24th April 2012 -Study Session with Beck & Research

Beck and I have had a couple of study sessions together over the last couple of weeks where we have actively participated in group work together as well as making time for individual assignments. It is fantastic how well we work together both collectively and the way in which we are able to support one another with our personal ventures. Beck has been kind enough to let me use her spare Mac computor along with helping to walk me through what she knows about iMovie and help me troubleshoot a couple of technical matters. It is amazing how well I have picked up the techniques of using this particular application....I need to purchase a Mac and I need to start beliving in my ability as it seems I am able to pick things up better than I think.

Beck and I have had another study session at my place today before class where I acheived quite a substantiale amount of progress towards my 'Locative Media' assignment.

RESEARCH

Bio Mapping with Christian Nodd

Over the last few years, Christian Nold has used the unique tool Bio Mapping  with its revolutionary methodology for visualising people's reactions to the external world. It is used in many diverse contexts from art, community development, science research, architectural planning and large scale political consultations. The premise behind the theory is when we become more aware of our own unique body reactions to the environment along with other around us, we can create a better world!

22nd April 2012 - Research: Restitution Video

During my new media artist research I have come across some fabulous animation artists who use imovie and premier pro to produce the finished products. After viewing several differing approaches and the end results, I myself would be interested in  experimenting further along these lines. I have included the links in the right-hand side menu under animation to these sites or video's. One of the links included is the video animation "Restitution" by a talented friend of mine, Michelle Stafford. The process involved the making of the sets and model, then taking a multitudes of photographs of each stage and putting them together to simulate motion. Very clever.

Michelle Stafford - Restitution

20th April 2012 - Shaun Gladwell

Shaun Gladwell - Venice Biennale

Gladwell exhibited his work in the Australian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2009.



Shaun Gladwell is an Australian contemporary artist who has gained worldwide acclaim for his video art, painting and photographs. Gladwell is a digital artist, whose interests often reflect his work, such as freestyle skateboarding, which he skillfully combines into his works paying homage to the past and present. In art historical terms, it is Gladwells embodiment of the physical and aesthetic risks which aligns him with artists who combine sport and art, as he himself embraces both a a street manner and art. Gladwell describes his video art as “performance landscapes”, and regardless of whether they are set in rural or urban settings usually present a juxtaposition of the visual against the environment where it actually exists. Gladwell often uses filmic devices such as slow-motion and long pans 9in order to capture both tightly choreographed and improvised performances. The results are surprisingly hypnotic as well as being beautifully poetic, due to the distortion of speed, reversed gravity or overall displacement of space and time. Gladwell has been exhibiting throughout Australia, Asia, the United States and Europe.

18th April 2012 - Tasks posted: Power to the People

Beck Graeber and myself have now had a couple of meetings to refine our ideas for the group assignment and to get things up and running. We have set up facebook group, invited friends to join and set some interactive activities for everyone to participate in. Being that our underlying premise is a social experiment using 'Art' as a forum for social commentary....it could prove to be interesting.

Power to the People - Information Posted on our Facebook Group

To all those who consider yourselves to be creative, interesting philosophers of life, we invite you to indulge, explore, experiment and be part of an immersive, interactive artistic experiment. Please join us on an artistic journey that takes art out of the white cube and explores what art is using interactive media as a tool for our experience. Over the next few weeks 'You' will be invited to participate in a variety of activities that encourage you to be the artist and most importantly have fun sharing the journey. We will keep you posted ;-) love the team

Dear Friends and Lovers of Art, my illustrious colleagues Danae Thyssen, Rebecca Graeber, Molly Bird and myself Charlie Davenport have invited you to be a part of an immersive, interactive artistic experience. Over the next 6-8 weeks we will invite you to participate in a vaiety of experiments and tasks, which will be set every few days. It is important to not only complete the activities personally, but interact with others who have done the same. You may also invite other like-minded individuals to join. Most importantly have fun.

Task 1: Download the 'ArtSwipe' app (free) on your mobile. Complete an activity by creating an image from the famous artworks provided or use images of your own and then upload the completed activity to this Facebook group to share.

