IDSS 2008 Group J

JAM - here we are!

2008-07-11T10:07:00.002+03:00

it was a great time here in Istanbul!
Thank you all!

not only just work!

2008-07-11T09:54:00.000+03:00

... /// storyboard /// ...

2008-07-11T09:26:00.001+03:00

You enter a dark room. You’re curious and walk around cautiously. You see some spotlights in different colors. The rest of the room is dark, so you walk towards the light. You step into a blue spotlight and suddenly you hear an instrument playing softly. Not sure what to do you walk around slowly and you notice that the blue spotlight is fixed on you. Wherever you go the spotlight goes. And you see that you’re leaving a trail on the floor with your instrument’s color. Experimenting what it does you move faster and hear the instrument play with more variety and it gets louder. Suddenly you realize what’s happening. You are the instrument.

Another person enters the room and experiences the same you just did a few minutes ago. But she goes to the yellow spotlight and a guitar starts to play. You watch her move around as she discovers the powers of her movement. You get her attention and the two of you decide to move in a similar way. The instruments are working together in harmony, just as the two persons are in their movement. The trails which are left on the ground entwine and the whole room becomes an area of dynamics, harmony and collaboration.

When you decide to walk near the walls you see all kinds of colorful patterns appear on the wall and because you’re together your colors blend and you are creating a room that belongs to you two.

... /// poster /// design document /// ...

2008-07-10T17:05:00.000+03:00

Final Concept | 10-07-08

Concept Goal: "Affecting people with music in an interactive audiovisual environment".

Target audience: Curious people of the age of two and up who want to experiment and experience.

Persona’s: Daniel, age 3. Traveling with mother (46yrs) and big sister (12yrs). Daniel likes listening to music/sound and playing videogames. He also cartoons.
Michelle (18yrs) and Ali (21yrs) are a couple. They like to travel and find new experiences. They just got engaged so they still like to do everything together.
Eva (63rys) isn’t really that mobile anymore. She needs a walking stick to come around. Although her movement is restricted her mind isn’t. She used to dance when she was young and she would love to feel like moving again.

Concept: There is a dark room. Every time you will enter the room you will see colourful spots on the floor. An instrument will start playing when you step into one of the spots and the light gets brighter. For that reason you realize that it is activated. If someone is standing still or walking cautiously, the instrument will be monotonous and soft. But if the person starts to run or dance the instrument will get more variations, dynamics and louder.

When more people enter the room, more instruments are added. Every person in the room represents one instrument (with a maximum of 7 instruments). When you want to change your instrument you discard your instrument by calming down and standing still. The instrument will fade out. After not moving for 5 seconds your spot colour gets less bright and stops following you. Then you are free to choose a new instrument by moving into a new colourful spot.

The whole movements from the person, dancing in the room, will be sketched on the floor in their special instrument colour. By changing your moving style and speed you can influence the lines on the floor in particular the thickness of the line. You only leave a trail when you touch the ground. By jumping you make dots. It almost look like drawing with light, or even like calligraphy.

The movement also influence the lighting in the room, and the visuals projected on the walls. So the environment triggers the user to react, then the user will cause a change in the environment which in turn should trigger the user to change his/her behavior. People will be activated to explore their surrounding.

If you getting close enough to the walls you also have an effect on it and your colour will jump over to it. Blending colours are also possible, when two instruments cross their ways.

The action of each separate person is reflected in the environment. But the instruments and visuals are also working together to create music (an experience/emotion). Just like the lines of a poem are separate but still a whole.

Every process has its ups and downs

2008-07-10T00:52:00.004+03:00

So we're nearing the end of the Interaction Design Summer School. I'm tired, not too cheerful and tired (yes I know I've said that already). Our concept got some criticism from the teachers. And while I was listening I thought: "**** I should've thought of these things". Somehow I got the feeling that I was just not thinking straight, because I really felt like I should've known.

But anyway, we got working afterwards and a new concept came to mind. But it's late, and we have a lot of work to do. Today the group seemed down and we weren't really in a working mood. I'm getting used to these phases in creative processes, since they're practically always there. But it's still annoying. We have to pull through and get things done tomorrow.

We will make it. Because we're a great group. We all want to finish in time with something to be proud of. And I think we will succeed. But whatever happens, I'll keep on smiling and feeling satisfied. Because I'm still part of Group J and I'm glad to be with Sara, Irena and Furkan.

We will definitely make it. Cheer up.
Roy

Final Concept

2008-07-08T23:53:00.002+03:00

Concept Goal:
“Affecting people with music in an interactive audiovisual environment.”

