wildermoth-blog

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Transmedia Narratives Week 1

What is “transmedia”? Well it’s the use of multiple formats of media. Transmedia story telling is using multiple platforms to portray and deliver a story, all the while attempting to pull the audience in and garner participation. Proper transmedia story telling should feel native to every platform it decides to branch to, for example the format and size of a video should not be the same when posting to both facebook and youtube. 

Successful transmedia story telling requires attention to many components such as story, experience, audience, platforms, business models and execution. It can also unfold in many different ways but usually beginning with one point or platform and then branching out from there. For example: 

Brand Extension - This type of transmedia narrative begins with a successful brand, for example “The Hobbit”. They begin with a successful movie and then use this as leverage to sell licencing for the use of their intellectual property. This is also known as ancillary revenue, and is made via licensing for merchandise, games and spinoffs.  

Stepping Stone - Beginning with a small platform, one creates content and gathers an audience around their idea. For example, the web series “Mr Pickles” began as short videos on Youtube. After a sufficient audience was gathered they then launched into tv series, merchandise and other platforms/revenue streams. 

Organic Transmedia - The most strategic of the bunch, one begins with a story and then plans the use of different media platforms to tell their story. An example of this would be halo’s “I love bees” ARG which sprawled across many different platforms.

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It’s all starting to come together. I’m testing a little picture frame for my poster to see if it looks nice. I think it will tie together the other components of the project. This is just a test with some scrap wood. If I decide to go through with it I will go to an opshop and spend a few dollars on a decent frame. 

I’ve started writing the final versions of my conceptual and contextual statements. I’m finding it difficult as I haven’t written down all my references so I’m having to go back and find them again. For my final semester project I will do my best to write the references I use in APA style and store them somewhere, possibly at the end of the blog. 

I will be getting started on my shelf for the vr headset very soon. I have purchased a drill and a circular saw to make the task a bit easier. 

I’m leaving the website until later because the design of the website will largely be decided by how I design my poster for studio so that there’s some degree of consistency. 

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Here’s the updated plan of the shelf for the VR Headset. There will be a carved out recess for the gear vr to sit in, The USB charger will plug in when the VR is on the pad. 

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I purchased a gear VR to exhibit my video. I’ve spent the past day getting accommodated with it and I think it will work really well for the exhibition. The field of view is quite decent, and the phone I’m using doesn’t have any issues with processing speed. As an added bonus there’s a small “Type-C” usb port in the bottom of the gear VR so when I make the shelf to rest the Headset on I will glue the port into a recess in the shelf so that it can charge while not being used. I will sketch and scan this in the next post.

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A Night of Discoveries

After figuring out I could turn photoshop files into 360 images I jumped right in! I got to work and very roughly drafted up this

Which I turned into an equirectangular video and uploaded to youtube

Now... obviously this didn’t turn out great because I basically jumped in unsure of what I was doing. However this was not entirely a failure as it really showed me that I was hopelessly lost. So I went back to the drawing board. I got some pieces of paper and started trying to understand how the angles worked.

I noticed that when a line hit a corner the angle changed immediately. However I didn’t know how this change occurred. And this meant I had no idea how to turn 2d into 360. Hopelessly lost. However I learned from the paper which way the angles go to make the transitions less severe, but there was still the problem that I didn’t know exactly how much I needed to move those lines. It was guess work. So I decided to try drawing over the top of a pre-existing 360 image. I spent quite some time looking for the right image and eventually I found it. It was an office with a perfect checkered roof and floor giving me a grid to help understand. This image can be found here. I downloaded it and converted it from equirectantular image to a cube map using the After Effects plugin I mentioned in the last post (skybox). At first it looked like this: 

After converting into a cubemap it looked like this:

So I traced over the top of this image the help me create a second draft. 

I lowered the quality of this video a lot as it 360 video takes forever to upload. I also uploaded it as a high-res 360 image which can be seen here. This was a success for the most part. Through the transition the lines seemed to pretty much line up. The angles were pretty much correct. There was only one problem... I didn’t know why. So I went back to studying the office and after doing more doodling over the top I realized all the lines were trailing into the center of the box. Meaning the cube map was 5 perspective shots, with the vanishing point dead center, being folded together. 

