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January 05, 2006

Wrap Up Notes (Alice)

Feedback from the classes:

Michael Snider told us that we were about 90 percent of the way there. The guest crit from Min’s class told me that she liked the look of the piece and it reminded her of a piece she saw recently in a gallery; she was referring to the fan piece that Min had posted prior to. I think that comment was somewhat reassuring, since at least we knew we were somewhere in the ballpark. Several people commented on the look/design of the objects.

The strongest aspect of the design was its turbine and alternative energy illusions, as well as the self-contained nature of the pieces. People seemed to enjoy picking up the units and holding them, passing them around.

There wasn’t much commented overall beyond the design of the objects themselves. Our hunch was that the piece (interaction wise) was overall a bit too simplistic. Conceptually it there wasn’t much to the interaction to hold sustained interest. Michael Snider commented that perhaps the gallery space (installation) was not the right context for this piece.

I remember that night, thinking that perhaps I wanted the piece to be something that it wasn’t. I think what we created was an interesting piece of lighting or device (later many people commented that our device could be used for asthmatics for breath training tools), however, that on it’s own it wasn’t interesting enough to stand as an art piece. Looking back, I think perhaps my wishes to bring further complexity to the piece may have been attempts that yielded little results; like trying to force a square into a circle.

In regards to the interaction his suggestion was to draw out the reaction feedback pattern. We made some adjustments to add a delay, but this didn’t feel significant enough to make a perceptible difference.

Momentarily, my misunderstanding of one his comments gave me some conceptual excitement that I hadn’t had for the piece for a while. I thought he made some comment about being able to pass the candle around a table and thought about this idea of persistence of breath. This really excited me because it gave the project an interesting storey that it was lacking prior. As it turned out, he was only referring to the self-contained nature of the form and how it was nice that you could pass it around.

However, this was greatly instructive to me about what I was personally missing from the project. I learned a lot through this process that what I get excited about in art, are the stories that can be made from the objects. Without some kind of conceptual element to apiece, I find it hard to get excited about the project.

During Tom Igoe’s class I could see the elements that we had not fully worked out yet.
1. There were awkward proportions between the shaft of the lighting unit and the propellers. I would have liked to see the propellers smaller and the base unit more defined (the cylindrical form carried with it too much of a phallic association).
2. The feedback given from the interaction was a bit too regular and simplistic for my taste. It felt ‘canned’. There were also sensitivity problems that made the reactions a bit too erratic to feel intentional. Small bumps and movements caused some of the units to react.
3. Judson mentioned a birthday candle effect. In our decision to concentrate on a singular breath, coupled with our choice to make the flickers a direct one-to-one relationship, I think we unwittingly created the very effect we were trying to avoid -- that which rewarded the user to blow harder and harder. Creating in effect the experience of hyperventilation.

Notes from the Show:

My hunch was that we were not completely ready to present this piece in the show, however, we had already entered our piece, and decided as a practice, we would show up for the audition on Friday and let Danny and Dano decide.

I was dismayed at first when we were selected, but in the end I was really glad we went forward with the show. As it turns out, I learned a lot (more than I ever would have imagined) from having this piece displayed.

For one, I found instances where people reacted in a manner opposite to our assumptions and our intensions. Initially we didn’t want people to pick up the units and to approach them as a singular element, but rather as a grouping. At some point we had decided that the interaction we wanted was for people to blow across the ‘candles’ to see the different patterns they created. We even went as far as to put the pieces on a pedestal to elevate the pieces so that people would be less likely to reach for them.

But what I saw consistently was that the form (the cylinder) was a very tactile form. One woman told me that she really enjoyed holding the piece – that it was tactile. By picking up the piece and bringing it close to their lips, the intimacy slightly changed the nature of the blowing from that of birthday candles to that of the way one blows bubbles or a pinwheel.

This is where we got a lot of feedback that centered around assistive technologies. More than one person spoke of the asthmatic tool. Also, people brought up notions of meditative, beautiful, quiet… which were all qualities we were interested in getting across.

The setting was fighting our intensions. Our piece was not well suited to be in a room full of video tracking displays, games and musical instruments. Definitely the quite and introspective nature of the piece would have done better in darkened room with the other lighting pieces.

