Final Build

Updated Prototype

Here is a few pictures of my prototype fully working!

Each photoresistor controls different things such as rate of video, fading between videos, and sound. Although the piano is still present, I want to change it but have not figured out how, but it has a nice sound to it so I will keep it there for now.


Excuse the blurry images, camera was playing up. :(

Physical Model and Visual Ideas

My idea for visuals is finally put into fruition. Since my physical model will be affected by light, I wanted to show this through the footage. My concept is to use Wellington at Night as a theme, and use footage from Wellingtons lighting at night. As well as this, I will create artificial visuals in After Effects to compliment these videos. Here are a few pictures that I have used for inspiration. I will create some videos as well to show off my ideas.





Having discussed the layout of my electronics for this project, I set to work designing the layout for the photoresistors.


This was my first attempt to get the LSR working with Arduino2Max, which was succesful. I started designing a prototype to use for testing my visuals, but I ended up hooking up the resistors in the wrong series, but now I know where to put them!

Update

I've purchased a few photo resistors and have had some issues getting max to read the inputs from the Arduino, but with some fine tuning it should be all good.


As well as this, I have been playing around with the makenote object in Max, and you can produce some funky sounds with it. I was thinking of hooking these up to the photo resistors.

Reading

Having had a look at chapter 4, I found this comment in the composition section that I thought was very interesting.

"Abstract visuals could be better analyzed as if they were music, including their compositional strengths and weaknesses, rhythmic structure, beauty etc...Unfortunately, we are not used to listening to visuals but rather to watching them attentively, looking for a story"

Having this in mind when developing a visual piece is something that is somewhat inspiring. The comment "we are not used to listening to visuals" particularly because it says that we can actually 'listen' to visuals, we just need to train ourselves to do so. I dont know how relevant this is to my piece but I found it extremely interesting.

Conceptualising

I myself attended last years presentation for 305 and was particularly interested in Sebastians peice using the Foosball table. I wanted to take this idea and not use it in such a satirical setting and actually use it to generated an abstract visualization of soundscape.

One concept I keep coming back too is the mini air hockey table, here are a few ideas I am mulling over, specifically the idea of play.

Finished Object - 'Water Pump'

Final Footage

To my best ability I added the flame as well as the water particles. I think it works quite well although I need to lengthen the span that the flame is down for. Can't quite figure out how.

Update

I have incorporated more text about the story in this 3D like state, to symbolize the loss of the documentation in the building.


The camera slowly pans in and out so you can read the texts, and gives you a sense of depth that a static patch would not.

Patch Updates

In addition to having a pretty sorted prototype, I have been working on the patch, it is not perfect but I have the basic fundamentals sorted.

This video shows the flame being put out by the 'water'.

Progress

Couldn't take pictures of my progress so far, so heres a diagram! The patch itself is becoming a bit of a shambles. I need some urgent technical help in some areas of it to make it look decent.

But other than that, full steam ahead, Im pretty sorted on all other fronts.

305 Rethinking Project 1

I am still going with the flame idea, but am thinking of constructing a pump mechanism to 'pump' water onto the flames, to reveal snippets of what happened, and the records lost.

Fire!

I have chosen 1952 as my year, it is the year that the Wellington Archive Building was burnt down, with the loss of much of Wellingtons records.

I have created a sample flame I may want to use for this project in Quartz:

Im thinking of focusing on the child demographic and making this into a game of 'try not to be burnt by the fire' so you play as the records themselves, or you try to blow out the fire somehow in some way, still thinking of concepts.

First Post

Woo