IMM Interactive

FILM - Research: "Osmose", Char Davies

2007-04-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

This piece could only be experienced by one person at a time,(although what they were seeing could be seen by an audience) who wore a head-mounted display and a motion-tracking vest. This looks cumbersome in the documentation, but apparently viewers overcame the physical hindrance and became totally involved in the piece, so much so that viewing time had to be limited.
The wearer could rise or fall into one of 12 "world-spaces" (Forest, Earth, Abyss, Lifeworld, Pond....) by using their breathing and balance to take them to the different spaces, or hover in the spaces between.
I would have loved to see this piece. It is as far-removed from 3D computer graphics as it can be, using layers of transparency, layered soundtracks, layered images. Char Davies is a painter and a free-diver (diving without oxygen tanks, controlling the body critically by breathing) and all these experiences come together in this piece.

"By changing space, by leaving the space of one's usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating...For we do not change place, we change our nature."
"The Poetics of Space", Gaston Bachelard, 1964.

FILM - Chris Hales Lectures.

2007-04-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

Interesting to see some early examples of Interactive movies and games. The "Laterna Magika" in Prague made sense of the Magic Lantern lecture we had a few weeks back. I saw Forkbeard Fantasy's "The Fall of the House of Usherettes" some years ago, where they interacted with their own original film footage and that of Melies, and although the audience couldn't change the outcome of the theatre piece, the performance style had similarities to the interactive events Chris talked about today.
I heard about his piece "Twelve Lovliest Things" nearly 10 years ago, and at last got the chance to see some of it. This morning I tried to work out the structure of the interactive film project, see previous blog. Seeing "Twelve" today reaffirmed the ideas I have, but made me seriously doubt my ability to make the piece I would like to make in the time available.

www.causeandeffect.tk
www.kinoautomat.org
www.forkbeardfantasy.co.uk/#

FILM - Project development.

2007-04-25T02:20:00.000-07:00

Working out the structure of the piece.
2 screen areas:
The lower showing the bench film, which is the core narrative, filming the activity of planting seeds. The radio is on the bench, and clicking the radio dial would (turn on) change the audio, which would have its own clip of film linked to it, which would then play (and replace) one of the window films in the screen area above. On the bench there would be objects with hotspots, which would link to small still images of associated images and sounds (some could be filmclips) which when chosen (bench film would freeze) would reveal themselves briefly.
The upper screen area would be the 3 panes of glass in the greenhouse, which would show 3 views out: a cherry tree in blossom, the sky, a part of the garden. These panes would have a milky look, to give the feel of looking through glass, and when the audio changes they would dissolve into the film that links with the audio, (the bench film would freeze for the duration) and then dissolve back to panes of glass as it ends.

The Narrative (what is being done) stays the same, but the soundtrack and the view (images of associated thoughts) would change.

Aim for 10 minutes duration.
3 Window films: 2 minutes each on a loop.
1 Bench film:5 minutes duration uninterupted.
10? Objects on bench with hotspots:varied, not more than 20 seconds duration for films, 10 seconds for stills.
10 ? Audio sounds and linked films: 20 seconds duration.

It is a really complicated task, to give the film interaction that will seem unique and give the viewer the feeling of personal selection and choice. It feels like trying to construct one of these, a Jovilabe, a mechanical model of the solar system in motion which showed the interplay of the Earth, Sun, and Jupiter, from our continually shfting vantage point:

Edward Tufte describes this problem in terms of Information Design:
"...how to reduce the magnificent four-dimensional reality of time and three-space into little marks on paper flatlands. Perhaps one day high-resolution computer visualizations, which combine slightly abstracted representations along with a dynamic and animated flatland, will lighten the laborious complexity of encodings - and yet still capture asome worthwhile part of the subtlety of the human itinerary.'
(Edward R. Tufte, Ch.6, "Narratives of space and Time" from "Envisoning Information", Graphics Press, Third printing, with revisions, 1992)

FILM - Research, Lynn Hershman Leeson.

2007-04-23T04:07:00.000-07:00

Lynn Hershman Leeson pioneered Interactive computer and net-based media art. Her piece "Lorna" was the first interactive video art disc, made in 1983-4. Its theme sets the tone for the bulk of her work, dealing with vulnerability, voyeurism and surveillance. This piece is maybe a bit lighter than some of the work that follows, at least there is an element of humour. The audience, when choosing what happens to Lorna, can pick that she commits suicide, shoots the TV, or moves to Los Angeles (which some of the audience thought was worse than suicide).
Lynn Hershman Leeson recent work uses interactive installation to explore further the theme of surveillance. As computer technology becomes central to our lives, we are watched, recorded, documented and databased, and this collecting of information has potential for serious reprocussions. In her recent film "Strange Culture", she looks at the sinister implications of surveillance on society, based on the story of a woman's quest to reveal the dangers of genetically modified food.
(www.strangeculture.net)
The fears and anxieties she addresses in her work are becoming more and more real in the world we live in today.

