Interactive Architecture brainstorm

A. I believe the gym could benefit greatly from coming alive. People in the gym are not interacted with, they sit in a seat and wait to be entertanied by whatever is on the stage. Offering a visual medium which the audience can influence. Keeping an audience happy between performances could be great, as they could potentially never be bored.

B. I believe adding lights to the walls and roof of the gym could benefit the audience. Adding giant lit-up equalizers to the walls could offer the audience a way of interacting with the gym through sound. It could also spice up a dance as the walls themselves are brought to life. Another form of interaction could be pads (glass squares in the floor with LEDs underneath them) that light up based on how much pressure is applied to them. This could even make for an interesting game of twister!

C. The equalizer could show teenagers that yes, they're being heard. Their voices reach all around them and the gym shows that they can be listened to. It can even entertain them. If teenagers need an outlet they could stomp on the LED floor and yell at the LED wall, having both the floor, the walls and the entire gym change in reaction to them. For catholics they can talk to the wall and have it react to their words. Catholic people could meditate on the LED floor and tell their prayers to the wall.

D. The viewer speaks to it. He goes up to it and if he's calm and talkative, the equalizer visualizes this, showing a very calm speaker. If he yells angrily at the wall the equalizer flares up to the roof of the gym in response, reflecting the viewer's emotions. It could also be a way for speakers to tell how loud they are and whether they're reaching the back of the gym or not. The LED floor could be used to incorporate the audience into the presentation. The speaker may want a red stage so he could get the audience down there to stomp on the ground and it would cause the gym to change colours.

Adbuster Image + Reflection

Technical: I split letters apart to create the Ls in Pharmaslave. I figured I wouldn't be able to find the fonts through searching, or at least it would have taken far too long. Cutting and copying was the best choice. Getting the logo in there at the bottom required me to copy/paste the lower part of the photo and stretch/blur until it looked acceptable. I figured it would be better than having the photo stop abrubtley to fit the logo in.

Idea or Concept: I got the idea while walking through the hallways. Seeing a girl wearing her "pharmasave" uniform I laughed to myself, calling it "pharmaslave". Then I figured I'm a genius and used it as my adbuster. My ideas consisted mostly of handcuffs/pharmaslave logos in order to convey the theme. As I progressed I figured it would be good to show a pill bottle with handcuffs spilling out, to show how much control drugs have over the average consumer. We're an overmedicated society in my opinion.

Influences: I really liked the Coca-Cola adbuster with the bottle of Coke being shot at the asian man. I wanted to show something like that. Maybe I'll redo this assignment later with a darker theme or picture.

Composition: Most of the focus is actually in the middle of the picture. Although I did adjust things in other places to subtley show the control medication has over the consumer. Most of the focus is in the center and after a quick look you're essentially done looking. I'm actually fairly disappointed with this image despite having a good idea to begin with. I would definitely redo this assignment with the same "pharmaslave" idea and a different, darker theme.

Motivation: Personally I loved my idea and wanted to see it into fruition. It would have been a pretty funny, clever thing had I been able to show it better. I believe I'm going to sketch something out soon as I'm getting a much better picture in mind the more I think about it. In the end my motivation had been drained and I started playing with the image. This is why the slave driver (cashier) is a pirate. I want to explore what slavery would look like offered through pill bottles.

Critical Assessment: I'd say the pirate's face is one of the most successful parts of the image. Terribly funny looking. Otherwise I'm proud of the big "pharmaslave" up at the top of the image, because I had to adjust pre-existing letters and shift everything over, manipulating shadows and the wall in order to make it look real. The pirate part was definitely the most surprising part of the piece. I was not expecting it to look good, and I'm glad it exceeded those expectations! I kept it in for its light tone and humour, and it even fits pretty well. With additional time I would redo the entire assignment. There would be a man on a stage pouring a bottle of pills over a crowd. The pills would expand and a giant dark hand would be layed overtop of the pills. The crowd would be cheering with handcuffs on their wrists, casts and other assorted medical problems. Pills being the "answer" to all of them, with a single smiling man handing out everything. This would far exceed my current picture.

