We experimented with the audio we recorded from the FCM Cafe and we got these results.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Research & Analysis
From the consultation session we had during our afternoon class (2 to 6pm). Our group re-presented it is work to Mr. Lim Kok Yoong, Mr. Erwin and Mr. Badrolhisham to clarify its intention and purpose and to see wither it will be executive or not.
We came up with a conclusion to divide our idea into two individual parts and try to focus on the first part which we proposed it as “transforming sound to visuals in a way which makes the user feels more comfortable and it will give them new expression during this real-time interactive installation.
Hence we started researching on how to transfer sound to visuals. Many software are available such as Acoustica , Garageband, sonar cubase and etc. But we wanted software which is capable to and is open for the user to customize the visuals such as “Winamp”, a program which is free customizable media player that plays mp3 and other audio files, syncs iPod, subscribes to Podcasts and etc.
Winamp plug-in has a very professional and customizable plug-in called “Milkdrop”. The latets version which we are planning to use is 2.1. The plug-in is created by Ryan Geiss (copyright (c) 2001-2009 from the Nullsoft, Inc.
To make sure about the results we spend a day recording sounds from the FCM Café during the lunch time which it’s the most crowded time of the Café, and another recording session during the afternoon time which mostly classes are over and the café would supposedly have few customers/students.
Overall 48 minutes and 45 seconds sound was recorded during this session.
From the knowledge we obtain during our alpha and beta year studies and with the support of the researches we made through the internet about shapes, colors and environment under the title of comfy and comfortable, we came of up with a conclusion on how to design and manipulate our visualization.
Blue, Green, white, gray and silver are the best choices of colors to convince comfiness. But about the shapes we understood that it is basically related to the alignments.
Thus we started experimenting and playing with the software to create visuals to elaborate our concept and idea development.
By the visuals we created from the FCM café using the ambience sound and the questioner made. We created our survey to send to our classmates and people interested on participating.
Comfort zone
Comfort zones are directly related to our dreams or goals, which is associated with self-fulfilling prophecy. In order to grow and change, we must first be discontent with our current comfort zone. To change to different life style, establishing a business, or succeeding at a challenging project, we must realize that all meaningful and lasting changes occur first in daydreaming (fantasizing) and then they work their way into reality. If we clearly and vividly imagine ourselves being and having the things we truly want, we will create a new picture of ourselves. The old comfort zone, in time, will be unacceptable and we will find ways to acquire the new.
Color Psychology
Colour symbolism is the use of colour to represent traditional cultural, or religious ideas, concepts, or feelings or to evoke physical reactions. Choosing colours based on symbolism or colour meanings can apply to everything from clothing to wall paint to home furnishings. In desktop publishing and design choosing colour based on colour meanings applies to print and electronic projects from logos to Web site backgrounds.,
Colours are more than a combination of red and blue or yellow and black. They are non-verbal communication. Colours have symbolism and colour meanings that go beyond ink.
Black
Black is the colour of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission to God. Some fashion experts say a woman wearing black implies submission to men. Black outfits can also be overpowering, or make the wearer seem aloof or evil. Villains, such as Dracula, often wear black.
White
Brides wear white to symbolize innocence and purity. White reflects light and is considered a summer colour. White is popular in decorating and in fashion because it is light, neutral, and goes with everything. However, white shows dirt and is therefore more difficult to keep clean than other colours. Doctors and nurses wear white to imply sterility.
Red
The most emotionally intense colour, red stimulates a faster heartbeat and breathing. It is also the colour of love. Red clothing gets noticed and makes the wearer appear heavier. Since it is an extreme colour, red clothing might not help people in negotiations or confrontations. Red cars are popular targets for thieves. In decorating, red is usually used as an accent. Decorators say that red furniture should be perfect since it will attract attention. The most romantic colour, pink, is more tranquilizing. Sports teams sometimes paint the locker rooms used by opposing teams bright pink so their opponents will lose energy.
Blue
The colour of the sky and the ocean, blue is one of the most popular colours. It causes the opposite reaction as red. Peaceful, tranquil blue causes the body to produce calming chemicals, so it is often used in bedrooms. Blue can also be cold and depressing. Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to job interviews because it symbolizes loyalty. People are more productive in blue rooms. Studies show weightlifters are able to handle heavier weights in blue gyms.
Green
Currently the most popular decorating colour, green symbolizes nature. It is the easiest colour on the eye and can improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing colour. People waiting to appear on TV sit in "green rooms" to relax. Hospitals often use green because it relaxes patients. Brides in the Middle Ages wore green to symbolize fertility. Dark green is masculine, conservative, and implies wealth. However, seamstresses often refuse to use green thread on the eve of a fashion show for fear it will bring bad luck.
Yellow
Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic colour, people lose their tempers more often in yellow rooms, and babies will cry more. It is the most difficult colour for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Yellow enhances concentration, hence its use for legal pads. It also speeds metabolism.
