The Shooting Gallery

Belonging to the second thread of proposals outlined in my previous post, The Shooting Gallery is a mechanism for prompting students within the SAPL to pause during the course of their day.

The basic idea is simple, that a continuously changing series of images cycling on a screen, projector or other imaging system placed in a public location within the school, can serve as a source of spontaneity, prompting new reflections and interactions amongst passing students. The source of the images is a critical component in making this work, as inclusion needs to carry sense of pride. Likewise, a targeting of the images relevant to certain passers by can only increase the chances of successfully achieving my aims.

Taking the first of these points, how do I generate content for such a system? It would be easy to reduce the system to an archive of past work, but I do not believe there would be any point in this as it would become background noise instead of something relevant to students immediate work. Without this immediate proximity to their current priorities, I do not believe that the gallery would hold a students attention. It occurs to me that images could be submitted by students themselves, or by tutors, or by a photographer, appointed secretly and at random. Smartphones could easily submit images taken in tutorials or of a model completed at 3am that a student happened to by proud of.

The idea would be that other students through interacting with the display would be able to comment, post links etc on the images as the play through, which would feedback to the originating student.

Phones could similarly form part of a targeting mechanism for the gallery installation, scanning for Bluetooth devices with specific names or running a back ground app, and upon detection showing an image relevant to the phones owner. Relevant information could just be an image from their last tutorial, including tags, links, precedents or comments recorded by others, or alternatively images of the people offering feedback.