My Journal (Rolly Project)

since no one really gets to see this stuff except the tutors I thought I stick it up on the blog. the following is photos of pages from my journal click on the images to get a less jpg preview mosaic version.

If its not fun why do it.

playfulness

Today Judit and I were focusing on video documentation and padding out our respective projects content. going through a colaborative effort of using each other for personal gain.

Today I started exploring the city through play, a blurry spinning mess with short moments of clarity much like the automated way humans interact with the space itself blurring out the mundane and routine which is only broken by glimpses of interest. the way the apparatus interacts is interesting, you apply the power to defeat the inertia in hope of moving it, but then what point does it stop is it how you predict will it deviate will it over travel and have a fall and become a oval? i on purposely restrained from rolling everything in sight with only rolling when I felt inspired or just wanted to see what it would look like.
I might get a more cliche cityscape before the stop filming deadline of Tuesday.

Upon walking to Myers Park a moment of spontaneity arised that it would be cool to put the ball in a child swing, the cage was too big to fit, but a sudden moment of realisation that id be able to augment the swing with my ball by looping the chain through two bars.

Wandering around looking for places to roll made me divulge into a photo safari mood finding all sorts of city intricacies which is somewhat uncoordinated sticking to manual focus and not being able to get your eye to the viewfinder. partially driven on by a peacock moment seeing another photographer taking shots I mentioned would look good seconds earlier.

What I want to create is beginning to piece its self together into my head, and I've even thought of a way of expressing it in my notebook, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of myself. after a year of being able to encompass a entire idea within the confines of a A2 page, my previous notebook documentation was inconsistent and full of empty points, driven on by my inability to order the scraps of thoughts and feelings being away with the fairy's mentally due to a inconvenient cold. so this project will be a attempt to at least bring it back up to the first assignments level if not more cohesive.

I love how my apparatus deforms and controrts as a responce to the actions it acts out. its like in a way it has a personality. a more organic being than a solid mass or sheet of steel every dent scratch is like a scar. it bounces and flexes and even has a small painted heart on the base from when it was still being conceived.

I'm still tossing up whether or not to have a semi narrative element. I'm really vague on my blog posts since I feel somewhat secretive about this project(or maybe its just I write my blog entries at a hour that I should be in bed). At the moment no student has seen more than 3 videos out of the 19, one of the things I dislike about seeing something I've seen the source material is whist watching it my brain goes, I'd do this differently ..... was a much better choice. you no longer look at the work for what the person was trying to portray.
Although I wouldn't mind giving up the exclusivity of my footage to play around with the other students shots, it would be quite interesting since the groups all have to make their own version using the same source apparatus and to a degree would conform to semi-simalar results. whereas a individual who was disconnected from the development and discussion would come in with a less parallel perspective, the result would be their own personal interpretation of what the heck is going on. although the main issue with this is time, the adversary for all the studio projects.

Making progress.

Revision C has been rolling along swell with two successful rolls in Albert park. and I'm fairly confident it the rigidity of the camera mounting plate. Ive started playing around with aesthetics Today tinkering around with lowering frame rates, and compression trying to emphasise the fluid lines that arise from the motion blur. That are somewhat like watercolour brushstrokes the yellows of the leaves
I'm starting to work out what to film next. A erratic spiral of thoughts Ideas and spontaneity hopefully. Tomorrow I'm going to do documentation and maybe take it to the park. or go for a roll along the footpath. I'll probably skimp on the video editing tutorials since its an introduction. and I make make the finale involving stairs.
Tomorrow we get our notebooks back so I will transfer all my sketches, doodles, squiggly paint marks over to it.
The classes collective efforts seem to be progressing along, my preemptive thoughts about how groups would progress have proven false. groups seem to have worked surprisingly effectively. Whereas individuals have procrastinated slightly to flitting around to compromises and indecision about what they want, and the odd strike of irony in the steel fabrication. I'm enjoying the self reliance of the individual on this task, it's not a task where you sit back at the end of exhausted like the complex logistical saga of the robot dancing. its a grandiose development of a chain of ideas, the refinement due to necessity not whim. where does this leave my project at the present? its difficult to envisage an finite end point, yet, I'm at a point where I could hand in and still do well, but I'm keen to see where the interface can go.