The changes we had made to the behaviors, both in an attempt to debug and dampen the erratic behavior of the prior piece and also to put in greater complexity to the piece, in the end created a delay that was too slow for people to understand without our guidance. The first day, we got a lot of confused users, who when waiting for the reactions would think there was nothing happening, would become frustrated and move on.

By day two, we had learned how best to prepare people for the interaction. When I explained to them that the device would count the rotation of the propellers and once the propellers stop, would play back a flicker pattern that corresponded to their breath (the quality of their breath would determine the rotation of the propellers), people would be willing to wait for the delayed reaction.

What was interesting to me was how much the background ‘story’ contributed to their interaction. When I took the time to explain what was going on and show them by first demonstrating myself, many people were captivated, once they could see the difference in feedback between a short breath and along breath. This was due to a vast improvement in the code that Mike made; no longer did the piece give back a canned flicker cycle no matter how long or short the user’s breath, but now, there was actual variation.

I have to credit Mike’s work on the code during the last days before the show. He spent a great deal of time working to express a behavior that I could only put into words. My only regret was that we didn’t start this process earlier, as the time that we had was not quite enough to work through the problem fully. Also, my opting to push things towards more complexity, in the end sacrificed some of the immediacy that was strong in the original iteration of the pieces.

I also noticed, that since we had not had time to properly calibrate each of the units (only one worked ideally), that even the subtlest of differences in the behaviors would make or break the experience. People needed to perceptively see that they were effecting the changes in the flickers for them to be excited and to buy into the concept.

Overall though I was reminded of how important things like artist statements are, since what makes a piece conceptually is the story that surrounds and frames the interaction. The storey/idea/concept is the starting point for which people can enter the piece and then the interaction must deliver convincingly what the story makes claims to; moments where the interaction was successful was when we could deliver both to the participant.

Due to the form and the look of the units, many, many people associated an alternative energy connotation to the piece that did not exist. Many people were curious about this aspect and wanted to learn about how the piece worked. I was careful to correct their assumptions, and informed them about how the piece actually worked while maintaining the possibility for this concept (that it was powered by a 5 volt, and that currently it does not generate its own energy, but however there was a potential for this by the inherent mechanics of a the form – a shaft in a rotating coil can generate electricity).

Early on in our class critiques there was the notion of faking things versus actually making them work a certain way and when to choose the different strategies. This experience has reinforced in me a desire to make things work when at all possible and not to use the ‘faked’ method. For me there is something magical about the process; the strength of the overall story, I find, is reinforced by factual details.

Notes on the Process:

Min noted that we did user testing a bit too early. I am ambivalent about this thought. On some level I agree with her – I feel that perhaps we allowed the user testing to guide our decisions for the concept of the project, which has its weaknesses, however, on the other hand, I also felt that I personally got a lot out of the user testing; very quickly it informed in me that some of our initial ideas and assumptions were off base and weak ones. I think what was problematic about the user testing wasn’t necessarily the user testing itself, but that at no point were any of us confident enough or clear enough about our ideas to act definitively in our decision-making. Allowing the user testing to decide in some ways was a way for us to avoid having to explicitly commit to a decision or vision of our idea.

This may or may not be a problematic thing depending on how one views the intent of the project. As a learning exercise this actually allowed us an openness for us to explore options that perhaps non of us would have ever intentionally chosen, however as a piece, I feel we were never fully successful in clarifying our ideas.

Where I tend to think about some of the problematic areas of our process lay were in our overall lack of confidence with our approach to the project as a whole. Mike brought up this point and I would have to agree with him. Min also brought up this point that when faced when an obstacle we would jump from solution to solution. Also, we consulted so many sources for advice that I think we got ourselves a little too confused to work at full efficiency.

Again the issue comes back to learning and exploration versus polished product. Overall this experience was a great learning curve for all of us and though very challenging at times, as I look back now on the whole process, I am decidedly pleased by the ground we covered and the solutions we were successful at solving. The whole experience of working on this project was extremely rewarding and though we may not have ended with a completely finished piece, for the purposes of our learning, I think it was best in the end to have gotten to 90 percent; I actually think that by exhibiting the piece at 90 percent, I learned more from people’s feedback then I expected I would.

Thanks to both of you for your hard work and dedication. It has been quite a journey this first pcomp semester and I owe both of you a great deal of gratitude for playing a large and positive role!

Posted by at January 5, 2006 12:17 PM

Comments

Posted by: min at January 24, 2006 07:06 PM