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Final look of my piece from the assessment day. 

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Evaluation

I started my project thinking about what would leave an impact on a viewer. I decided I could play on the idea of an experience as I had done on the collaboration project.

I knew that projection mapping was something that I had been interested in trying for quite some time, thus I concluded that this project might be the greatest opportunity to do so. I came across artwork by a Japanese art student named Hiroyoshi Asano, His work was most centred around projection mapping on buildings, walls, objects etc. The work that struck me the most was a projection mapping of waves onto a white backdrop as well as the floor. The image was created to look like it was in real time, like a 3D effect. He achieved this by using a fisheye lens which was something I had thought about trying. What also struck me most was how he was able to map the floor to create the illusion of the water directly at your feet. After seeing this work I knew that projection mapping was the way to go for this project. 

When researching further into projection mapping, I saw that a simple, yet effective, structure to use was a cube, thus coming away from the idea of a backdrop. I made a small cube which I initially used to test mapping. Matt taught me how to do mapping in Premiere Pro CC and from there I was able to expand my visuals and realise which kind of images were effective and which were not. The most effective were the visuals of an underwater coral reef that I had come across online. It created the illusion of a fish tank or aquarium, which I though was highly effective and so decided to continue working with these visuals. I also found the larger cube which I knew would work best to create that illusion. 

IT was after this that my concept came about. Originally, before I began mapping, I wanted to create a piece that contrasted between the manmade and the natural and how we are able to manipulate and easily access natural imagery through technology. However after the group crits I became aware that this was too complicated and confusing, which drove me to condense my concept into a single idea. After I practiced mapping I related the underwater images to ocean pollution. This idea was prompted by a video I had seen on Facebook by Greenpeace about the bleaching and death of the Great Barrier Reef. I am quite passionate about protecting the sustainability of the planet and realised that this was the way forward for my piece. 

The images I used were found online and are of an underwater reef along with images, overlaid at irregular intervals, of industry, pollution and marine harm. I wanted the images to appear suddenly to disrupt the viewers gaze on the beautiful images of the reef. I reinforced this with the sound, where I have placed sounds of the ocean that is constantly present but is then disturbed by industrial sounds when the images appear. 

The aim of my project was to create an experience for the viewer of the reality of ocean pollution, as it is often something that we overlook and continue to dump waste into the ocean. 

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This is the final look of my complete project. In this video I have been able to sync each side to play at the same time to the best of my ability. On the day of showing it is simply a matter of pressing play at the same time. One side from my laptop and the other from a media player. In this video there is also the sound playing through the three speakers I have placed around the space. Unfortunately the mapping of the images are slightly askew. This happened after I exported the two sides. I have been able to position them as accurately as I saw possible, but is the only unwanted part in my piece. Other than this I am very pleased with the way that it has turned out and hope that my message will be understood to viewers. 

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This is the final set up for tomorrow (Thursday 30th March). I spent the day accurately placing both projectors to cover the cube with my mapped images. I also have finally set up three speakers around the cube to create the atmospheric experience I want to achieve. 

Matt also locked both projectors for safety to avoid theft which was very helpful as I will not be needing to completely set up on the deadline day. Unfortunately there will always be some sort of movement from the projectors in which case I would need to align it again on the day. I have also taped down the wires to avoid trips and ruining of my work. 

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These are exports of both sides of the cube. It shows how each side is quite different in the way I mapped them. The ‘Two sides only loop’ was the easier side to complete as I did not need to distort the image to fit the cube; I simply needed to mask the image and it was finished. The ‘Top and two sides loop’ was the most difficult as I had to distort the images quite a lot in order for the image to be smooth and flat against the cube. Along with each video is the sound track that I have made changes to. For majority of each video we hear the sounds of the ocean and underwater and the when the images of industry and dead coral appear we hear the sounds of industry to portray the manmade sounds that we hear and know is causing some form of pollution in contrast with the calming sounds of the ocean. 

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Although this is only the second edit that I have done since the first try, I feel that the structure of this sound fits perfectly with my work. I have made it to sync with the images that are seen. When there are images of the underwater reef I have only used the sounds of waves and underwater bubbles. Where there are then the overlaying images of pollution, industry and animal harm I have used the industrial mechanical sounds on top of the ocean sounds. With this structure I am giving the viewer moments to take in the beauty of the underwater ocean, hearing the calm sounds, until it is entirely disrupted by the industry sounds and images. However, the disruption is only for a short moment. The idea behind this was to not give the viewer the whole message, but to make them wonder what they had just seen and to watch on further to understand what they are seeing. I hope that with this it creates a great impact using a simple structure in both sound and image. 