The Perfect Label? Reply from Don Norman

2007-04-20T01:43:00.000-07:00

Keep thinking about that apple. Decide to send the photo and text from my blog to Don Norman, author of "Emotional Design", whose essays I've been reading lately. Received the following replies:

"Hah
Only the Japanese would go to such trouble. Very clever.
(I sent the photo off to a friend for translation. I'll let you know
what he tells me.)
Thanks for writing/"

"My source replied.
1. it is simplified Chinese characters (I mistakenly called it Japanese), so it
comes from mainland China (not Taiwan).
The characters are indeed saying organic:
simplified characters: 有机衣庄
pronunciation (pinyin): you3 ji4 yi1 (or yi4?) zhuang1
traditional characters: 有機衣莊
meaning: 有机=organic, 衣=skin, flesh, raw? 庄=farm sounds:"

Don Norman

Donald A. Norman, Palo Alto, CA and Evanston, IL
Nielsen Norman Group http://www.nngroup.com
norman@nngroup.com http://www.jnd.org

Prof. EE & Computer Science, Cognitive Science & Psychology
Co-Director Segal Design Institute
Northwestern University don@jnd.org

FILM - Research: "Placeholder" - Brenda Laurel.

2007-04-19T03:39:00.000-07:00

Researching "Placeholder", an installation and 2 person VR system designed by Brenda Laurel, Rachel Strickland and Rob Tow. Its a piece that allows the viewer to become part of the environment, to experience the place, to hear voices telling stories about the place, and to leave their own voices, an audio version of the graffiti scratched into the rock around them.

In conclusion, Brenda Laurel said 'Working on this piece has demonstrated to me that the art of designing in VR is really the art of creating spaces with qualities that call forth active imagination. The VR artist does not bathe the participant in content; she invites the participant to produce content by constructing meanings, to experience the pleasure of embodied imagination.'
(www.tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/BrendaBio.html)

For my short interactive film project, I am revisiting a theme I have worked on before, based on "Genius Loci" - A Sense of Place. I intend to develop this further for my major project. For this piece, I have 2 main considerations: the spacial organisiation, how to present the narrative journey, the route taken through a place, and how this can be mapped with its many alternative paths; and how to evoke the character of the place, the atmosphere, the weather, the quality of light, the affecting factors, the passing of time for each individual viewer.
This project will have to work through an interface, but for my final project I would like to have no obvious interface but use a book, embedded with sensors, that would prompt the interaction with the film pieces.

Film - Research for self-initiated project.

2007-04-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

The images above, from left to right, describe the following:
a river bed
layers of strata below the surface,
a path through the trees,
inside a dark wood,
noticing detail, particular to a certain place,

natural phenomena, in this case, rooks flying to roost,
earthworks, the signs of a previous life still visible,
earthworks, uncovering the past on an archeological dig,
experiencing a place, being there,
and taking/bringing something to/from a place, how landscape changes with the smallest intervention.

This set of images, drawings, etchings, and photographs, was put together for Tonkin Liu Architects (www.tonkinliu.co.uk/) as part of a proposal they were putting together for Landmark Wales, a project commissioning new gateways into Wales. The team comprised of architects, engineer, surveyor, designer, artist, and mountaineer. We brainstormed to come up with ideas for new landmarks. The images above were part of my contribution, a folio of prints for public display, and a Powerpoint presentation, researching what it is that makes a landmark, what makes us remember a particular place. The project went through many transformations, resulting in a bridge that would be a viewing platform, where spectators could walk up steps inside the structure to see the landscape from different viewpoints, and would include a cyclepath and landscaped gardens.
The proposal has now been shortlisted and can be seen at (www.landmarkwales.org/), (enter Phase 1 proposals, then Tonkin Liu, then A550 at the Flintshire/Cheshire border), where it is open to the public to vote for the scheme they like the most.

I was asked to join this project because of work I have done previously on the theme of "Genius Loci" which means "A Sense of Place". This project directly relates to the work I am doing this semester. I am interested in how we relate to the landscape around us:

why we prefer the feel of certain places over others,
what makes us return to the same place over and over again,
what makes us remember it,
what makes us feel "at home",
why are we drawn to particular places,
how we create our own personal landscape.

