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Week 11 - Integrated Practices

“Isolated Environment

Focused on physical isolation in light of the pandemic, while retaining social contact via other methods such as online interaction. The campus itself is isolated in some manner from the outside world, but there is a focus on maintaining an outside connection despite that. Keep the students safe in body whilst retaining their mental condition.

1. Cultural Probes: Allowing us to figure out what our audience (students, tutors, faculty) would ideally want/require, by seeing what sort of overall ideas would be good—the location, interest, basic requirements (for being able to create a self-sustained environment)— we could have mini-games to see if people would enjoy a water-based university or a forest one, etc. We would also use this to also know how many students can afford/access this type of university

2. Ideation: Brainstorming of how exactly we plan out the systems, based on the results of the Cultural Probes, focused on a small administrative group that understands the information presented by the Cultural Probes. From here, plans can start to be created based off the information condensed from the ideation process, concepts such as how we build each section of the and how they’re run.

3. Low-Fi Prototyping/Design Thinking/Cross-Section Giving out a basic idea of how our system would work, a self-sustained environment that CAN remain closed off aside from entrants and graduation, seeing how much space we’d need and how things should be organised with certain things considered.

Using the results of cultural probes and talking to designers we would try and create an environment that will try and alleviate the stress that comes from being in isolation.

Furthermore, from the concepts based off of the Ideation results, we’d begin making sure we fully understand each of the basic needs and amenities, including things that aren’t quite normally considered such as entertainment, as it is ultimately a physically closed off environment.”

(From the group work we did, we had already written it as a word document that pretty much fulfilled the questions)

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Week 10 - Systems Thinking

(Pictured above, looking to experiment with a more “complex” version of the predatory prey system, where there are multiple ‘rungs’ in the ladder and an ultimate apex that primarily hunts most of the other lifeforms that’d “predate” the original food source)

1. How could you use systems thinking in your creative processes?

Systems Thinking feels like it’d be a good way to help picture an overall theoretical roadmap for long running projects that’d require outside input—most notably something along the lines of an indie dev project is what comes to mind immediately, such as early access or beta testing. Where the dev would roll out a new play test version, users would play test and give feedback, looping back to the developers who’d work towards a more stable version of the system, and rereleasing it to continue the cycle.

2. How could this method complement (or contrast) another method we have explored in CTEC500?

Overall the Systems Thinking method feels like it’s an integral part to each and every one of the methods we’ve learnt about, where the intent is to design and innovate in some way, then garner feedback and utilise that feedback to further enhance whatever project may be worked on. It feels this is the ultimate point of the methods we’ve learnt, where Systems Thinking is a more readable and approachable visual understanding of that common thread between these methods.

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Week 7 - Sectional Drawing

Interpretation 1: (A possible sort of entertainment building or housing? Reminds me a bit of a Zorb Ball)

Interpretation 2: (A sort of liquid containment unit based around the anti-sloshing measures of storage containers on the big cylindrical trucks, where the double line indents are meant to represent holes in the walling for liquid to pass through).

1. Consider how you use drawing as a research method in your own work and tell us about that – it could be quite unlike any of the ways we have talked about in this class - maybe you make diagrams or maps to explain your ideas?

Ideas can come from pretty much anywhere, the use of cross sections of otherwise mundane items brings out an overall new avenue of inspiration that I hadn’t honestly thought of, in the sense of someone who particularly enjoys designing things for fictional fantasies in different mediums of media.

2. How might you use drawing in other ways in your work?

As someone who overall ideally has wanted to work in graphic design... it’s suffice to say that drawing overall is the very focus of what I want to do, being able to visualise my ideas and designs in a way that I can conceptualise it as something part of a world I create is overall one of my most handy tools that I often try to use when it comes to creating things for my currently personal projects.

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Week 6 - Ideation

1. In what ways did this exercise assist you in creative thinking and generating ideas?

Overall being able to split into several different routes for potential ideas was helpful in imagining new ideas for an overall area or theme was particularly helpful. Having different sub-themes to base ideas off of helps condense these ideas into something more manageable.