Concept:
There is a darkroom. Everytime you will enter the room you will see colourful spots on the floor. The instrument will start playing when you step into one of them and it also gets brighter. Fot that reason you realise that it is activated.
If someone is standing still or walking cautiously, the instrument will be monotonous and soft. But if the person starts to run or dance the instrument will get more variations, dynamics and louder.

When more people enter the room, more instruments are added. Every person in the room represents one instrument (with a maximum of 7 instruments).
When you want to change your instrument you enter a free colour spot on the floor.
For taking another instrument you calm down and stand still, therefore the instrument will fade out...
After not moving for 5 seconds you are free to choose a new instrument by jumping into a new colourful spot. Your former spot colour will gets less bright and stops following you.

The whole movements from the person, dancing in the room, will be sketched on the floor in their special instrument colour. By changing your moving style and speed you can influence the lines on the floor in particluar the thickness of the line. You only leave a trail when you touch the ground. By jumping you make dots. It almost look like drawing with light, or even like calligraphy.

The movement also influence the lighting in the room, and the visuals projected on the walls. So the environment triggers the user to react, then the user will cause a change in the environment which in turn should trigger the user to change his/her behaviour. People will be activated to explore their surrounding.

If you getting close enough to the walls you also have an effect on it and your colour will jump over to it. Blending colours are also possible, when two instruments cross their ways.
.
The action of each separate person is reflected in the environment. But the instruments and visuals are also working together to create music (an experience/emotion). Just like the lines of a poem are separate but still a whole.

/Group J

Final concept before feedback

2008-07-08T23:44:00.002+03:00

Concept Goal:
“Affecting people with a poem in an interactive audiovisual environment using calligraphy.”

Summary:
Walking calligraphy. Calligraphy gets written digitally on the wall. You have 6 walls. Every wall has a different interaction method to discover the meaning of the line. The line continues when you accomplished the assignment en you enter the next room.

The six different interactions:
•Wall number 1
oMusic improvisation (Tef)

•Wall number 2
oTracing calligraphy (not seeing it but grabbing a “pen” that’s sticking out of the wall. It will only go one way so you “feel” the feeling one has during the writing.

•Wall number 3
oStanding still (discipline and patience)

•Wall number 4
oTouching papier-mâché

•Wall number 5
oCandle room (light the candles to see the calligraphy)

•Wall number 6
oStorytelling, Spiderstory

Ideas:
-Puzzle
-Animals
-Spiderstory
-Getting core values of calligraphy and base interactions upon those. That will make the entire interaction more sophisticated instead of “just” a game.
-Challenge people to develop

-more people in the room is more visible lines
1 person = 1 line, 2 persons = 2 line, etc.

/Group J

Group J - Presentation points

2008-07-04T23:38:00.003+03:00

So the first presentation is a fact. For those still wanting to read our little presentation here is the textual content. If anyone would like the PTT for closer study (*chuckle*) you can ask Sara, Irena, Forkan or me (Roy) and we can give it to you. So here it goes:

Values
- Interaction
- 5 senses
- Discovery
- Experience and emotions

Goal
“Affecting people with a poem in and interactive audiovisual environment using calligraphy.”

Idea
- Space
- 6 Walls with actively flowing calligraphy
- 6 Lines of a poem to discover by interacting
- Affecting the user

Once again, pictures will be arriving. Have no fear!

Group J

2008-07-04T12:11:00.002+03:00

the next pictures are about our first inspiration sources...

for developing and trying out as many possibilities about our endproject...
which brought us finally to the main concept...

calligraphy could be also in a really colourful brigth way

Ashes and Snow

Feahter to fire
fire to blood
blood to bone
bone to marrow
marrow to ashes
ashes to snow

combining the calligraphy wih "nowadays -subjects"
and getting into therms like graffiti and three dimensional experience
this is our first concept sketch...
6 lines of the poem are pointed out as 6 different walls...
only one concept the "calligraffiti" one is shown here as an example...

Group Jam, full speed ahead

2008-07-04T01:30:00.002+03:00

So it has been a busy day today. Actually the entire schedule is quite busy (whether we follow it or not). But today was the day to get all members in the same direction and really start thinking like a team. We were supposed to have an idea ready to present on Friday. This idea will be developed further in the beginning of next week. We had quite a long discussion about our goal. But in the end we all agreed in the general goal and got to work on the ideas. Below you can see some notes on our progress/thoughts today, just so you can see what we have done.

Concept Goal:
“Affecting people with a poem in an interactive audiovisual environment using calligraphy.”

