The final show

So our final presentation, exhibition and critique has come and gone. Similar to last semester, we were to select either Sound Building or Urban Screen to present on a space of wall in and around the studios. In addition, we were also to collate documentation pages of all three of the studio projects (including the week long 'Ideas, Concepts and Visualizations.'

I began with the journal pages as an opportunity to revisit the previous projects before deciding for concrete which one I wanted to present. I felt that I had explored my Sound Building brief quite thoroughly, even with a further reflection a few weeks later as part of one of the idea generation activites. I didn't feel there was a lot more I could get out of this brief without redesigning and rebuilding the instrument according to some of the reflective ideas I brainstormed but this didn't fit into the short space of time in preparation for the presentation.

When revisiting the short Ideas, Concepts and Visualisations Brief, I went back and completed the activities which I had missed while I was away sick that week. The first one was called "What’s an Idea? What’s a concepts and where do I get one?" which was focused on using the process of creating art as both subject matter and concept as means of generating ideas. I chose from Richard Serra's verb list "to tighten" and explored it by use of photography, as shown below (left). An extract from my analysis of this activity is viewable by clicking on the image.

The second activity was exploring the generation of ideas through a matrix and 'cross pollinating' platonic solids to create new and hybrid forms. As this activity was originally intended for a group of three, I scaled back the 6x6 matrix to a simpler 3x3. The result was the image above (right) and my analysis of the activity is viewable by clicking on it.

Finally, I returned to the activity which I had started, where we had interviewed each others precious objects with no knowledge of them and then based on common ideas that arose, we were to develop a visual signifier for our own object. I didn't complete this because I was completely stuck for ideas but after completing the other two activities, the ideas came more easily. Final result is as below with more detailed analysis viewable by clicking the image.

So that left Urban Screens as the one to present. I had been hoping to successfully complete the programming as we had intended it to be but was again constrained by the lack of time. So instead I made a dummy version of how it was supposed to look with preloaded headlines, Tweets and Flickr images but using content which the program had generated over our trials. By finishing up the journal and documentation work for this project, I was able to look over my initial research again to generate some new ideas as to how it could be improved.

Our current visual aesthetic of the screen output was, as we had established from trials and presentation, pretty static overall so not very eye catching. It was constrained to a very geometric format as we had tried to stick very closely to our concept, something the viewer would only be able to take in if they stopped to look at it. If I was to develop it, I would find perhaps a more abstract way to visually represent the 'data' (i.e. text sources) to make it more dynamic and eye catching, so the viewer would WANT to stop and look at it, and then take in the meaning.

As we were no longer retrained to the A1 poster format for presentation, I chose to present my project in several simple glass frames to give the impression of several screens on the wall. My main two 'screens' of content I literally added the image of a screen frame around it while I used invididual frames to highlight and simply explain visually how the programming worked.

I expanded upon the visual imagery of the circuit board which I have been using throughout by mimicing the connections of a circuit board between the frames. These visually worked very successfully and I feel helped unify the individual frames and convey one of the key concepts of the project, that is, the global connection made possible by technological advancements. (Click on image for other documentation photos from this project).

Overall, I felt it all came together well but was taking it off the wall again before I knew it. I realised later that the space of wall where I had set up my exhibition was the exact same spot of wall I had used in the very first activity this year, the social mapping. It was a nice connection to make and even in the space of a year I feel we have come so far from programming the Lego NXT robots. The Urban Screens project served also as an introduction into year 2 with the logistical challenges of sourcing outside assistance and I am pleased we managed to make it work. This too was a reflection of one of the years' initial activities where we were out on the streets of the Auckland CBD in the situational shuffle.

I feel more confident now in moving to bigger projects outside of the direct university sphere and I look forward to continue to build on what we have learn so far this year and take on the challenges of Year 2.

Urban screening

Tuesday we once again arrived at Dick Smith and were left on our own to go ahead and set up and run our project. Even though it resulted from a technical glitch that we couldn't have our content on all the screens, it was interesting to have for comparisons sake to have the three variations of content displaying simultaneously.

