The spring quarter was supposed to be my final quarter in grad school, one in which I was to show my thesis work, perform my oral defense, and attend commencement. A time for the celebration of years of study and several months of laser-focused research and making. In preparation for this culmination I attended a residency in Finland in order to have the time and space to focus on my work. This provided the opportunity to have an entire quarter devoted to this process. When I returned I hit the ground running and went straight into complete fabrication mode. This became my daily activity and an action that was providing stability for me as the reality around us began to unravel. I felt fortunate to have this project to keep me focused and motivated.
Then it all fell apart.
I lost access to the tools I need to complete my fabrication and found my project on a almost permanent hiatus. I’m now unsure of whether or not the gallery that so graciously provided me with space for an exhibition will even exist when this is over. That being said this project is still serving as the foundational motivator for me in this time of uncertainty. I have continued to work on the elements that I have within my control. Those include coding in Arduino and MAX/MSP and some basic assembly.
Personally, I have found the time I’ve been coding to be calming for the most part. Things are going smoothly and I’ve only had one major obstacle to overcome. I spent a decent amount of time figuring out what the various options were to deal with this issue and by switching the communication protocol for my sensor from SoftwareSerial to I2C I have made the problem a lot easier to deal with. Again, I feel fortunate to have this project to keep my mind busy during this time. Especially, when I am hearing about the difficulties many of my friends and family members are having in this new way of life.
Additionally, I have begun to tap my network to find some professional outlets in this time as well. Lately, I have started to create some basic AR filters for Facebook and Instagram as a way to make some money and improve my skill set in this particular vein. I have been experimenting on my own as well as following tutorials on how to create various interactions.
This has been a tool that I have used on a very surface level in the past. It has been inspiring to see what can be achieved with this technology when some serious effort is put into creating the interaction. Additionally, I have found that many different creators are able to achieve a similar affect using different means. This is something that I have always found comforting about programming and I’m interested in taking it further in this patch based system. There are also methods of using scripting to create even more sophisticated interactions and it is motivating me to dive back into JavaScript. Which has in turn initiated a return to p5.js and my dear (digital) friend Daniel Shiffman. It is very nice that he has revamped his Nature of Code to the p5.js platform. It is something that I intend to go through in the coming months as I continue to search for things to fil my free time while not working on my thesis or Graduate Critique projects.
Lastly, I’m beginning my last instance of Graduate Critique and am using that time to create work that sits next to the pieces made for my thesis in order to develop additional skills and provide opportunities for documentation of the work that is currently unachievable.
Graduate Critique S20 Project Proposal
The work created for my thesis show was site specific and had a very close connection to the space in which it was going to be exhibited. It is my intention to pay homage to this space (which may or may not exist as an art space when this is all over) by bringing that space and my piece into the virtual. This will be done in order to provide an opportunity to create documentation that at this current moment is impossible to capture but nonetheless extremely important to my thesis project. Additionally, it will provide an experience of the work in the space in order to give individuals the opportunity to “be” with the work. The content of my thesis is in direct opposition to the virtual interactions that are so prevalent in our society so there will be no attempt to virtualize those interactions.
I have yet to determine which game engine I will use to create a real-time experience of the space. It will either be Unity or Unreal Engine 4 I do know that all the modeling and material creation will be completed in Blender 2.8. At this point, I envision creating some basic animations that relate to elements of the work that can be seen in the virtual, however, these are not meant to have an affect on the viewer in any way similar to what I had anticipated for this work. And may in the end help to further the conclusions from my thesis that the physical proximity and interactions with other beings is of extreme relevance in a time like this.
Timeline:
* This is relatively dependent on the access to certain tools and the times at which that access does or does not become available.
Blender
4/17 – Block out space with exhibition elements. Gather images for material creation
4/24 – Finalize space and begin applying materials
5/1 – Finalize materials + make any artistic adjustments that presented themselves through the process. Render out static images for thesis documentation purposes
Unreal Engine
5/8 – Bring space into UE4 and get accustomed to working in the new software
5/15 – Adapt materials for UE4 + add in some lighting/environmental elements
5/22 – Continue tweaking materials and lighting
5/29 – Continue tweaking materials and lighting. Test compiles/renders
6/5 – Final adjustments. Compiling of stand alone application. Render out video walk-through.
6/12 – Show the work in class