Revision B(roken)

On Saturday I took the rollcage out for a spin, out in Albany Village. On the first run the screw wasn't tight enough and the camera started unscrewing as it rolled, I remedied this by further tightening till the base plate was smooshing the base of my camera. two more runs down the same part one involving stairs and me and my assistant Chris were ready for a big roll. and released it for a total of ten seconds till the base plate broke of from the support bar causing a tumbling camera, luckily the lens took the brunt of the force and decided to diversify in to ground excavation. with only light scratches to Mr cammy (I wasn't intending on reselling it anyway) the spot welds were only light and partial. On Revision C I'm going to increase the power to make a more complete weld and maybe a support bar, so if the base plate does dislodge its more of a happy trampoline than a masochistic camera shotput of doom. looking through the footage there is somewhat awesome stills and it has a fluid like appearance when slowly dragging the playhead through it which is giving me ideas for the end video that I will have in a few weeks. still very early in the project. but the signs are looking good. Ive already started coming up with ideas for how to dictate the conception of my 2-3 minute video. but it will probably be exponentially different than my current grasp of it.

What brought me to this point of haphazardly endangering my beloved camera by hurtling it down gradients in a steel cage of doom. is it how I love skiing straight downhill for the exihilaration of speed, the blurry vision you get when you do a backflip on a trampoline, my odd fixation with katamari. or the thrill of not being in complete control of something and it being a fine balance between beauty and the destruction it can create.

refinement

On my testing a sway within the beam that the camera sits on was evident in the video. Today I improved bracing to stop the beam from swaying , this created damage to the beam making it bend, I then tried spot welding thickplate steel to the thinner stuff I've been using it worked so i made a new mounting plate with threaded camera mounting screw. and added a second mount point for optional second camera and makes it a tiny amount less bottom heavy.
I'm proud of my rollcage and am looking foward to rolling it down a big hill.

producing

Wedneday morining I made a paper mockup of my apparatus, its much easer to explain what your making when you have a mini version in your hands, and it allowed me to see how the parts would interact where joins would be, proportions and encoraged the chances of having a solid mechanisim since the structal integrity increased greatly in the paper mockup. the new method of using semi circles of steel to increase the size was in effect. and in the afternoon started fabrication of my ball of steel. I was transfixed at the complication of creating a hexagon. which is actualy really simple when i was taught the easy way how. at the end of the day I ended up with the main structure two hexagon with 6 half circles between.

Thursday I built the camera mounting bracket, the ring for the middle to reduce deformation of the sphere. my percived inferior inadequacy of my design by only requiring spot welding was disallusioned by dificultys arisen by multiple class members from the welding. and compliments. maybe im going back into a simplicity phase, abiet one dificulty arises whist trying to weld i have to solve a puzzle trying to get to the joint i want to weld
near the end I took the ball test run.

preparations

On monday I had a meeting with Otto and Everyn about the project, and they sugested I went more in the direction of a ball for a less calculated clinical result. also they brought up how it could be given to people to use. I also tried modifying my cardboard roller to record to the side results in the video->

On tuesday I went along with Zak and Judit to north shore steel, The inital shock of trying to work out what you need was a bit like when your in a line at a fast food resturant and your congnitave train of thought is broken by someone who "knows you from primary school".
and I managed to go into a flurry of words when trying to describe a possible construction method for Judit's design. In the end I left with two 60cm X 60cm 0.8thick sheets and two bars which I will use to mount the camera onto.
upon returning I worked out the maximum size of the circumfrence based of using the current length.

2πr= 60cm
r=(60cm/2π)
r=9.549
diameter = 2r
diameter = 19.09 cm

17 digonal reading across the back of mr cammy cam
grip side |- 9.3cm -| tripod mount |- 5.6cm -|
this side is scarily close to the radius since it dosent take into account the bow of the frame, so i will have to ofset the camera.

From this it will be a close fit to get the camera inside without it protuding, another possibile dificulty will be getting it inside in the first place. with having to dismount the lens being a strong possibility. and a removable mounting plate possible. one way I could increase the diameter is by removing diagonal strips, instead of the usual parallel to the current bounds, this will increase the lengths possible for my main shape with smaller peices being used to increase the frame structural integrity.

testing the water

Today I missed out on my scheduled tutorial of the metal working elements of the 3d labs. So instead of twiddling my thumbs sketching out ideas I decided to create a cardboard mockup of one of my ideas.
at first i started off with my cellphone and then borrowed seamus's camera for a more prolonged recording. (my cell phone dosent like staying in camera mode for prolonged periods)

results were somewhat what I was expecting but a good base to develop from. especialy if i decide to develop this idea futher.

chroma chroma chroma chroma chroma Chameleon!