Purple
The colour of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.
Brown
Solid, reliable brown is the colour of earth and is abundant in nature. Light brown implies genuineness while dark brown is similar to wood or leather. Brown can also be sad and wistful. Men are more apt to say brown is one of their favourite colours.
Shapes and emotions
Assigning emotions to shapes is nothing new. In experiments as early as the 1940s, individuals have been found to consistently apply the same emotions to shapes in schematic cartoons: "angry" triangles and "loving" circles. But only one study had attempted to see if people consistently assigned emotions to static shapes based on the appearance of dynamic forces.
In that study, participants viewing two slashes ( / / ) tended to see the slash leaning towards the other as "bossy," while the one leaning away was "submissive." In 2005, Irena Pavlova, Arseny Sokolov, and Alexander Sokolov made the first study of emotions and dynamics in single shapes: they showed participants triangles, ovals, and lines in a variety of orientations, and asked them to rate the figures for the emotions they conveyed.
The triangle balanced on its point (Number 1 in the above figure) or lying on its side was viewed as the most stable, and similarly, the oval balanced on either its end or its side was seen as stable as well. Instability correlated significantly in these figures with perceived suffering and fear.
For the triangle, the oval, and the line, there was a significant negative correlation between joy and the degree of rotation from vertical: the more vertical, the more joyous the figure appeared. This correlation held for anger as well, but only in the case of the oval and the line.
Pavlova and her colleagues argue that the implied imbalance in the pictures of static objects is what leads individuals to attribute emotion to them. They note as well that neural imaging of patients with Asperger Syndrome shows that the parieto-frontal circuits in these individuals are activated differently compared to normal individuals. Since one symptom of Asperger Syndrome is an inability to detect emotional states of others, the team suggests that there is a direct link between perception of the physical orientation of an object and perception of emotional states.
This finding has implications for the field of art as well. If certain shapes are indeed associated with emotions, then this may partially explain the appeal of abstract art. Rather than being a seemingly random collection of shapes, abstract art may evoke common emotions in many viewers.
Sketches for Urbanize
The sketches we did of how our installation would be installed after we finalized our idea and finished writing our draft proposal.
Furnitures that resembles comfort
The screen projection
FCM Cafe layout (side view)
FCM Cafe layout (top view)
Bedroom environment
Living room environment
Group discussion enviroment
Bar environment
Mindmaps for Interactive Installation Art
Me and my groupmate (Pouyan) started working on our final assignment by writing down our thoughts through mindmaps which basically where separated to three mindmaps as below.
Emotion and Expression
FCM Cafe
Sound & Ambience
Case Study - Interactive Art & Installation Design
SCOTT SONA SNIBBE
Biography
Scott Snibbe was born in 1969 in New York City. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Fine Art, and a Master’s in Computer Science from Brown University. Snibbe studied experimental animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and his films have been widely shown internationally. He has taught media art and experimental film at Brown University, The San Francisco Art Institute, the California Institute of the Arts, The Rhode Island School of Design, and U.C. Berkeley. Earlier in his career, Snibbe worked at Adobe Systems as a Computer Scientist where he made substantial contributions to the special effects software Adobe After Effects, and research projects at Adobe Research. Snibbe also worked at Interval Research, performing basic research in haptics, computer vision, and interactive cinema. As a researcher, Snibbe has published numerous articles and academic papers, and is an inventor on over a dozen patents.
He is a media artist, filmmaker, and researcher in social interactivity. Whether on mobile devices or in large public spaces, his interactive art spurs people to participate socially, emotionally, and physically. His works are strongly influenced by cinema: particularly animation, silent, and surrealist film; and sometimes mix actors’ filmed performances with real-time audience interaction. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and The Museum of Modern Art (New York). His work has been shown in over one hundred solo and group exhibitions since 1989 including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), The Berkeley Art Museum (California), InterCommunications Center (Tokyo); and Ars Electronica (Austria). His has received grants and awards from the National Science Foundation, Renew Media, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Prix Ars Electronica, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the founder of two organizations: Snibbe Interactive, Inc., which distributes social interactive media; and Sona Research, which engages in educational and cultural research.
Choice of media
He is one of the first artists to work with projector-based interactivity, where a computer-controlled projection onto a wall or floor changes in response to people moving across its surface. His works are frequently requiring viewers to physically engage with diverse media that include mobile devices, digital projections, and electromechanical sculpture. By using interactivity, He hopes to promote an understanding of the world as interdependent; destroying the illusion that each of us, or any phenomenon, exists in isolation from the rest of reality.
An example of his interactive work which uses the floor as a media is Boundary Functions.
