Thoughts?

This is a slideshow of abut 10 possible designs. Indecisive much!

Slides of Exhibit Design(s)

Exhibition Blurb

Bisjay Exhibit Blurb

Introduction

The Bisjay is inspired by Papua New Guinea’n culture. The small totem that forms the central part of this exhibit is a “Bisjay” pole. It was originally used in their rituals of head hunting: the head of their enemy would be spiked on the pole, to then allow the tribe to absorb the defeated spirit.
The theme of absorbing spiritual attributes from one person into another is a recurring theme in our society, and I have used this to develop a story based on the audiences choice of spirit. The spirits in my exhibit are represented by three heads, each carrying predetermined character attributes. These heads are selected by the audience for the attributes that they perceive as attractive.

Experience Scenario

The Bisjay pole will act as my conduit to the virtual world. To the right of the pole are three small heads, each with labeled attributes. The user picks one up, and places it on the top of the pole. He then proceeds to repeat this interaction, and then chooses another head to complete the story cycle of three interactions. A story emerges from the wall, as it would be told if they had adopted these attributes into their own spirit.
The heads represent the users spiritual attributes, inspired by the crystal ball from common mythology. When placed on a Bisjay, it absorbs these attributes. After three interactions you have effectively built your own destiny. With ever more virtual existence, we have the opportunity to portray ourselves however we want to. This means that we can build ourselves from attributes that we believe to be attractive. Ultimately we do not know how this will effect our physical lives, and how this false aquisition of personal qualities will cause our real selves to change.

Technology and Design

The exhibit is crafted with plaster and plastics. The doll heads have RFid tags embedded inside, which are read by a reader hidden above the pole itself. The dolls heads then create a feed, similar to a blog, that is read by php script on a webserver. This identifies the combination of attributes (heads) used and prints out the appropriate story.

Future

The original concept of this exhibit was to create networked objects that bridged the gap between our physical and virtual realities. Through physical interaction, without interacting directly with a computer, an online identity is changed. In this case it is a story that has changed. This concept is therefore one that could easily develop into a device that interprets more subtle nuances of the user, and feeds these readings into a gaming avatar, online profile or at a more basic level a feed to online communication mediums such as Twitter. The concept of online identity being effected by your actions in the physical world is one that will inevitably flourish as computing becomes less desktop based.

No time for words..

What am I doing?

Ali managed to get the printer working, well to be honest by the end of it it was a joint effort, just took plugging the printer directly into the computer that I'm using...

In the mean time I'm building the exhibit, it's getting there but it's also getting a bit boring, there's only so many times you can paint things white. There has also been plastic:plaster:grout:filler compatibility issues. Sigh.


Stress...

Thankyou B&Q

So! This is the beginning of the end!!! Woohoo! Just worked out a nifty way of hiding the rfid reader - in plant pot bases! I plan on painting it, but this is the exhibit in it's crudest form...

(the pole will have a base that'll make up the rest of the height...)

Oh, yes.

Got my touchatag today, and it works perfectly. I have the RFid tags going to a link that carries php script to email my blog. My blog then turns the email into a blog entry. Another site takes these entries, combines them and spits out a story! It's like a relay race for phps!!

Ahah! Genius!

Ali and I (tech genius) spent Thursday and Friday last week working with PHP, we had a couple of major pitfalls - the story was updating perfectly well thursday night, but on Friday morning it was entirely broken! BUT! By the end of Friday the printer had printed the story off twice (?!) Go figure. Mission for this week is to get the story printing more predictably, and to start using the RFid tags (which will, so HELP ME GOD, come in the post this week.)

In the mean time, I have been a little counter productive, sort of lost my drive but I have rediscovered it! Today I went to the cinema and paid 6p for a pair of sweet lips!



Just had a coat of white gloss, then I'll get the plaster/tile-grout/pollyfilla out!

PHP PDF RTF

I am finally getting somewhere with PHP, I was recommended "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by our technical advisor/guru, and not only speaks PHP but also my language - PHP for dummies. So the current stage of interaction development is still focussed on story production, but now instead of posting the story (calculated from blog entries) on a website, it builds a PDF and downloads it to the computer. There is a rumor of JS for Adobe Acrobat that can be utilised to print "invisibly" or rather, automatically. Hopefully it'll work for me! Otherwise I have also completed a PHP script for writing the story to an RTF file, more or less just to see if I could, and I can and it works very nicely!

Another advantage of printing the story out through a PDF template is that I have complete control over the style of the document. The stage I am at right now is debugging the code (the php/pdf isn't working quite right). Wish me luck!!

PS - here is the exhibition documentation

A wee update...

On friday we had a meeting with the exhibit people (sorry, I don't really know the proper title) to discuss how we are setting up the space, sourcing materials, working out power points, quantity of physical computing needed etc etc. I realised that I had sort of assumed that I would do everything myself, so I don't really know what to do now! Last semester I choreographed our exhibition and so maybe I'm just more practiced at doing everything myself but we'll see how this pans out. Things like making podiums, well I don't really have experience making them specifically however I like to think I'm handy enough to work it out. (I have renovated a flat myself so surely I can do this, can't I?!)

Did a little vector design for the object-placing-plate that will go on top of the Bisj pole, and cut it out of 4mm MDF with the laser cutter. Just going through different coats of white paint just now so don't be too judgmental!



Today we had another meeting about the physical build of the exhibition and it went ok, people seem to be more clued up on what they are doing but to be honest I think we are all too distracted by making the exhibits first. it would be nice if there was time to wait until our exhibits were more complete before worrying about the exhibtion but the semester isn't long enough I guess. I'm going to try to work out some php printing stuff tonight to prepare myself for tomorrow when I'm hoping to have the opportunity to discuss php with someone more "in the know" than I am.

Off to make some dinner and hang up the washing. Ahh the student life.

Progress!

For those of you that are really interested in the way my exhibit is going to work...

I have now got a working blog and php script that reads the blog entries, takes the entries into an array of 3 items. The three items together read AAA, BBB, CCC, ABC etc and the php displays the corresponding story.

Currently the input to the blog is manually as you would a regular blog, however I plan on utilising the RFid tags and reader to post the entries A, B, and C.

For those of you who are eager to see how things are shaping up here's a picture!



Bl**dy brilliant is the phrase you are looking for... They are not finished, (the gills and lips are still to be molded) but this gives an idea of the design language and the finished feel.

Making headway...

Pre-Head harvest... (Warning: Dolls were harmed)


Stage 1 Plastering



Stage 2 Emulsion