Task 2: Download the Pici Booth app (free) on your mobile. Take pictures of yourself or friends, then apply various affects and upload to this Facebook group to share.

Task 3: Answer this Question - What constitutes as 'Art' and what makes 'Art' great? ""

Task 4: "Make me like you"

Random Continuous Story Exercise



Task 5: A random continuous story is a collection of people participating in contributing in writing a random story. Rules - write a small portion of the story leading on from the previous sentence. You can write up to a handful of sentences or as little as you like, but you must leave the story 'open' ready for the next participant to follow on.



First story
It began with a ripple in the water created by the sudden flight of a bright orange butterfly. Please continue...

Task 6: A random continuous story is a collection of people participating in contributing in writing a random story. Rules - write a small portion of the story leading on from the previous sentence. You can write up to a handful of sentences or as little as you like, but you must leave the story 'open' ready for the next participant to follow on.

Second Story

Deep in the forest you could hear a pin drop for the silence that reverberated in the darkness. Please continue...

13th April 2012 - Update on Group Meeting

After the group session yesterday, I went back to Becks with her so that I could utilise her spare MAC laptop to work on my locative media assignment and gain some assistance from Beck with how to use iMovie properly as she has used this application previously. Due to the late hour, I stayed overnight as I was kid free. This morning the plan was to continue to work on our personal assignments before attempting to colaborate further on our group assignment and put into place some of the ideas we had all agreed on yesterday. Due to some unforeseen circumstances we were sadly interrupted for a lenghthy period and did not get as much done as we had planned.

Just as we resumed our focus and began working again, I received a rather upsetting call from JC accusing me of being some kind of master mind who had deleted the Facebook group he had created, which we had been using to communicate between catch-ups. JC had previously set this group up for another course he was involved, but altered the name for our group. Apparently he had gone on to Facebook to discover that all of the content had disappeared and thought I had somehow deleted it and then accused me of removing the group altogether. Now....I am no technical genius and I know others who are far more savvy than me who cannot delete a facebook profile once it is created. He proceeded to yell at me and talk over the top of me every time I tried to say something for over an hour. Now if this had not been such a distressing call it would be almost funny as any one who knows me is aware i am somewhat technically challenged. When I pointed this out, he then blamed Beck. While we were on the phone, Beck went onto the net to see if the group was indeed gone as claimed, only to find it was still there untouched with all its content. Strange but true. Sadly the conversation did not end well. Beck and I found this behaviour completely unprofessional and not attention worthy and therfore we collectively decided to part ways due to what I like to call "Artistic' differences.

Not wanting the day to be an entire waste we proceeded to set up our two alias' and to add them to our created Facebook group - 'Power to the People'. As mentioned in my previous post this name came from the idea of handing the power back to the people to either interact or not interact with the specific tasks we set, to like or dislike or post their own comments. By the time the session was over we had created the alias Charlie Davenport for me and then in turn we created the alias Molly Bird for Beck. The creation of these characters is an experiment within itself to explore how willing our members will be to accept friend requests from someone the do not know and interact with them. Additionally these characters enable us to redirect activities to some extent to maintain artistic control.

After this we decided to end the day as we had both lost our mojo and wanted time re-focus. 

12th April 2012 - Group Meeting at Danae's

Initially when we were aware there was to be a group assignment for this course Beck and I knew we would choose to partner up as we have worked together previously and done so very well. However, we decided to invite JC and Allen as we thought it would make for an intesting dynamic within the group as each of us has quite different personalities and varying skill sets. Beck and I had an interesting chat about this very topic where we had contemplated the various talents that we all bought to the group: Beck is very organised and we are both great with our artistic and conceptional skills; I am always being told what a talented writer I am; then we have Alen who is also good with conceptual ideas and very funny; then in conclusion we have JC who is apparently very good with media and technologies, which is obviuosly a valued skill for this assignment. 