2. How might you use or adapt this method in future for your work?

As stated prior, with the ability to have different overarching themes branched off the main idea, it’s particularly useful for creating new potential avenues of ideas from themes that on their own may not seem interconnected, but can be connected through the main base theme.

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Week 5 - Lo Fi Prototypes

Describe how this ideas could be deployed. There are no limits! Choose any materials or technologies.

Overall Lo Fi Prototyping seems useful for giving a basic idea of how an object or area is intended to function, giving an audience a basic space for them to interpret as part of a basic overall pitch before actual architecture, engineering or overall building of a smaller object takes place. Further, with a little more work could also be a cheap way to explore particular functions.

How did engaging with your ideas in three dimensions (through prototypes) help you better understand your designs?

Whilst all I had was a picture of Fort Lane, utilising a pair of bookends alongside the lo fi paper lattice I made, I managed to picture the overall product in 3D in the ideal way I imagined, further adding details with SAI to help further add to it. Overall seeing how it could potentially look made it easier to appreciate the design more.

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Week 4 - Material Interrogations

Describe your selected object and why it is significant to you.

The object I selected was a plush cushion, there’s no particular significance aside from the fact that I enjoy using it as a place to rest my head at my study desk while I work or play games.

Provide a sequence timeline of all of the creative processes conducted with the material interrogations method with visual documentation, associated notes and explanations of each process and outcome.

From the initial image of the plush, I opened it up in Paint Tool SAI and changed its overall hue and saturation as well as blurring the image and scratching it overall via lighting effects.

Further, I converted the image into an MP3 file via audacity, causing an overall strange scratchy drone as the end result.

From there, interested in how it may turn out, I grabbed a segment of the code from the MP3 and pasted it into the seed generator of a Minecraft world, to see if the seed would result in anything unusual or strange, the end result however, was a rather normally generated world unfortunately.

Reflective Paragraph: Write/Vlog/Voice Record about the learning gained from engaging in the method of material interrogations in regards to your own way of creative thinking/making and how might you apply this method within your developing practice in the future.

Overall, to be honest, I feel I didn’t learn much, though philosophically speaking, despite the fact that the end result was probably normal due to the way the seed generator works, if nothing else, it’s interesting to see that no matter how seemingly random or mismatched things seem to be, it all overall results in something ‘normal’ and identifiable eventually.

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Week 2 - Cultural Probes

What do you think might be one issue in working with Cultural Probes as a method?

In a less current events manner (namely the COVID pandemic), it overall feels as though the largest weakness behind Cultural Probes is that they don’t really give very specific answers. You get an overall feel of the general side of things, and even then, that’s only from those who are bothered or vocal enough to voice the opinion which might not necessarily be what the overall target group is like.

Write about a situation where you might use Cultural Probes as a method to understand a group of people? 

Most likely, something in relation to a public event or communal research task, a cultural probe helps get a basic understanding of how an overall group may react to the intended idea or how they’d like to or can interact with it.

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Week 2 - Cultural Probes

What do you think might be one issue in working with Cultural Probes as a method?

In a less current events manner (namely the COVID pandemic), it overall feels as though the largest weakness behind Cultural Probes is that they don’t really give very specific answers. You get an overall feel of the general side of things, and even then, that’s only from those who are bothered or vocal enough to voice the opinion which might not necessarily be what the overall target group is like.

Write about a situation where you might use Cultural Probes as a method to understand a group of people? 

Most likely, something in relation to a public event or communal research task, a cultural probe helps get a basic understanding of how an overall group may react to the intended idea or how they’d like to or can interact with it.

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Week 1 - Dérive

In what ways did this exercise assist in seeing things you may have not have noticed before?

In overall essence it reminds me of Life Drawing, you tend to notice things that are usually overall more subtle about the things you see every day. Minor quirks, perspective, spacing, things that seem natural without thinking about it, but the moment you look at them with the intent to find them, it’s pretty much everywhere.

How might you use or adapt this method in future for your work?

It feels like a solid way to push out and look for inspiration in the most strange places, my first drawing above was based in a hallway with the other students as part of the piece, even as simply silhouettes, it was interesting to draw and the overall need to dynamically space made it one of my favourite pieces of the day.

