Manifesto & Process

My Manifesto defines the boundaries and rules (or lack of) that I am using in my project.


Aims:


My aim in this project was to take something meaningful, such as a personal story, and disrupt its significance by taking away the sound, combining it with abstract imagery, and making use of chance. At the same time I wanted the meaning to be available for those who want to find it, but hard to put together and to make sense of it.


Development of Idea:

In the beginning of my project I was very frustrated because I wanted to explore art without a meaning. In my frustration I bought a sketchbook and I started drawing aimless water colours. I chose water colour because it is one medium that I have barely used so I thought it would help me explore new possibilities, rather than limiting myself to what I usually do.

At the same time I was thinking about a solid idea for my project and carrying out some research on art without a meaning. This is when I came across Chance. I have then decided that rather than coming up with an idea myself, I would go around with a recorder and get stories from the people around me. I didn't think much about what I would do with the stories, but I liked the idea of having to visually interpret a story that came out of nowhere. The reason I chose to record stories is that they are so full of meaning and emotion, that I thought it would be interesting to slowly take away their importance by interpreting them myself, and also by taking away their sound. Of course this  got me thinking about Chance and narrative, which is also what my research paper is about. During my research on chance and narrative in fact, I came across database, which also interested me as a possible way of displaying my project.

When I was already filming some of the stories, in my paper I discuss films such as the Tree of Life and Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, which have a way of displaying footage and abstract visual imagery together. This was when I started thinking that my intial watercolour experiments could coexist with the footage of the stories in the final interface. They could be an irritating or interesting distraction from the filmed stories. Ultimately the water colours were each assigned a destroyed version of the story (through a chance process) in order to play around with the disintegration of meaning within the stories.

Process:

1. Recording stories. (I have around 66)
2. Interpreting stories using video
3. Animating water colours
4. Chopping recorded audio.
5. Creating sounds based on a chance process involving audio recordings
6. Attaching these sounds to the water colours.
7. Create an interface that changes randomly with user interaction.

Manifesto:

Accidents: Keep recording even during discussion / keep filming even when not following the script. Accidental shots and stories are always preferred.

Reduce: Rather than interpreting the story by using a structured storyboard, the videos should aim to create a visual image of the story; capturing its essence. This can be a single emotion in the story or a very strong / particular part of the story.

Raw: Technical constraints are not important. Filming can be raw and low budget, to complement the stories.

Effects: Effects should depend on the story, but whenever possible aim for minimal. Some effects can be applied to emphasise surreal elements in a story.

Interface Boundaries:


The interface will start out with 8 water colours, each with an assigned sound (that was generated from a recording, as specified in "Process").

The user can Play, Pause, mute, drag and resize the video.

Each time the user carries out an action, 0 to 3 videos can turn off and 0 - 3 new videos can turn on. These videos can either be new water colours or footage.

The screen will not refresh each time, therefore videas that will stay on, will not have to reload.

In addition to this, with each action, 0 - 15 recordings might start playing. The recordings will not be represented visually, they will appear out of 'nowhere',

Everything is done using a programmed random operator.

There cannot be more than 8 videos at one go (to preserve processing speed).




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.