Where Good Ideas come from

The Divided Brain

Catvertising

Perhaps I should rethink ditching my cat idea:

Re-considering my Manifesto

I thought re-working on my manifesto to reflect what I am about now would be relatively straightforward but it was actually incredibly hard. After much deliberation, below are some statements that I feel are part of my Manifesto. I will re-visit this throughout my final year to update as and when it seems appropriate.

Manifesto thoughts:

I want my audience to share in the process of my design through interactive and playful elements.

I want to explore individual elements of design, combine them in new and exciting ways and explore their relationships.

I want my audience to experience feelings of enchantment through my design.

I want to explore how present time-based media can evoke a sense of magic

In terms of the presentation of my manifesto, I think it would be nice to combine this with the QR code idea (scrapping the cat idea). I think I will create a poster of myself, speaking my manifesto - though the magic of the QR window. I can also add some humorous comments so it isn't too dull!

QR idea development

Different idea for style of poster:

Although I much prefer the style of these, I'm still not quite sure where I am heading with this.

QR ideas

My initial thoughts for use of QR codes were inspired by my cat. The idea is that you scan the QR code that takes you to a short animation about my cats thoughts - the animation is under development (so don't be surprised if the link doesn't go anywhere!):

Although I'm not really happy with the style so will have to give it some more thought.

New time schedule

Updated time schedule (click on image to get better view):

Meeting with Brendan

This week I met with Brendan to discuss my research question, aims and objectives but I found it quite hard to think of my exact question, but had a few different ideas (apologies for the stupidly long list - my favourite in red):

Q: How can elements be combined to create an entertaining experience for my audience?
Q: How can the audience be involved in an audio-visual experience?
Q: How can audio and visuals be combined to encourage play?
Q: How can design allow the audience to play?
Q: How to recreate the magic of analogue using todays technology?
Q: Can analogue enchantment be recreated digitally?
Q: Can digital media evoke the playful charm and mystery of analogue technology?
Q: Can digital magic rival analogue?
Q: How can technology contain playful characteristics?
Q: What is the relationship between colour and sound?
Q: Can I turn my audio-visual research and experimentation into a retail product?
Q: How can design explore relationships between sound, shape and colour?
Q: How can design encourage an audience to stop and play?
Q: How can the audience experience design non-passively?
Q: How to involve numerous senses in design (e.g. sound, sight, touch)?

So I'd really got myself confusing. Chatting to Brendan helped me realise that perhaps some of these are my objectives rather than the exact question - something I can come back to later if need be.

Summary of progress presentation

For the first week back at uni we have to present our progress (throughout the MA) to the rest of the class and our new course leader Stephen Monger.

Again I've used Prezi for the creation of the presentation as it feels like a more organic way of organising and sharing your thoughts.

Unfortunately this has no sound, but I may update this to include a voiceover when I have more time. For best viewing, you should open within a new window.

Extended Practice in Graphic Arts on Prezi

Developing an app

As I've never been involved in app development before I do realise I've got alot to learn. This week I've been trying to make my way through the book 'App Savvy' by Ken Yarmosh although I'm finding it quite hard. Throughout the early part of the book he urges you to resist designing too soon.

There are some great planning tools included with the book which will definitely come in handy, but I may need to adapt some of his advice to fit the real purpose of my app creation at the moment, which is simply to explore creative arts (and meet the criteria for assessment!)

Other digital play ideas

Whilst I am keen to develop this idea, I have also learned my lesson and don't want to place all my eggs in 1 basket. Learning how to create the app, ensuring its approved by Apple and ideally creating something that it successful will be a challenge which may have to extend outside of my MA. The most important thing for my MA is that I have a working prototype that can be assessed, not necessarily a downloadable finished product, so this is what I will aim for for the time being. To ensure I don't get bogged down with developing the application, I will also explore other areas as well.

Mixing physical with digital
I am keen to explore the potential of QR ('Quick Response') codes within design as well. I love the idea of linking the physical and digital worlds, and exploring the potential of modern technological advancements. Whilst QR codes have been around a while, they are yet to take off fully in the UK, but are being used very creatively by some.

