Group Artist Statement:

For our group project (Jake, Kebby, Sam, Jenna) we made a game called Shark Attack where the user controls a shark to eat a diver. Navigating past dangerous underwater mines was the only way to the diver. Not only that, the controls were wired to be the opposite direction of what was indicated on the keyboard. There were three main facets to the challenge that we aimed to achieve – the underwater mine maze, the opposite controls, and lastly, a six second countdown timer which triggers the underwater mines once it reaches zero. We programmed the shark to reset at its starting position whenever the countdown timer reaches zero, whenever the shark touches a mine, or whenever the shark touches the diver. We wanted Shark Attack to be thrilling and feel more like something that you’d find in the app store as a simple mobile game, hence we went with a shark/underwater aesthetic. We had to explore ways to implement the mine’s position into a “select” message which would trigger the bang for the reset. Another new feature we tried to implement was to have an on-display countdown timer for users to pace themselves, which added a sense of urgency to the experience.

Solo:

For my solo project I decided to create a maze that in order to move the object through the maze, the user must control it with their nose. I incorporated skills that we learned from earlier weeks such as jit.world, jit.gl.gridshape, the use of attributes and loadbang (my lifesaver) and the Posenet face recognition feature that I wanted to get a better understanding of therefore using them to make this project. The twist of it is that the direction you move your nose and the direction the object follows is jumbled up. Moving your nose downwards triggers the object to move to the left and moving your nose upwards, moves the object to the right – and vice versa. Expected challenges for this project were getting the right values to align the parts of the maze using the position and scale attribute boxes, connecting it correctly to the face recognition. I wanted this maze to be a mind-eye coordination challenge for the audience that will also leave them looking like a little crazy and going home with a minor headache.

Reflection:

For both group and solo work, the end product was not what we initially had planned however worked out for the better.  Our group work started of as a simple concept of a pacman inspired maze however after further discussing the capabilities of it sustaining the users interaction, we decided to retain the original concept but give it a more aesthetic/exciting look by replacing all 2D elements to 3D, from a simple ball object to a model of a shark. The motive was for the shark to successfully reach the position of a ‘diver’ but in order to achieve that the user has to dodge underwater mines. Deciding to change these elements of the work brought a different meaning and look to it. In terms of technicality, there were a lot of tedious work from figuring out the position coordinates. The output data for the positions were made for each underwater mine using “pak”, “increment” and “line”. We made the background as a texture on a cuboid shape to ensure its size remained the same when making adjustments to jit.world.window.

As for my solo work I intended to create a 3D maze that had mini obstacle courses throughout the journey to challenge the users. Initially I had a visualization for my final project however I feel like it did exceed my technical abilities, not to say I was not willing to learn however due to time constrained and a few minor errors in the work in progress, I decided to greatly simplify my work. I am not particularly happy with it but my biggest reflection for this assignment was the ability to understand fully the skills and features that I ended up using which my personal values correlate with. I personally believe in understanding what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and what it is for rather than creating something just because. As mentioned above, through this work I was able to further gain my knowledge to the skills that were taught throughout the semester, as much as I am disappointed that I was not able to create as technically advanced work as compared to the rest of the class, I am happy with the progress I have made throughout the semester from gaining knowledge to finding meaning of interactive art.

-Jake-

I admire Jake’s non tactile project as he really thought it thru and explored into the advancement of the future into his work. He incorporated his skillset of using After Effects to create the graphics and animation that he layered onto Max using another video. I think it was really smart to create what he was proficient in using and then using his knowledge of Max to develop a non tactile interaction. It was really fun and satisfying to play around with to see a visual graphic of your cheering, I see it definitely being a way to enhance sporting events and experiences.

-Claudia-

Personally enjoyed Claudia’s project in terms of the unexpected! The project was easy to understand and I liked the way she used the posenet plugin and linked the horizontal stretch effect to the position of the users hands creating that stretch in the reflection. It was very creative combining the two and was something i definitely enjoyed learning from her project, how it was simple yet complex and has a meaning behind it. She also embedded very thorough instructions and the presentation was clear and precise. Something to learn from that.

