Highlights

The Design Document
The Shootnpass web site.

More to come...

 

Details

Soon this and (hopefully) other pages will be modified to allow ease of use to blind web surfers.

Introduction

This is a journal of my process for coming up with my thesis project ideas and a way of documenting all of my notes and related ideas. These ideas are then paired down in to create the design document. Many of the initial ideas were discarded for various reasons.

Greetings. This particular page is for a course that is currently in progress. Feel free to check back later. There may be a lack or organization or missing info or things that will be our of context... You'll just have to wing it until I close the lid on this journal sometime in mid 2002. Thanks. -Andrew

Last Updated 04/03/02

Table of Contents

The First Assignment
Five Page Concept... in reconstruction
Deconstruction of my faith in humanity
The Final Concept/First Presentation

Notes prior to the Design Document
Design Document

 

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The First Assignment

Oral presentation of a website, film, installation, etc. that demonstrates a successful project concept and an unsuccessful project concept.

Success:
Color Kinetics

Failure:(Partial)
Charmed

My Project concept

My goal is to understand the document the processes that take place during the production of a temporary interactive work of pubic art. The final thesis will consist of a proposal to create such a piece in a public space.

I am exploring situations and industries which exhibit organizational behavior in such a way that a group of people come together to collaborate and then go their separate ways. Thus having created a lasting memory in the minds of the participants.

What types of organizations exhibit this behavior?

- Film production crews
- Circus troops
- Burningman
- Military operations
- Exhibit design
- Parades
- Theater
- The Madagascar Institute
- Christo and Jean-Claude

When does the public come together most? Times of crisis..

- 9/11
- Natural disasters

How do people assign roles in these situations? How are expectations formed when there is little time to understand what is going on?

Possible technologies would include the use of a wireless web cam for the purpose of documentation. This may include a wireless X10 camera transmitting to a mobile 802.11b station.

 

2/6/02
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Five page project concept

Notes...

Working Title: Organizational Behavior within Improvisationally Organized Public Art Projects

This project will occur in three phases. The first phase is to study and understand the behavior of groups which create this type of project. The second phase will be to define and propose a project. And finally the third phase will be to execute and document the project when it takes place.

Timeline: I plan to have the first phase completed by Spring Break. The second phase by the completion of this course, and the third phase over the summer... sooner if possible. I would also like to prototype the projects and perhaps document some other artists work.

Audience: The project will be geared toward people who happen to be in the area at the time in what ever public space this project takes on.

Parameters: These are still being defined. I am investigating calls for public artworks in the NYC area. The piece will be documented but the intent is that viewers need to be there to see it.

Research: I plan to do research in to "happenings" from the Fluxus movement. Sociological research in to organizational behavior.

Roles

What roles are required for a project like this to occur? (Keeping in mind that one person may assume more than one role.)

Visionary - Someone has to come up with the idea.
Pitch - A charismatic leader who will pitch the idea to supporters and volunteers.
Technician - The person with the knowledge/experience to make it happen
Producer - The person arraigning the funding/budget.
Volunteers - Sets of hands ready to help out on short notice.

Questions

At this point I am questioning my approach. I feel that trying to create the organization before having a concrete idea about what to create is putting the cart before the horse.

A project which would deconstruct my faith in humanity. (Dipping a toe in Fluxus)

If the thesis is to truly a culmination of the work I've done at ITP then I need to briefly review what these works have entailed and what they mean to me.

Each project has had the following things in common.

- A clear, simple idea that is easily understood in a short period of time.

- Physical user interaction.

One idea I currently have (and I'm still working on the framing) is to have two people on opposite ends of a busy block in a "high class" section of the city. The first person is a brochure flipper. One of those people who is constantly trying to stuff a flyer in your face.

My flyer person will be handing out crisp $1 bills.

The second person will be a homeless person who could clearly make use of a spare dollar. I'm not sure exactly how to stage this, but I would like the viewers to be aware of the set up... the participants will need to figure it out on their own.

I would like to discover how many people will accept a dollar bill when it is handed to them and what their reaction is. Will they be so distracted as to walk a block and throw it away, or will they ask for a second one? Then will they be will in to give the dollar to the beggar knowing full well that it is indeed a spare dollar.

I may also register the bills with "Where's George" to see where they end up.