One third of the the screens had the usual content of music videos from C4 TV, a third of them were completely blank and the other third was displaying our content. This gave us a good indication of whether customers were interesting in the screens as a product for purchase or whether they were watching the content.

We were interested to find that regardless of the content, it was actually the screens themselves people were more interested in, rather than the content (or lack there of) which seems almost contradictory to the purpose of the screen. (One man seemed particularly interested by my laptop sitting in amongst the screens.)

Despite it being during their rush hour (12:30-2:00), there seemed to be few customers in the store and not many of them interested in the screens in the first place. Regardless, the RSS content happily went and it was the videos which kept causing the program to crash.

The original idea of the screen in Dick Smith appeals for the mesmerizing nature of the mirrored content filling ones field of vision completely. Once our content was up there, we realized it wasn't enough to simply have the content displayed on multiple screens but the reason the music videos worked so successfully was because they were filled with movement and energy, where ours was mostly static. If the refresh rate on the RSS had been faster it would've possibly improved this but we were limited by the speed of the network, despite the fact that it was programmed to refresh every 4 seconds.

We managed to get video documentation observing people interacting with the screens and screen shots every 4 seconds which, when played in sequence, is also white interesting as it provides footage also from the webcam point of view.

After one last attempt to get the Flickr RSS element of the programming integrated and working, the slow progress meant that I was unable to have it done in time for presentation so on Thursday we went ahead regardless. Despite also the fact that I was suffering from stomach wrenching pains and had to curl into the foetal position halfway through, I feel it went quite well. Once again the program went on happily with only the video crashing.

Discussion with Kim and Charles during presentation prompted us to consider things such as the nature of the content, which brought us back to the ideas we had during our first city exploration in the four different purposes of the screens (advertising, entertainment, surveillance, informative). We realised that in it's current state, ours reflected only two of these (informative and surveillance) which then also presented a nice parallel in that the other third of the screens were still displaying the music videos (entertainment).

If we were to keep developing our project with this in mind, as well as integration of the Flickr images, it could be interesting to integrate also videos from YouTube RSS (using the same keyword which triggers the Twitter and Flickr feed) which could fulfil this entertainment purpose. The problem with this would be overloading the limits of the program which as we discovered, we have already pushed when integrating two videos and the live webcam.

I wouldn't want to integrate any elements of advertising but rather based on our observations the screens are in fact, advertising themselves in this context as a product available to purchase. This was an idea we tried to reflect in our concept as the screens themselves were available for the viewer to purchase so in that, the content was 'available' to the viewer; everything in the virtual public sphere is readily accessible with the screen as a window or vessel. The screen as a consumable product was another idea they prompted us to discuss and explore.

They also asked us to talk about the challenges we encountered during the project which were mostly logistical and technological; Organizing the use of the location and writing the program to make it do what we wanted it to demanded that we be flexible in adapting our ideas and concept. Similarly, other things out of our control also came into play, such as the limitations of the program and the network.

In preperation for exhibition week, I hope to be able to finally integrate the Flickr feed and perhaps alter the visual aesthetic of it, especially as it will be exhibited in a different context. In the end, I enjoyed some of the beautifully random interplay that came from the random selection of words and Tweets, which is why I am also eager to see it bring up a similarly related (but possibly unrelated!) image. The passive interaction from the global public sphere is what drives our content and this part of it, I am pleased with as it is unexpected. We are merely providing the window to it through the vessel that is the screen.

On Air in 3, 2, 1...

Friday afternoon and we got our first chance to try our content out on the screens at Dick Smith Electronics on Wyndam Street in the City. After a few minor issues, we can get our content displayed on eight of the display screens, about 1/4-1/3 of all their screens. We has issues arrise around the inability of the signal from the laptop to travel into the splitter which then daisy chains into another splitter and 8 screens. This is unfortunate but we could find no way to make it work otherwise. Regardless, it still has a good effect.

We are able to place the laptop among the screens so at least that is one more screen present and also the inbuilt webcam is able to directly record the viewer as they engage with an respond to it. We have the program set up to take a screen shot every few seconds which will make for interesting documentation. An example is shown below from our trial on Friday. The news headlines and Tweets shown in this example are from prerecorded feed as opposed to live.