We held group meeting at my place today with Allen, Beck, JC and myself. Although there were some very productive moments where idea generation seemed positive, there were moments where one particular member of the group (JC) tended to monopolise and try to individually control the direction we would take. Unfortunately this has been a trend from the day we invited him to join us, where the ideas of others are vitoed immediately, yet everyone is expected to support his idea's unquestionably. As a group we have bent over backwards to try and realise this individuals ideas, but any attempt at troubleshooting has been taken as the group negating his ideas. Sadly this results in everyone talking in circles, wasting time and being unsure of what it is we are actually doing. Previously, other members of the group have all had successful amicable working relationships in group situations and thus found this situation frustrating, combative and rigid.

Unfortunately when Beck and I met on the Tuesday 10th June, both fellows were unavailable to join us to discuss the direction for the final assignment on this date. Beck and I had scheduled this date before we had invited the boys to join us. However, JC had decided that because Beck and I had met without him and Allen, it was a direct attempt to sabotage him, which is ridiculous. Yet he chose to ignore the fact that we were all meant to meet and the two of them had cancelled and Beck and I did not want to waste a study opportunity. After the last class just before the holidays we had quickly discussed a few options for the group assignment which Beck and I began to implement because we were all agreeable.

These ideas were: to create a facebook group to interact with as an immersive collaborative approach; plus another idea which germinated with JC, was for us to hold an event where there we would have a selection of interactive computor stations set-up somewhere on campus for students to interact with various apps in a gallery type of installion with alcohol. When Beck and myself tried to discuss this as a possible concept we raised the point of possible pitfalls we may run into with this idea, such as needing a liquor licence, making application for permission to hold an event in the space (which location) and the risk of having no-one attend if not planned properly. Although we thought it was a good idea we were concerned of the potential danger of leaving it all up to chance and not following the proper protocols, which was his approach. We suggested trying to implement the same concept on-line to avoid many of these issues, as well as applying for appropriate permission so we were covered either way.

Upon discussion with CJ Taylor the previous week, he made the suggestion that we make a mock event, invite him and video it incase there was not enough interaction at the real event. We would then write a report and use this with the documentation to make a proposal to explain the legistics of such an event.  Executing this concept would not be impossible but could prove challenging and JC was adamant he did not want a mock-up, but the real event. However the harder we tried to realise this event and make it happen, the more defensive JC became. He took problem solving as critism and had trouble actually listening to what people are saying. However, when Alan also mentioned he had the same concerns and did not really understand what JC was trying to achieve, even after hours of going over and over it JC seemed to calm down. It was at this point we all endeavoured to come up with solutions and finally received some more positive collaboration from JC.

Anyway, not wanting to waste any more time, Beck and I attempted to use this time productively with some great input from Allen to assess how we might make everything happen along with brainstorming any other possibilities. Alan then suggested we send my alter ego out and film my interactions with the general public and then graced us with his own alter ego, which was certainly enlightening. Beck then made the further suggestion that both of our alter egos' go out on the town and that she would be happy to film the experience. Beck and I then shared some of the ideas that we had come up with during our previous meeting to see if we could flesh them out further. Over all we had four hours of production time and put some great stratagies in to place, assigning each of us various tasks to complete before our next class after the holidays. After a shaky start to the meeting we are hopeful that we have come up with some amazing ideas that will result in a successful project.

10th April 2012 - Group Meeting: 'Power to the People'

Group Meeting at Danae's with Beck Graeber

A group meeting was scheduled today with myself, JC, Beck and new-comer Allen. However both fellows had to re-schedule for Thursday, however Beck and I met today regardless. Beck and I explored some of the ideas that we as a group had previously mentioned and how we would execute these ideas. Although some ideas were interesting there were matters that required further trouble-shooting in order to execute. After exploring some of these options, we decided to defer this segment of our discussion until our next meeting with JC and Allen. Not wanting to waste this opportunity to make a plan, we took the time to discuss various other options for our interactive immersive assignment. "When you fail to plan....you plan to fail."