In brainstorming with Todd Holubeck (AKA Doctor Groovalicious) he came up with the idea of having a whole assortment of characters who were increasingly more desperate as you continue down the block. The first person might be a guy in a suit who is $1 short of subway fare followed by a teenager who doesn't look too homeless, and finishing off with someone who is a real mess who is screaming in desperation. (I actually walked past a guy like this who displayed slurred speech and a crippled walk. Once he had a few bucks he stood up straight cursed us all in crisp English and galloped down the stairs to the subway. It was quite a performance.)

 

Research/Influences

Fluxus
Esp. Robert Bozzi

Oblique Strategies Info
HTML card picker

02/20/02
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OK, this time for real...

After a great deal of reflection and reconsideration I realized that I am indeed a tool maker/producer rather than a content maker. Therefore I am planning to create a structure in which creative people can collaborate and produce an interactive sculpture.

I will create a framework/structure that will allow participants to each build a (perhaps modular) piece of the whole. These pieces will contain a common plug which will supply switched AC or DC power and leads for a switch and some sort of instructions for mounting.

The idea is that as these pieces are plugged together they will be able to interact with each other in some way. A switch on one module will trigger power to another module.

An example of this is the modular lamp I created for my father for Father's Day. It consisted of light bulbs and Y connectors. Each Y connector can be connected to another creating a (fire hazard :P ) lamp that he could assembled in whatever configuration he chose. I then proceeded to give him a new bulb for Father's Day for the next few years.

For my upcoming presentation I plan to have members of the class create pieces of a project which I will then assemble.

I plan to add an additional layer to the entire project. Perhaps working with light, masking, and moving parts. For instance, each participant could contribute a lamp, a gel, a character shadow mask, a landscape shadow mask, or a scrim. The resulting story lamp would project images like a zoetrope with a light sources in the middle.

This could also involve participation by the users in which they would each move a wheel or rotate a lamp to produce another effect.

 

Click image for three photos of lamp

Add photo of cube project.

02/27/02
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Thesis Presentation

Well I presented the above idea and class and it flopped with a greater thud than any other idea I've ever presented here at ITP.

I was not all that crazy about the idea and it did not really present well the ideas that I have been chewing on all this time.

The scale of the idea is not adequate for a thesis. I'm putting too much control in the hands of the participants. The results are too loose and might result in something that is not too impressive.

The above idea is not the culmination of all my work. So... what has my work consisted of...

the kissing booth involved an interaction with strangers in a private booth located in a public space. The interaction was common in that it was a kiss and strange in that you would never know who you are kissing. The technology was dental dams. Not electronic, but I put the chose the interaction and then applied appropriate technology.

Invis-O-Vision involves wearing a pair of glasses similar to 3D glasses. Again a familiar experience, except that instead of seeing 3D you see a video image where before there was only white light.

Sonic Tetherball allows visually impaired people to play a game on equal footing with the sighted.

I need to focus on interaction. What is the interaction?

All of my projects are vehicles for interaction which tend to focus on a particular sense.

Create a structure, but still allow for creativity.

What is the goal? What is the container which holds the structure?

 

Production notes

Progress... so far I:

Registered the domain and went with Hi-Speed as a hosting service.

Visited the USPS and found out that I can not use business reply mail so I bought postage and mailed a camera to myself as a test. (It worked.)

Bought 20 "Fun Snap" cameras with flash on EBay for about $80.

Created a stencile in photoshop and photocopied them on to avery label. Camera labels are hard printed instead of typeset making them more personal and looking less business/profit motivated.

Wrote the copy and printed cards to go with cameras.

I had hoped to launch a batch of cameras from San Francisco but I ran out of time and hit a couple of snags.

I have a party interested in using this idea to launch disposable digital cameras.

Printed dummy of thesis hardcopy.

To do

Create and shoot poster in first frames of all cameras.

Finish site splash page.

 

 

Thesis Design Document Notes

Thesis Goals:
Create the structure for an interactive experience in a public space where strangers can collaborate to produce a creative result. This will involve creating a simple set of instructions that will take an ordinary experience and add a twist to it that will create a memory. This memory will trigger an opportunity for the participants to tell others about the
experience.

The Experience:
When visiting a public space where a large number of tourists are resent there is often an awkward moment when a total stranger approaches you and asks you to take their picture. The moment is awkward because they are trusting you with their possession (the camera and film) as well as assigning you the role of ethnographer, archivist, and photographer. You are suddenly given the means to document an important moment in their lives… a visit to a location that may have been some time in the making. (Vacations are often so far and few between.) However, you take the photo… sandwiched in with all the snap shots they will be taking as the continue their way around the scenic location.

