3W27 Assessment Evidence

Here are a set of links to blog entries which cover each of the assessment evidence points:

1.On-line text / diagrammatic /visual / aural presentation of your work, demonstrating a critical understanding of digital arts and how your work relates to current thinking and research in Digital Arts

• Podcast (Click on Podcast button at link ecoloops.org, this is a slightly updated version of the podcast since the colloquium.)
(This is perhaps the clearest documentation of the entire project in a nutshell.)

• Blog
(This list of links demonstrates some of the key blog entries from Mada 3 that show the development of my project.)

3W4 End of Timelapse
3W8 More Rotoscoping and Tutorial
3W10 Further Development of Creature Loops
3W11 Patterns
3W14 Completion of Ecoloop Sequences
3W15 Environment Loops and Backgrounds
3W17 The Educational Text
3W22 Collapse Movies
3W25 Sound

• Quicktimes
(This page has links to many of the different individual quicktime elements which make up the ecoloops system. It shows the progression of the work, as different parts were shot, keyed, and composited together. Almost all of these were done in MADA 3 except for some of the raw footage timelapse links at the bottom of the page which were captured last term.)

2. Practical work resolved according to your proposal and presented professionally as part of a on-line group event, supporting research material in appropriate form

• Interactive Flash Project (Click on ‘Ecoloops Final System’)
(This links to the final swf and flv project files which are used in the show. Please note, the advanced programming of the timer, the impact arrows and the temperature slider were done by my friend Richard Lovejoy, everything else was done by me!)

• Book
(I made a book which explains the project for the final show and can also be used as a marketing tool to tell people about the project down the road. It can be purchased by anyone who is interested at blurb.com where it was printed.) (To see pages from the book go to the website in the next link ecoloops.org)

• Website at www.ecoloops.org
(I made a simple informational website about the project. It gives a brief explanation of the project, shows the podcast, and links to the book and contact information. This site has not been included in the final exhibition.)

3. On-line log documenting your role as a member of the exhibition/presentation team

• Exhibition Involvement
(The first link below is probably the most relevant, explaining the week I spent at Camberwell, the other links show my other involvement.)

3W27 Final Exhibit Notes E (Show Setup at Camberwell)

3W22 Final Exhibit Notes D (Chats with Face to Face)

3W12 Final Exhibit Notes C (Preperation Chats)

3W11 Final Exhibit Notes B (Wiki Contribution)

3W6 Final Exhibit Notes A (Early Chats)

4. A written report in two parts: artist’s statement - explanatory comment and critical evaluation of your own work in the context of current creative practice and reflection - a critical analysis of outcomes compared with intentions, a review of overall progress and outline plan for further development

• Report
(This links to the artist statement and critical analysis report.)

3W27 Final Exhibit Notes E

I took this past week off from my other work commitments and have spent all week at Camberwell working with the Face to Face students to setup our final show. It has been a really challenging and exciting week! First off, the students and tutors at Camberwell were really great, and I felt completely part of the team by about lunchtime of the first day. I was really impressed by the way everybody (who was there) worked together, and it seemed even when there was a little tension at points, that nobody let their own opinions cause’ any major hiccups to the whole process! It was a super exhausting week (I’m sure for everyone), but I did actually really enjoy it. Sometimes jumping into a hectic situation is the best way to get to know people, and I definitely felt connections with some of the other students and their work through this process, so I really do hope to stay in touch with them after this (I’m not sure this would have happened had I not actually been here in person!) The show was very close to ready by the time I left on Friday evening, and it was fantastic to start to see everybody’s work situated together. My actual setup was very simple and only really took a few hours to organize so in the latter part of the week, once the rooms were ready to install work, I teamed up with John and Tara to help install some of the other online students work. Most of their specs were clear and organized making the task fairly straight forward.

It probably is also important to consider some of the specific challenges in the exhibition setup aswell. Overall, there was more basic preparation of the building to be done than I had expected… ie. trying to turn a life drawing classroom, and an IT room into a clean professional looking exhibition space with fairly limited resources. Most tools and cleaning supplies actually had to be bought, as there didn’t seem to be any basic equipment available to us at the college, partially due to health and safety regulations. This meant that each day anyone who was around was asked to chip in, causing some tension between students about who had bought what etc. We perhaps should have made a petty cash envelope at the beginning of the week which one person was responsible for, and could have played the role of banker, collecting all receipts and distributing funds as needed. This did not really happen, as I don’t think anyone had really planned for setup costs, so I fear there was a fairly in-equal distribution of money amongst different students, and the ones who weren’t there to help with the setup didn’t end up paying for anything. I also wonder if it would be possible to have a small budget assigned for these costs from the college for future shows. I know Andy covered some larger costs himself with the hope of being reimbursed for receipts later etc. but this does not seem like a fair solution, so hopefully this part of the process could be addressed in a better way next time.