We decided that a viable option was to use Facebook as our medium to explore and incorporate various functions that our participants (friends) can choose to access after we invite them to join a forum we create. The group would be called Power of the People, as the idea is to give power to those who use Facebook to interact in an immersive experience to comment, create and participate in various tasks with the group. The inspiration for the concept of giving the power to the people came from a movie called 'Pay it Forward'. It is the story of how a young boy comes up with the concept of doing something for three other individuals that they are unable to do for themselves. However they are not to return the favour, but pay it forward to three other individuals without the expectation of receiving anything in return and so on. The concept is about how one person can start a chain of events that multiples beyond all expectations and can create a revolution and make a difference.

1. Exquisite Corpse - is a program already created , which can be shared via Facebook. One person begins the drawing (top third), then invites a friend to complete the next section being the second third and then sends on to a third person to complete the image. It is all done without being able to see the first persons contribution, except for a small section which enables the next person to continue the next portion of the drawing. Continuous story - we begin a story line which is continued

2. A contiuous story - we begin with a sentence of which is then continued by the next individual and so on.

3. Interactive poems - similar to the continuous story idea started with the first line

4. Dear Miss Molly' - ask a question and receive an online response. The idea was inspired by a movie called Letters to Juliet. In the film the letters for 'Juliet' are left by visitors to a famous tourist attraction in Italy where individuals leave a written messages in a wall to have their Questions answered. A group of ladies would come and collect the messages daily, respond to them and return them for the author to collect the following day.

5. Tell us your secret - this is another spin on the movie Letters to Juliet.

6. Photobooth - Ask our Facbook group to take a photo using Photobooth or similar app, add a 'special effect' then share on the group site for other participants to either like, dislike or comment on. The assignment breif will be fullfilled by documenting responses, possibly video which will then be added to the site, various app and the public participation and social media which fullfills the interactive requirement.

We intend to set up the group immediately in order to give us time to have our friends respond to the various options available.

7th April 2012 - Exquisite Corpse Game

Group activity for Assignment 2 Update Research Details for Exquisite Corpse and success of task


Invitation to join us
As part of a group assignment that we are currently working on for uni, we invite as many of you that are willing to partiipate to be involved in an interactive task, that is just one of the components of an immersive collaborative adventure. Many of you may remember this first activity from your youth.


How to Play
To begin, the first person uses the top third of a piece of paper and draws a head, then folds the piece of paper in such a way that the next person cannot see what they have drawn so far. However, in order for the next person to continue the drawing the previous person must extend the lines just over their section to indicate where the drawing continues. This person will then draw the next portion being the torso and will then repeat the remainder of the process on the middle third of the paper. The instructions for folding the paper are the same so that the next person cannot see what has been previously drawn. This process is repeated by the third person who will complete the image. For a more complexed version the image can be broken down into as many segments as you like and process repeated until the page is filled. Once the process is completed you unfold the paper to reveal the colaborative creation.

Obviously due to the nature of needing to use interactive media for this assignment, we will not be using paper, but have located an on-line app through facebook where the same process applies. Throughout the process you may be as creative as you like!

*Note: We have also discussed using the same principles to colaborate on a shared story along the same vein as applied to the drawing corpsegame.

https://apps.facebook.com/corpsedrawinggame/

6th April 2012 - Premiere Pro VS Mac

As I do not have a MAC computor to work on at home, I have checked out the time-tables at Uni to use the MAC's in the computor pool and come in on my own time on a couple of occassions to try and work out how to use Premier Pro and iMovie. I have not used either of these applications before and am finding the entire thing very overwhelming and frustrating. I am a perfectionist and a little OCD and used to doing things well, this is a struggle for me.

"Computors and I speak a different language and I am clearly in dire need of a translator."

I am seriously wondering if this was the best course choice for someone like myself who is technically challenged. Well always one for a challenge, I will endevour to do my best to overcome and hopefully learn some technical skills along the way.

Apparently, it seems to be the opinion of a few in class that Premier Pro is the better option for manipulting footage, especially if wanting to insert dialouge or music.  I am told that iMovie can be quite limiting and thus making Premier Pro the better option by default. However, I have had far more trouble working out how to get it to work for me and am questioning whether iMove is possibly the better choice for me at this stage. I think I may need to further research both and look at some turorials before I am in the best position to make a decision. However, I am even more than determined to work it out than when we began. I wont be beaten....arghaaa.