Øya Wall test movie

The collage wall is beginning to take shape. The small clips are random and is displayed when the wall is in standby mode. The big clips are your friends recordings that apperars when you touch the wall. The text is generated eighter from your movements on the festival or from the speech-to-text function mentioned earlier. We haven't decided yet.

We like the rouged and messy style of the collage but we have to work on the timing, positions, dimentions, exposure of the clips. The sliding text don't work that well because you kind of want it to stand still..

PaperPrototyping

Prototyping of the sequences at the recording stations in the ØyaWall concept.

Contribution Wall

Our final concept is now looking something like this. There will be a wall with a big screen that displays a collage of videoclips of the guests in a graffiti/"sjablong" style. It will also contain a microphone that converts speech into text. On smaller stations placed around the festival area you can touch with your wristband to record videoclips together with friends, and post it on the big wall if you want to.  

Speech to Text

Another idea is to also be able to leave short messages with a voice to text converter and paste them onto the collage wall together with the videoclips. Could be a nice typographic element.

Music Wall

We have also been looking into a concept of collaborative music mixing on the big wall, maybe with dedicated sounds based on your personal Øya-profile. At least we want also the collage wall to be interactive in some kind of way. Maybe just a "touch to upload my clip-function" and then the clip is pasted on the wall in an animated fashion and what not. Or, a way to touch and manipulate the clips and sort of customize them to make the contribution feel more pesonal.

Wall

Our current concept for ØyaPlay is an interactive wall where you can upload small video clips of yourself into a big collage with others. We think this will enhance the overall social feeling of the festival but we struggle a bit in making the actual recording into an amusing and playful event.

 Our basic idea is to have small recording screens around the festival area where you can play in front of the camera and do whatever you feel like, and be able to post it on the big wall afterwards if you want to. But to make the experience more interessting maybe these recordings should have an immediate affect on the big wall like in this project. 

Workshop with GK4

Due to the collaboration with students from second grade we held a workshop for the design of the RFID-wristbands. We used the Stig&Stein workshop methode as earlier in the semester.

Our problem definition was "How to enhance the festivalfeeling and to make it more personal?" with the focus on wristband and identification. Based on associative words and then forced combination of these words we generated many new ideas. Here are some favourites:

-Beer Brag, a giant beer bottle that is "filled" up according to the amount of beers sold. Both totally and individual sales. "Look how many beers I have bought"... "Look how many beers I have given to others"...

-The wristband as a Piece of Jewellery. Customize it based on your music preferences etc.

-Pick up Beer, pay the next beer for someone you like by touching the wristband at the last place this person has touched. 

-Seal of Contacts, let people you meet be able to make an imprint on your wristband. Could be physically or digitally. 

-Archetypes, wristband based on you being a character/belonging to a group etc. Could be combined with this years Øya graphical Cartoon Theme.

-Contact Three, a three with branches that grows according to your social interaction. Associations to Øyas Eco-Image. 

-Øya Advanced, gives you benefits based on your participation on the festival. How many years you have been there, how much time you have spent on the festival area etc.

Even Morrissey can stink

Our new direction in the festival project is to make a karaoke-machine. This singin phenomenon often produce a lot of bad material and is by many concidered being a tacky thing best suited for shady bars.

We on the other hand want to combine this concept with the more refined music culture of Øyafestivalen, with dedicated choices of songs related to the visitors music profile. Can this produce some what more pleasant sounds than the ones heard on the video?

Also take a look at Candice Breitz study on fan-culture and her karaoke experiments.

Tom Na H-iu

Our idea of "Viggo -the friendless installation" is thought to be something like this. Only with the lights moving accordingly to the touching of peoples hands. When more people touch at the same time the feedback changes, thus creating a subject for conversation and collaboration.

Festival Visuals

It's winter now which makes it hard to imagine what summer and festivals feels like. Some pictures might help.

Remote Speaker

Had to post this one too. This gives people an opportunity to express meanings public without the embarrassing attention of the speakers corner, yet it delivers the message in a more "old-school" way than lets say a sms-chat on a big screen i.e. 

I like the materiality of this installation because I fear that introducing to many digital devices like screens and graphic interfaces will inflict the festival-feeling in some way. Done in a nice way I think it can be a nice translation from digital to analog media.

Memory Wall

Here is a good example of a relatively simple interactive installation which I guess gives added value to the social experience of a festival. Could be something to look to if we work further with gossip- or the sharing-ideas.

A hint

Due to our next direction in the project working with a 'hide and seek'-concept, I found the Spy-on-yourself Beauty Mirror interessting. Giving people at the festival hints on where they are, how they look and so on. 

Iteration Three - Platform for prototypes

Our first approach to the festival project is to regard the festival as an area that we can place different RFID devices into. Our thought is that every guest has a tag and this can in some way be registred by readers in different areas of the festival. You will get a feedback on each reader device but there will also be a feedback based on the network of readers that communicate with eachother, reflecting the activities of the tags.

So there are two layers of interactivity/feedback. The personal interaction with immediate feedback, and the "part of the big picture"-feedback that maybe is generated over time. So far these are just loose ideas but for the Arduino workshop we may want to investigate:

-how different readers can communicate with eachother?

-what is the difference between personal and common touch? 

Festival Feeling

"Hei jeg er på festival, jeg er klar for nye ting". 