Boundary Functions is a set of lines projected from overhead onto the floor, dividing people in the gallery from one another. When there is one person on its floor, there is no response. When two are present, a single line cuts between them bisecting the floor, and dynamically changing as they move. With more than two people, the floor divides into cellular regions, each with the quality that all space within it is closer to the person inside than anyone else.
In his interactive artwork, he usually portrays the interdependence of beings with their environments and each other through bodily interactions. Many of his works do not function unless viewers actively engage with them—by touching, breathing, or moving—so that viewers are essential to a piece’s existence as art. Furthermore, although the works involve state-of-the-art technologies, viewers’ experiences more typically occur in the context of human-to-human social interactions. In social settings, the public works provoke communication among the viewers that, more than a mere reaction to the work, becomes its very essence. For more intimate works, the experiences can be ones of concentrated creative attention more frequently associated with artists than with media consumers.
In one of his statements, he wrote “Humans often think of themselves as embodied beings acting separately from their environment and other people. However, when we examine the object most of us take to be “me”—the body—we find it composed entirely of non-self elements: skin, cells, our parents’ genes, food, water, atoms originating from ancient stellar explosions, and these, as far as we know today, made up of pure energy. Furthermore, our bodies’ parts are in constant exchange with our environment and with others’ bodies through eating, respiration, immunology, and genetics. Similarly, the contents of our human minds are dependent: language, thoughts, memories, and preferences only emerge from our interactions with others. Even while alone, the imprints of our lifetime’s interactions propel our thoughts and memories. Such a view of interdependence has long been central to Buddhist philosophy, and has recently gained widespread validation from neuroscientists, social psychologists, and philosophers of emergence, chaos, and complexity theories.”
BLOW UP
by Scott Snibbe
Blow Up records, amplifies, and projects human breath into a room-sized field of wind. The installation comprises two devices. The first is a rectangular array of 12 small impellers, which stands on a table on one side of the gallery. This small input device is electronically linked to a large wall of twelve electric fans. The tabletop impellers are spatially and temporally synchronized to the fans in the wall
When a “sender” blows into the first device, “receivers” experience the magnified breathing patterns over their entire bodies. When he stops blowing, the wall continues to play back the most recent breathing pattern, captured in an amplified loop, until someone inspires a new pattern.
In his statement, he said that “the physical world, we become aware of our bodies through transactions with other phenomena: we hear our voices via the vibration of air, we see our faces via the bending of light. Breath too is as essential attribute of one’s person, whose existence we only infer through other media: the sight of our chest rising and falling, the sound of air rushing into our sinuses, the disturbance of the atmosphere near our skin. We mentally label this evidence-of-breath as “my breath”. Yet what distinguishes ”my breath“ from mere air and, further, what distinguishes my breath from me?”
Blow Up’s simultaneous processes of recording, translation and amplification is meant to increase the breath’s salience and legibility, while detaching the breath from the body that allegedly produced it. The process of observing this translation and translocation of respiratory activity may prompt the sender to consider the connection between one’s person and the air it exchanges, and, more broadly, the existence of any self independent of the air signaling its presence
I personally find this piece of installation an interesting one because it did make me think of these questions, what distinguishes my breath from me? What can I tell from my breath? What’s the difference between my breath and others? Every human beings start breathing even when we are inside our mother’s womb but do we see it as an essential attribute? It is a rather thought provoking piece of installation to me.
TRANSIT
by Scott Snibbe
Transit is a large-scale video installation in the Los Angeles International Airport’s Tom Bradley International Terminal that plays on fifty-eight back-to-back HD monitors curving above the arrivals waiting area. The fifteen-minute video features hundreds of pedestrians in silhouette who take part in a loose narrative grounded in their ceaseless movements left to right. Against this backdrop, travelers occasionally put down their bags and break into exuberant dance routines in styles that reflect L.A.’s diversity: from Hip-Hop to Salsa, Ballet, and Punk.
One of the many stories in Transit is about a little boy and his mother. The little boy runs out across the monitors. His mother soon follows, calling him to return. Eventually, he turns and rushes back but once again breaks free.
Mid-way through, the high-definition story shatters into abstracted fragments as multiple copies of travelers wipe forward across the screens; moon-walking travelers float backwards; crowds spew out from single travelers.
Lady in Red appears performing a majestic folklorical dance, who is soundly ignored passers-by
As the piece ends, a few straggling travelers move across the long expanse – breaking into romantic duets that in the last frames are cut in by a lonely gentleman.
The silhouette video of Transit was shot in front of a green screen. The project is a collaboration with choreographer Francesca Penzani, and videographer Noah Cunningham. The California Institute of the Arts Center for Integrated Media offered substantial facilities and support for the project’s production.
I think that the installation art, “Transit” is a good way to welcome tourists to Los Angeles. By looking at the monitors, people can see how diverse the city is with the different types of dance they have. Besides that, Transit was installed in the arrivals waiting area which is good so that tourist will not feel too bored while waiting for their luggage or their family members.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)