testing out the touch screen

Today I took the application to work to test it out on the touch screen. First of all I was very glad that the few people who have used it have spent quite some time playing around with it. I got comments such as "this is quite addictive" "it feels like a puzzle" and "the creepy sound makes you feel like something is going to happen to that little girl" (of course the sound has nothing to do with the little girl). Most people also commented on the aesthetic strength of the piece that was quite nice to hear. This was of course the beta version of the interface, so I'm hoping once it's updated it will be more enjoyable. 

The touch screen worked out fine except for the dragging / moving / resizing. I will either have to modify the code or play around with the touch screen settings. I might also use the multi-touch option that enables users to zoom in and out of the interface.

It's working!

So Maria spent three and a half hours here today trying to make the application work on Chrome using a local host (for faster browsing) and it worked!

I will be conducting the Case study on friday with my students.

A few things I wish to fix for August:

At the moment the videos are not auto playing. The problem with auto play is that the play action triggers a random generator, so the code does not see the difference between play and auto play. Consequently videos keep randomly generating before stopping.

Removing the play bar. The play bar looks slightly ugly and I would like for it to only appear on roll over. Once again there is a code conflict since the roll over already has an action attached to it, i.e. the user can move the video and resize.

I want the variation in the video sizes to be much larger. As one can see in the screenshot the videos vary in size but not much. I want the contrast to be bigger and therefore more dramatic.

A few more things: Play option is invisible when browser is full screened & localhost sometimes needs to be refreshed a couple of times in order to work properly.

I've also decided to only have one story on the screen at one go so the user is more focused on one thing, but can also see multiple videos at one go. This way there is not absolute confusion but rather a balance between order and chaos. I believe this will make the user want to find meaning rather than giving up completely. At the same time however there might be multiple sound effects going on simultaneously; these are the ones attached to the water colours.

All in all at the moment I'm just happy to see all the videos working together successfully.

More Documentation Ideas

One of the books I got from the library lately is "Things I have Learned in My Life So Far" once again by Stefan Sagmeister. I got it solely for the way it is bound together. This could be ideal for the way I want to present my work since I want to split it into four different parts. Of course I will not be copying Sagmeister's ideas but stapling the four parts individually is very cost efficient, and then I will only need to think of a way to have them exhibited together as one. I was thinking of ways of how to view them together as one book, or have the option to take them apart. Tried some maquettes already that I will put up soon.

Ideas for Documentation

So for my Documentation I want to have a book that will be split into 4 parts: Sketchbook / Water Colours / Video & Interface. Last week I went to the college library and tried to get some ideas for the layout. Below are some shots of "The art of looking sideways" and "Sagmeister".

I was basically was looking for interesting ways to display my images / texts as well as looking into how to bind the final book.

I like the extra large bold text on the left in contrast with the super small text on the far left, and then a whole page image on the opposite side.

Possible way to display a large landscape image & sideways text

Grid for text

Possible text over imagery? Although the text will not be completely legible so it should not be something of great importance, but rather annotations and reflections

Just a very raw hand written 2-page spread that I really like and could work well in my layout

The middle visual reminded me of my water colours; possible ways to display them perhaps

Sagmeister's book was just full of hand-written annotations in combination with very structured type grids. Found this idea to be very immersive and casual at the same time

Possible way of displaying various frames from an animation / video

A simple 2-page spread but displayed diagonally. Ideal for the sketchbook part.

I am currently exporting several videos and water colours so Maria and I can finalise the interface for the casestudy that will hopefully happen this week!

Chat Reflective writing and interface updates

Yesterday during the chat, everyone had to critique my project and I got some really good feedback. I was glad that aesthetically the project seemed to be liked, although there was some confusion as to how it would work. This was expected since although I have explained it several times, it will only be 100% clear once I actually get it to work!

I have also received suggestions such as; using a chair to further immerse the audience and get them to stay for longer during the show and also using various monitors to display the interface. I'm thinking of how I can do both however it will be very difficult to use various monitors due to transport from Malta to London. I might also create a stand in Malta; made of planks of wood that can slide into each other, and paint it in London. This might make the monitor look better so it is enclosed in a minimal white space.

Later in the day, Maria, my developer came over and we were looking at different formats of how to export the videos and water colour. After endless tests, including uploading to youtube and downloading as .mp4 (since HTML5 only accepts ogg, mp4 and WebM) we found a good export and codec.

Maria, writing code

Basically we wanted a format that would be of a decent quality but also of minimum file size; basically not more than 50mb. The best solution was to put my original water colour, which was a 720HD, in a new PAL widescreen composition in After Effects. This was then exported as a Quicktime Movie, with an MPEG4 codec set to 70% quality. After this, it was converted using Miro converter, into an .mp4 file. HTML5 seemed to like this sort of file and the quality is quite good so we're using that.

At the moment I want to export all I have using this method so I can carry out a case study / focus group as soon as possible.