#Ctec503

[alyssabct]

Creative Workflow - Studio

[malsbctslam]

Original animation of the ADM Machine

[muttonbct]

Kufre Demo Video

[landraxbct]

CTEC503

Project Ke - Foam Mask

In week 9, we used the mask pattern created by Ciara and Alyssa to cut out the helmet pieces from EVA foam, which we then glued together to make our helmet. This foam mask would help us to see how we could fit our electrical components inside. It was a challenging and quite messy task, but I’m so happy we were able to finish it that day.

[711bel]

Week 6 - COVID CHALLENGE PT PT 2

At the beginning of this week I formally e-mailed Rachel, the one kind of in charge in the whole COVID-Challenge thing to inform her that I was going to be participating in this instead of Senior Studio. 

The majority of this week was just weighing my options, and identifying things within the challenge guide that I would like to work on with in the remaining time frame that is feasible. 

At first I was thinking more down the lines of the homeless with in the current pandemic situation. They don’t have ways to keep in-doors, as well as with everyone being isolated they aren’t able to eat as well. It had me thinking “what are they doing right now?” Of course I had no real way to know other than driving down to the city, as well as other than concept I don’t have a real feasible way of communicating this digitally. 

To help me keep my thoughts in order I stole my sisters whiteboard and started jotting down feasible ways of communicating as well as the concepts to drive it. On the top top left I have the different methods of communication. I kept the methods digital, as I don’t have much stuff around the house to make something physical that would be finished in time. On the right are the themes and concepts. I then added either a positive sign (+), negative sign (-), and equal sign(=), to symbolize the likelihood that I would do it. For themes I had positive signs on homeless, as well as mental health/ Abusive current situations. For the communication methods, I had positive signs on rotoscoping as well video editing, as these were skills that I would like to further develop further as well as something that was feasible given the time period left. I settled with rotoscoping as video editing is either or. 

Having everything laid out like this I’m pretty worried... I don’t know if its communicative enough to achieve what I’m planning, and I’m kind of a bit frazzled right now. 

[natpeabct]

ghost jeans

Finished putting all the pieces of the jeans together today. Here is what they look like against a wall and an explanation of each section.

It’s quick janky and I’m not entirely happy with the edges. Something I was surprised by was how the hanging jeans seemingly slowly rotate. Although I didn’t anticipate this, it gives an eye catching movement that might just draw people in. The fact that there is a sliced up pair of jeans hovering and turning should be a good tool to get people curious. It’s similar to my last project, I drew a poster of a big frog in a pot on a cellphone. It did relate to the project, but more importantly it was so bizarre that people wanted to come closer and see what it was about, I hope the ghost jeans will produce the same effect. 

We had a few people come in at pluck through the rack of clothes. A 2nd year came and without any prompt starting saying how this is making her think about how she owns too many clothes and how the stories add value to the items. We then told her how accurate she was with her description. This was a great sign, to have someone come up and very elegantly tell us what our project is about means that it is simple and self explanatory to some degree. Tomorrow we will get to test this further with the “test for a treat” event. 

Moving forward we are discussing how we want to present for showcase and ways we can collect data on the night in a fun and interactive way. My hope is to prototype and idea tomorrow at the event where we get people to draw a piece of clothing that is meaningful to them and write the short companion story beside it. Roxy and I agreed that this might be quite effective if by the end of the night we had a big tapestry of people unique doodles and handwritten stories. Again, this is similar to our last project. We had a table top piece of paper where people could mark their personal “line” in terms of how much data they are willing to freely give away.

Next step for me is to label each section of the ghost jeans in a way that is clear and will work with the movements of the jeans.

[calsbctthingy]

Biomimicry, nature & H20 Just Add Water - Weeks 2 & 3

These past 2 weeks have been pretty full on. We started out week 2 by looking into what our premise would be and how we’d further implement our idea.

Since we had been looking at creating a tree - We discussed biomimicry and the principles we’d need to focus on to get it right. There were 3 main principles - Nature as a model (Physical looks/aesthetics. Emulating natures models in design), Nature as a measure (What works and is appropriate in the ecosystem) and Nature as a mentor (Taking the learnings from nature to apply them to the design - e.g. what works, what doesn’t) (McGregor, 2013).

