A series of related blogs on the development of my thesis during the my interactive media masters.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Lighthouse Elemental
Lighthouse Elemental was a collaborative projection project between Interactive media and Music technology masters students in University of Limerick. There were five groups of five students, each containing a mix of students between both courses and so five themes of Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Spirit were born! I was a member of the group Earth, other members included Beata Zujewska and Peng Lu from I Media and Louisa Donnelly and Alan Gleeson from music technology(the same group as for the installation!). The projection took place on Plassy house, which is situated on the university of limerick campus as part of our contemporary art module for our courses. Lecturer Mikael Fernstrom guided us through the process.
Plassy House!
Earth
The theme chosen by my group was Earth. We made a tree out of photos of machinery that we photographed ourselves from our surroundings. We made pulsating flowers from photos of flowers, made them brighter in photoshop and then made them pulse in after effects. We filmed by hand as the hand that flicks the pin ball at the beginning of the clip. It was a steep learning curve in after effects as not many in the class had used it before. A lot of preparation went into the whole event, from getting the measurement of the building, making the animations and videos, testing for the show, working to strict time limits and coordination on the night.
Although stressful the whole project was a great experience. The projection was a great success despite a technical difficulty with the projection before the end credits. Everyone seemed to be very impressed by the show and the president of the college even expressed his delight with it. We are in the process of making a video for the event, soon to be uploaded!!:) Thanks to Oisin Lavery of Tricyle lnteractive who kindly provided us with the Max patch to help us display and ordinate all the videos, animations and music.
As part of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD) "Remediating the Media" theme, five groups of five in the Contemporary art module of Interactive Media UL creatively explored different ways of remediating archive footage from IWAMD. My group produced Abhainn; an interactive installation.Members included; Peng Lu, Beata Zujewska, Louisa Donnelly and Alan Gleeson as well as myself!!! The initiative was organised in association with the opening of the new music and dance building on the university of Limerick campus. It was our first experience of exhibiting our work to the general public and it turned out to be a very positive experience indeed.
Short extract from our Abstract:
"This piece is encompassing a variety of modern materials, inspiration from the past and the surroundings. Reflection of light is symbolizing hope for the future. Silhouettes of dancers and their gestures suggest the movement in learning, embodying the vibrancy of this building and emphasizing transparency".
The planning process:
After our initial brainstorming sessions we had many interesting ideas about how we would uniquely recreate the old footage. During these sessions our emphases was on being realistic!! We throughly discussed any ideas we came up with and then approached our leaturer Mikael Fernstrom on whether the ideas was feasible or not. There were many aspects to take into consideration when we set about making our installation, some I would never even have considered before! Planning was a critical element, we needed to source our own materials, do up costings, come up with an abstract and name etc and this is aside from producing the content, music and building our screen.
Thought process
From the begining we all liked the concept of "bringing the outdoors in". We thought of the location of the new building and of course felt the inclusion of the river was an necessity! Alan (music technology member of the group) recorded the sounds of the river and the surrounding environment to create a unique piece of music. This idea was the basis of our installation. For the screen we wanted to be creative and treat our potential audience to a screen with a difference that fitted into our theme of the river. We came up with using panels of sheet metal as a reflective and moving screen. The movement of the panels would mimic the flow of a river, with the noise of the panels mimicking that of a wind-chime and adding to the over all atmosphere.
Building process
We had a selection of different dancing footage to choose content from (a long process in itself!!) to make the basis of the video and as well as this we decided we would create a mask of dancers of which the audience could view the archived footage through. By laying footage and creating these masks we generated a unique video full of movement. The masks were made by filming two dancers on a green screen and editing it in after effects and final cut.
The sheet metal had to be cut into individual panels, painted white on one side (this meant masking the edges of each panel), then it had to be pierced and then hung with cat gut onto the metal frame. This was a long, slow process that was completed over the course of approximately three weeks. It was a very tediace but worthwhile process seen as it worked very well on the day, and we were so proud!
Materials:
Sheet metal, paint, cat cut, fan, lots of masking tape, newspaper, mac computer, web cam, black curtain backdrop, bin bags to block the windows, of course a projector and stand.
How it worked:
The web cam picked up on peoples movements as they came close to the panels, it then tracked their movements and changed the music.