Finishing up the last bits of the programming in time for our actual run tomorrow, I am disappointed to say that I have been unsuccessful in combining the various elements of the content into a single program. I have used quite a roundabout way to stop the live RSS feed from making the videos and and webcam lag but was unable to amalgamate the program to incorporate the Flickr Feed. This is particularly disappointing as that particular piece of code was tricky but I managed to make it work by itself. The problem arose with incompatibility between the two programs in use of different versions of XML libraries and my inability to rewrite one to the other. I came very close so there still is the potential to fix it up in time for presentation to the class or exhibition week which I will definitely aim to do.

So on the eve of our real run, I have let the RSS real time feed run for a while and some of the results have been interesting in terms of the relationship in the news headline and the Tweet pulled only by relevance of randomly selected keyword:

'Fake' passport seller to stand trial
23:30:08
@JosephJonasFans hey ! i just got a news that i don't know if it is true ? nd i just wanna know if it is true !! i know u can answer me !

Plunket distressed by RNZ decision
Plunket
@mcquillanator Rubbish. Once I realised it wasn't Plunket the organisation but the person, it was sweet! Haha
23:32:43

Hit-and-run driver may be showing nerves, say police
say
Just wanted to say that I love KTU and @paulcubbybryant is amazing!! http://myloc.me/164dN
23:35:18

NZ potter Dame Doreen Blumhardt dies
dies
RT @Bristolnews: Bristol woman dies after being hit by car on zebra crossing: http://bit.ly/xV37H Zebra outside Orpheus, Henleaze.
23:37:52

Court upholds five's P convictions
five's
Counting crows? One's bad, Two's luck, Three's health, Four's wealth, Five's sickness, Six is death.
23:40:27

'Ignorance' behind Nazi Facebook photos - council
Facebook
New facebook page http://bit.ly/2iJG8y
23:43:02

Morrison shapes up for action movie
Morrison
@empiremagazine RT On the subject of 24, did you know that James Morrison, aka Bill Buchanan, runs a yoga class in LA? - Amazing fact!
23:45:36


Man threw daughter, killed her, court hears
hears
is looking for around 4hrs a week part-time work in London. If anyone hears of anything let me know
23:48:11

Search for missing trampers on hold
Search
gmn cara searchnya? lah wong g ada kotak search!
23:50:45

Inmate murder accused in court
murder
did they conveniently avoid Omprakash ? @rkartha: How the Muthoot murder has hit the Trivandrum airport development http://bit.ly/4ighTD
23:53:20

New Plymouth Airport wins best regional
regional
For any railfan followers I may have: I'm taking Amtrak Northeast Regional train 95 from Philadelphia to Williamsburg. 12:03p EDT departure.
23:55:58

Call to TVNZ weatherman as friend only - therapist
weatherman
Why cant the weatherman not come down on his wee pony and tell me its gonna start pishin down before i walk to asda?
23:58:33

Climate scientist oblivious to media policy before sacking
in
Common word was filtered
close
What's the current #webos version for the #Palm #Pre in Germany? Is it 1.13 ? Thanks for the help in advance!
0:1:07

Depending on the keyword chosen, sometimes the headline and the Tweet are directly related, as with the headline "Morrison shapes up for action movie" where Morrison was selected as the keyword. Other times, the two are completely unrelated as with the headline "Man threw daughter, killed her, court hears" which then pulled the Tweet: "...looking for around 4hrs a week part-time work in London. If anyone hears of anything let me know" by keyword of 'hears.' I do not see this as a disadvantage or fault of the program but rather sits within our concept around the technologies of the virtual public space, where often when searching for something, you find something completely different.

My favourite of the ones above is quite possible the headline "Court upholds five's P convictions" which then became "Counting crows? One's bad, Two's luck, Three's health, Four's wealth, Five's sickness, Six is death" by keyword of "five's". Though not directly related, it seems almost ironic and yet poetic.

So though I am still not feeling entirely prepared for tomorrow, we're going to go in with what we have and make the most of it. The program is far from refined but I still feel somewhat pleased with what we have been able to achieve so far.