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A Ramble From My Assessment!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BV3n2qKSAQ for the assessment in question! Literally just taking what I had in the description and pasting it back here since I ran out of characters to type more:

“I feel like even with double the intended time, I haven't conveyed exactly what I  mean quite yet; that shortening it as much as I already have has made it too vague, so I want to use this description area as a chance to expand on some of my points. I truly don't believe much of my personal background affects my beliefs about CT. I'm from a fairly normal middle class family, born and raised in Australia for the majority of my life, Presbyterian background, but Agnostic myself... however none of this really affects my knowledge and belief when it comes to the things associated with CT, the best I can say is that I was blessed with the chance to start loving my hobby—at first, sketching and video games—though the knowledge I gained from my own research and my own dogged practice I feel affects me more than anything else in my life. Nor do I believe why I chose BCT matters, which is why I left out this question altogether. I don't have a solid reason as to why it stood out to the other subjects I had a chance for, aside from the fact that it was the closest to the things I know with certainty that I enjoy. Overall, I noticed others were going after a very essay-like structure, but looking over the rubric, especially in comparison to Stefan's rubric for the Programming first assessment, which was far more structured with specific marks set for getting specific things done in addition to 'hidden' criteria... this one didn't have that, and overall much of what we're learning from both Introduction and Studio is flexible, there isn't one right answer, it's meant to be vague, we're meant to figure things out our own way, not the expected way. Thus, I ended up going for a rather casual blog style while there's absolutely some form of structure, it's not some grade A essay, it's a heart to heart. So, well, I'm honestly taking a gamble with this, maybe I'm completely wrong but the lesson (which I'm most certainly not writing much of this within while I listen (Sorry) while the idea's still fresh) today is just confirming my beliefs. Hopefully I'm not completely wrong and fail for it but, that's neither here nor there. Our tutor (unsure if I should really be revealing the name even if it's an unlisted video, so gonna keep using vague terms instead of names :D) claimed to avoid the 'textbook' definition of Creative Tech, which, while I understand they were saying that to avoid falling under that trap of following a structure or formula, I still genuinely believe that it's the wrong message to have given us, as if that were true, that definition shouldn't exist. While yes, CT most certainly isn't anywhere close to being the exact same as learning the several degrees that CT relates to—there's no way I'm going to learn literal rocket science or how to make a panacea in CT—there's too many parallels between the subjects mentioned to be what CT is made up of, and all of these mentioned parallels, not just the example I made about each requiring practice to properly execute, nor vaguely touched upon that they're intended to do the same thing in different mediums, this is what I think Creative Technology is. In one of the previous lessons in the earlier weeks, the tutor mentioned that differentiating these subjects on "how creative they are" is absolutely absurd; that creative arts are formulaic too, that sciences are far more abstract and creative than we give them credit for. The proof in it all being all the tools and technology that each field has, if Science wasn't creative, we wouldn't have such extraordinary tools at our disposal for it. If creative arts didn't follow a system of some sort, it'd be far too abstract for us to understand, if there weren't 'systems' and 'formulas' movements aimed towards that absurdity such as Dadaism wouldn't exist (as much as I personally dislike abstracts like Dadaism and Modernism). CT is as I said, a culmination of the arts and sciences it's from, our end goals are the fruits of labour much like any of the other fields. The way Sciences such as Chemistry and Biology find use in what's deemed too useless or too dangerous—atomic energy from warfare to powering cities, Mendel's work with genes. In fact, Mendel's work is a PRIME example of all this, nobody cared AT ALL about his work until long after he died back in the 19th century, yet what he learnt is the very foundation of much of what we know about genetic biology. What was once deemed useless and irrelevant was expanded upon and realised into a full fledged idea all of its own, and I believe things like this is exactly what Creative Technologies is about...” Further examples include the internet itself, intended as a communication system for warfare, now it’s... this weird wonderful place that has opened up communication worldwide. Other examples far simpler, like literally cheese, vaccines as a concept (inoculating someone with an inert version of the virus), and all sorts of ‘alternative solutions’ that I simply can’t list off. Overall, I believe that for Creative Technologies, the end result isn’t the end. Things that failed, things that look like they have no use, all of this IS useful, all of it IS a success, just as much of a success as a positive result for other subjects is. Creative Technologists simply look at these failures and success and think to themselves “Okay so what can I rip out of this, what can I salvage for the next step?” there’s no end goal, just checkpoints which we can expand beyond, thus CT really is many of just as much the fields that it’s built from as it’s its own unique thing. In some way shape or form, the goal of CT—that there isn’t one—is the very same goal of the other fields. We went from getting a man on the moon to going to Mars to exploring the expanding universe around us, and who knows what the next step could be from there? If that isn’t creative, if that isn’t extraordinary, abstract and almost insane to hear, then nothing possibly could be. Creative Technologies in my opinion is the very ability to turn the abstract, the insane, the ridiculous into something very much so grounded in reality, and honestly I feel like I could rant about this for far longer than even the 6 minutes I allocated to my video.