For my self-initiated project, I am going to make an interactive film, using a greenhouse as a metaphor: for a viewing platform, a transparent hide within the garden, removed from the outside by a thin sheet of glass. From here the viewer will be able to watch and observe, affecting the atmosphere of the interior and what is seen through the windows by changing the tuning of the radio on the greenhouse bench. A change of sound will bring up new images, the windows will show activity on both sides of the glass.

For my MA project, I would like to evoke the feeling of a sense of place in an interactive film, shown as an installation and web-based piece, that lets the viewer choose their preferred landscape, and create its atmosphere, in the form of an interactive journey. To be discussed!

FILM - Laurie Anderson

2007-04-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

Musician, writer, film-maker, artist.
I saw Laurie Anderson's exhibiton at the ICA gallery, London, in the early 1980s; it was extraordinary, memorable. Her album, "Big Science" is about to be re-released, 25 years later. Her music is inventive, haunting, experimental. Listen to the forthcoming album on her website.
(www.laurieanderson.com/)

Laurie Anderson was the first artist I saw using the "new technology" as a vehicle for her work. She brings together multi-media, live and recorded, from many different sources, working individually and collaboratively, constantly moving on and embracing new developments. I prefer her music to her visual pieces; the latter seem to fall into cliches and are more predictable, whereas the music is still fresh and thought-provoking.

FILM - Research: Interactive drawing

2007-04-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about Interactivity, what is it exactly? Came across this work by Tim Knowles "Tree Drawing - larch on easel [4 pen]", photograph of the installation, and the drawing made. The construction of the installation is simple and effective, nothing to detract from the action it is recording, which is the interaction of the movement of the tree recorded through drawing on paper with pens attached to the branches.

USABILITY Group Project: Colour in Design.

2007-04-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Edward Tufte’s book “Envisioning Information”, which has some pertinent comments to make about the use of colour. He says that the fundamental uses of colour in design are:

to label (colour as noun)
to measure (colour as quantity)
to represent or imitate reality (colour as representation)
to enliven or decorate (colour as beauty)

He uses this Swiss map to demonstrate these principles and maintains that “The Swiss maps are excellent because they are governed by good ideas and executed with superb craft.”

High ideals to meet (it is a map of the Matterhorn) but sound principles to bear in mind, even with this small group project.

Things of Interest - The ultimate label.

2007-03-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

Found this apple in the greengrocers today. The message is purported to read 'Organic farm' but I have yet to find someone who can translate. It's been made by covering the apple before it ripens and reddens with a clear wrapper with black characters to block out the light, a perfect photogram or sun print. It has to be the ultimate integral grow-your-own label without any packaging.
The "label" changed how I saw this apple. The surprise of seeing the apple bearing a message I could not read made me curious, and lead me to imagine the labour-intensive activity of wrapping individual fruit on the tree to make the photogram. Only a few fruit in the box had labels, following in the tradition of boxes of citrus fruit, which bear stripes of attractive tissue-wrapped fruit to catch the eye. This was no longer any old apple but a clever apple with its own inventive label. It made me notice it, marvel at the clever branding of the fruit and the edible function of the "no-sticker" label, and want to own it, even though this apple has been imported from China and has clocked up a ridiculous number of air miles.
It fulfilled the three catagories, visceral, behavioural and reflective, named by Don Norman in his book "Emotional Design". (www.jnd.org)
It may not strictly have been designed as much as grown, but the addition of the grown-on label give it a high visceral appeal and initial impact, the label itself is functional and can be eaten, fulfilling behavioural criteria, and the apple itself, with its integral brand name commands prestige. This apple made it to the display case in the Graphics department at college.

Things of Interest - "Knowledge Lost"

2007-03-18T04:53:00.000-07:00

An article in The New York Times, "Knowlege Lost in a Digital Age - Struggling to Preserve Collective Memory in an Online World" highlighted the problem libraries are having, mainly financial, with putting their collections online. Only a small percent of material makes it to the web. Google has donated $3million to help an initiative, led by the Library of Congress, that will digitize and share materials around the world. When Google digitalized some of the National Archives' films, and put them on its site,( www.video.google.com/nara.htm) , there were 200,000 hits in the first month, compared to 200 requests to the research room in the previous year. Copyright places serious restrictions on the effort to make material available online, as does the physicality of how to copy it, so the main focus so far has been on books and other printed material.

FILM - Writing and research for short interactive film.

2007-03-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

I want to explore how we see things, depending on the physical conditions of our environment, and our mental outlook.

