Digital Media Project Liam Richardsons blog about his 3rd year project

Project Proposal

I started this post on Sunday morning. As it turns out, its now Monday Evening and I have (finally) finished my Project Proposal. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to bring it home from uni today so I will have to wait until tomorrow to update the Project Page. I thought I would take this opportunity to talk about how I wrote the proposal, and some other bits and pieces I have started doing to help with my project.

When i first sat down to write my proposal I found it really difficult to be inspired by the project. I think this was because their where still to many "what ifs" in my idea. I found it really difficult to even describe the project, never mind think about its objectives. However, the workshop I attended on Friday really helped me pin some ideas down. Dan Dixon also suggest we use a set of questions to help us define our project. These where:

• Why are you doing this?
• Who for?
• What are you building?
• With ? (what are you using to build it?)
• How are you going to build it?
• When are you going to build it?

I found that working out the answers to this really helped me work out what my project should be about. I have decided to stick with my original Idea of using Carbon Dioxide emissions, and visualising this in a flash animation, using motion tracking though a web cam to make it interactive. I also decided to focus on this aspect of the project, and not worry about building it as an Installation, though that is still the final plan. I realised that I just wouldn't have the time to work out the installation aspect. But possibly could finish it by the time of our degree showcase.

I also took the opportunity on Friday to talk to James Ede, a professional flash developer I worked with whilst on placement last year. He was a real great help in working out all the components I needed, and even pointed me int he direction of some useful blog posts and example code for things that i would need, such as this Motion Tracking Example.

After all that I was able to sit down and finish my Project Proposal, a copy of which I will put onto the project page in the next few days. The other thing I have started doing is storing every useful paper or link I find about the project on delicious. This gives me a simple place to store all the information I find, and will also help me build my sources and references up when I come to start writing my final report.

My next task is to tidy up the last few spelling errors and hand in my Proposal. Once Ive done that the major research begins. This includes reading all the blog posts and papers Ive found on Data Visualisation and Interaction (Many of which have come from my Interaction Design module, which is handy). I have also started thinking about the artistic direction, and found some inspiration I will be sharing in a blog post soon. Ive also got to scan in some more planning documents to keep a record of everything Ive done, including some poor sketches!

Project Planning Part 1

I had intended on planning my Digital Media Project during my Summer break between placement and uni. Due to various factors this didn't really happen, and I didn't start serious thought on the project until early September.

By this stage I had a few ideas floating about my head, and I decided to get these down on paper in the form of a mind map. The first mind map was just everything I had in my head about the project, put onto paper as quickly as possible, so I could evaluate each one individually and highlight my preferred projects, and scribble out ones I thought where frankly, a bit shit.

WARNING: These mind maps where not designed to be presented, and thus are mostly scribbles on scrap paper.

I decided to work on a second mind map that followed up in further details my favoured ideas from Mind Map 1 (Highlighted in red circles) I also followed a couple of new directions which would ultimately end up shapping my final project idea.

By this time we where due to go to the first of two timetable workshops to help us work on our project proposals. Before this we where given a draft copy of Module Guidelines. I studied this carefully to make sure my ideas would stand up to scrutiny from tutors. One of the appendix's was a list of project title suggestions. In this list, one caught my eye, "physical installation in a public space". It was something I wouldn't expect to see especially coming from a web design degree. It intrigued me, and i knew that this was something worth pursuing.

I turned up to the first workshop with 3 main ideas written down on project outline documents, and one blank one with "Digital Installation" written at the top of it. During the workshop we where encouraged to share with our peers our ideas and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each idea, and any difficulties we expected to encounter. Rather than use my sheet, I decided to just spiel off the ideas I had about a Data Visualisation installation using flash animation and live data feeds. The group liked the idea, and helped me formulate my own vision for it, so I quickly wrote it down on a Project Outcome sheet.

This was then past on to another group to be studied, and feedback offered. They suggested that i would need to add an interaction aspect to the installation, otherwise the project would be too simple. I thought this was a valid point and added it as a requirement to the project.

On returning from this workshop I quickly worked on my 3rd Mind Map of ideas, writing down everything that was floating in my head, and pursuing some ideas. Currently incomplete, it shows my ideas on my Data Visualisation Installation.
Using this mind map, and a further workshop at uni, I will need to develop my ideas into a finalised Project Proposal. I will start towards this before the next workshop, most likely with some more mind maps .

So yeah, a quick guide to my planning so far. I'm quite worried about my chosen idea so far as I have no idea how to do the technical side of the installation, with only basic experience with flash and app building, and no experience in art or installations, so much research will be required.

This post was written to the sounds of Rage Against the Machine, Live at the Grand Olympic Auditorium .