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Week 1 - Studio 1

Today we were introduced to papertronics, in addition to our first look at Makeymakey.

Our first basic exercise was to create a simple circuit with a switch that would activate an LED light upon completion of the circuit.

(Image courtesy of @jcherrybct​)

Our first prototype tested the use of conductive clay, and, to our dismay, actually ended up in complete failure, we couldn’t trigger the LED despite having a closed circuit, and double checking our circuitry. Our second, we attempted the usage of copper wires, and that similarly ended in disastrous failure with us unsure of why it was.

In retrospect, I feel it may have had to do with our physical contact with the circuit splitting off the current, though I can’t guarantee this, as it’s mainly theory without having had more time to test it, at least, when we used conductive clay. I believe our failure with our second attempt utilising the copper wires were due to there not being sufficient contact between the copper wires and the rest of the connecting points, and potentially tightening the connections—guaranteeing that it was a closed circuit (perhaps the copper wires were somehow not making contact with the battery holders)—with a coat hanger-like twist may have solved that issue.

With roughly 10 minutes of time left, we attempted to salvage our prototype with alligator cables, these seeming much more reliable, and after testing without the switch to guarantee we had a working product, we succeeded and created our circuit, using a small coin as the circuit switch (Pictured above on the left). With spare time left over, half our group sought to create a much cleaner iteration of the circuit, utilising a lilypad component as both the power source and our on-off switch (Pictured above on the right).

Following this exercise, we were given our first taste of utilising the Makeymakey, hooking up the main board to one of our laptops, figuring out how to create an interactive system was surprisingly easy given how we failed to do so in the prior exercise at least two times before succeeding. Having hooked up the board we used it to play a html version of Super Mario, our system utilising conductive clay once more, with much more success—conductive clay itself seemed more successful as a point of input rather than as the circuits on its own.

While technically, we had used the board to make a controller, it was interesting that we ourselves were actually part of the circuit, despite effectively having made a controller. The ‘Earth’ part of the board introduces interesting ideas, and while the others formulated much of the base for the controls of playing HTMario, I seeked to making the ‘Earth’ part of the circuit a bit more friendly to utilise. Originally we were simply holding the Earth alligator cable while we played, which, from my own experience was honestly rather clunky and messy to hold (in addition to the conductive clay becoming somewhat unreliable due to constant compression deforming it). The idea I had settled on and hastily crafted (while the others seeked to improve the control schematics by replacing the conductive clay with more traditional buttons (beginning with Bells refit to act as buttons, then ending on al-foil strips)) was simply a large strip of al-foil kept together by a clip (I had misplaced the clip I intended to use and ended up relying on paper clips), effectively worn as a bracelet to keep the player in constant contact with the Earth segment of the board. I noted for the future that it was rather fiddly to put on and wear, and seeked to improve the design somehow.

(Image courtesy of @jcherrybct​)

Surprisingly, it didn’t take particularly long before we had another crack at making a control system. This time we were to make a system to play a flash game that was handed to us, Zoo Feeder. Taking a small amount of time to understand the general play pattern, we understood that only 2 buttons mattered for gameplay, the left and right directional arrows, and an extra button to hit play—unfortunately, hitting play required us to also navigate the game with the mouse, which we did not have access to from the mapping system, which is something which would be nice to learn upcoming—rather quickly, our group decided on relating the control schematic to the game itself, our left and right buttons were green conductive clay shaped into spheres to look like watermelons, and our play button intended to appear like a hippo in itself.

