BART Swings
Just a quick post on a set of pictures I came upon. Three swings were set up on the San Francisco BART railway, and someone documented other people using them. A great idea of site-specific design, where the swings were specifically set up on the train to maybe lighten to mood on train ride. BART Swings.
Sensatorium Presentation 2.0
After more testing of Sensatorium, and having other people try it out, I reached a few conclusions with my project. Overall, the video was pretty successful. I asked people what they thought after using it, and they thought it was cool and they had fun with it. They felt like they were actually controlling the device by touching the screen and tilting the player. For the most part. They noticed that sometimes the timing was off where something would happen before or after they touched it. Some thought it was just because of response time within the program. People were eager to start touching the screen and and do things right away, without any instruction to do so. I think I could also speed up some of the actions that take place, as people seemed to understand what to do with a quick glance of the stage. I would also change the amount of text there is, as people didn’t seem to read it all or even need to. I did have one person say that the text made them feel like they were truly interacting with it. He said I used encouraging language, such as, “Good work” and “You follow directions well,” to make it feel more real.
One section that seemed to confuse people was the grid of squares that they were told to touch when they appear. As soon as the green-outlined squares appeared, they tried to touch all of these really quick, until the first green square appeared, and realized what to do. When multiple squares came up, they touched one at a time, instead at the same time. Then there were the 6 squares the came up, which really confused some people. Some, however, tried to use one hand to touch them all.
A few people had some trouble following directions during the tilt the circle around the maze onto the black circle. Because they had just dragged the button to the black circle before, they tried to do the same thing, which created some timing problems. Some people also put down the player before the final scene shows the press the button to quit, as they felt the end was the text beforehand.
Most people were excited after using it, and thought it was cool. They were shocked when I told them it was just a video and they had no interaction with the scene, even if they may have had their doubts. I had a few occasions where they figured it out right away because they were too slow or not following directions. They really liked the idea and asked if something like that could really be created.
Here are a few quotes of things people said during and after use.
“This thing has touch screen? I had no idea.”
“So I wasn’t actually touching the buttons or moving it?”
“I was wondering why when I touched it, it was a little off.”
“I feel cheated. I feel duped. I thought I was good at that game.”
“I didn’t feel duped. I was too slow so I got it right away.”
4 Site-Specific Videos Response
The four videos on DUVAGA each talk about site-specific art, including installation and interactive installations. The first video of the large chunks of chalk by Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla was my favorite, as it reminds of using chalk as a kid on the sidewalk. What makes this project more intriguing is that the pieces of chalk are much larger than normal pieces of chalk – nearly three feet long. Normal people then used this chalk to write something on the ground. It was really interesting how the police and government officials stopped this work by taking the chalk and power-washing away the writing on the ground.
In the other videos, Mark Dion creates a sustainable environment around a fallen tree, as a way of preserving the trees ecology and the environment contained within the tree. He takes this massive fallen tree and brings it into a green house in the city. I also liked this project as it takes a very natural object and ecology and brings it into an urban environment. He tries to preserve life contained within a fallen tree.
The other videos, one of Alfredo Jaar’s flowers within a metal container, and Krzysztof Wodiczko’s video installation, were also pretty interesting. I’ve seen Wodiczko’s work before and think he is very creative, especially in this work with the wearable camera which then gets displayed on a monument. Each video portrays different types of site-specific art, from audience-created works with the chalk, to using natural objects in unnatural places, and using the surrounding buildings as a canvas.
