ideas and shit

Had a few ideas, only one that i'm really convinced could work and won't make me a mardy cow in the process.

1: Liked the idea of having something interactive in a retail space, mainly cuz i've worked in the hellish arse of retail all my working life. This could either benefit or disadvantage me in this project. I know retail, how it works and what customers need, but i hate people and shopping, so perhaps not such a good idea.

Retail Space: Interactive screens in changing rooms. Where people can have full body scans taken of them, clothes superimposed on them and they can see what it looks like at all angles and can go through a catalogue of other items. Could also have the option of being referred items that suit there particular body shape. It's an ok idea, but not something i will go with cuz i don't think i could work on this for 6 weeks without killing myself or someone else.

I'm quite hungry at the moment, so this has given me the idea for interactive menus in cafes and stuff. People can order food from a touch screen menu and pay for it there. Just something interactive where you wouldn't normally expect it. The pedantic among us may argue that it is interactive to speak to the people that work there, which is true but it doesn't matter cuz i'm not overly keen on this idea just because it reminds me too much of the last futures project.

I like the option of designing an art installation, but despite my background being in fine art, i quite dislike modern art or installations. I have liked a few installations i've seen so i will probably research this some more with an open mind and not dismissing it all as bollocks. Would have to put my theory hat on.

My final idea, and the one i'm most into is some sort of flash online game that allows users to help build the game as they play. For example the game could start where the character is in a room with no windows or doors. To get out they could draw a door that then opens up the next level. Colin also suggested that people can play other people's games that they've worked through and see how they've problem solved. so props to you colin.

I like this idea cuz i've got the theory of wikinomics backing it up and its just a slightly different way of interacting with something that doesn't just involve clicking or moving arrows.

The only problem with this is that i couldn't make it. I'm humble enough to admit that this stretches my somewhat limited abilities in flash. Tho from what i've heard i could just make an animation to show how it would work, so hurrah for that.

To Do:
- major research in art installations, just in case i change my mind (as i so often do)
- research into online and casual gaming (and not just an excuse to play on neopets)
- more research into wikinomics and the idea of mass collaboration
- look at basic games that allow user to draw on the screen

doesn't actually seem that much to do at the moment, famous last words and all that, but i'm sure the above will open up a whole can of worms and i'll be busy right up to the deadline. Again.

Three media artists, Martin Bonadeo, Michael Chu, and D. Scott Hessels, drove Los Angeles' famous Mulholland Drive with five types of sensors--measuring the car's tilt, direction, altitude, speed, and engine sound. The captured data of the mountain road was loaded into a computer and a 3-dimensional model was created. This model was used computationally to control two robotic lights in a room filled with fog. Two 100-foot beams of light and the processed sound of the engine recreated the topology of the road as a new form of visual experience and sculpture-cinema without image.

Thought this vid was appropriate as it uses a lot of the tech stuff Mike talked about this morning.

Ubiquitous Computing:

Ubiquitous computing integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Another term for ubiquitous computing is pervasive computing. Promoters of this idea hope that embedding computation into the environment would enable people to move around and interact with computers more naturally than they currently do.

links and shit

its always hard to start new projects and i have a few ideas, but mainly need to do shit loads of research before i can even begin designing or thinking about the aesthetics. In the meantime there are loads of links and vids for some cool stuff.

Art Installations:

i've never really thought about doing an interactive art installation, but now i've looked at them a bit more i really like the idea of it. Quite like the idea of a screen based installation but the reasons i'm not entirely convinced of this is that 1) i always do screen based stuff and 2) so does everyone else. There are some that work really well like fallings times which is:

"a real-time news "translation machine" representing appearing & disappearing information about our times. the news content is reduced to the most frequent headlines & their according keywords. the reduced news headlines are then visually translated in a dynamic pictogram language that is considered to be universal & instantly understandable. online users can add keywords to an icon to determine which news will be displayed.

"Falling Times refers to the heavy InfoPollution we live in. the InfoSociety has created a new kind of consumer – the InfoConsumer!"

Also really like this installation called The Dumpster.

It is an aesthetic portrait of romantic breakups from a group of 20,000 blog posts describing breakups in 2005. this 'social data browser' visualises inferred reasons for the break-up, who was involved, age & gender of the author, & emotional state, with similar breakups showing up with similar colours. It seems to be another screen based design, tho that may just be in the context of being displayed online. I liked this mainly for its interface in that it's intuative but still has a hell of a lot of info to it.

I think its intuative because it adheres to some of the psychology of design in that people will click on things that are moving. All the dots are moving, so its obvious what to click on, and when the mouse moves, the bottom and side bars move as well. Interesting design, but im not wowed by the idea, but then i'm cynical and laugh at american teenager's pain.