The Twist:
What if when given the camera it becomes ours? Ours to use to ask the next person to take our picture and give to the next person and so on and so on.

Wandering Eye (Working Title.)

My goal is to create a limited edition of small numbered business cards that would contain the following information:

Camera Number
Shot Number
URL
E-Mail address
The camera would contain the following:
Simple directions in 4-5 languages
A SASE preferably with internationally valid postage
The first shot would be of me holding a card with instructions on returning the negatives or a set of prints of the entire role guaranteeing postage.

The URL

E-Mail address
Camera Number
Brief project description in 4-5 languages
Technology:
Multilingual web site
Image scanning

Negotiations:

I plan to approach existing contacts at Kodak to see if they will provide 100 disposable cameras, processing, and notify their labs to keep an eye out for the initial photo.

Generative Art:
This may become and urban legend. “The grad student who give cameras to tourists” Participants will have the opportunity to e-mail in a description of where their image was taken.
What it was like to give the camera away and have to explain the project.
They can visit the site and see the photo they took and the photo of
themselves.

Motivation:
In order to see their photo they need to do a good job of explaining this
to the next person.

It is something that is fun that can be done by anyone. Mostly tourists
who are on vacation and have a few moments of spare time. Unlike other projects that work in the medium of e-mail or the language of writing it takes less time and commitment to snap a photo of someone and pass off the camera. And these are people with spare time. They don’t have to come to the site if they don’t want to.

Similar projects:
Jessica? – people too busy to read and respond to e-mail that requires
them to read, and respond creatively
http://www.wheresgeorge.com – Interesting but participation is sporadic
and bills never return. My project will be documented all along the way
with photographs because the item being exchanges is a camera.
Others?

Interaction/communication between strangers:
People will need to ask a stranger to take their photograph and provide some level of explanation to the extent that the other person will accept the camera and pass it on.

Instructions:
I will need to create a set of simple clear instructions which will encourage people to participate and most importantly get the final person in the chain to return the camera.

Prototyping:
Send out cameras with only a few photos left and see if they come back.

Previous works:
This project is similar to the Kissing Booth in that it works with a familiar interaction and adds a twist. It takes an experience that is quite typical and familiar except for the uncanny experience of actually giving the camera away. It is similar to Invis-O-Vision in that it involves the transportation of images that can not be seen until the camera is returned, images processed and posted to the site.

Keywords/themes:
Anticipation, risk, trust, interaction, communication, US Postal Service, sharing, public, participation, photography, tourism, responsibility, structure, creativity.

To do:
Get cameras
Call Murray Oles and track down contacts at Kodak
Ask Dad if he knows anyone who still works at Kodak
Modify camera packaging to conform to my needs.
Create poster/white board with camera number and last chance return
instructions
Visit launch site.
Ask people to take my picture.
Functional Requirements

Camera:
Camera needs to be easy to use.
Should probably include a flash.
Should probably be waterproof.
Needs to be able to deliver one card per shot.
Needs to be able to turn inside out and have internationally accepted return postage.

Web site:
Register site
Configure e-mail
Produce a multilingual site that will work with common denominator browser and platform configurations.
Determine site architecture
Site Map
Dedication page (KEK)
About the project
About ITP
Enter the camera number and photo number
Registration?

Risks:
No cameras are returned
Photos are unusable for some reason
People refuse to participate
Participants lose/destroy cameras
Participant does not understand directions
Camera is damaged in shipping/lost in mail
Postage is invalid for some reason
Participant does not agree to release photograph rights
Participants may be impatient or be angry when the camera is not returned and they don't get to see their photograph. (Yeah, me too!)

Benefits:
Strangers have reason to communicate and share and experience
Participants will have opportunity to visit site and see them selves and
become a greater part of the experience by sharing a story about their
participation.

Everyone is familiar with disposable cameras and has a reasonable degree of confidence when it comes to taking a picture.

Future iterations:
Digital cameras with GPS and wireless networking
Start cameras in each continent.
A new camera per day
Use a solar wireless web camera which would record information for the life of the camera.

Audience:
Tourists, travelers, people in tourist locations, visitors to the web site

All photographs and artwork (c) Andrew Milmoe 2002 unless otherwise noted.