There were also many discussions between students about the lack of external technicians to prep the rooms. I am personally not very familiar with this whole system, but other students told me that many colleges have technicians, build and paint walls, floors, cover windows etc. leaving the students to really just install their work. It did occur to me that the online students do pay the same fees as the face to face students but don’t use any of the college resources throughout the two years, ie computers, space in the building etc. so maybe technicians could prep the onliners spaces, as opposed to leaving it to the face to face students who are overwhelmed with their own projects and setups at this point in the course. Obviously, I am aware that there must be many different people and logistics involved in all these decisions, and it seems most likely that I do not understand all the ins and outs of the college system, so hopefully these comments are not seen as major criticisms, but rather as constructive possible solutions for future students and years to come.

Having said all of this, I do feel that overall some of the challenges we faced also forced us to come up with some creative solutions and to really come together as a team! I feel very lucky to have been able to arrange my life to be here for the week and to get involved with this really brilliant group of people! Thankyou everyone!

3W26 Ecoloops Website

Unfortunately the project size is too massive to work smoothly online, and needs to operate from a local computer (or ideally a kiosk in the future). However, it seemed important to have an informational website that people could visit if they wanted to find out more about the project, and to contact me. I needed to keep it very simple due to time constraints, but I wanted the user to get a little teaser of the imagery and animation involved, so I embedded an flv file onto the homepage. The user can also watch the 5 minute podcast (created in May) that explains the entire project in detail, and view some of the pages from the book, aswell as read a little synopsis of the project on the about page.

The site has just gone live… check it out at www.ecoloops.org.

Wow! I think that was my last major task! Now I’m pretty much all set to spend next week at Camberwell setting up the show! Phew!!!

3W26 User Testing & Final Project

I began to recompress all the flv files with sound, and add sound effects to the transitions in the fla file. I also began to user test the entire system. All sorts of strange little bugs appeared, so Rich (the programmer) and I spent much of the week on skype going back and forth trying to find and fix everything. User testing is truly tedious, and the file is pretty complex at this point, but fingers crossed we’ve caught all the bugs! Thanks Rich! So I think I now have a final version of the project ready for the show… just in time!

Click here to download the final interactive flash version of Ecoloops.

(Once its downloaded, unzip it and open up the file titled ‘ecoloops_final.swf’ in your flash player, and click ‘view’ - ‘full screen’. Be sure to keep the swf file and the folder titled movies inside the same folder, so that the swf can access the flv animation files.)

3W25 Sound

I spent this week creating all the music and sound for the project. Initially I had thought I would collaborate with a composer on this, but the right situation did not seem to come about, and I had secretly been keen to try this myself. I played piano when I was young and used to love writing little compositions, however, this was many years ago, so as I started out on this new element of the project everything felt rather intimidating. I talked to some different musicians about the best software to use, and everybody suggested garage band hands down. At first it seemed tedious, and I had a frustrating day at the beginning of the week, just feeling that it was too late in the game to be learning a new program in a completely new medium. However, the next day was much better, as I started to get the hang of the process. I am so very familiar with all the animation imagery that I found I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted each species to sound like, perhaps this is one of the advantages of composing your own music. By the middle of the week I was really starting to enjoy myself and was so excited to hear the pieces finally coming to life – sound changes everything! I created a 12 second sound loop for each species in a different key. I incorporated different elements of each of the species loops to make the sound for the zoom levels. Then I used the minor keys and some other effects to adjust the sound loops for the collapse animations. It has been a killer week as I’ve been composing non-stop, but I feel fairly good about the end result, and to be honest, I can’t quite believe I pulled this off! (FYI: There are tons of sound files, so I will wait to share them with you until they incorporated into the final piece next week!)

3W24 Artists Statement & Critical Analysis

I have spent most of this week writing the artists statement and a critical analysis of my intentions versus the outcomes of my entire project. It has been interesting to look back at the progression of my work, and to analyze this from a new constructive standpoint. I think the structure of this course has challenged me to push further than I might have done without it. It has also really helped me to focus my attention on a particular issue. Whilst it has been incredibly hard to juggle my work and personal life with this MA over the past two years, I do feel incredibly appreciative of the opportunity I have had to study, and explore these topics on another level. I feel like I have just begun to scratch the surface, and I can only hope that I will now be able to manifest this new direction in the next part of my career.

Click here to view my Artists Statement and Critical Analysis!

3W23 Ecoloops Book

I have spent all of this week making a book to accompany my project for the final show. The book is illustrated with rich visuals from the animations, and explains the entire project, with details on how everything fits together to represent an ecosystem. It will provide additional information about the actual interactive system. I also plan to use the book as a marketing tool when I start to build contacts this summer. I will insert a disk in the back of the book with the interactive flash system and the last five minute podcast on it to show and leave with potential developers, funders or exhibitors.

I have just sent the book off to be printed at blurb.com, which seems to be one of the most affordable and professional looking services out there for individual book printing. The only major disadvantage, of particular note to this project, is that they don’t do any environmentally friendly printing yet. Hopefully that will come in the very near future, as people begin to realize that it really is affordable and possible to do.