Interactive Architecture Pre-Assignment Reflection

a. Monomyths: My favourite piece of the house? Most of the house is actually unappealing. But the most interesting part would be the heads that pop out and display old stories. It's a bit of an invasion of privacy, but it's meant to be a creepy look into someone else's private life. The heads light up when emitting sound, and it seems you can pull the heads out closer to you so you can kneel down and give them a ki- observation. Observe their faces and stories. The combination of movement, sound and lights all make for a more interesting piece than the mirror that shows you the past (3 seconds into the past. Mind-boggling.) and the seat with a soundboard.  I'd say if I were to make a piece it would deal with sound being the interactive bit and lights to show how you're affecting the piece.

b. LED ceiling: The world's biggest LED screen can be art by influencing the viewer. Art is meant to affect people, make them think and question. Some pieces of art are just big black cubes with no marks, no identifiable artists or interesting designs. The entire piece is a blank masterpiece meant to make the viewer think, and it does this well. A giant LED screen can influence the viewer, lighten their spirits, make them think differently, and even advertise to them. It would be a way to transport people to a different place of the world, so for fleeting moments they're no longer in a mall, they're in a sea of stars blinking and unblinking. Watching stardust in the wake of boats that travel overhead. This LED screen could be a window to the artist's mind.

c. Ocean of Light: This is a pretty interesting piece of technology. It could make the viewer feel different when evelopped. In a sea of red they could feel scared, or angry. The lights from the cieling invoke emotions based on the colours and being wrapped in the lights forces the viewer to think and feel differently. It can also make fleeting moments of wonder and awe at pleasing fireworks and designs. Though it doesn't have too much usability aside from flashy-lights looking pretty. It's art in the way Final Fantasy 13 is good-looking. It's a pretty painting until you look at it from the side and see it's entirely two-dimensional. There's no depth beyond the pretty colours.

Post-Apocalyptic World

Before:


















After (final, finished image):

Technical
I used many layer filters. The hard mix filter combined with a gradient changed the image completely. That hard mix layer was just above the background, so any layers above it where unaffected by it. That way I could put dots and butterflies above the layer without them becoming corrupted and odd. The explosion was done using a colour filter or linear burn filter, making sure it was detailed and red. Filters were used all throughout the image. To make the silhouettes of people escaping from the explosion in the water I had to find pictures of people jumping and I filled their outlines with a colour, afterwards adding a gradient to make them blend better with the water. And a concept you showed to the grade 11s during the course was some feature where you could twist objects around, contorting them to the wickedest of shapes. I used this feature to curl the poster of "THIS IS THE ENEMY" around the sleeping person.

Idea or concept
I really wanted to highlight the explosion. Despite it being in the background, I wanted it to be immediately important to the viewer. I wanted to show nature in the image (represented by the butterflies). The posters on the ground were supposed to show the society that crumbled during the apocalypse. What I really wanted to show was a strong military presence. I wanted to have a Nazi representative or some other strong general in the picture. As I added to it, I realized I wouldn't have room for the general without the image being too cluttered, so I scrapped that idea. As I fiddled with the layers and their filters I changed the colour scheme and the overall feel of the image. You can see from the "before" and "after" photos that I tweaked almost everything as I developed a vision of what I wanted from the image.

Most of my original ideas stayed strong though. Nature is there, war is there, decay is there and propoganda is there. Pretty much everything I wanted in the beginning still exists, the improvements I made were in the presentation.

Influences
I had no influences on the particular assignment. The closest "influence" per se was Matt's opinion, which I took very seriously and adjusted my picture accordingly. I had nothing in mind when I started yet as I completed it the image took its own shape. Making this particular image was like shaping clay. I'd weave my hand around the clay as it spins on the wheel and despite starting without a clear shape in mind, I'd finished with a nicely proportioned pot. It required no influence. I knew what I wanted, a pot regardless of its shape, therefore when sculpting it I gave it the best shape I could while maintaining the fact that it was still a pot.

Composition
I made this image to be asymmetrical  I wanted the viewer to circle around the image. If you take it apart you can see three distinct parts that I worked on separately. Toss them together and the viewer appreciates one piece of the triad, moves on to the next, then moves on to the next. I layered the composition as much as I layered the actual image, and dear lord did I have enough layers. A quick scroll-through reveals about 30, so I definitely worked at piecing it together fluidly. My eye moves in a circle. Specifically across the three distinct areas of the image. At least I believe it's a circle because of the emphasis on the explosion then my tendency to check out the butterflies shortly after, in contrast.

Each individual piece has its own level that I was working with. But I did not intend for any level to be a specific depth. I did not want the viewer to see things in the average 3D style. I'm tired of that, it's boring, everyone sees 3D and says "Great! Now our cubes can have real depth"! I want my image to remain 2D with the 3D aspects improving specific bits. I put emphasis on parts that mattered by putting them in red. For other parts of the image they remained their natural colour because I'm not going to sacrifice a good looking image for the sake of "Golly jee 3D!!".