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Bart Kresa, one of the world’s preeminent projection designers, is used to working with massive architecture and spaces. But this month, his team of international artists has transformed their 1,200-square-foot studio into an immersive augmented reality. The result is both a showcase for visiting international clients and a real-life working space for conference calls and story boarding between Kresa and his global design teams in the U.S., Poland and Japan.

In this video we see that the viewer is transported from an underwater world, to the inside of a cavern with vibrant colour and texture. It then changes to floating islands in the night sky until a Chinese dragon with nostrils flaring and eyes popping suddenly appears. The immersive atmosphere of this piece is achieved by using the entire room as its canvas. The artist is able to throw anything into the mix to create a spectacular experience. An idea that I originally wanted to try was using an entire room for projecting my images. With the cube that I have used it does not create the immersive atmosphere that would be present in this piece, however I think that it creates a different kind of immersion. Instead of being surrounded by and almost being inside the image, using the cube creates the illusion of looking inside it. The idea was to create an aquarium like structure to achieve the concept as well as create something that has not been seen for many viewers. 

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This is a video posted on Facebook by Greenpeace UK. 

This video shows work by sculpture artist Jason deCaires Taylor. The work was a response to plastic pollution and so called his work ‘Plasticide’. The sculpture he created was made entirely from plastics he found at his local Beach. It depicts a family having a picnic at the Beach surrounded by seagulls throwing up plastics they had consumed. 

I believe the work is a great message about ocean pollution. The fact that he has used only plastics to create the sculpture is evidence enough of how much plastic is wasted every day. It also shows how much is found along sea shores as the sculpture weighs two and a half tonnes. Although the work is not a work to inspire my project, it is the message and passion of creating this work that really inspires me. It inspires me to create a piece with such impact on the viewer to hopefully make people more aware of the dangers of pollution. My original thought for my project was to keep it subtle, however I believe that I need to be much more assertive with my message and to change the way people view pollution. 

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One Beat One Tree - Naziha Mestaoui

This work is an artistic installation creating a forest of light in 3 dimensions. She invites the public to plant a seed of light that grows to the beat of their heart. Once the tree is created virtually, a real, physical tree is planted in an area of reforestation. With regard to all services rendered, the tree is an ally, a regulator, an opportunity for balance and regeneration for the ecosystem. Knowing how to take advantage of the tree's ecosystem services offers multiple benefits and benefits for the farmer, the local people, the industrialist and the planet. This artistic device proposes to give substance to planting projects and thus allows everyone to appropriate this through a poetic symbolic act. Each citizen becomes a co-creator of our collective future.

The essence of this work is very beautiful. To be able to create life for nature through our life force is an amazing way to be able to reconnect with the earth. I believe this piece to be so powerful and only wish that I could have experienced this for myself. The visuals are beautifully crafted to flow with the heartbeat of a person, making the viewer directly involved in the creation of this piece. I could not think of a more surreal and wonderful way to be able to give back to the earth that through an art piece such as this. It greatly depicts the calmness of nature, even if it is computer generated images. The sounds sends you into a silent paradise of tweeting birds and the voice of nature. Although this piece is not entirely similar to the concept of my piece, I believe that as well as allowing us to reconnect with the earth, it also sends a message of awareness and how we can make a difference to heal the planet in the smallest ways. I am inspired and in awe of this piece and hope that one day I will be able to experience something like this when the opportunity arises. 

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This edit is the side that was most complicated to complete. I had to create 3 different masks to be able to cover all three sides of the cube. The top side and the right side were most complicated as they both required a lot of distortion and image transformation to appear flat against the cube without seeming like a stretched image. This side is also a flipped image of the other side of the cube in order to create the illusion of an aquarium/fish thank structure. 

The sound here is layered with sounds of the ocean and industrial atmospheres. This is not the final soundscape as I wish to continue to experiment with it. 

My next step will be to complete the other side of the cube so that when both are finished I can project them together to complete the aquarium structure. 

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New edit and trial.