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Set Up

I’ve done a little drawing plan of what I wan’t my exhibition to look like. I’ve left out measurements as the shelf and dowel size will largely depend on the size of the headphones and VR headset I use. I have ordered one and it should be arriving within a week or so. The center line of the poster will be 170cm off the ground as this is the average height in New Zealand.  The shelf will be a little lower than chest height as this should allow people to easily pick up the VR headset. 

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While talking to harry in class the other day I had the idea of exhibiting my design in a sketched 360 video. I had never seen it done before and I thought it might add something nice to the project. My past projects have always featured a sketchy line drawn animation style and I would like to continue that. 

So I set out to find examples of this and it hadn’t really been done. After alot of time searching I found this video. It’s a hand drawn 360 video. I had no idea how they did it but atleast now I knew it could be done. 

After more searching I came across an after effects plugin which can takes 3d footage and turns it into editable 2d footage: 

http://www.mettle.com/

After having a play I discovered that it can convert 3d imagery into something called a cube map which looks something like this: 

You’re then able to edit ontop of this. BUT!! it converts this back into 360 footage! So I thought why not extract the dimensions of the cube map and then make a photoshop file with them? This would allow me to draw on a 2D image and have it meshed into 360 footage. So I tried this and just put a stock 360 image of clouds onto the canvas as a test: 

I then put this back into after effects, meshed it up, played with the settings for a few hours and then rendered. I learned that YouTube interprets equirectangular footage for their 360 videos. I also learned that 360 video files are massive and so I opted for a poor quality version as a draft. I then uploaded this to YouTube, only to find I couldn’t make it 360. Something went wrong. After a while, I found an article posted by google on how to upload 360 footage, and apparently YouTube requires metadata to be stitched into the file. They supplied a simple program for this, I put the video through it and voilà, it uploaded perfectly fine:

The video is very short and the quality is very poor but this means something exciting for me. It means I’m able to render 2D photoshop drawings into 360 footage which will allow me to create an immersive concept sketch of my homeless shelter pod design. 

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Final Exhibition Ideas

The time has come to begin bunking down on my final presentation of the concept. I’ve been stirring over what I should have as the final exhibition. So the ideas I had are:

A scale model with projection mapping of the design.

A simple model of the design

A 2d video showing the design

An immersive 3d video

The projection mapped scale model was an idea Laurent gave me. I like the thought of mixing physical and digital as this was one of the 4 paths the singularity could move down (refer to previous blog post). However the issue I had with this is that I would need to figure out projection mapping of a curved object, which is mathematics I’m not prepared for, and also I would need to spend a lot of time on creating a scale model. And while I could do this, I feel as though it would leave too much of the design and work I’ve done out of the exhibition.

The simple model has most of the same issues as the projection mapped concept. While there is the bonus of not needing to figure out projection mapping, there is also the drawback of having a simple and boring scale model. The exhibition wouldn’t say much about the singularity, nor would it say much about my design.

Creating a 2d video would help display my design as I could animate the different processes and automation I’ve planned out. However, for most of my previous studio submissions I’ve created a 2D video. And I want to expand my knowledge by taking risks. A 2D video would be a safe option, and so I might reserve it as my contingency plan in case the first option falls through.

My final idea was creating a VR experience. While I have minimal knowledge about VR, there are plenty of online resources to help me understand. This would allow all the benefits of the 2D video whilst simultaneously making a statement about the singularity and allowing the user to properly experience the living pod design. I think this final exhibition idea is the one I will be going with.

In conclusion, out of the mentioned final exhibition ideas, I value most the idea of having 360video with 2D video as a contingency plan.  

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I’ve been spending some time doing more sketches of the capsule design and the experience it would bring. I wanted to flesh out the experience more so I created a little story board of someone signing into their capsule, coming in from the street, talking to a receptionist (who would be AI) and then retreating to their capsule. I found that using this method of story boarding the experience of my design I was able to work out a few kinks and actually discovered aspects I hadn’t considered like how the occupant would get assigned their room, I hadn’t thought of a receptionist or a system until drawing this. 