From this we came up with our first brief/statement of intent:

To explore biomimicry to create an interactive installation

This is where the use of the tree and mirrors would come into play. From here we split off into 2 groups. Lachlan, Alyssa and Fox focused on the tree aspects while myself, Callan and Matt began looking into the premise of the mirrors and how viable it’d be.

We started by going down to look sharp to find small mirrors which we could construct a small box from. We also bought some wire-fairy lights to go inside so we could get an idea on how it would look.

To make this prototype we used cardboard to make a frame and then stuck the mirrors directly to the cardboard using the included adhesive pads

Once together, we put the lights in a random formation and used our phone cameras to get an idea of what it looked like inside.

We were pretty happy with how this came out, but our only concern was what it would be like on a larger scale. We debated if we wanted to do a full walk in box or if we would rather have a box where the use sticks their head in and looks around. To do the former, the box would have to be big enough for someone to stand in and turn around without knocking anything, and for the latter we’d need to work out the optimal distance between the persons head and the mirrors to determine what they’d see.

Our next step though was to find alternate ways of making the mirrors - as the ones from Look Sharp were $5 each, and traditional mirrors from places like the warehouse/K Mart were far too expensive. We looked into using perspex or acrylic. We could use this in 1 of 3 ways - Either buy it with a mirror finish already applied, buy it clear and us a film or spray paint it using a mirror finish paint. We tested the latter since it was the easiest to source and bought some spray paint which we believed would give a mirror-like finish and headed to the 3D Labs

After 2-3 coats, we checked it and it was just a silver finish, no gloss finish like we’d had hoped for which was disappointing, which meant this was going to be an expensive project.

We carried on though and tried to think of ways we could make the box smaller and how it would be used. I came up with the idea of doing the overhead box and having it be an electronic eco-system that would be used by multiple users. 1 user would be inside the box watching the changes and having no influence over them, and other users on the outside would be manipulating certain touchpoints, such as a clock arm to change the time of day, microphone which changes wind speed, a water sensor and spray bottle which makes it rain or a river flow etc.

So from this we started to measure how big our box would need to be. We estimated we’d want it to be around 800mil x 800mil x 800mil, which would be big enough to put your head inside to and started making some calls about pricing and to get some advice - It was going to cost roughly $300 for a 2440x1220 sheet of mirrored acrylic which we would then need to have cut to size. This was outside our budget range by far as we’d still need to buy components to go inside such as the lighting/screens.

Feeling pretty defeated from this we decided to have a think over the weekend about what we really want to achieve with the project.

References;

McGregor, S. (2013, January). Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry. Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science, 4.

[ellaoconnellbiddlecombe]

Last lil thang

to wrap things up a little I created some posters in the last couple of days to start to play with not just reiterating what people have said but put it in almost a visual story telling way which I though would be really cool!.

They aren't much but I just played with what had already been said with the photos and did a few doodles in there.

It was also awesome because Jarem came out and helped take photos who is amazing at photography and got some really sick shots which just defiantly enhanced the experience with people on the street also!

[gracehcreates-bct]

Design Process

Here is a list of all of the weeks we’ve had for this project:

Week 1: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188412003192/week-1-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound Week 2: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188412017182/week-2-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 3: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188412294257/week-3-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 4: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188412455267/week-4-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 5: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413102027/week-5-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 6: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413536142/week-6-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 7: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413734507/week-7-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 8: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413735792/week-8-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 9: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413808787/week-9-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 10: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188413871232/week-10-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 11: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188414014152/week-11-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 12: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188414016297/week-12-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1

Week 13: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188914126382/week-13-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound Week 14: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188914134057/week-14-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1 Week 15: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188914136702/week-15-of-the-rise-of-space-image-and-sound?is_related_post=1

Open Showcase: https://gracehcreates-bct.tumblr.com/post/188914285437/friday-8th-november-open-showcase?is_related_post=1

[liamoreillygevert]