An issue that quickly became apparent in my opinion, was the chance that it was not quite understandable what each button was intended to do, and adding my own personal touch—being somewhat of a fan of design theory as a hobby—were rather simple instructions drawn upon the paper we were using to rest the conductive clay buttons on, in addition to making the Earth part of the controls rather than our prior attempts of simply holding it nor a bracelet to wear.

The ‘Earth’ was a simple thumb rest, where you could place both your hands in a fashion that it was comfortable to play, with either thumb or your palm resting on the Earth, you could place your hands in a diamond-like position to easily access the main gameplay segments, the left and right directional arrows, incentivising the player to have their hands in a position such that they can keep in constant contact with the Earth without hassle. Furthermore, I added the, as I personally believe, clear and concise instructions to the paper ‘board’, to try and keep the design foolproof without compromising the aesthetic of the interactive pieces that mattered the most. There was a particular reason behind this, and I want to clarify that what I am about to say is not intended to belittle anybody in the same class as me.

The basic idea that I had recently learnt, though I cannot quite remember where I learnt it from, was that when designing something, make it completely fool proof, create a system such that you could not fail it even with intention. 

Again I want to clarify that I am not saying this with ill intent, nor aiming at any particular member of my cohort, the most memorable example I could recall that used this design philosophy being some form of machine in a factory, where a worker would need to use both their hands to operate the machine in such a way that they couldn’t accidentally crush a free hand by not paying attention. The machine itself could be operated with only one hand, in theory, but to make it fool proof / accident proof, the controls were made in a fashion that it’d remove the chance of accident.

In the case of this board schematic, of course, nothing was this drastic, and my solution was rather rudimentary, making it clear what the buttons did by having directional arrows, and further having an L and an R to represent left and right underneath, in the off chance that for some reason, the control board was flipped upside down.

Whilst fairly traditional (and not as wild and wacky as one of our neighbour groups using multiple players as the controller rather than a single one), I do honestly quite like this design, because it incorporated a key necessity of the Makeymakey in a manner that seemed natural, the ‘Earth’ that used the players themselves as a circuit was something convenient that players could make constant contact with, without it being too much of a hassle.

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Week 1 - Introduction to BCT

Today was my first lecture for the course, basically we learnt about the overall subject, and mainly focused on an understanding of brainstorming and the overall importance of the subject.

A further push into understanding the subject that particularly stood out was Ricardo’s slide that pointed out that Engineers worked on practical things, created them physically, and Designers work on ideas—Engineers work typically with already known designs, finding ways to improve these designs for the better, whereas Designers explore unknown territory. However, the subject that is Creative Technologies is more of a middleground of the two, we explore out ideas, and we do our best to bring them into reality, we don’t necessarily have to be constrained by already built ideas, but we want to come up with new ideas that aren’t merely theory.

During the class, Ricardo got us to try and figure what was wrong with a particular quote, “They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.” (Siltanen, 1997) I noted that design processes, and importantly, implementing things in a reasonable way for the sake of improving, in fact contradicts this statement, the rules and what’s considered normal are required to be taken into consideration before we see how we can improve on what we have or bend it altogether. There’s no point in creating something for the sake of creating something, we’re not taking an axe to the norm, we’re improving it, and improving it means we must understand why it works, and how we can change what doesn’t work to benefit us.

Aside from this, I’m not sure of what else to say much, aside from the usual, we got a basic outline of our assignment, we created this blog for the sake of documenting our progress, and more or less I’m quite excited to get into things and see what I can do. I hope to do my best and impress, but more importantly I hope I can understand my limits and push beyond. Personally I don’t care for being the next revolutionary, I’m happy pushing out what matters to me and something that can touch another person such that they can strive to be better too. It doesn’t have to be me, and I’m happy knowing one day something I do might help the one who it is. That’s my motivation, even if I don’t know what I bring to the table is, nor how or who it affects quite yet, or what they may do in the future.