After the mentoring with Björn and Clemens in which they asked crucial questions about the project, I felt the need to step back and try to see the project as someone who has never heard anything of it. I somehow felt that something is missing to communicate the message and the story I want to tell. Those parts that are telling the story are sometimes too complex in order to understand for someone who has never dealt with the topic. What I want to achieve with this work is to make people aware of these repetitive patterns of human language using the example of birth reports and dditionally, raise questions about political implications and the way how this data set and data sets in general are created. I realized that I have to essentially simplifiy the project since I realiized that I have been using a way too detailed view on this matter. Furthermore, the whole project and process is very dependent on others such as the Ausleihe in order to obtain the projectors. But they are not able to fix this order since there are too less projectors and even almost non available to conduct a serious testing to make sure all these tiles can be illuminated with the projectors. I realized that I have to find these uncertain variables and reduce this uncertanity through simplification or alternatives. Another point was that I realized in a test set-up that the threaded bars are not working, altough very practical to assemble. As assumed, the shadow production is too extreme and rather overlays the actual message than to benefit to it.
What I did was firstly to exactly define the 11 clusters and the statements that belong to them. Then, I used a TTS (text-to-speech) converter to generate one sound file for every cluster; reading out loud every example with a repetitive computer voice. These sound files are used to create the rabbit hole, one of the interactive elements of the installation. Thus, the visitor is able to connect his observations and perceptions of the data structure with the utterances of the birth reports themselves.
Through exactly defining these clusters and their content, I was able to draw a true-to-scale sketch of the whole installation. This will be used to firstly send it to the Facility Management to clarify the questions of setting up a grid for haning these tiles. This an actively discussed matter since the cable funnels are installed with a distance of 6m to each other and are the only appliances that can carry the installation's grid. Secondly, this sketch allowed me to define the space needed for the installation. To find out, I this defined space could be completely illuminate (including the whole height of the stacks) the installation, I set the height of the stacks to 70 cm and the height of hanging to 50 cm. This means that the projected area gets sginficantly smaller (due to the angle of field) and that it has to illuminate the stacks at a minimum room height of 1.20 m Knowing that this model of short distance projectors generates a projection of 1 m per 50 cm projection distance and placing the projector 2.80 m above ground (room height), I could calculate the size of the remaining area that illuminates the whole stack (2.80 room height - 1.30 hanging height = 1.50 projection distance). When going through this, I realized that my installation was too big to be completely illuminated, so I adjusted the size of the tiles to 10 x 10 cm and set the distance between those tiles to 10 cm. That way, I created a 10 x 10 cm grid and shrinked the size of the installation to fit in the available illuminated space. This led to a concrete amount of 419 tiles in 88 stacks and a size of 3.80 x 5.00 m of the whole installation that should practically fit into the projected area. Testing and checking time is rare since there are no projectors available but is scheduled for the next week. While dealing with this matter of unavalability, the option of buying these projecots came up again.
In a next step, I prototyped a new version of the stacks using nylon cord. I hestitated to use this method since it is a very time-instense method to hang the tiles accurately, especially this amount of them. But after a few testings, it turned out to be the best option in terms of shadow production and general appearance of fragility on the one hand and schematized and inalterable setting of the data set.
In a further step, I thought of some ways to simplify the hanging since 88 stacks are a lot and tend end up in a cord chaos and furthermore, I will have three days to do most of the work. The most reasonable way so far will we to use a wooden tile on the very top to keep the strings straight. This tile can be used to quickly attach the stack to the grid on the ceiling. As an additional help, my brother will be available for one week for setting up directly in the room from 22nd of May.
In terms of sound, I decided to use a simple MP3-Player connected with a Mini-Jack to a little speaker with a hood to tunnel the sound. It will be hanged from the ceiling as well to enable the visitor to rab it and put it over the ear and hear the TTS sound files playing in a loop.