07/10/19

Today we came in and talked about where we were at, I showed of my moving model on fusion with all the joints and motion links in place as well as the laser cut gear set. I explained how the ratios effect the rotation of the outer ring gear and make the model move at different rates. For example if the gear set has a sun gear with 15 teeth, planet gears with 21 teeth and a ring gear with 57 teeth, then the ratio would be ‘3.8 : 1′ so for every time ring gear rotates once the sun gear rotates 3.8 times, therefore the constant rate for the sun gear to spin would make the ring gear spin slower, thus having different ratios for each spike would make the spikes move at different rates. Now if you wanted to make the gears spin a different way then you would have to split the axis that runs through the middle up, due to the fact the sun gear spins one way means that the planet gears will spin opposite to that. Therefore having the axis split when it connects with the sun gear in the first gear set and creating a new axis that comes out of the three planetary gears and connects up with the next gear sets sun gear would make the sun gear in that gear set spin in the same direction which would be the opposite of the original axis thus making it spin the other way. The only issue with this is that now all of the gears past this would be spinning the other way, that is fixable with the same technique but because the gear ratios are different between each gear set the next gear will be slower/faster than that of the previous one, this is fixable with the use of the right gear ratios, we could finesse it so that it would spin at the same rate as the previous gear but that would require a lot of math and I don’t have the brains at this time for that. 

(Drawing of Rotation)

Additionally helical gears could be used to keep the gears in line, if the gears a flat there is the possibility that over time they would slip away from each other and come apart, so the helical gears could be used to create a V shape in the teeth making it impossible for the gears to slip out from each other unless they break. I haven’t had the chance to prototype this fully due to the fusion work being quite high level and tedious, so I thought that just writing about it and showing some images/videos of helical gears at work would prove enough for my concept. 

(Image of a helical gear in the V shape)

Initially we had the idea of slowing the sculpture down when it came close to the shape of the rush logo, I’ve thought about this, since I’m focusing on the mechanical side of making this move there is no real way to slow down the gears in a simple way and especially at a certain time, so I though about servos. Using a high torque servo we could replace the motors at each end with the servos and program it so that after a certain amount of rotations it would slow it down and stop for a certain amount of time to show off the logo. This would be a lot more simple then using complex gear sets that would be prone to breaking since there would be lots of small gears and different ratios, with replacing the motors at each end we would only have to do some simple math to find out how many rotations it takes for the logo to form thus giving us the point in which to slow it down and stop it. 

(High Torque Servo)

I’ve also considered how the ring gear would be connected to the spike of the logo and the one of the more reasonable ideas that comes to mind is to just cut it out of the spike so that it is actually impeded in the sculpture. Issues with this involve that fact the spike material may not actually be strong enough for the teeth thus leading to the breaking of teeth as well as being quite hard to cut out the helical gears. Another idea would be to create the ring gear in a square shape on the out side which when inserted into the spike wouldn’t move.

I learnt how to animate my work on fusion as well, this gives a really good representation to how this with all look and work, it uses almost all the features I have mentioned except for the helical gears and the way in which the gears will connect to the spike, but now for the crits and the showcase I have a working video of how the sculpture with work as well as how the gears move. (Video in a different post.)                 

[jrtataut]

Final Entry - CTEC503 - James Robinson-Togia

Team Name: In Development

Jordan Bryan

Nathan Gibson

Bhumika Patel

James Robinson-Togia

Blog Posts in Chronological Order:

1) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/186828953604/so-it-begins

2) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188537413959/the-what-and-nothing-but

3) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188526063434/research-and-presentation

4) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188619614729/team-discussion

5) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188055935174/summary-of-test-for-a-treat-event

6) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188623100069/issues-with-the-ocd-spectrum

7) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188625299549/my-prototype-cdo

8) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188653406434/problematic

9) https://jrtataut.tumblr.com/post/188653408039/group-prototype

[whereisthebreaddd]

Rough design concept for the coupon labels.

Note: These coupons are fake and only a prototype for this project, so they are invalid to use. 
Initially, it was going to be merely white/blank with a bold black font but we thought it could use a little more creativity and significance to our project concept and ultimate goal, which is to encourage the act of re-using and recycling.

I’m personally more drawn to visual art, so colour choice is a fairly significant part to me and what I make. I like the idea of using brighter, vibrant colours than sticking with monochrome because the box itself is (purposely) very bland and rough, so it could give the coupons/rewards more personality and a more exciting appearance.

Patrick suggested I consider making the coupons look more like your typical supermarket coupon deals. I thought using a mild lime green would work more for this project since the colour green is universally known for nature, plants, recycling etc.

Using a marketing strategy technique I remember learning in business studies last year of enlarging the actual discount code (e.g. 50% OFF or HALF PRICE) or the word “FREE” might also add value to the coupon for part-takers at the BCT showcase and may take it more seriously…

We have yet to finalise what the coupons or discounts will actually be.