NullPointerException

The last week or so has been spent focusing on putting together the programming for pulling and displaying our content as well as the logistics of getting permission for use of said content as well as the use of the location and screens. Last week we visited electronics stores and spoke to the managers and passed on a hard copy of our project proposal. At James advice, we have been attempting to follow these up with phone calls, emails and visits in person and finally this morning we have gotten the go ahead from the area manager.

We have also been soldiering on with out programming so once our content is ready, it will be easy to adapt it to the premises and their setup. It has been interesting to see our concept develop seemingly naturally as we have begun programming. After our experiences learning Java (i.e. which we all found extremely challenging), it was to be feared as possibly the most complicated part. I have however found that I have gotten to the point in my understanding where I can pull at my knowledge from both programming papers (Processing and Java) and combined with common sense and helpful resources (and the indispensable aid of Kim) has been sufficient to work out and achieve the outcomes we set out to create.

My absolute moment of joy came at about 11pm on Monday night where, after about a week of searching, experimenting, trial and error, I finally managed to work the Flickr API to display and image on the screen. This was configured to search by tag and creative commons so it will relate to the content pulled from news headline feeds and Twitter, while ensure also that we do not breach copyright restrictions.( Images are licensed under 'BY' which require attribution only so from here it is a matter of displating also the username of the creator of the image.) It was the point where I realised that I have begun to enjoy programming the same way I enjoyed maths in that is it something really quite challenging and requires careful and precise calculations, but when that successful outcome is achieved, it is absolutely rewarding.

We have at this point about four seperate programs to perform all the functions which generate the various aspects of our content, including:

- Generating and placing in pre-recorded content,
- Reading, displaying and saving footage from a live webcam feed
- Pulling a keyword from the news headline to feed into the twitter feed and Flickr search.

Now, this is where we are starting to have problems with integrating the different parts of the code so they don't interfere with each other. My concern also is with the demands of the program on the computer once all the elements are integrated as already with two videos, the live webcam feed and the rss feeds has caused it to crash.

As it is visually coming together, it is exciting to see how the elements are begin visually integrated and imagining how it will look and the effect it will have when in context. As outlined above, we are beginning to have an idea of the meaning it will convey. At this point, our intended effect on the viewer is to make them stop and engage with the screens and the content. It could be interesting also to observe how viewers interact with the screens when the usual content is on and compare the effect as ultimately, with this project we are trying to create a conversation between the space, the screen, the content, the passive contributor and the viewer.

Back in the streets of the CBD

Since presenting our concept last week and establishing our fundamental concept and logistical possibilities, this proved to be a good base on which to plan our visual aesthetic. At this point we have chosen to focus on the electronics store as our location and have begun seeking permission from such locations.

The screens in these locations display identical content on all the screens visual concepts have been prepared for this sort of set up but also in the case where we are able to display different aspects of our content on different screens, as shown in the image below.

It also shows two different potential treatments of the content. The image to the left reflects the traditional form of media formerly used to inform the public sphere of important societal issues and concerns. With the technological expansion, many if not most newspapers have had to reinvent themselves in a digital medium to stay in business. The scrunched nature of the newspaper reflects that for many newpaper business, the printed word has become uneconomical to maintain and is slowly becoming obsolete. This reflects one of the impacts of the digital age.

The layout, which reflects the newpaper style, displays content from news headlines and / or Twitter feeds, periodically updated and refreshed.

The second possible treatment came by realization that the multiple screens in a space was reminiscent of security systems where multiple areas could be surveyed at once. This idea prompted the idea of using several webcam feeds of the surrounding area in and outside the store to tap into the idea that this virtual space is still interlinked with the awareness of the physical space we occupy, both in immediate and wider surrounding area.

This design more successfully reflects the technological aspect of our concept and if we are restricted to the same content on all the screens, it can be adapted to suit this layout also by repetition of the layout shown below.