Motivation
I wanted to produce my own good-looking 3D image. This would be all my work and could properly show the potential these glasses have. When I'd show my blog to friends this image would be the one to impress them. Essentially, I did this for bragging rights.
As with most ideas I made the most of a "pop art" feel. I figure that's what works best as it offers a stark contrast and the 3D glasses work really well with objects that contrast. I wanted to have elements that were more than just in a background and foreground, I wanted to mix them together to create more than just a sense of depth. Using 3D to create a better looking 2D image was what I had in mind. The water wasn't red or green because I don't care for how 3D the water looks, I care for the aesthetic feel of the water. I want people to  look at this and see a relatively nice image, then I want them to put on their 3D glasses and be impressed as the green butterflies combine in the background and the explosion bursts forth to greet them.

Critical Assessment
I feel like the most successful part of this image was the effect of the explosion. It shows a real amount of power and force behind the bomb that struck. Having it in the foreground impacts the viewer really well. Another good part of the image is the clouds. I'm really proud of how perfect the outline is on them. The butterflies also work really well as they're green and don't look very cluttered when wearing the glasses.

The change introduced by a single layer with the "hard mix" filter really surprised me. You can see the difference between the first and the last image being mostly done by introducing that one layer and tweaking the colours. It's actually really sensitive, and tweaking the brightness or saturation of that one layer affects the size of the cloud, the outline of it and the brightness of the sky.

I'm not sure what I'd do to improve my work. I'd need additional inspiration or ideas in order to improve it. Even then I'd likely get rid of other elements in order to make room for the new ideas. The image is already too cluttered to me. Adding to it would be a mistake. Getting rid of certain parts of the picture in order to improve the overall quality would be what I'd do given more time.

Post-Apocalytpic World: Brainstorming

a. I'm thinking the world can't end, this planet has an incredible way of surviving through everything. The only way the world could "end" is if it ended for ourselves, the resources applicable to our survival dwindle and our world ends. The rest of the world will undoubtedly survive. The most plausible scenario in my mind is that we kill each other. There won't be a slow decay in our world, the end will be from a Cold War or a World War III. So, in my scenario, the world ended during the Cold War. Most of the planet is still green, most of the wildlife is still around, but the majority of the population has died and every large city has become a smoldering crater. And as Einstein said, World War IV will be faught with sticks and stones, therefore I want post-apocalyptic survivors to have a war with these tools.

b. I think everyone's going to act as they do when settling in a new land. People will do whatever they can to survive, and that includes working together really well, which will cause the wars to be far worse and the rebuilding to be far better. Companionship will be important. People will pretend to enjoy each others'

c.

• Nature's going to be just fine after a nuclear war. I'm being completely serious, grass will grow anywhere and will settle far before people do. Therefore I can't see the world being a brown desolate crater, but I can see it being filled with destroyed buildings and structures.
• I can see important politicians and celebrities surviving in fallout shelters, people like Obama, the congress, Stalin, and not-Harper.
• People will wear decayed jeans and t-shirts, raiding Wal-Marts for clothes. None of this leather-skinned shorts and other ridiculous things that so many post-apocalyptic scenarios portray. People aren't going to start wearing cow-skulls just because the world's been blown up.
• Music will survive. People will create instruments from anything.
• Garbage will become the easiest material used to create art.
• Some nuclear warheads and military institutions will survive.
• Larger, fish that hang out lower in the sea will survive. Possibly breeding other fish that can live closer to the surface, regardless of the level of radiation. These would be some scary looking fish. So I'll just use a jellyfish instead.
• Pearl Harbour will survive, giving me a proper location for all of this to be placed.
• Our old culture will survive, and so will the powerful symbols of our history. This will be represented on the soldiers.
• Tenth and final thing that will survive: Puppies.

d. My symbol of hope will be music's survival. There will be a small group of actually happy people trying to rebuild society around the people who have managed to keep music alive. The politicians, decayed jeans and nuclear warheads should be oppressive and disheartening, with the music being a "chance for survival". Much like my Mario Kart picture I want this done on two layers. I want the top layer to have society as it is with oppression and post-apocalyptic damage, and I want one cut-out corner that sinks inward with the people who hope for a better society.

e. Their art doesn't have much detail, and the landscapes are mostly about rebuilding things. I don't see how they portray the world after an apocalypse. Society looks to be just building new structures, not surviving a nuclear fallout. This could be relabelled "Saskatchewan" or "Sudbury" and have the same, if not better impact.