Things that brought us to our goal:
- Tell stories (history, creation, religion, etc.)
- Discover information instead of just “learning”
- Interaction/response
- Calligraphy
- Telling a poem
- Enrich people, making them smarter (the harder the road…)
- Experience/feeling

Some of the goals we were thinking about before reaching the final goal:
“Making the user more aware of the meaning of calligraphy through an interactive experience”

“Making the user explore the meaning of calligraphy through an interactive experience”

“Create a new way to explore calligraphy with interactive design”

“Affecting people with a poem in an interactive audiovisual environment using calligraphy.”

“Creating an interactive environment which will affect people’s emotions. ”

Ideas/inspiration/concepts:
- Jeffrey Shaw – Legible City like digital place
- Calligraphy community making online calligraphy and sharing your art.
- Storytelling in digital 3D environment.
o Information points
o Choices in story
- Making calligraphy by making sound
- Learning history with interactive stories with calligraphic design.
o Also use smell
o The poem in calligraphy, discovering the game will award you with a translation of a word. So in the end you know what the poem says.
o Enter the room, darkness, music and the screen. Then the music fades out, and lights go on around an instrument. People should go and interact with the instrument while the movie goes on, creating calligraphy onscreen.
o See: Visuals
o Hear: Sound/music
o Smell: Candles/incense
o Touch: ‘Drumming’
o Taste: ???????????????
- Walking calligraphy. Calligraphy gets written digitally on the wall. You have 6 walls.
- Making your own poem which gets translated digitally in calligraphy. Sort of like a guestbook. Older messages fade, wear or overlay.

So we will see where this is going to take us. But we are confident in our team and we think we will make something good. Hopefully you will all agree with us in the presentations on Friday.
Good luck to all the groups and enjoy!

Sara

2008-07-03T23:54:00.001+03:00

This is going to short summary of my feelings from the four first days of the course. I will not write about the project because we are writing about that together in the group.

In the beginning I was just curious about what the course really was about and how it would be like to work in the group. But I think it really turned out well. I like the course and I really like my new friends in my group.

Our inspiration subject, Ottoman Calligraphy is very interesting in a lot of ways like what does it really means and what is it and how are we allowed to use it. I will write more about that later in the week.

The best lecture so far I think is Cornés and Thomas maybe because I could understand them easiest. The thing I really liked about Thomas presentation was the thing that all religions has there own Akilles heel.

//Sara

2008-07-02T11:26:00.003+03:00

... starting with creating a mindmap ... getting to know each other a little better ... each other perspective about personal views and way of thinking ... talking about "nono´s" about what is not possible to do with calligraphy regarding on using in new way ... getting a short overview of the different styles of calligraphy during the museum visit ...
JAM

A good start is half the work ...

2008-07-01T20:05:00.005+03:00

That should mean that with a great start like I had all the work is done already.
No there is tons of work yet to do, actually all of it. But what a start it has been.

The trip to Istanbul was long but pleasant nonetheless. The closer we got to the hotel the more nervous I became. But that's pretty normal for me. I can safely say now though, that this is going to be a wonderful experience. The hotel is ok and Istanbul is really impressive (and I haven't seen a lot of it, actually almost none of it or so it seemed today, cruising the Bosporus).
The people are wonderful. The other students seem really interesting and they are eager to learn. All four countries have brought a group that's willing to work and at the same time have a great time in a new, fresh environment with new and fresh people. And the teachers/professors are intersting people too (theater backgrounds, enthousiastic attitude). I really get the idea they actually want to teach us and inspire us, instead of just being there for feedback and guidance.

I was pretty nervous about the people (I hope my group will be nice, what if they aren't? What if I'm useless compared to what they already know?) But, luckily it was totally pointless to stress. My group seems to be really nice and we already had fun today. Every student is from such a different area of expertise that it's really surprising to see how that knowledge can be combined to make new and interesting concepts. I'm really looking forward to these weeks.

About the project so far:
Calligraphy seemed like a wonderful subject for a project. Even though it might seem weird for an interaction designer to even consider calligraphy, it doesn't mean that it isn't useful. I'm still not entirely sure where this theme will be taking us but it did make me curious.
The mindmap making was fun. Maybe we're being to careful now, but I think our group really works. There's a nice atmosphere when we're together and I think we can make something to be proud of at the end of the Summer School.

When there's more interesting stuff to tell I will post more. For now ... enjoy the summerschool and I'll see you all later!

P.S. day two... photocount 352.
Pictures will be added in future blogposts I think/hope.