[roxyallnutt]

ferrarii fashion

 I've been reading a series of articles and scholar papers regarding the vast issue of fast fashion but more specifically its environmental impact. The key environmental harms include water pollution, toxic chemicals and textile waste. My question here is what avenue should I be researching. Identifying what caused fast fashion in the first place seems a good place to start. The mass production of cheap clothing has accelerated over the past decade as big-name stores compete to stock the latest trends. With no escape from the fast-changing styles, seasons and colours consumers reflect these fast changes as high spenders and increasing demand.  This article written by Nikki Gilliland covers this and claims the 'industry has grown 21% over the past three years'. It also claims that 'H&M and Zara were said to be among the very first fashion retailers doing this'.

https://econsultancy.com/four-factors-fuelling-the-growth-of-fast-fashion-retailers/ 

There are roughly 100 billion pieces of clothing made in a year, for 7 billion people. Most end up in landfills. Some man-made fabrics such as nylon and polyester can stay on our planet longer than we will, and longer than our children will. The issue is, we buy things we don't need or we buy things because its cheap. Breaking this mentality seems like the obvious solution here. However, easy to encourage that while turning our backs to the stupid cycle we are brainwashed into.

Through conversations today we were able to break down and identify the three issues/areas of fast fashion. Environmental - water wastage, chemical exposure. Ethics - disturbing livelihood of workers behind the garments. Social - Installing change to mindsets around consumerism. We understand that taking an approach that covers all three of these areas is daunting. At this stage, I figure that the only hopeful fate to this unsustainable problem is consumer awareness of the lifecycle of these garments.

Conventionally grown cotton, one of the most popular clothing fibres, is also one of the most water- and pesticide-dependent crops.  It takes 2,700 litres of water to make one cotton shirt, enough to meet the average person’s drinking needs for two-and-a-half years. Statistics like these need to be communicated. Today Ella brought up a valid point explains the negative impact of making people feel bad and guilty for their clothes, as the message won't be effective. We need to be aware of pop this as we begin to ideate further.  

At this stage, we are still finalising our topic of research and plan to start the first of many data surveys. In terms of our project, we are looking at e-textiles, features of AR and possible artistic structures we could build.

[muttonbct]

Studio Progress

Since finishing our various points of research, Seb and I have made multiple points of progress. Before heading into our med semester break we mainly focused on Hi-Fi prototyping for our art installation.

Since we finished off most of the hi-fi prototypes when moving into lockdown due to Covid-19, testing had become somewhat limited due to the level 4 restrictions. However, we still tested as many of our aspects and features that we could with whoever was available in order to ensure that these each one captured that sense of Dementia and that we were not misrepresenting the condition.

The many things that we had developed, gathered and collated up until lockdown are the following:

Creative workflow document updated and to be followed throughout the project.

Digital lo-fi prototype of the rooms and simplified versions of the aspects using Autodesk.

Digital hi-fi prototype of each room and their different aspects using software by Epic Games.

Digital interactive hi-fi prototype of each room and their different aspects using Unreal Engine 4.

Continued consolidating contextual research and inspirations to continue to grow an understanding of Dementia and visualise our ideas better.

Hi-fi prototype of the audio for the phone call room.

Lo-fi prototype of the document to be printed out by the printer in its respective room.

Hi-fi prototype of the document to be printed out by the printer in its respective room.

Hi-fi prototypes of the music to be used in the rooms.

Hi-fi prototype for voice of the character the viewer embodies.

Have changed the title of the project from “INSIDE” to “Kufre” for story reasons (Kufre is a Efik name meaning Do Not Forget).

With each prototype we used test groups comprised of several people to view and explain how these aspects made them feel and what reaction they evoked. We wanted to gather this Qualitative data for what was an art installation at the time as this project is basically all about feeling. How does each aspect make one feel, does it convey the feeling of a decaying mind? Does the viewer feel a sense of losing one's identity? Do they feel isolated, disoriented and confused? This is what we are looking for in each aspect and each prototype to make our testers feel. These testing sessions were mostly done in one on one sessions over a Discord call by either of us due to lockdown and level 4 restrictions. This allowed us to change our prototypes to more accurately capture the feelings we wanted it to. Photos of these prototypes and developments can be found underneath.

