Research

Following on from my last post (Initial Ideas) I decided to do a bit of research into Camille Utterback’s installation, you can view the description and video here.
As participants walk through the plaza they locate their brightly colored silhouette in the projection above. Pedestrian trajectories are inscribed to the background of the piece, while web-like patterns emanate from clusters of people.
Using real time motion capture, people walk around the San Jose City Plaza and see a visual representation of them on the screen.

This project has been a massive inspiration for my idea, I feel that the visuals on the big screen look great and I feel it works really well as a social space. I would like to do something like this, but on a much smaller scale. This project also is a good reference for my point, as the final image isn’t developed by the artist, but the audience interacting with the art produce the visuals, and therefore the artist is only a moderator to what can be done.

I found another interactive wall made by the Adobe Creative Suite team when they were finding a way to promote their CS3 package.

I think this is a good idea to promote a product, because people have fun and therefore don’t realise that they’re being sold something. Going back to my point, I think the idea is great, however most of the visuals are created already, and even though they seem to have a large variety of different animations, all the viewer does is walk past the wall to animate it. I could do something like this, again on a much smaller scale. The project here uses an Infered Camera to track were people walk, I don’t have access to this sort of camera, and therefore would have to find a way on MAX/MSP to track the audience.

Initial Ideas

For my Negotiated Project I wanted to carry on from my essay which was titled: How are the Roles of Artists and Audiences Evolving from Traditional Art to Interactive Art?
Obviously I the brief is very broad, and so is the essay so I have a few ideas which I might develop. I really like the idea of developing an installation which will change depending on what the viewers do. A social space would be ideal for this project.

The final points I made on my essay were:

Artists have gone from being the main creators of the artwork where audiences view and do nothing else, to artists becoming moderators of art and set rules for audiences and therefore create different results depending on what the users do.
Something to create something which follows my last point of the essay would be ideal. There are a lot of examples which has been done in the past where the interactivity is very strong. For example Camille Utterback created an artwork in 2007 called Ubundance which I will go into more in the research section. This was basically a social space where the movement of the audience would change the image projected on the large screen.

Brief

This project requires you to set a critical inquiry and to provide critically informed, culturally aware and creative response in the form of a practical interactive media project.

Projects are to be negotiated with your tutor(s) through an initial proposal written up and presented online as part of your website. This is in contribution to the development of your professional practice and your final year project. It is essential that the development and production of the project is informed by critical debate underway in seminars and lectures. The proposal must include description of the topic, evidence of relevant research, critical references (bibliography, netography, filmography, etc), illustrations, diagrams, technical solutions and a realistic production timetable. This proposal sets out aims and objectives against which the project will be assessed.

You are required to produce and keep updating online workbook/blog (that works as a traditional ‘workbook’) that document your individual research and development of idea for the practical project. The document needs to include terms of reference (critical sources) relevant to your area of research, any ideas or examples that may support your project. It needs to be included on your website and will be assessed as part of your project.
Group seminars, individual tutorials (crits) and workshops will be run to facilitate development of your practical project (see timetable for details). You should attend all timetabled sessions and be ready to present your work in progress (ideally online) for discussion at any time. During group seminars and individual tutorials you will be set specific sub-tasks, staff/student expectations will be negotiated; your progress will be monitored and your work critiqued. Failure to participate in the tutorial process will severely limit your chances of success.