Previously in the year before the break I got asked by a non BCT tutor if I had an idea for a for a task for students doing a computer based task in a certificate course. something a bit less monotonous than a illustrator or photoshop task. I suggested using a chroma studio and doing stop animations which they could then bring into motion and add scenery and their own asthetic to. continuing on with deja vu idea week(yes im typing this up wednesday so 3days counts as a trend). we got setup with a almost the same task stop animation with chroma keying inpired by the matrix's bullet time effect. as dicovered by the robodance project with a large group the efficiency of a group decreases, even more so when there is no heirachy, and Jason and I got consumed looooong discussion of the approach. a attempt at trying to make it look like a circle of people. a break away from Tom into acutaly producing. (thank jellybabies) and I was compiling images and converting into video. we finaly got a steady workflow going.
In class I did a simple colour key and overlayed it over a background he shot. afterwards I urged judit to work with paper based elements instead of creating digital elements, its quite fun whatching someone else develop a sugestion in their own styistic tangent (even thouh I suspect it agravates her somewhat firing off sugestions at a steady tempo) after being abandoned at the end of the day I came up with a startling revalation, I've obtained embarassing source video of bct students and plotted to create a bjork level of random group dance. which has only been iterated into a draft which got shown in the presentation at present but will be realised sometime soonish, with the current tune being sugalumps by flight of the conchords.
all in all it's a nice change of pace returning back to the studio paper with a strong confidence in creating something impressive to end the studio 1 paper.


Time is starting to get more cluttered with constant onslaught of things to do, and balance of working on things and sanity time, with atleast two personal projects being put on standby. I haven't taken a serious photo in a whole 3 days and it feels like atleast week.

Throughout the year so far I have ?joked? that theres only 3ish people that read the blogs, but to my amazement on saturday I got linked by an american fashion blog as about one of my exibtion visits, it's somewhat of a proud moment not just having randoms unexpectingly happen onto my blog or bct students ,but sheep being lead there by someone saying my blog was a "good first hand review/impression of the show." ->HERE<- (warning contains fashion photography which in laymans terms pretty much equates to people wearing not many clothes) Its nice to get some recognition from an outsider. also prompted a retraction of my "post it if its in a semi coherent draft and just put draft in the title" policy to save embarassment.

processing summative assement. summation

I had started loving this project the night before the end with incremental improvements coming without long pauses of trying to work out logic, it was a spontaneous flurry of activity, what was surprising is usually by then i have gotten project abandonment syndrome where i no longer care about how a project turns out. but near the end simple problems had held me back, in retrospect I probably should have tinkered more with the abstract, as i got bogged down by my character animation. of my sketch. meaning I ended up with a project which felt like I had achieved greater ability in processing. despite not ending up with it as pretty as the idea in my head. the animation of the lady bug did have a cute personality the tracing of the outline and detail allowed for a more natural fluid like movement. I suspect the project isn't heavily marked on the end result. and more on the development of the program.

linky to end .app(mac) and .exe(windows)

Begining of summative assesment: programing for creativity

For the programing for creativity papers last task we have to explore within processing, from kim's lecture on monday we saw the asthetic of using hand drawn items within a computer space which has lead me to developing my drawings to work on a asthetic. even with fancy effects an animation often still feels lifeless. the main issue will be creating a ballance between my coarce colourfull oft called "niave" asthetic animating it effectively, and developing coherency with any computer generated elements that i wish to include. currently mine is taking the form of a game like interaction. often within the gaming comunity this is a debate about games as art and a games ability to tell a story and make you feel a connection to the characters,
Working solely in processing makes me fidgety sitting there trying to find outliers of intrest by tinkering around with it, my notebook is full of diagrams and sketches and my idea is at the rising in the oven stage not yet fully set into one path, so I have a day or two to work on the basic frame work developing the interaction and feel. idealy I will have a working skeleton of my final before friday. With time for a sprinkling of sugar over the weekend.

Working with processing keeps getting described to us as like a sketch, the issue that arises is it seems a less uniformed way of developing a idea, our programs are dictated somewhat by personality traits in thought and arrangement of code. and are often difficult for another person to look at the sketch and work out what I'm going about. with a drawing you can spell things wrealy badleah and even not use any punctuation and it still could make sence. It would almost have more benifit to psycologists as a analisis tool than a group of creatives. At times its tedious and its more fun solving others problems than your own (much to the bemusement of those you gift pearls of logic to).

processing formative assement.

For my formative assement I created a program that was trying to simulate a magnifying glass and a ladybug, I managed to get the program to the point where it would make the ladybug bigger when it was under the microscope. there was a "slight" flaw where it wouldn't shrink again when it went up to the upper left corner.

Overall so far Processing has a different feel than Max Msp did
In what it can seem to do and the obvious differnce in the interface. its also a bit harder to keep track of large programs and notations are a nessesity for formating reasons will be interesting to see what our project will involve.

heres a link to my program using my dropbox HERE