The second image starts getting into the grit of the design. Labeling all the different parts that would come together to make a livable space, I also found this process extremely helpful. The two design drawings that I’ve uploaded each had about 4 or 5 other sketches before them where I got half way through and realized some panel would block the wires or something wouldn’t fit in. It also led me to consider how the capsule would be installed. And how would it be maintained if some sort of breakdown happened? Where would the water go if there was automatic cleaning? how would the water dry? All questions that arose from the process. 

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Today’s creative workflows lecture spoke of archetypes. I searched more about this and found this amazing talk between Joe Rogan and Dr Jordan Peterson about religion being something that consolidates archetypes. 

There was a great point about how our stories and media today are being unconsciously judged based on how closely they follow archetypal stereotypes. Things like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones are successful because they get the archetypes right. 

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Worst Case Scenarios

Today in relative workflows Pete brought up the “what if” question. What if it all goes to shit? how’s it going to happen? So I thought I would answer a few of those right now. 

Starting with what’s already happened this semester: 

A loved one has fallen ill and been admitted to the hospital

2 weeks before the holidays my partner was admitted to the hospital with crippling stomach pain. I’ve written a separate post about this so I won’t go on about it now. 

My living arrangements quickly change causing me to need to move house

Half way into the first week of the holidays my girlfriend was discharged from the hospital. It was a great relief. She still needed care but not such intensive care, and it could be done from home allowing me to work. So I plotted out a week long catch up session over the second week of the holidays. Sunday night before the second week I was told that I should move houses asap as the building I was in was leaky and would soon need renovation. The next day me and my partner had a house lined up, her grandmothers now unoccupied house. An over-run, near unlivable house filled to the brim with furniture, possessions and dust. The garden overcome with weeds. We set out to work, buckets filled and refilled with bleach until surfaces sparkled, old furniture moved out and ours moved in, cupboards full of rotting food emptied and refilled. By midway the second week we had reclaimed a bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. However we had just been piling boxes of unsorted things into the lounge. So we set out to sort them. By the end of the second week of the holidays we had a reclaimed the lounge. 

I didn’t really deal with this. I did sketches and jotted notes in my spare time however my days consisted of waking up at about 10am and moving heavy objects around untill 2 - 4AM the next day. I still have a few weeks to catch up with studio. If this were to happen closer to final hand in I would most likely need to apply for special consideration. 

I am without a personal internet connection 

This was more difficult than I thought it would be. Through all the moving we were trying to get an internet connection set up. Firstly they needed to wire the fibre to our house, which they needed a cherry picker for, which was being used to build things. So a week later we applied for a temporary connection which apparently would take another week and alot more money. We went through with it. After a while we finally we got the email that the internet had been connected. It was not that easy. Hours of being on tech support before they decide a technician is needed. A few days pass and a technician gets to our place to test the house. They test all the ports, no connection. Apparently they had been given the wrong port to connect us. Long story short, almost three weeks of back and forth and finally we have a connection far worse than the one we’re paying for. 

To deal with this, once we had cleared out a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, every night at about 10 we would drive to the carpark outside the library and use their internet. They only required an unchecked email for 1gb of data. This worked somewhat, and we both managed to get a little work done before it got too late. 

I have fallen ill and been admitted to the hospital

The day before university started I felt a dull pain inside my jaw. I ignored it and went to bed. That morning my jaw could only open to about half it’s usual amount and there was a constant stabbing pain in my through and neck. I hoped it would settle down by the next day. But it got worse, after a sleepless night my jaw had almost locked shut. Again I waited to see what it would to the next day. Another night without sleep I decided enough was enough. By this point my jaw had locked shut so I headed to the hospital to see what they could do. They gave me painkillers, antibiotics and high strength medical grade mouth wash which I was to inject into the back of my jaw every night. Wednesday the next week as I’m writing this, my jaw has almost returned to its full capacity. 

Again, I didn’t really deal with this. I tried to work where I could but the pain killers made it difficult to concentrate. I applied for special consideration in my electives. However I didn’t for my studio project because there is plenty of time to get it done satisfactorily.

Now for other worst case scenarios: 

Extreme injury

I would apply for special consideration and either get compassionate consideration or re-submit my exhibition the next year. 