AXA's TV commercial that you can step into:

But I really loved this simple idea by Victor Petit:

QR CODE - Content-rich Resume from Victor petit on Vimeo.

Victor used this to supplement his CV and definitely helped him stand out from the crowd.

Colour and emotion

I am also really keen to explore how people relate colour and emotion and would like to develop some infographics that displays an individuals chosen colours that they feel most represent their feelings over the course of a period of time (e.g., week/month/year). I'd hope that, although the final outcome may not mean much to others, for the person that chooses, it would provide some insight into their own emotions.  I am keen not to use myself for this experiment, as I would like the process of my design to involve my audience and not just be about me, myself and I.

Exploring sound/colour association through play

I thought it would be interesting to link colour and sound as a beginning point for my final MA study.

Here is a basic keyboard using colour to symbolise keys - the idea based on various research that I have found that sound could be symbolised through colour, although I have literally only used a basic set of keys and related it to a basic colour chart.

From here I thought it would be interesting to see how some basic music could be visualised through colour.

Doe a deer looks like this:

From here I felt that a sound/colour game would be a project that could be symbolise what my practice  means to me - something playful and simple that involves my audience in the experience as well.

Initial thoughts for the style and medium of the application:

The idea being that I develop an app based on a circular timeline.

I have since done some research and found some very similar ideas. I absolutely adore the simple beauty and physicality of the Ocarino app by Smule:

There is also the very visual app by Bloom:

And the far more technical app, but possibly too technical to be as visually interesting app by Synthpod:

So nothing completely like my idea which attempts to relate colour to sound, but some fantastic quality applications by some very creative and clever developers.

What I love about where I am heading with my idea now is the exploration this allows me. I am looking forward to seeing how this all progresses.

Summer progress

I had great plans for progress over the summer :) However, my idea was certainly still pretty vague and I now see that perhaps my idea wasn't really going to work - it seemed to change daily and I kept losing focus and direction. Along with an incredibly busy summer, which included house sales falling through and an increase in workload left me feeling like perhaps another year of studying would be a bit too much to take on. Although not ideal, reaching this point did allow me to stop getting so hung up on an all singing all dancing bit of software and decide to have a go at really stripping back the idea.  

Synesthesia
This was an area I'd vaguely researched earlier and found of interest. Synesthetes (those who experience Synesthesia) experience automatic, involuntary second senses. There are a range of different types of Synesthesia - one person may experience grapheme-colour synesthesia - where letters and numbers are seen in different colours, another  sound - colour synesthesia whereby the person in question would experience colour/shapes/movement when hearing particular sounds. Synesthesia is a very personal experience, with no synesthetes experiencing the same effects, and from the outside looking in (I can't assume how it feels to each person with the condition), also seems incredibly magical.

Synesthesia in Art
There have been many artists who draw on their synesthesia to create works of art and also art that is intended to evoke feelings of synesthesia.

Terra 606: An Eye Full of Sound is a wonderful animation which explores the experiences of a number of synesthetes.

Whilst I found my research really interesting and inspiring, I still wasn't clear at this stage how this would influence my work.

Sound/Colour association
Historically, many artists and scientists have explored possible associations between sound and colour. The first known experiment was conducted by the Milanese artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo at the end of the sixteenth century and Isaac Newton tried to solve the problem by assuming that musical tones and color tones have frequencies in common (Wikipedia). Whilst I don't feel sufficiently qualified to provide answers to this question, I did want to make colour/sound associations a feature of my work.

BBC Horizon documentary: Do you see what I see

Gantt Chart displaying plan for MA level

... can be found at http://www.pandorataylor.co.uk/timeplan/chart.html

Progress with motion graphics

Okay, so this is still a work in progress but I have uploaded my interactive animation piece online. Note though that all the colour bubbles link to the blue animation, and after the whale exits the screen is where I am up to. Will upload more at a later date!!

You can see the animation at http://www.pandorataylor.co.uk/animation

The line and the dot: a romance in lower mathematics

Motion graphics and type

Inspiration: Luke Busby - Visualising Sound

Visualising Sound from Luke Busby on Vimeo.