Kebby

Kebby’s solo project was initially what I intended my project to be however we all know how that turned out. She connected a 3D model to the face recognition software that allowed users to control the different parameters of the animation with our parts of our faces. I found it quite comedic that she added funny background music to make it more entertaining.

ARTIST STATEMENT – GROUP:

Our group non-tactile interactive study aims to explore the effects of implementing technology to replace physical objects. In our group project, we utilised motion detection to trigger sound clips of instruments that were overlaid on the video input. We had instruments and sound effects located at each corner of the screen – a drum, a cymbal, a “brr brr” sound effect used in hip-hop ad-libs, and a clap. The user would trigger each of these sounds by waving his/her arms in the respective corners, resulting in a concoction of sounds that were unique to the user. We wanted to explore how much better would it be to replace physical instruments with intangible digital versions of themselves. Would the benefits of technology outweigh its drawbacks? Or would the transition be well worth the cost? This project only deals with trivial things such as a drum kit, but what would happen if the same thing were to happen on a more personal level à la Her (a 2013 movie about a man who develops a relationship with an artificially intelligent virtual assistant)?  It’s an important question to ponder upon, in a world where things are increasingly replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.

ARTIST STATEMENT – SOLO :

I chose to explore the relationship between the human to the motion detector and the motion detector to trigger sound effects on Max. It is a relatively simple simulation to focus on the basic elements of it that will be developed in my next assignment. The idea was to communicate the motion detector with a sound effect at a specific corner of the screen – in this case a sound effect of a ‘punch’. It was inspired by an unfortunate event that will be explained in the reflection. Skills and techniques I developed from this project was the use of “jit.op @op absdiff” nodes to implement the motion detector to trigger the sound effect.

REFLECTION :

For our group project initially we wanted to incorporate the current “meme” video trend that displays a sense of humor that’s currently been going viral. The idea for the project was inspired by a viral video by @askaboutaj called “Mood I’m going into 2018 with” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw4atwjEff4&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0mZLujFczewgPbP5DxLq-ODcDq4qxrPWzTSSNeaqkzZei7G6pO91PUR2E) He dodges and punches/kicks graphics of words or objects associated with “bad vibes” the fly across the screen. It was important to us to create something that our users, uni students were able to resonate and have fun with. We gathered as a group outside of class to collaboratively work on it as there were many elements to take into account however after experimenting with the idea, we realised our laptops could not take the large number of “jit.alphabetblend” nodes causing the software to lag and video output to freeze when attempting to run the program. We turned to a simplified but slightly different idea which incorporated the same nodes as the first idea. Max8 was able to register smaller files and ran smoothly making it a better user experience as compared to if we were to go with the more complex idea but fails to achieve interaction. Things we can work on in the future could be programming and incorporating specific movements to represent and trigger the sound effect such as jumping to trigger the cymbal. Throughout the process of this exploring this feature of Max 8 we discovered that the software is still unresponsive and can’t fully handle the weightage of certain files just yet as it failed it detect particular hand movements. Conclusion it was important for us to make the decision to simplify the idea rather than have a complex project that was not functional.

As for my solo project, my initial plan was to explore the 3 dimension world with the “jit.world” node and it’s ability to display animation and communicate with the motion detector feature. This is because I have always had an admiration for animators who have the talent to draw and create these motion pictures. When discovering this new skill I knew I wanted to dive deeper into it, this is because, how cool would it be if people who resonated with my disappointment in being horrible at drawing had the ability to in another way “animate” characters. Challenges included finding the right format that could be read and copied to clipboard, identifying and connecting the right nodes to the selected part of the animation to scale down to it’s value to be detected by the motion detector – HOWEVER when almost completing the project I saved and closed the window to see if it would work if I re opened it and a ton of errors just kept interfering with the functions. There were hundreds of error notifications and to my strongest abilities I tried to re track my steps and fix it but the knowledge I have of the software was insufficient to solve it. I resulted in changing my idea to a more straightforward less complicated project that I was able to put together with the little understanding I have of the software. Hoping Camille has some humour for this next part as from what I had learned throughout the weeks, I decided to work on a motion detecting sound effect simulation that was inspired by the urge to punch my laptop when my intended project failed last minute. Using the “jit.op @op absdiff” nodes to trigger the motion detector and the “past” message to trigger the sound when a certain numerical value is passed. It is completely different from my initial idea however it did spark a revelation, as someone who regularly uses Facetime, I wondered how cool would it be to incorporate a motion detecting sound effect in video calling platforms to express how we feel with sound effects. When I wanted to punch my laptop out of frustration when my first idea came crumbling down it didn’t have the same satisfying impact as it did once I added the sound effect and there was a sense of humour being able to do an action and have a sound effect to express in further.

