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