Also like something called "Emotional Traffic Display" which is a real-time visualisation & sonification that runs during an on-stage musical performance using data from the Internet about the emotions of the world. the size of the text reflects the emotion's presence on the web, while layers build up, making the display more detailed & complex. a 'meridian line' scans the visualisation, creating the rhythm of the music being played.

pov, pov and pov and the barge and the sausage

cool links to remember from a good talk today from Alistair McDonald from Kerb

killerviral

memecounter

blog from kerb

nitrome

cove

osflash

really enjoyed the flash talk today, and have wanted to make a flash game since i started this course, mainly cuz i'm addicted to neopets but that's not the point. I'm hoping i can include gaming for this project and plus i get to draw more pretty pictures, one day there may be a project where i draw nothing. Really need to research into online/casual gaming and try and get some theory behind my designs. Most importantly i need to get the damn futures project out of my damn head. damn.

Design for Interaction

Brief:

OK, new brief and just as terrifying as the last. It may just be overly complicated and may take a little while to get my head around it. Also having to start thinking about the dissertation, so bang goes my idea of starting it in April and handing it in, in April.

From what i can gather the brief is once again focusing on theories and concepts. So i think the idea is to get a good theory or concept and base the design around that.

- interactivity as personal and social
- the theory that interactivity separates new media from old

it can be: instructional/storytelling/entertainment in the forms of:
- a game
- experimental website
- interactive art piece
- non-linear story
- interactive environment - retail space/museum/learning zone/public arts commission

its nice to know that the brief is fairly open, but i guess until i start doing some proper research it all seems a bit hazy.

Dissertation:

My original question (for that proposal we had to do) was: With reference to online communities and interactive games such as ‘The Sims’, what are the relationships between technology and humans within today’s society?

I won't be doing that question cuz i figure that if i write about something I'm not personally that interested in i wont write much/well/anything (delete as appropriate). My past essays looked at horror movies and art, and the Simpson's and writing about that didn't seem like such a chore (the research part was great too)

- I'm still interested in the relationships between art and film (first year i wrote about the relationship between Munch's 'The Scream' and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre which was charming). I could expand on this idea perhaps, although it would be nice to write something completely new.

- I also like how music and effects are used in film, especially older films and Disney films which they use it really well. Even 'silent' films where they do have some music over it could work. How does the sound enhance what you are watching and how this has changed over the years.

- Again, sticking with the film bit, i am interested in the idea of film and originality, has new technology helped or hindered audiences experiences

Also need to make sure that whatever i write about has enough flesh to squeeze at least 5000 words out of it. Makes me feel a bit nostalgic for the days when i thought 1000 words was a lot.

it's only bloody done!

probably a bit late for this post but oh well.



that's the final animation of how the cot works. I've slaved over that bloody thing so i'm quite chuffed with it, even though I'm sick of the sight of it. Plus i'm so pleased the presentation is over because when you've worked on something for so long and you know how it works its difficult to explain it to other people. Plus i've never 'pitched' anything before, but i think i did good.

Just gonna have a little read over the new brief and have a think about that, maybe post some links and thoughts later. want to get started early cuz i really need to work on my organisation and time management.

working towards final design

Was stuck between 2 ideas. The first was having the cot as the robot where the elements were in the cot but would come out when needed. The design ideas for this seem less limited and there is room to have much more capabilities.

The 2nd idea was having the robotic device in a soft toy, for example if the design was going to be a teddy then the ears could be speakers, paws for lights, noce for scent devices, eyes for cameras etc. I was leaning to this idea more as it could be easily transferable to prams and pushchairs, bigger beds etc and would also be used as a toy for when the baby gets older. However when discussing this with Mike we found that a lot of toys and devices like this are already available.

They can already play music and lights and I want to steer away from things that are already on the market.

We also discussed the possibility of the cot being the complete environment for the baby, meaning that the cot is an intelligent immersive environment with the possibilities that it can control other aspects in the room like temperature and lights etc.

The only technical problem i was having with this design was how to power it so none of the elements would be lost but would still be safe, the solution was to have it powered by low voltage electricity.



also found quite an interesting yet aesthetically creepy video on and AI Female Android
Speech, Reading, Color, Face, Object recognition.
Ability to tell Weather.
Ability to have a conversation
Can understand 13,000+ sentences, and
has the ability to learn.
Ability to solve math
Ability to distinguish simple drinks and foods.

to do

Not a lot has changed since i last updated this blog but the idea is becoming more refined now i just really need to get it down onto paper. This will probably help me work out all the elements i want to include. So far the robotic cot thing has elements like:

- robot system with memory and ability to learn

- change in lights: colours, brightness, movement etc

- soothing noises: music, heartbeat, soft white noise (this works as a distraction mechanism)

- voice/cry recognition: different sorts of cries can be measured by frequency, urgency and pitch. The robot can remember different cries and try and calm the child.. some of this may be trial and error but a certain amount of programming will be done so it wont be a completely new process that takes a long time for each different child.

- maybe have different levels of robot/human control: the parents can decide how much monitoring they will or will not do, the benefit of this is that it generates trust, but the disadvantage is that parents will not use the device or use all the elements, or be over monitoring or not monitoring enough. Need to think about this point a little more.

- robot response: some of my research states that adequate robot response to human users creates more trust. Could have robot practically reporting back or alerting parents as to what is going on, what happened and what action it took. Or alert the parents when they need to physically take over for feeds or changing as i don't think its practical or really possible for the robot to do this. Thats becoming a bit more sci-fi.