Man krever ikke så mye på en festival. Den er veldig lite teknologisk. Den er jord, øl, skranglete band, blendende sol, krypende kveldskulde. Man går litt tilbake i tid nesten, til noe mer primitivt. (en venninne av meg sier hun begynner å jukse og juge) Man kler av seg den teknologiske drakten og selv IT-mannen bretter opp jeansen og føler seg kul. Når jeg tenker meg om synes jeg kontrasten mellom det primitive og teknologi er fengende. Og RFID kan passe veldig bra inn her fordi den er liksom så lydløs og lite spektakulær ( kommer selvfølgelig an på hva man designer rundt den men potensialet er hvertfall der) den er litt menneskelig om man ikke slenger på billige buzzere som lager kjipe lyder o.l.....

Iteration Two

Festivals

Finally we have decided the context of our project and it will be festivals. After evaluating our workshop and the ideas it generated we have found that many of them is about meeting new people, having fun and being social in a playful way within a defined context. We wanted to build on this and dicussed among others the two contexts of festivals or conferences. Festivals seems to be the most suitable for our task whereas we predict that working with the threshold and acceptance of implementing RFID into social settings will be one of our big challenges. On festivals people are probably more relaxed and open to try new things and the atmosphere is not too serious. 

Iteration One

Direction

For the direction in our project we have chosen the design breifs RFID and the everyday / Touch as culture and we probably should focus on who to;

-enhance peoples social life (physical world)

-explore peoples acceptance of touch in social context 

Reading up on blogs and RFID related sites we dicovered two interessting phenonemon ; Social objects / social life of objects

Social object is of a more abstract nature and can be said to be the shared ground of why interaction occurs . 

An example of such a common ground could be Thinglink.org.

Social life of objects could be relevant for us in this project because it is concerning the objects identity, history and ability to communicate. (BookCrossing)

"The interesting thing about Social Objects is not the object itself, but the conversations that happen around them"  Hugh Macleod, Gapingvoid.

To sum it up we could say that we want to Work within a tangible, physical approach to social settings. 

Observations

It can be difficult to get a direction with such a broad term as social life. First we wanted to sketch out different kinds of social interaction and did some observations, without focusing of any ideas or solutions:

-give short/necassary information (slippery surface)

-read other peoples thoughts (man looking curiously)

-explore other social groups (ethnic mothers with children)

-let objects become personal (parked cars, only personal when owner is present)

-objects that sticks out (giant palm, subject for conversation)

-find things (Marianne got lost)

-help others (man struggling with “rullator”)

-decrease inhibition (children dancing in the fountain)

-borrow objects (man with umbrella)

-get recommendations (girl walking with tempting, newly-baked bread under arm)

-can garbage hold information (tax deduction card in the gutter)

-random meetings (someone slips on the bus, starts a conversation) 

-accidental touch (narrow sidewalk) 

-disorientation/fear (kid mistaking me for his father)

-peeking/view (looking into peoples home, ground floor)

-locating seats (entering a café)

-ear-dropping/scene (girl and boy in love, playing around a car)

Plan

Arrange a workshop (see older blog post)

-research of peoples networks 

-formulate a problem definition

-generate ideas in multiple directions

-investigate thresholds for social interaction web/physical (probe Facebook etc..)

Workshop till you drop

After having two lectures (StigogStein) about how to plan and arrange a workshop earlier this week, Marianne and me arranged our very first workshop. 

We did not have a specific problem definition of our project yet so we placed our bets on defining it in the workshop. We did however have a main task and a direction we wanted to work within. "We want to improve peoples social life with the use of RFID". 

As an introdution the participants were asked to list up their web-based and their physical networks and to comment positive and negative aspects of those networks. This task was more of a user survey nature that provided us with data on social networks but it also tuned our mindsets in for the workshop. 

Based on the main task we asked the partcipants to formulate possible problem definitions. There were several suggestions that we dicussed but since we noticed an extra interest in a certain direction we ended up with: "How can we make new social settings more comfortable?"

Based on the definition we were now ready to use the creative tools. Starting off with assosiative words , grouping them, giving the groups names: Heartbeat, Home, Play, Wizard, Self-Promoting, Julebord.

Then we took one word from the assosiations and mix it with the group tittle to make new constellations that generates ideas which answers our problem.

It proved to be a really productive session. Lots of good and interesting ideas popped up that we feel can be subjects for iterations.

Some reflections on the practical aspects of a workshop:

-write answers big on the wall. People like to share and se what others have answered. We like to see our own contribution on the wall. Ownership.

-keep one focus. It is enough with only one person taking notes or it will decrees attention. If you write on the wall, all the focus should be on the wall. If you sit around a table, all the focus should be on the table and so on..  

-keep up the speed. The process becomes more productive with a moderate time pressure.

-try to motivate and engage the persons that is not contributing or is lacking focus. Do it in a positive and optimistic way. 

-try to make people elaborate the answers if they are to diffuse or not to the point. Ask them "yes but -why do you think that ... -what is it with...-how did you...etc.

-it is much better to stand than to sit. People tend to get more engaged mentally when they move physically

-remember to take breaks.

-show pictures and make people evaluate them

-sessions tend to last longer than planned

-explain the task carefully so that everyone does the same thing (ex. when generating ideas they should be concrete, because then they will be easier to discuss

Feedback from tutors

-make decisions on what kind of social environment  and social relationship we want to work with (family, strangers, friends, colleagues, classmates etc..) 

Living objects

Nanotechnology can be quite inspiring in relation to the social life of objects. Don't know exactly how this technology would be implemented but I think that the ability for things to change shape in that way will reinforce the impression of objects commming to life. This is maybe the layer that is missing now that objects becomes more and more intelligent yet they are to a high degree static in their shape.

Four-legged RFID

Thought about working with pets and tags. This is one of the reasons not to. 

Many ways of solving this ofcourse so it could be fun to work with. After all, pets are social objects aren't they?