This combines the same elements of content with the same visual aesthetic, possibly also more successful as it shows a clear link to the idea that technologies have allowed us to be globally interactive. We have already begun to try composing this in Processing and bringing in feeds. We have enquired not just at potential locations but have also contacted Flickr, NZ Herald and Twitter to ensure we follow all requirements to avoid breaching any copyright restrictions on displaying content accessed through feeds.

With time starting to run short, we need to have this up and running on site next week but the wheels have been put into motion.

Delving futher into the space

a

To work on padding out our concept, we narrowed our options down to four possible locations and expanded on the possibilities of these in terms of the meaning behind the screen, the location and the impact the context would have on the content of our screen.

The "outdoor arena" which I discussed in my previous post presented itself as a setting which, like a screen, can offer an escapism from your immediate surroundings, in this case, a chance to stop, slow down and sit down away from the bustle of the city. The screen in this context is reminiscent of the traditional domestic ad private use of the screen in the home where everyone would escape the outside world to sit around the TV. In this sort of situation, our content would bring the notion of the virtual public sphere into the pysical, showing the viewer that while they were in this physical setting, it would be showing the wider physical world changing which we can access through the screen through the expansion of technology. We have however had to write off this idea as the logistics in getting a screen and powering it outdoors would be beyond budget, as well as risks with the weather.

The screen in the shopping mall too had to be written off as it's predominant focus is for advertising which would put an entirely different meaning to our content, as well as the fact that the nature of it's location is that it is only glimpsed for a few moments by passing people and would be difficult to hold their attention.

The two ideas we are focusing on at the moment are The Link Bus and The Electronics Store. Again, as outlined in the previous post, the Link Bus already contains existing screens to provide a diversion from the everyday mundane activity of the commute. The public space is only accessible by paying a fare and the passengers which occupy the space often facilitate little interaction, focusing instead on the screen. The disengagement experienced with the immediate physical space is substituted with the engagement of the virtual world displayed on the screen, that is the virtual public sphere. The notion of the bus and transport enable easy access for the commuter to the wider public sphere, the same way that technology has integrated into our lives to enable easy access to communicate with the wider world around us which we may not otherwise easily be able to physically access. This is relfected in our content and runs parallel to the existing content on the screens which display information about the businesses and services offered near the bus route.

Where this one of our strongest ideas so far, it carries a lot of potential logistical problems which we will look into before writing it off completely. Otherwise, we have also identified electronic stores as another potential location. These store often have entire wall displays of television screens displaying the identical content, often for entertainment such as music videos. The effect is that the viewer is confronted with these screens, filling their entire field of vision in what is almost a hypnotic effect. This quite literally represents the presence of screens in our everyday life but on a scale which is unignorable; one may think that it is an exaggerated example but just walking down Queen Street, the viewer encounters probably the same amount of screens. The content also raises the idea that where it is there for the customers entertainment, it is at the same time displaying and advertising the product itself and keeping the customer in the store longer. While the customer watches the screens, they too are also being watched on the store's surveillance system.

The setting also literally places the viewer in amongst the technological advancements which has resulted in the expansion of the public sphere into the virtual. The main kinds of people who go into electronic stores are the younger generation who have grown up with the technology, and the adult population who has seen the exponential growth of the technology. The product appeal to our 'want' instincts: we WANT the latest and the newest gadgets, we WANT to be in touch and keep up to date, we DON'T WANT to be left behind. By having the latest, we are convinced we are in touch with the expanding world. Despite their high price tags, we often sacrafice to have them, or just go inside the store to have a look around at the things we want, even if we know we can't have them.

Logistically this is the most feasible idea as we would be dealing with more directly with the people involved in their operation and location and we have several options with the city area.

Presenting these ideas to the class on Wednesday, I realised we broke the rule of presentations by placing far too much words and content on the slides (which are viewable by the clickable links above) which makes the presentation less successful as the audience is conflicted by trying to focus on the exessive content on screen and the presenters speaking. I also realised as soon as we got up there that we had not yet put any though into the visual aesthetic of the content. We had focused on the concept, the locations, the logistics, how to pull the content together but I had only very quickly and crudely thrown together a vague visual representation of our intended content. This was quickly called up during presentation and so our next phase is to plan how we will visually present our content in a way which will unify our concept, screen, location and content into a coheive whiole. I see this as an opportunity too to pull at my design skills which I haven't used much this year.