Here are some screen shots of a few pages from the book:

3W22 Final Exhibit Notes D

We have been having lots of discussions about the final show in the chat sessions. The face-2-face students at Camberwell have been doing a really brilliant job of getting everything organized. They have drawn up diagrams of the entire space, and assigned slots to all the students, along with researching plasma screens for rental, and organizing the building of plinths to support all the computers etc. I feel that it has proved to be quite hard to get fully involved from a distance, but I have offered to spend the setup week at Camberwell getting the spaces and exhibition organized with the other students. I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone, and really excited that it suddenly feels like everything is coming together in preperation for a really great show!

3W22 Collapse Movies

This week I have been focused on creating all the collapse movies for the system. When the system shifts into collapse mode, the last 12 seconds shows each species, or each level of zoom beginning to die. This requires both the background environment loops to become polluted and the front species loops to deteriorate, and stop reproducing.

I began with the environment loops. I did some searches online for toxic looking substances, which brought up some bizarre things, but nothing that particularly resonated. I then experimented with a bunch of different effects to try to make the environment loops look highly toxic. I had thought particles might work with some smoke on top, however, as I often find with the effects in after effects, I ended up resorting to making my own mini quicktime effects and duplicating and adjusting them to make it have just the strange kind of pattern I was imagining.

I then moved onto the species loops, each loop begins to die off and is incapable of reproducing… the monkillos have a baby with two heads, the siganas give birth to six dead skeletons, and the hummagones have two little birds that never manage to grow out of the egg… all rather gruesome and sad really! For the producer species, I felt it was important to have some sort of disease actually attack the plants aswell, so I made little tiny versions of themselves to attack their growth. All the species loops lose color as they die, and become more de-saturated and shriveled as the quicktimes play out, so that everything ends with a dull, grey, burnt quality.

Click here to see collapse loop quicktimes for all twelve species.

3W21 Online Colloquium

Yesterday we had the online colloquium to review the work of all the other students on the course. We all reviewed each others presentations before the chat session, and then had ten minutes to ask each person questions about their project. It was really inspiring to see everyone else’s ideas finally coming together, and it seems like there’s some really great work being done. There question and answer session seemed to be very productive, supportive and challenging all at the same time. It’s exciting to see how we have all learnt to discuss our work on a deeper level.

My work seemed to be well received, and some of the questions were really thought-provoking and helpful. Gary asked me if ‘there was any auto-biographical element hidden in the loops’, to which I replied, ‘I have realized that alot of my work before was about me being alone, and this work is about me being reconnected in some sense to the rest of the world, this is definately happening in my personal life is subtle ways right now!’ Jess asked, ‘Can the user zoom in to the final work and see the “animations” in detail which are shown at the beginning of your video (like the single bird only) or are the characters always included in the “whole” scenery?’ I told her that I did have plans for further levels of zoom to the system in the future. However, later on I found myself re-thinking more about her comment, and realized that this could also be accomplished on the website (or in the book), in an introduction to the system. This maybe a very useful detail for someone keen to learn more about the whole idea.

I had prepared a bunch of questions for other students which I’ve pasted some of below for documentation:

Birgitt: You mention materialization is important, have you considered framed or mounted sequences of images for galleries, in addition to the books? I love the juxtaposition of the two page in the books, and am wondering what may develop out of a triptich… or more images in a sequence?

Gary: The connection you made to the migrant, specifically in the Flusser quote added a new dimension to your work, that I had not fully picked up on previously. Perhaps, because I so personally relate to the experience of belonging to multiple places, or not belonging to anywhere depending how you see it, but I thought you pulled together the threads of your ideas in a really successful manner in this presentation!

Jessica: Super entertaining presentation! Great to see all your different ideas on the self connected together, seems to have really come a long way from before. I like the core internal 3d hub thing that you zoom in and out of, this seems like a very important connector. Not quite clear how the user controls the piece? I understand you take an infrared image of the user, but how do they navigate, it is by going in and out of the 3d hub? PS: Love the rewind at the end…. Brilliant touch!

Sean: I really enjoyed your thoughts on systems theory… especially as it is something I have been so interested in too… it is fascinating to see how differently we have approached a similar subject matter. You have truly incorporated collective thinking in your work, whereas my has not reached it’s potential in this area yet, so I have to say your ideas have really inspired me…thankyou!!!

John: I have to say I really admire your work, it is totally mesmerizing… you’ve probably thought of this already, but perhaps another possible future exploration could be projecting your work into a planetarium… a half dome, as this is such an interesting way to completely immerse the viewer in a 2d space….

Rajinder: Hey Deo, I found your work really fascinating…. It is like a truly interactive timelapse .. perhaps we could collaborate sometime and you could use your instruments to control some of the timelapse footage I’ve shot of plants growing…. It might feel like the music was making the plant grow? How cool would that be! What do you think?