Literary reference:
In D.H.Lawrence's novel "The Rainbow" the women on the farm look out and try to make sense of the changing world. The passage quoted below describes the lives of the Brangwens, farmers, and the difference between the outlook of the men, who are engaged in the physical aspect, the "blood-intimacy" of the farm, and the women, who are aware of the bigger world beyond their everyday lives:
'... the women looked out...to the spoken world beyond.They were aware of the lips and the mind of the world speaking and giving utterance, they heard the sound in the distance, and they strained to listen.'

The idea is to film being inside a greenhouse, a self-contained environment made of glass, allowing the viewer to be aware of inside and outside at the same time. They can change their environment by retuning the radio, which, depending on the subject matter and mood of the sound, will change the way that the viewer perceives the environment.

This piece describes what it feels like for me in my greenhouse:
'My daughter has written 'private' on the glass door with a green crayon. Once inside, it is indeed a private world, a protected environment. Even on a bitterly cold day it is warmer inside, sheltered from the wind and catching and retaining any heat from the sun. It is quieter, everything outside is muffled, one step away from reality. The smells are intensified by the heat and stillness: of warm potting compost, green peppery Rocket salad under the bench, fresh green scent from the box of broadbean plants, and rotting leaves from the grapevine, left on the brick floor from last autumn.
The greenhouse is a hothouse for growing plants, it brings them on quicker than outside. Once inside it is sheltered and it is possible to concentrate on the fiddly business of planting seeds, which are watered, protected and finally released into the outside world when they are ready.
Sometimes I take a radio down, if there's a chance of an uninterupted hour or so. Jolly sunday morning programmes jostle with the news. News of killings in Iraq may coincide with a plane flying overhead, while I watch the children dig a big hole in the vegetable patch. A snatch of jazz could make the flowers seem brighter. An irritating quiz may focus my attention on the mousehole I keep filling in, or slug damage on the new plants. The weather forcast is for high winds and the hazel sways outside the window; the forcast is for sunshine but rain hits the glass panels. Time pips and the silence is shattered by an argument outside that needs to be sorted out, a cup of coffee steams and the food programme talks about the coffee harvest, fairtrade fortnight, poverty, poor nutrition. "The Archers" tune plays, I look out beyond the garden to the houses down the hill and other peoples' lives.'

I made a test piece with stills and Final Cut Pro, taken inside the greenhouse, switching focus between a flowering plant inside, and the landscape outside, as seen through the glass.
Sounds: greenhouse door sliding open and shut, muffled exterior, radio on, being tuned, going between stations (see dial) watering of plants inside, rain hitting glass outside.

Need to work out:
How to make the piece interactive, film embedded into Flash? What choices to give for interaction?
Image changes with each radio station?
Inside sound/outside sound, focus on inside/outside image - is this controlled by the radio dial?
Change brightness and colour of flower to reflect mood of news/music/narrative heard on the radio?

FILM - Interactive Short Film brief

2007-03-04T07:46:00.000-08:00

Working out an idea for this brief. Refer to the brief on Minerva but it is confusing:

It asks for 'A short digital narrative", but Martin has put emphasis on it being interactive. We have been told we should aim for 10 minutes interaction, and make a demonstrator, to hand in on a disk.

SELF-ANALYSIS AND REFECTIVE EVALUATION:

*As a part-time student on the IMM course, I am not clear what I am being asked to do or what the criteria is for this assignment. There seems to be a discrepancy between the old course that I and the other part-timers have elected to follow, and the structure of the new course, which we seem to be shoehorned into, and to which all the teaching this semester is tailored.

FILM - What is Interactive?

2007-02-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

What does Interactive mean when applied to computer-generated work? What are its limitations? In this drawing, each of the dots could be hotspots that take the viewer on to another screen. There is no key to the dots so the choice is random, unless a pattern builds up, and then the viewer may choose a certain size or colour of dot in order to receive more information on a particular theme.

How Interactive can a piece really be? It can't mimic our own thoughts, the images that come into our head when reading a novel, which come from our own personal picture library. Nor can it mimic our train of thought, based on our own experiences and the way we interpret words and images.

There may be advantages; an Interactive novel could allow us to experience alternatives to the main text. It could involve a multi-layered narrative with different paths and endings, all dependent on the choices the individual makes.

We could revisit chapters of a virtual book, replay the scenes, reorder events according to our own interpretation.

The same image could be viewed through other people's eyes,

and seen as a simple pattern,

or a complex image built form the information we are presented with and the knowledge we have already.

But in the end, it can never be truly exhaustive. There may be endless combinations and paths through, but it all depends on what is put in the piece in the first place. The cleverest games are those that offer numerous choices and levels, and engage their audience for the longest.