Learning Experience:
From beginning to end I learned a lot and gained more of an insight of how to think like an interaction designer. This experience will go along way to help me with my thesis, in how I will go about things and how to improvise if things go wrong. I also learned a lot about how web cam technology works and I am thinking of incorporating into my thesis idea. Over all it provided great real world experience, from working in a group capacity, meeting deadlines and talking to the public. Even hearing feedback and seeing your idea "come to life" from a sketch on paper to a physical piece, taller than u!
Video of some of the visitors interaction with Abhainn on the day:
On the 15th of March 2010 my classmate Lette and I gave a talk on the role of Technology in Healthcare. This topic was relevant to both of our thesis topics and in researching for this topic I became aware of many issues I need to take into consideration when designing my thesis project for the patients of the Milford Care Centre.
Lette gave a good background in the evolution of technology in healthcare and why it is important for our everyday lives especially relating to diagnostic technology such as x-rays, ultra sounds and MRI technology. She also gave a few good senario examles of healthcare systems failures in Ireland such as the Tallagh hospital letter and x-ray scandal and also the question of weather the use of EHR's will increase the risk of theft of medical records in los Angles. The following video: "Kevin Kelly tells technology's Epic Story" : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS1xL1qcBa4 gives a good insight into the meaning of Technology.
For my part in the seminar I focused on healthcare technology design, this involves; design criteria and challenges to designing technology for health care, such as incorporating divergent users, the carers, healthcare professionals as well as the patients themselves which leads to the need of participatory design methods.
The participatory design process invites patients to cooperate during the design process with designers, researchers and developers. It is important to incorporate these various stakeholders into the design process as it enables the understanding of different perspectives. I think this design process will be invaluable in designing the Motomed to incorporate a visual therapy system for the patients of Milford Care Centre. An important note here is; Users are not designers and designers are not users. Users are an important source of information as they provide an understanding of the environment but they can not always suggest the best design.
The importance of understanding the current changes in the healthcare area and characteristics of the different healthcare contexts are also essential elements in the design process as a lack of understanding of the healthcare environment could be critical. These guidelines are very relevant to how I should design a suitable visual art therapy system for Milford Care Centre. Without doubt technology plays a very important role in aiding healthcare but it is also true to say that technology only benefits if all users in the different stages of healthcare are able to utilize the technology in an effective way. During the seminar I showed the class the following video emphasize this point. Healthcare needs to be designed to support divergent users in various contexts and in the case for my thesis project, the motomed system will need to support divergent patients needs.
There is also a great need to work with healthcare professionals as healthcare is a complex area to comprehend. Rapidly changing demands and requirements (users) puts alot of pressure on the design and evaluation of new technology in health care. In designing a visual art device for the motomed I will need learn alot more about the environment of the patients in Milford as well as learn about their different illnesses and try to design to facilitate each one. However the problem in specifying requirements for design is that requirements are usually tacit and hard to articulate at the begining of the design process (The need for iterations is especially relevant for this design area). The result is having dynamic requirement specifications and this is one of the main differences and difficulties in designing technology for healthcare.
There are many good examples of online collaborative healthcare technology systems which i demonstrated to the class:
Google & Microsoft (Google Health & Microsoft HealthVault) have launched their own online patient health records; HealthValue6 & GoogleHealth5
Telemedicine which can be used by a less experienced surgical team to talked through a process by experts.
Micro-blogging tools such as Twitter indicates that the exchange of short messages can be powerful for people to share opinions and information.
Sugarstats.com is also an online resource for patients of diabetes to tract, monitor and share their bloog shugar levels to manage their diabetes.
A very impressive advancement in healthcare technology is that of iphone apps such as this one that measures blood sugar levels, recommends to patient what they should eat and allows you to share the information with your family and your doctor. As well as this allows for collaboration between patient and doctor and a guide for the self maintenance your diabetes.
The theme chosen by my group was Earth. We made a tree out of photos of machinery that we photographed ourselves from our surroundings. We made pulsating flowers from photos of flowers, made them brighter in photoshop and then made them pulse in after effects. We filmed by hand as the hand that flicks the pin ball at the beginning of the clip. It was a steep learning curve in after effects as not many in the class had used it before. A lot of preparation went into the whole event, from getting the measurement of the building, making the animations and videos, testing for the show, working to strict time limits and coordination on the night. 
Water
spirit
Fire
Water
Earth 
