Take Two

This slightly more ambitious version on the tangible forum is something that I have been working on over the last week or so, however requires more technical expertise and time than I can really spare.

However, I am now planning to design a smaller portable version of the same system, and am working on a set of activities to test the system in collaboration with the school's Architecture Society and the parenting scheme that I have referred to previously.

The Tangible Forum

Reviewing some of my initial proposals, my concepts have continued to evolve. "The Tangible Forum" is the latest iteration of my thinking. At present students are prone to pinning up work in progress, and generally writing on the walls of their work space, the idea behind the tangible forum is to take an image of this W.I.P., and transmit a live feed into a public space within the school. A corresponding feed picks up annotations over the top of this and feeds back to the student via another projector.

Oh My God, They Killed the High Street…..YOU B******!

Thinking of different mediums to address issues with the future high street, I have decided that animation is a powerful tool which I should consider.

Animations such as The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park, commentate regularly on topical, social and political issues.

Various academics have noted how animation contributes to the effectiveness, cultural currency, and longevity of many animated series. Reading “Taking South Park Seriously” Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock explains how animation is used. He explains how “viewers approach cartoons with suspended disbelief, and in the process absorb significant social commentary”. Animation allows serious and even controversial issues to be treated under the guise of being ‘just a cartoon’.

Below is an example of South Park addressing racial stereo types with a black character called ‘Token’. Click on picture for video

Creating a digital shop front that encorages interaction between the public and an animated character could encourage dialog that would be revealing and entertaining.

Virtual Surfaces

Researching "I'm Visible" I came across a few installations for generating Graffiti Digital that I thought might be of interest. "Your Wall" works using a spray can that emits infra-red light onto an optical tracking screen, and apparently also features on the new series of Dragon's Den.

Also, this interactive shop front unveiled in New York this week may be of interest to Hannah.

Virtual Landscapes, Talking Walls and the Pocket Universe

For a while I have an idea that I have hesitated to put forward, driven in part as it was by my own preoccupation with 3d modelling. It also sits slightly uncomfortably between the two design objectives I have set myself, drawing on and contributing to both, but achieving neither without significant extension.

Originally the idea derives from the fact I am a huge fan of the 3d buildings layer within Google Earth. Contributed by individuals, they change not necessarily how you to use the software but how you understand the space that it represents. Via a couple of different plug-ins the Google Earth is available as a canvas on which individuals can work, and in terms of architecture, place their buildings into a roughly representative context.

This is of very little interest to me - and I am categorically not proposing building a Second Life game with students Sketch Up models. What I have wondered is could this familiar method of visualisation, (in a similar way to already proposed in Project Cartography), could not also be useful for mapping projects? Essentially this is just a more visual representation of a computer file structure, the important interaction would be the one between different students virtual landscapes.

Recently however, I have been reading some slightly odd texts (looking a a thesis project), relating to depictions of different geometries from different frames of reference. Now I am wondering if it would not be possible to extract from this a proposal to build a "pocket universe" as a means of visualising a students stream of conciousness, that would exist within an overriding framework or multiverse. The idea would be that each student would exist only as a starting point, their networks of ideas and project would grow outward in inter-mesh with others. Lines of enquiry could be seen branching off, some ending in dead ends, others refining down to ever finer levels of detail.

Herein lies the problem. Whilst an interesting exercise in conceptualisation, the system described lacks an engaging interaction. Thinking this over, the concept has begun to merge in my mind with another embryonic idea originally titled "If These Walls Could Talk..." Very briefly, the idea was to set up an augmented reality within the school that would function as a virtual exhibition of past work and references. The environment would demand exploration in a physical manner, and could be different things to different people encouraging comparisons between the virtual world as it was visible to different students.

Now, why could I not expand upon this? I propose the creation of a virtual world behind the physical, filled with past and present examples of projects throughout the city, movies playing on the side of buildings, and signposts erected to guide explorers. Such a world could be used as a canvas as much as a portfolio, with students able to leave observations or jokes as graffiti, that only other members of the community would ever be aware of.

The Writing’s on the Wall.

Since collating my research on the high street I have started thinking about what I would actually like to design and which methods I would use. I hope to create an interactive digital installation that comments on my findings. To find inspiration for this I will return to look at the streets.

When walking down the street, looking past artistic displays in the windows trying their hardest to make you depart with your money, there is a long established urban art scene that is continuing to grow.

Graffiti is still constituted as vandalism and is therefore illegal. There are some artists who argue that advertising is just a form of paid legal graffiti, which I completely agree with. On a daily basis I would say I’m far more offended by awful adverts than I am with graffiti. Who needs this on your way to work?

Jeff Ferrell in ‘Urban Graffiti’ quotes a street artist who says “he tags for the respect of other taggers, who cares about adults?” Ferrell describes the tagging as an alternative system of public communication.

I liked this because it reminded me of not only what I think of the high street as being a place of public communication, representation of status etc., but also of a lot of my girlfriends opinions on fashion. I have heard many girls say they don’t care about what guys think of their outfits but it’s the like minded girls who they are out to impress and whose respect and approval they seek to gain!

Many artists use characters time and again in their work. I would like to create a character just like these famous graffiti artists who would help me develop my own story.

As for it being illegal, I can say if woke up and someone had done this to my flat in Newcastle…..I’d be nothing but impressed!

I'm Visible

At the outset of this project I was extremely interested in the use of sketch books, and this interest evolved as I came to understand them as a productivity tool having read the "I lie to myself that I have freedom in my own schedule" paper by Leshed et al. One of my initial ideas was that an electronic pen system could digitize the information recorded into sketch books automatically without any need to syncing and serve as the input for a system promoting reflection and collaboration, such as the shooting gallery.

However, during the course of my research I became concerned that not everyone used sketch books in a way that would be conducive to such a system, and that the information recorded under such a system was likely to be lacking in detail, especially in the later stages of a project.

However, the graffiti scrawled throughout the studios caught my attention. A desire to record what I will call shared suffering, has lead a number of students to create a number of informal notice boards of the walls of their studios, including several "Crying Tallies", an "It Could be Worse" board, and a list of "Things You'd Rather be doing". Whilst humorous in nature, their is clearly something in creating these which is supporting the authors moral whilst under pressure. They are accompanied by a large number of quotes, and a huge volume of material relating to projects pinned to the wall for reference.

I began to wonder what would be the outcome if you were to record the input, the act of writing, but move the output, the visible made sign. I'm Visible uses digital pen technology to record writing on a surface, and transpose it elsewhere in the school. Many of the graffiti motifs have responses scrawled beneath them, this system takes the same principle and opens it out to the entire school.

This grants students scope for expressing their frustrations, and enables them to form new interactions with a degree of anonymity. The system could evolve to form dialogues across the school, or even be used as a message service, with students posted requests for help or appealing for ideas relating to a specific field.