IWAMD Installation Project - Second Irishood

For our first assignment in the elective module Contemporary Art in the Public Realm, we were to make an Installation to be featured in the new U.L building for the IWAMD. We were given tape footage from the library achieve for the IWAMD and asked to incorporate it.

After much brainstorming and team collaboration, James, Lucy Sophie, Vinny and myself came up with "Second Irishood". Our installation, featured a screen which projected a videos of Irish dancing that we edited which would be controlled by user input through glowsticks detected by a web cam. The idea was for user to stand in front of the screen, moved the glowsticks and their bodies to the music and for the screen to react with them. We wanted to make the installation engaging and encourage movement.

I learned ALOT from the experience! I've seen installations in galleries and museums before and they look so simple to do...but it was tough! There is soooo many elements involved, there is the ideas process, the making of it, making sure it works, putting it together, putting the various files from different programmes together, seeing if it works,organisation of roles and meetings, the heavy labour of setting it up and taking it down, discussing your project with visitors, documenting comments etc....I could go on....

In the end round our proposed interaction with the screen failed! We had the long complicated ActionScript done (with the help of other classmates) and we late the night before were going to make a simple change to a video and import it back in...the Flash file then failed to work again and no one knew why...so we had to find a plan B

But that actually didn't work out too bad. The people who visited on the open day seemed to like it and seemed to believe that with the glowsticks they were in fact interacting with the .swf we put up!


















I found the overall experience very rewarding and I am looking forward to out next projection on 14th April '10 where we will be projecting onto the front of Plassey House!



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What it means for me to be a Designer?

I've never regarded myself as a designer until this year in IMedia when we were told collectively that we were. Mikael Fernstorm recommended we put the title on our business cards. I thought wow, I don't have business cards, but that's a fancy title I'd like to take!

But it does make sense I guess ever since I've been young I have always been a bit "creative". Whether it be singing, painting, drawing or playing my music, or shouting at my fellow 8 year old actor friends when they said something wrong in the play or movie I created(probabley because they couldn't read properly yet)...I could go on...but I won't embarrass myself another further...let's just say there is a few videos and tapes in the Leonard household as evidence :P

I guess as a designer it all starts with an idea. Inspiration plays a big factor. I always had good ideas, especially in primary and secondary school. But then when these were demanded of me in Unversity I could'nt think, they just flew out the window and I hit a mental block. Maybe if I was put back into a 5th year double French class again I would have some of the best ideas of my life... but I don't really see that happening.Inspiration these days hits me at the most random times. And the things that pen and paper create are endless.

But I guess when your producing work whether it be something small or a big project it is all about engaging the audience. Enticing them somehow to pay more attention, look a little further, explore and ultimately for them to be entertained in some way or another. It's about knowing your user and providing them with something that interests them...

But I also think it's about yourself. If you are happy with a product it makes you happy, and if you see something working for you, you just want to keep working on that. If something comes easily to you, you want to work as hard as you can on it.

Other peoples opinions on your work is also crucial. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's embarrassing, sometimes deep down you know it's not good and you just don't want someone else saying it out loud... but it has to be done! You benefit from it. Learn from mistakes. But also it's a major confidence boost when their response is positive.



MORE TO FOLLOW SOON.....

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Arduino class - Fernando Orellana

These are some videos of what myself and Brian came up with in our work shop with Fernando! I found the class really interesting and it's made me think I could possibly have the potential to make something half decent...maybe ...if I'm lucky:P

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Presenatation - Mobility and it's implications

So we had our presentation there recently and I like to think it went OK however i think we approached it wrong...approached it maybe the way we did Liam Bannon presentations... as apposed to what Gariela Avram wanted...

Myself, Jill and Brian were in a group and we decided to take the topic of Mobility and it's Implications from the list on the wiki. We thought it would be an interesting topic and the informaton about it ws vast and it was open to many angles.

We chose to read “Reflecting Human Values in the Digital Age” by Sellen, Rogers, Harper and Rodden, as we knew the class was familiar with it from Luiginia’s module last semester. We also chose “The Next Wave of Nomadic Computing: A research Agenda for Information System Research” by Lyytinen and Yoo, as well as “Expanding the ‘Mobility’ Concept” by Kakihara and Sorensen (a paper recommended by to us by Fabiano who's presentation had been the week before).

Most off my research was done online. I read different articles and researched computers and their advances. Some of my ideas were inspired from Fabiano’s presentation. I found the concept of the ‘digital nomad’ very interesting in his talk. I did research it more, but didn’t want to go into to delve into it for our presentation as I felt it wasn’t relevant and we as a class knew enough about it already from him. I read pieces from a thesis by Kakihara about mobility as well; “Emerging Work Practices of ICT-Enabled Mobile Professionals” but much of the concepts was the same as the other paper. As I mentioned in the presentation when I was researching the topic there was not much written about the social implications of the advances in computer mobility. Most the information online discussed various computer models and the year they came out. I decided I would talk to my parents about what their memories of computer mobility were and share it with the class.

I tried to make the presentation engaging. I wanted to add fun elements to it as well as being informative. I added, what I thought were attention grabbing aspects such as references to television characters (Zac Morris, ‘Saved by the Bell’) as well as a funny video (John Cleese).

We decided that at the end of the presentation we would have a discussion. We wanted to interact with the class and see what their thoughts were. I thought they brought up some valid and different points and the conversation was interesting and thought provoking. Overall I felt the presentation went well, perhaps maybe my nerves got the better of me, but I was happy with it in the end round.

Here is the link to the video I used in the presentation



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Mock ups of users using my inteactive dressong space!

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