With this edit i have overlaid images of polluted water and dead ocean floor to accentuate ocean pollution and climate change. Unfortunately, at this point in the process I wished to have moved forward a lot more. I have, till recently, been experiencing many technical difficulties, however with the help of Matt these now should subside. This video is the beginning of my work along with sound that I have layered together. The sounds are a mix of calming ocean water sounds and industrial mechanical sounds to bring across the contrast of the man-made that is harming the planet with the calming sounds of the natural world.

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With this first edit I layered sounds of industry with calm sounds of the ocean. This is to contrast the natural with the manmade. The sounds I used are from factories, oil rigs, machinery, boat engines and along with waves and under water bubble sounds. Layering the sounds creates a very chaotic atmosphere. I hope along with the images that this will fit well in the message I wish to convey. 

I plan to experiment further with the sound as I feel that it can fit much better once I have thoroughly tried different things. When looking at it with the images I think that it can be used and can be effective, however it can also be too over the top. Sometimes being over the top can work well but in this case I feel it is too constant and too repetitive. I feel that it needs some space to breath, as well as the viewer needing space to breathe before being plunged back into the intense sounds and images. 

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In these edits i am overlaying images of industry and pollution onto images of the calm underwater world. I chose images that contrasted with the underwater images to create impact on the contrast between the natural and the manmade. 

After overlaying the images I will mask them to the shape of the cube that I will be using to create the aquarium structure. The top pf the cube will not have the overlay to create a more obvious effect of disruption from the other images. The top image will also be a distorted version of the image to create that effect of looking above a fish tank. 

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of ocean that has been plagued with debris from waste and pollution. It was discovered between 1985 and 1988 and varies is size dependant on the concentration of debris in the area. This video is an experiment to locate the areas of Garbage patches in the ocean. We can see that buoys have been used by tracking them as the ride the ocean currents and eventually gather at the patches. The patch is not easily visible, because it consists of tiny pieces almost invisible to the naked eye. Most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean. The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre. A Gyre is a naturally occurring vortex of wind and currents that rotate in a clockwise direction in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere. The gyre's rotational pattern draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including coastal waters off North America and Japan. 

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This a short plastic and waste pollution awareness video that points out the issues of human waste. 

A quote at the beginning of the video is “Only we humans make waste that nature can’t digest” by Captain Charles Moore, who is an oceanographer and racing boat captain known for articles that recently brought attention to the 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch', an area of the Pacific Ocean strewn with floating plastic debris which is twice the size of Texas. The video shows images of plastics that end up in the ocean and sea shores and also gives statistics of the pollution that the ocean has suffered. One part of the video shows a man surfing through a wave only to see the once clear water tarnished by waste. It is all these no biodegradable and non recyclable products that are destroying the nature of our planet. 

When watching videos such as these is what inspires me most to feel the need to take action in art form or any other form, in hope to make a difference for the planet that humans have damaged. My work is something that I am very passionate about and I am glad to have realised for this project that this is something that I want to pursue; be for the rest of my projects into third year, or as an idea for future works after university. 

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Sound

After focusing only on visuals for so long I have finally decided to experiment with my sound. 

After the last group crit it was suggested to use industrial sounds in my work. I took this on board and did exactly that. I looked online for sounds of different industrial or mechanical machinery. I came across the sounds of work at an oil rig, a factory and drilling. I layered these sounds with my footage but felt like this did not give enough depth to what I wanted achieve for the message of this project. I decided that sounds of the ocean would work well with this. I found sounds of ocean waves and underwater sounds and layered these on top of the industrial sounds.

I find with this there is no need to distort it or exaggerate it in anyway as it essentially does that itself. By layering the sounds on top of each other shows how the loud mechanical industry is continuing to disrupt the natural world, thus causing us to see and hear less of nature everyday. These sounds are associated with the damage and destruction of natural habitats and will then serve as a disruption as a part of my piece.

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These are notes that I took when I was having technical difficulties with my work. I had completed most of the mapping until my images began to glitch, disappearing and reappearing at random. I spoke with Matt who helped me resolve this issue and since then it has all worked out fine. The side that i named annoying was the side that covered the top as well as two faces of the cube. This side was the most difficult to get right and required a lot of patience to get right. I am still currently trying to make it all fit the way I want it to and hope that I will be able to for the final assessment day.