 

SASKIA KOSTIC

Saskia’s project stood out the most to me as I love traveling and being able to navigate and experience Europe through her project was very interesting. Through her project I have learnt different elements of interactive art that I hope I can incorporate into my work in the future. I would like to explore further and learn how to assign messages to parts if the photo as how she did with the map. I enjoyed her use of different media elements such as still images (the map) as well as videos (to show the footages of the city you clicked on). She successfully created a tactile piece that from an audience point of view was exciting to experience.

SAGE ESCOTT

Sage’s piece was an on screen piano keyboard that in order to play it you had to use the mouse and click on the key. I personally felt that it was a bit awkward to be playing a piano with a mouse however the end product was still fun to play around with. However I feel that figuring out a way to play it using the keyboard on the computer would be a more natural way to interact with the piece such as assigning alphabets on the keyboard to particularly keys.

CHARMAINE LEE

Charmaine successfully achieved a very visually aesthetic piece. I appreciated her effort in compiling all the photos and assigning them to each key as that is something I still struggle with, on Max8. I liked her work because even tho she was the ‘artist’, her interactive art piece gave the audience a chance to be the artist and being in control of which photos/illustrations are presented on the screen by choosing which key to press. However I would have liked to see a reset button as after spamming the keys a couple times I wanted to rest the screen and continue.

 

REFLECTION

The past three weeks of being exposed to this new software (Max8) has been very eye opening and fun (although we don’t make it sound that way in class but it is -when we get it). I personally feel like being introduced to a new software is always very confusing and scary at first because everything is so unfamiliar at the beginning however the process of learning what we know now about the software, I personally feel was made more comprehensible and fun to explore through to Camille’s patience and teaching style creating a classroom where we were not afraid to ask for help when we did not understand as well as his ability to read all out confused and brain fried facial expressions that tells it all.

For my solo project, I decided to work and develop on the basic elements of Max8 software that I have learned over the past few weeks in class to solely have a better understanding of what was taught as well as “getting it” in the first assessment rather than adding a bunch of cool things and connecting them but not actually understanding what it’s meaning and purpose of the effect and its contribution to the project. Creating a webcam on Max8 was the first exercise that was carried out in class – the excitement that I felt when I first managed to connect all the elements correctly was a feeling I wanted to carried forward to my first assessment. The first mode of interaction that the audience would have with my project is seeing themselves on the screen therefore that excitement to continue interacting with the piece was important to me. The next element that I incorporated into the piece is audio. In my tactile interactive art piece there is screeching high pitch noise that is triggered when moving the curser of the mousepad to a certain area of the screen. This is again involves the feeling of the audience and making them use the senses that we have as humans to engage and interact with pieces that I attempted to create. Combining these two senses together I intended the screeching high pitch to represent the stretch and pull that can be seen on the screen as the resolution decreases and it starts to distort the webcam – this is to create that atmosphere of distortion and stretch of the webcam by feeling the screeching high pitch noise whilst watching the act of it happening.

As for the group project, we decided to create a responsive tactile keyboard that each key carries a vocal recording of it’s respective phonetics. Inspired by a sampler like drum pad we wanted to experiment a little further by allowing the participants to create words by typing them out and hearing a different pronunciation of the word based on its phonetics. Breaking down each word to it’s alphabets individual spelling was an interesting experiment as there were a balance of words that sounded “correct” as well as a handful that sounded a little not like what it was supposed to be. Our aim for this piece was for audiences to take away the importance of communication and how breaking down everyday words can become a discovery into a new sort of artwork. We had fun in the process and having a sense of humour whilst testing out some inappropriate words.