Next step too is to put the wheels of the logistics in motions by writing up letters outlining our intention and requesting permission from both locations and potential rescources (such as news websites, Flickr, Twitter etc.) to ensure we don't encounter problems around copyright. This way, once our concept and visuals are soundly established and we get the go ahead from lecturers, we will be ready!

Link to the world

We once again take to the streets of Auckland City, this time looking for what has so integrated ourselves into our public spaces that we hardly notice them. When you actually begin to look, you find screens everywhere, removed a recontextualized from the traditional domestic setting, sitting around with the family. Once we began to think about it, we notice four predominant purposes and uses for these screens: providing information, entertainment, advertising and surveillance.

And in fact screens are often used as a form of "Out of Home Advertising", which encompasses other forms of media such as billboards, have proved to be a much more effective at providing instant impact and appeal, in particular to people and consumers on the go. It is a highly visible medium but tends to appeal more to people through engagement rather than intrusion such as other traditional forms of advertising and, based on the context, is tailored to maximize communication with target audiences.

Though screens in urban spaces aren't necessarily always purely for advertising, it is important to remember that someone put the screen there to get something out of it. Many retail stores down Queen Street have screens with what would be classified as entertainment for the shopper but in each store, the content of the entertainment is relevant to the 'theme' of the shop (i.e. content of outdoor activities in sports equipment stores, pop music videos in clothing stores targeted at teens) and has the underlying purpose of keeping that shopper in the store longer which increases the chance that they will purchase more. Venues such as bars often screen big events (often sports) to create a communal, social space to bring together people of common interests, and if they are having a good time, they will stay longer and buy more drinks. So even when screens seem to be for entertainment, it can still act as a very subtle advertisement for the location itself.

Though we aren't focusing for this project on urban screens purely as a form of advertising, the concepts of contextualization are important. The other important aspect is that of the public space. Where the public sphere used to be a literal physical space for coming together to discuss important issues, we have chosen to take this idea of the virtual public sphere which has emerged through the internet; the virtual world has become the place where anyone can discuss their opinions and thoughts on important issues to facilitate change.

We are wanting to make this connection between the virtual and physical public sphere through the idea that despite what physical space you are occupying, the virtual public sphere enables to you be connected to what is happening in other physical spaces around the world. Our basic concept at the moment is based on periodic photographs taken of a space to show how it changes and what happens throughout the course of the day. When each photograph is taken, a program will pull RSS feed from a recent newspaper headline (traditional informative media), occurring as close as possible to the time the photo was taken, and take a key word from the headline which will then further pull from other RSS feeds from sources such as Flickr (images), Tweets (comments) and Blogs (opinions). This combination of media will represent the ways in which we process, understand and experience events, unlimited by physical distance to interact. It is the idea that we can almost be everywhere in the world at the same time.

Ultimately, the content and conceptual meaning will be impacted by the context in which we choose to use our screen. Possible locations (with logistal complications aside) for this are parks or public transport.

Public open spaces within the city can tap into that idea of the traditional domestic use of a television as a place to stop and sit down and engage with the content as these parks within the city offer that chance to escape from the fast paced rush of the city to sit down and engage with a different setting and atmosphere. Interestingly enough, we also noticed the large open space outside the shopping mall is overlooked by the upstairs food court where diners sit looking out the window at this open space with the same sort of fixation as one would a television screen but rather the physical space outdoors has become the content.

Public transport raises ideas around public sphere within the context of public transport; there is a borderline of the public space as you have to pay a fare to access it and once on it, you often don't engage with those around you. Busses such as The Link are equipped with screens which provide all four types of content which we have identified (advertisments, new, weather and location information, surveillance footage and snippets of movies) and the context creates the perfect situation for engagement as people often have nothing to do during such commutes, giving them something to focus on. At the same time, the idea of transport and movement links to the idea of events happening in the world around you, as though you were moving around the world.

The next step now is to focus more in fusing the concept with what is logistically possible in preperation presentation of concepts next week.