Inspiration: 'Visual Scores'

Through my research I've come across many visual scores which I find really interesting. Below is First Arabesque, by Claude Debussy, performed by Stephen Malinowski, accompanied by an animated score that was created by software 'The Music Animation Machine

Inspiration: Color Animation Experiment by Jimmy Edgar

Inspiration: audio driven motion

Inspiration: Lewis Macdonald - Visualising Sound

The Clock (Visualising Sound) from Lewis MacDonald on Vimeo.

http://publicspacesdesign.com/sound.html

Inspiration: evolving story

Inspiration: fluid motion / sound

Inspiration: liquid life

Inspiration: We feel fine

We Feel Fine is an online project by - Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar that collects human feelings from a large number of weblogs. The software searches blog entries for phrases such as "I feel" and "I am feeling" and then records the full sentence and classifies the feeling creating a database of human feelings. The database can be searched and sorted thus providing access to a whole range of questions such as 'where do people feel most happy? Are men happier than women? and so on.

The interface create beautiful infographics.

Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar describe the work as

'an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life.'

Definitely worth a visit at: http://wefeelfine.org/

Inspiration: Oskar Fischinger

Class presentation

For best results go to 'More' (after hitting the play button) and full screen the presentation

Developing Graphic Arts on Prezi

Inspiration: Lidu - Follow the White Rabbit

Below is an extract from an Interactive Story created by Lidu.

The video explores the concept of dreaming, everything is randomized creating a completely different results each time.

Find out more at http://www.lidu.fr/followthewhiterabbit/


© 2010 lidu, Sylvain Favardin + Ludmila Korenarova.

Research: Cymatics

Evan Grant, a Creative Technologist explains Cymatics (sound visualisation)

Development of projects

I've spent a huge amount of time trying to storyboard the animations but have realised that it's not so easy to do. The movement involved going from one scene to the next is what really makes the animation and this can be difficult to realistically visualise. I've decided to just get started and try to work more intuitively at this stage. Hopefully by next semester I'll have a better understanding of how to flow the animation so that it doesn't just statically move from one scene to the next.

I feel that my practice is about transporting someone and providing them with an experience regardless of the medium.

Inspiration: Auditorium - sound and space game

In the process of searching for audio visual games I came across this game called Auditorium that is all about play:


Go to www.playauditorium.com to play the game

The build of the site

Although it seemed a great idea to build the site using Wordpress, it is still a content management system (albeit a very simple one) and needed far more work than a static site! It has taking quite alot of work to get this finished!

On the plus side however we can just adapt the template and reuse for our final show :)

The finished site can be found at: http://www.uwemagraphicarts.com

I do feel I have a tendancy to make things more work than is actually required but I'm very happy with the result.

Inspiration: Wieden + Kennedy

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/january/honda-jazz-this-unpredictable-life

I adore this magical animation by agency Wieden + Kennedy.

They've also considered how to interact with the user by creating an iPhone app where you can catch the characters as they come from the screen. Whilst I love the ad, I wasn't as impressed by the app, however I think it was an interesting way of involving the user in some 'play'.

They are also responsible for the genius that is the Cravendale, Cats with Thumbs advert:

Inspiration: Benjamin Renner

A beautiful black and white animation by Benjamin Renner. Love the style

Le Corbeau voulant imiter l'Aigle by Reineke17

A lovely story and beautiful animation

Interactive videos

One of the things that really spoke to me during my previous module was how interactivity with the viewer really adds something to the experience. Involving the viewer in the art or design is something I'd like to accomplish within my work.

A great example of marketing that uses this concept is 'Hunter shoots a bear' - the viewer controls the actions of the hunter which evolves into a range of humorous outcomes. Please see http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=tippexperience for further info.

Much earlier than this was the internet sensation, 'Subservient Chicken' (see below)

Research update

Currently I'm trying to read 'Psychological Aesthetics, Painting, Feeling and Making Sense' by David MacLagan (2001), although I'm having some difficulty. I think I may need to tackle some lower level reading on the topic to inform my research. I did get a few things from the book however:

• Psychological aesthetics - the relation between aesthetic qualities and psychological effects these have the spectator
• Aesthetic experience - Something that is not easily articulated in language

Arduino

Although I'm not necessarily going to make more physical objects, I have been told by a colleague about the wonderful world of Arduino. It is an open source electronics prototyping platfrom, designed to make the process of using electronics simpler and more accessible. Its intended users are artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects. It allows people with less than brilliant technological understanding to create beautiful light displays or robotics.