Overall,  reflecting on both the assessments and the first quarter of the semester, it has expanded my knowledge on interactive art and one main thing that I am learning from this whole process is the importance of creating something that has meaning and a purpose – not only to the artists but being able to project and present that to the audience. It is so interesting how through the software, I learnt that everything connects through the communication of messages/objects other elements that you can add – and how important it is to actually understand what input/output/effect you’re connecting it to, weather it is the right one and understanding the purpose of each connection and bridge in your process.

 

ARTIST STATEMENT GROUP (JAKE, KEBBY, JENNA, SAM)

As a group, we were all extremely interested in creating a project that explores the medium of sound. The keyboard was also incorporated as a platform for immediate tactile feedback. We recorded and dissected individual alphabets to its most primitive pronunciation, which was almost baby-like. For example, the letter ‘B’ was recorded as “Bah”, P as “Puh”, and E as “Ehh”. After creating patches in Max8 to trigger each letter’s sound with its respective key, we made a textbox which is the only thing onscreen when the “Presentation” mode is on. Participants are invited to type out any word they wish, which results in an entirely new concoction of sounds. By turning everyday words into unfamiliar and abstract sounds, it evokes the participant to reflect on the importance of communication. It also provides an amusing interpretation of abbreviations such as “LOL” and “LMAO” that are not uncommon in text messages. ­ As a group, we had to use the “key” and “message” patches to figure out each key’s specific number. Another challenge we had to overcome was figuring out the patches required for bridging the keyboard to the individual triggers for the sounds in our playlist. Not only that, we had to create a box to display any text input simultaneously as the participants type their word out. Initially, we wanted to have a separate input for the “Enter” key to playback the entire word but felt that it was too complex for the time being. Perhaps we might incorporate that into future projects.

ARTIST STATEMENT SOLO

Inspired by the interactive art piece that I chose to write my first blogpost of this studio on that focused mainly on the senses of the audience – creating the atmosphere that requires the audience to use that senses to interact with the piece. Hearing (the sound of droplets) and seeing (the rain droplets). For my solo project I decided to take what I learned from the research I had done and incorporate it into this project with the little skillset and knowledge that I have with Max8 and using the basics that we’ve learned over the past 3 weeks as the foundation of this project (with help from Camille). It is known that the brain can hear faster than it can see therefore I wanted to combine these two elements to my project (ie. the audience can feel the distortion + decreasing level of resolution of the screen – with the high pitch audio to guide the eyes). As this is the basic of basics for interactive art, what I feel would develop this project further would be to experiment adding something physical  (ambience/surrounding) that would contribute to the audience experience. Expected challenges that were faced throughout this process was understanding the use and significance of messages/ objects/ numbers/ inputs/ outputs that were needed to string the project together as this software is very new to me.

 

Random International is a collective that was founded by 3 contemporary artist Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood in 2005. They’re known for their distinctive approach to digital based contemporary art that often reqires audience participation in order for the installations to come alive.

One of their pieces that I admire and would lie to explore more to incorporate some of the elements in my future projects in their “Rain Room” that was exhibited at the Barbican in London 2012. The Rain Room exhibits a perpetual rain shower that allows visitors to feel the moisture in the the air surrounding them whilst being able to to hear the sound of rain however remaining untouched by the drops of water.

What I find fascinating about this next level interaction between digital technology and audience participation, is the fact that the audiences interaction becomes so significant due to the fact that the rainfall responds to the reaction and movement of the audience (this is carried out through motorised mirrors with sensors that register the movement and controls the rainfall) – thus, the audience some what becomes a subject of the artwork rather than just a third party viewer.