Below is a digital lo-fi prototype of the rooms as well as simplified versions of its respective aspects. This was made and captured by Seb with the use of Tinkercad. It allowed us to get a general idea of what the rooms and their different aspects would look like in a large 3D space.

Below is the developer view of the first room with the various post it notes. Developed and captured by Seb this is a part of our digital hi-fi prototype of our art installation that has allowed us to more accurately test the different aspects of each room and whether or not they accurately depict Dementia. Along with the developer view is a screenshot the player view of the same room as well as a screenshot of the overview of the game area of the digital hi-fi prototype. Again we tested the various aspects of each room with this hi-fi prototype and performed one on ones with multiple people over discord.

Expanding on the hi-fi prototype, Seb developed various interactive features  to assist with testing, making use of Unreal Engine 4. This allowed the player to walk around the layout of the installation, interact with doors, and objects, and read early versions of the various notes and messages. Below are some photos of these hi-fi prototype and the player interacting with some of the elements, taken by Seb.

Seb has also developed a hi-fi prototype of the faux phone call through software by Image Line that the user would receive from an old rotary phone during the experience. It is meant to be both confusing and disorienting, as well as give the user a feeling of unease. This was inspired by the phone call audio found on YouTube as said before in contextual research. Below is a screenshot of the audio file, taken by Seb. There will also be a post on my blog with this file to listen to.

As well as these aspects, Seb also developed a lo-fi prototype of the redacted documents that the printer will print out for the viewer to read. This was to act as a standin for the hi-fi prototype version. I worked on the hi-fi prototype of this document that we subsequently used for testing purposes. Below are screenshots of both.

Since I took the lead on the research and inspiration side of the project, I did not have as much time to develop as many of the hi-fi prototypes as Seb did. However, I did produce multiple musical pieces that will be used within some of the rooms. These pieces will be uploaded onto my blog in future posts. Along with this I also worked on the voice audio clips of the character who the viewer will embody in the art installation. This hi-fi prototype is a small clip of the mixing voice the character will have that will echo throughout the rooms. Made using Audacity and having to use Play.ht for AI voices since we do not have proper audio equipment for recording purposes at home. Due to not having any access to professional recording equipment, we cannot record high quality audio for the voiceover. We may need to use AI voices in the final product or not have a voice recording at all. We’ll be leaving this part of the product till the end when we hopefully have proper access to professional equipment. Below is a screenshot of the Audacity file that I crafted the voice in.

[711bel]

Week 5 - COVID CHALLENGE

First week back to BCT via Blackboard Virtual Classrooms

Since our idea of creating clothing with statements on to it is no longer feasible given the current circumstances our group of four has split up, with the three of us joining the year 1s with the covid challenge. 

This week was more of a mental adjustment and just trying to cope with the change within BCT. It was very daunting having to move forward this semester with no group but what happens, happens and It took a bit to adjust. 

[natpeabct]

Raw Dartar

Today we got clarification on how the raw data summative works. The rubric is very straightforward and details what the teacher is going to look for. One of the six criteria is about testing early, as early as week 1. We didn’t even have formed teams until week 2 so we’ve missed the boat on that one unfortunately. During the process of going through the rubric, we were pleased to recognise that, although it didn’t feel it, we had actually been testing early and often with testers in real environments. 

Apart from that, today consisted of going big on writing the deeper stories for the clothes. I wrote two, one about my token season of rugby, the other about my national* dodgeball championship (*not really national). Here is the dodgeball one:

Won the national* dodgeball championship in this. (*not really national)

I use to play social dodgeball with a few mates for a laugh. Turned out if you bring cricket, softball, rugby and basketball players together for dodgeball they do pretty well. We were winning all of our games and had the opportunity to trail for the Otago squad. Me and two friends made the same team : Pegasus. We were all the “sprinters”, they are the ones who have to rush out to the balls and shovel them back to the throwers. Our team was really good, we didn’t have the star players that the other Otago squads did, but we just gelled perfectly. We were training for the National Tournament that we were hosting, teams from all over the country were coming and there was even a rumour of a team from Fiji coming. A week before the tournament, every team that wasn’t from Otago pulled out… so yeah that sucked. We ran the tournament against each other instead and ended up winning, I even won the final round of the trophy game with a bullet of a throw. I continued to wear my Pegasus top on the daily and even wore it out on the road works with Fulton Hogan, ended up getting bitchumen from the roads on it, trust me when I say that bitchumen doesn’t come out of clothing.