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 is Finished!
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I reached my goal for my SENSATORIUM project. The final piece is approximately 2 and a half minutes, and is on my Zune media player, as I wanted it to be. It goes through a series of steps/interactions telling the viewer to touch the screen and tilt the player to ‘interact’ with what is playing on the screen. I am pleased with the final result, and surprised with myself that the final product was identical to the initial concept. I enjoyed working on this project, and found it challenging to get the timing right, as well as quite time-consuming, and tedious. But it paid off in the end. While creating it, a friend thought I was actually controlling it while testing it on my computer. So the unfinished product even managed to fool someone. As I want other people to be able to use this, I’m posting links to download a vertical-based video for normal viewing on a computer, as well as the sideways video that is formatted for the Zune 30GB.
Download “SENSATORIUM” for Zune 30GB.
Download the viewable “SENSATORIUM” video.
Sensatorium update
A quick update on my non-interactive, interactive video. As you remember, my Site-Specific Design project is an animation that plays on my Zune media player that tells the user the player has motion and touch sensing capabilities. I’ve finished the first part of the video, the touch-screen section, which has a few simple buttons, and a short game the user ‘plays’. The second part of the video is a motion sensing section, which tells the user to tilt the player a certain direction to make something ‘fall’ or ‘move’ on the screen. I have already had an experience with the piece where someone thought I was actually controlling what was appearing on the screen just by touching it. While testing the animation on my computer, I was touch the screen when it told me to to test the timing for the buttons. My friend was sitting next to me and was watching me, and gasped and asked, “Are you doing that? What’s going on?” I didn’t know what the project was, so he believed I was actually controlling it with touch. I told what was happening, and he said, “So it’s like a prank or something?”
I told him that’s exactly what it is. So far the project has succeeded.
Creating a non-interactive piece of interactive art
Being a student in EMAD, I’m very interested in creating art in the digital realm, from visual, print art, to website and graphic design. That all started when I first realized the amount of diverse creation tools available for computers nearly five years ago. After experimentation with these many tools, and finding my area of interest, I’ve moved towards the creation of digital and physical interactive art. As an artist, and designer, it’s important for me in my work that the viewer can feel a part of it. For me, art is sometimes most interesting when I can interact with it, which makes me feel like I’m directly connecting with the piece.
Site-specific art has a wide range of possibilities, in both form and presentation. It can be large installations in a public space, or created for small electronic devices, like cell phones, or music players. I liked this idea of creating a media player based piece of art and decided on using my Microsoft Zune player. This project plays off the idea of interactive art by creating something that presents itself as interactive, but it reality, the user has no say in what happens.
My thought is to create an animation that acts as if the player has sensor capabilities. This animation has some object, like a square or something else on the screen, that tells the user to turn player up side down, or any other certain direction. It basically tells to user to do things the player can’t actually do, while playing a video that follows the directions it is giving. It becomes an interactive piece without actually being interactive.
Obviously, with this idea, timing comes in to play, as well as the user following directions on the screen. This gives the appearance that the user is actually controlling what is on the screen. So, I’m going to have to do some testing and see approximately how long it would take for people to follow the given instructions. I would like to use audio to give instructions too, as well having the user “alter” the sound.
It is necessary for this project to be on a hand held media player because of the turning and interaction involved with the video giving instructions. A mobile device allows users to more rapidly respond to the directions given, thus making the project more successful.