Throughout this  semester in studio Thinking in Fragments I have gained more knowledge of how online space offers new ways of thinking about screen media. It has been a journey exploring the realm of media through the past 4 assessments. Our final project in particular, Time Out embodies a combination of multiple characteristics of online spaces. As a group we were determined to expand out of the norm way of narrative linear structure and unpack the idea of “storytelling” in an interactive screen project by incorporating the characteristics of modularity, interactivity, multi-linearity with an unregulated length. The characteristics of our project in my opinion determines the notion that is beyond traditional media which to answer a question presented to us that yes, to an extent we do consider our work to be web specific.

To elaborate further without dwelling too much on what our project is about because we have covered that a lot, our project consisted of 3 perspectives and in 3 different locations.  First of all each of the clips in our project are of unregulated length and of no constraint in time length making each fragment authentic and flexible. In terms of modularity, each fragment of our project work consists of distinct perspective and locations which can be understood independently but all have a common theme and relation when put together.

As a group we have occasionally discussed the concept of intertextuality even though not discussed that much in class.  We discovered this concept throughout the course of creating our project and how the relationship between one fragment to another fragment grouped in it’s specific order of format shows interconnection formed in the narrative that our project portrays. The form of the narratives projected through the different scenarios take the viewers along in the day in the life of the character, it obtains the intertextual narrative of an isolated university student we emphasised on.In context to multi-linearity, the idea of different perceptions and locations in our project allows viewers to go experience multiple paths in no particular order but still resulting in the same theme and flow of feeling.

Lastly one of the main characteristics that we focus on in this studio is interactivity. Before experiencing this studio, my only knowledge of interactive media spaces was narrowed to social media platforms. The interactive aspect of our project work is carried out through the use of Korsakow. It allowed us to use it as a platform to storytell in a non linear way utilising computer driven database to show how different media fragments not by any specific narration but under the theme of Isolation. The interaction aspect of our final project is reliant on the reciprocal contribution and involvement by the viewer / “user” , this allows the user to engage and experience different perceptions as the foundation to the interactivity of the project.

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Through the making of this project and the opportunity to explore online screen productions, I have learned that it is important to experiment on film making to really understand the effect a project has in projecting the ideology behind it and it’s narrative. This studio has really opened my eyes and stepping out of my comfort zone in terms of thinking in media production particularly new media and screen production. As mentioned before that my knowledge of interactivity and online screen media has consisted of social media platforms such as instagram and youtube. However throughout the semester breaking down every assignment and online media I experience as allowed me to question myself in how I experience media. Questions such as what was the aim of the project? Was it linear or non? What did they try to portray through that particular aspect? It has made me realise that film is not about having a narrative and linear start to end but more so evoking a prompt/theme and feeling a certain way about it.

DAY 2 – OFFICIAL SHOOT

This week we had our last day of shooting at Macedon. This location was beautiful and every turn we made, every corner of the location was visually appealing. Even though we had particular shots we already had in mine, one thing that we were concern about with shooting at such a location with endless possibilities was that we might get off track and ‘shoot the shit out if’. Having our film based on a poem really helped guide us through the filming process and gave us an idea how it should look like. The poem was about death and grieve, which means moody, dark, emo, loneliness. With the weather on our side, we were blessed with a nice cloudy day with no sunlight with contributed to the mood. During our test shoots at this location we were concern with lighting as that day was really sunny and had too harsh and bright lighting which we would struggle to fix during the post production stage but thankfully we don’t have to worry about that anymore.

We learned a lot as individuals and as a group, each member got the chance to direct and be the camera operator and while that was going on, we were constantly giving each other tips and feedback for the shots. I feel like this was really beneficial in a sense that they saw things that I did not see and vice versa that was wrong about the angle/framing etc. This is one important thing that I stated in my collaboration blog post.

In terms of camera movement and angles, I feel like we did a decent job however I realized that we had too many shot where the camera was stationary and the character moved, which could result in it looking boring. It would have been a good idea to take more tracking shots/ moving with the character or in the perspective of the camera.

One thing I wished we could have filmed better was the concept of the character going on a journey to this unfamiliar yet familiar place. While looking through the clips, I felt like we didn’t follow through thoroughly with our plan to take the audience with the character on her journey. For example this clip below, if we were to put it into the film , it would have been improved we had establishing shots of her feet taking steps, close ups of her hands, maybe a mis shot as well.