UWE Graphic Arts website

Initial design for UWE website presented to rest of the class:

Simplistic design with a basic black and white theme

• Uses a colour coding system for the actual showcase
• Idea is that everyone can access and update the site with their own work (passing some of the responsibility over to individual team members)
• Can be used for future showcases and examples of previous students work
• Blog facility means that essentially it is possible for blogs to be kept online
• Can also be used to market the course!

The site went down well with everyone happy with the outcome!

Progress update

This week I've felt hugely rushed. I've taken out a number of books that I'm quite looking forward to reading but time hasn't been on my side. This hasn't been helped by house viewings (as we are selling our flat), meaning that I'm having to keep my work tidied away! My main focus has been preparing for the show. I feel if I can be prepared for this early, I can get back to developing my new ideas for my practice. This week has involved scouring the internet and shops for a drum to make the Zoetrope from (which will be in the Work In Progress Show) and consideration of how to improve the scanimation (which may or may not be in the show).

Website
In terms of the site, I've decided to install Wordpress on the server in order to allow everyone to update their own areas. The template will be original but through Wordpress, it should be possible for the site to evolve over time for other uses. Through discussion with others in the group we feel a simple template as a backdrop to the work would make the most sense. Although just because something looks simple doesn't mean it will be the easiest to code!

Helvetica

I watched the film Helvetica today, mostly due to the fact that as I am predominantly a 'web designer', I'm not as clued up on typography as I would like to be.

It was much more than typography though. I found the elements of subjective versus objective and discussion of mood and atmosphere particularly interesting. I think I will do some further research on Michael C. Place as I felt some affinity to the reasons why he designs and what he finds of interest.

Motion Graphics

Week 1 of Developing Practice

This class really hit home how much I need to evolve some of my current habits. My knowledge of visual artists and practitioners could still be improved and I could do with working out ways to use my time more effectively. On the plus side though, I generally did quite well in the previous module and have some ideas as to how to progress the module forward.

Working out priorities and strategies:

• What is the QUESTION about Graphic Arts practice that I would really like to find an answer to?
• What RESEARCH can I carry out to help me find my answer?
• What SOURCES can I identify to help me find my answer?
• How will I ANALYSE the material I find?
• How will I DECIDE what is relevant/useful?
• What happens if I find there are several answers, or no answers... JUST MORE QUESTIONS?

Initial thoughts:

• What is the perception of visual/interactive media? (emotional/learnt/cultural/physical)
• Audience analysis of Graphic Arts
• Perception of colour/imagery/sequence/medium/interactivity on the audience
• How to tell a story without words/simple narration
• Affect of sequence on audience perception
• Current perceptions of...
• Removing self from process
• Impact of technology on magic/illusion/perception
• Why is analogue more magical
• How to create a sense of magic in design
• Perception of colour, imagery, sequence, interactivity on the audience

So... basically no idea of my question for Graphic Arts at the moment. Will attempt this again at a later stage as I'm definitely having some trouble explaining myself. In short I'm interested in the elements of magic that came about through my previous projects. I'd like to investigate why people feel something is magical, or other sensations through specific mediums. I would like to involve the audience more in my process and hopefully understand them better through it.

Initial thoughts for 'Developing Practice' module

Focus more on perception of design in order to integrate some of the aspects learned from the previous module...

Such as

• colour theory
• imagery interpretation
• semiotics
• the way things are written
• Games to assess how things affect people
• Use a variety of media to test emotions towards certain mediums

MUCH more reading/evaluation/testing

LESS 'finished' work MORE process MORE research

Elements from previous module to continue:

• Play
• Interaction
• Perception
• Time-based/sequence

Zoetrope

I've finally finished the first prototype for (second) Zoetrope. I'd like to develop this further with real treadplate.

Phonotrope

Unfortunately I haven't developed this quite as much as I'd like. I intend to progress this further into the next module.

Acetate

Progress with 'masking' images through colour. This definitely could work better!