AUT burns down

Apparently if the establishment is somehow demolished by something like a fire, all current students immediately pass with a degree, so not really the worst case scenario. However even if not the case, majority of my work is conducted from home, so a building fire would not set me back a great deal. 

File loss

I have 2 physical copies and a cloud copy of all important files. It would be an extremely rare scenario for all of these to simultaneously fail. In the event of this happening, I would have to simply roll with the punches. Save what I could and make use of what’s left. For me this wouldn’t be too difficult. I’m creating a concept design so the final outcome will be extremely malleable. I could do a large design sketch and display this. I could create a physical cardboard replica and then use a projector to overlay an image of the features. There are many ways my project could be displayed and so file loss is not a large issue. 

Nation Wide Power Outage

The paper would be delayed by however long the outage was. If all students are unable to work, and all staff are equally unable to work then there wouldn’t be any expectation to get work done. If for some reason there was, I would revert to pen and paper design. 

World War 3

If the government for some reason decides to get involved in war and requires by law that all the healthy men are conscripted well then I suppose the paper doesn’t matter. By the time my service finished I would either be dead or the world would have changed so much, I doubt BCT would still be here. No solution. 

Equipment Faliure

I have a fair amount of equipment to use. A laptop, my partners laptop and my desktop. If all of these were to fail I would use AUT’s equipment. If there were to all fail, I would apply for course related costs and buy a new laptop. If this were to fail I would give up and revert to pen and paper. If all my pens ran out of ink I would buy more. If there was a pen shortage I would use pencil. If there was some extreme disaster that caused all the pencil leads to crack I would use charcoal. If all the charcoal and paper burned in a freak “paper+charcoal” spontaneous combustion accident then I would use my body to act out the experience of my final outcome. 

Utility Failure

If the utilities failed, such as internet, I would use someone else’s. 

Basically: Can I work around it? 

no - Special consideration 

yes - Then do so 

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Response to Pareto Misunderstanding

In laurent’s blog feedback I was made aware of a problem which using jargon could cause. That being multiple definitions. 

“The Pareto Principle”

The Pareto principle is a principle, put forth by Management consultant Joseph M. Juran , that specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs. The principle states that 20% of the invested input is responsible for 80% of the results obtained. 

Basically and 80/20 rule stating an imbalance between input and output. The principle was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Vilfredo’s created a theory also named after himself which infact a completely different theory to that of Juran’s. This makes the word far more confusing to use... Gee thanks Juran!

“Pareto Efficiency” 

Pareto efficiency or Pareto optimality is a state of allocation of resources from which it is impossible to reallocate so as to make any one individual or preference criterion better off without making at least one individual or preference criterion worse off. Vilfredo Pareto used this concept in his studies of economic efficiency and income distribution.

Basically all this is saying is if you’re in a state of pareto efficiency, it can’t get any better without making something else worse. Whereas if you’re in a state of Pareto inefficiency you could be better off without detracting from anything else. 

For example if you really like candy bars. They’re 2 dollars each and you have 10 dollars. You could buy 5 candy bars. If you did, the only way to get better is by stealing and making the shop keeper worse off in order to make yourself better. So buying 5 candy bars if Pareto efficient. Now if you went in with the same costs and money and decided to only buy 3 candy bars you would be operating in a state of Pareto inefficiency. Because in order to buy more candy bars you needn’t make anyone else worse off, you can spend and extra $4 and get 2 more candy bars, making both you and the shop keeper better off. 

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The Connection Between Pod Living and Happiness

In my blog feedback laurent mentioned a disconnection between the notion of happiness maximization and pod living. 

It seems I’ve left a piece of the puzzle out and forgotten to blog about an important decision I made. That being that I wanted my project to be focused not only on design but also user experience and rehabilitation. I felt as though these pods would attract a certain type of person, that being someone who’s fallen on tough times. Which presents a unique opportunity to touch the lives of these people positively. 

An alarming number of homeless people have mental issues, drug abuse issues and criminal records. None of which makes them bad people. However it does make them difficult to reach and difficult to help. And so my design will not focus just on the look and feel of a pod hotel, but the way in which these pods will positively impact the lives of its inhabitants. Ideally these pods would be free, government run and non-profit. This means the design can focus wholly on user satisfaction and rehabilitation which might be what someone in an unlucky position needs.  

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Some sketches I’ve been doing in my spare time. There will be alot more to come. So in these two I decided on a few things. Firstly the shape of the front, and also the style of lock sensor. 

I need to do some more brainstorming on door ideas as I’m not really happy with the ideas I came up with. 

The shape of the front will be square with rounded corners. This will maximize space whilst keeping the corners easy to clean by round automated brushes. The rounded corners where space is being wasted. Could be filled with sensors, projectors, emergency equipment etc. 

The sensors will consist of a body shape analyzer, walk scanner and voice recognition with a thumb scanner as backup. The body shape and walk scanner are good because they aren’t things that change too much over time, unlike a thumbprint which changes every time you touch something dirty. It’s also very difficult to simulate a walk or body shape which would make the pods extremely safe. 

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Context and Concept

Contextual

Currently Auckland faces its most expensive housing prices in history. Droves of people are being pushed out of their homes, living in cars or on the streets. This trend doesn’t show any sign of easing, nor does it show hope for getting better. With this in mind, we can perceive a future need for small, affordable and temporary dwellings. This has already begun in Japan, with pod hotel living aimed at backpackers and business men. However what currently exists is a very basic form of pod hotel. None of which is technologically advanced nor takes into account how the future of technology and AI will grow.

Conceptual

What pod living would allow for is to help those people who are homeless, troubled or out of luck. Not just with accommodation, but with subtle and unnoticeable nudges towards decisions that would make these individuals more happy. In behavioral economics one of the key principals of is realizing people don’t understand their preferences. We don’t know how to make ourselves happy. People who have fallen on tough times are those who need rehabilitation the most. And cheap pod living could serve as a net to catch them and push them towards a more fulfilling life. The main idea for the project is a self cleaning, basic pod hotel. One with internet, computer screens, heating, etc. The next layer would be theorizing a system which senses the preferences and personality of the user and promotes personally chosen activities, jobs, places and people through the pods interface. This promotion would be similar to facebook's promotion algorithm, where instead of promoting for the sake of sales, it would be promotion for the sake of rehabilitation and happiness.

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I've been very slack with posting due to some very difficult circumstances but hopefully the next few posts will somewhat make up for that. 

I've been doing alot of design work coming up with a design for these pods. The next couple of posts will be the start of them and discussions on where I want this design process to go.

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Hospital Bound Creative Workflow

So this is an interesting challenge my workflow has faced. I’ve been by my partners side comforting her through sever abdominal pain. It’s also equally busy at my job as I’m working in a chocolate shop on Easter. So my time this week has been split between helping an understaffed chocolate store and helping a sick young lady.  And during this time it has been extremely difficult to continue working, however I’ve done my best to do so. I’ve adapted my workflow temporarily to fit with these disruptions and while it has of course slowed down considerably, it’s still going. This is how I adapted: 

I quickly realized that while my partner was awake it would be impossible to get studio work done, and while at work it was too busy to sneak in blog posts. So this left me either before work or after my partner fell asleep. Both of which resulted in an 1-3 hours less sleep. Which is fine because it’s temporary - A week or two at max. So with this in mind I’ve set out to maximize every moment I have. The hospital is a 20 minute walk to my house, so after my partner falls asleep I use the walk to either listen to relative podcasts or browse for leads and things to study. When I get home I quickly heat up dinner (I cooked a weeks worth of meals and froze them in preparation), shower and then get to work. 

The past few days I’ve been brainstorming designs and sketching whilst recording it. This video should be up by the end of the week, unfortunately video editing and uploading is quite time consuming and at this point I have none to consume. But aside from that I’ve separated and ordered my task lists to show me quick tasks I can get done at the hospital versus tasks I need to be at home to do. I’ve had to put off some tasks, however I gave myself a false deadline of about 2 weeks so this shouldn’t hinder my schedule too much. 

In conclusion, it’s been a stressful week but a useful opportunity to push my working capacity to it’s limit. The biggest issue is the hours of sleep I’m missing, however the schedule I’m running requires it. I will continue developing this temporary workflow. Hopefully not for too much longer though.