The design symposium, created as a starting point for the interdisciplinary modules of the 2nd year students of the Department of Design, is also a mandatory event for all bachelor students. This year's topic was «HOT HOT HOT!», all about climate, its changes and the human influence on this matter. For me, it was inspiring in terms of situating my bachelor project as some kind of an digital art project which explores the boundaries of art and seeks to work with methods of the field of science. The symposium particularly showed the necessitiy of addressing these matters in an understandable way to the audience. What I took from it was that art can be the connecting language between researchers and the ordinary citizen.
On Tuesday, we had the exhibition workshop with Mirjam Steiner together with Martin Dusek. They introduced the available rooms for Interaction Design and the exhibition concept they have been working on the last weeks. This introduction was followed by a workshop in which all students, masters included, should arrange their projects in the available space. For most of the students, it was the first time they thought of how to represent their work and both of them encouraged them to be creative and use the potential of an exhibition like this.
For me, the workshop gave me the opportunity to sharpen the concept of this representation. Since I am exhibiting my installation in another room, it is clear that my area in the Interaction Design exhibition would work as some kind of a teaser to inform and make visitors curious to visit the actual installation. The overall concept is to use the same material and the same methodology (hanging, treatment of material, etc.) as it is used in the actual installation.
Until now, there will be a project video which is going to be projected from the ceiling onto an acrylic glass tile. Material samples serve as projection surfaces for a mood video which displays the videos used for creating the immersion. Additionally, the physical documentation will be hung up from the ceiling as well and a sign, as well as tape on the floor, will inform the visitors about the room where they can find the installation. For the installation itself, it probably make sense to offer certain time slots in which I will open the room and, if desired, give an extended tour. While writing this post, it strikes my mind that this is also a repetetive aspect which can contribute to the overall impression and influences the way I give this tours or communicate them. What is not clear till now is the opportunity of tracking some of the visitors activities or thoughts concerning a particular topic and to visualize them somehow live in this teaser to enhance the will to see the installation.
After this extended iteration phase, I went back to prototyping, taking into account the findings I got from last week and the exhibition workshop in terms of wayfinding and providing access to the room for visitors. Outcomes are a more narrowed and grouped concept of the previous one, based on the similarity clusters of the visualization.
When zooming out completely, 11 main groups or topic islands such as «pain descriptions» or «Hello my loved ones» can be identified. From this approach, it is possible to perceive that the underlying pattern is the data itself. This fact embodies a very data-driven approach but also makes it possible to address the emotional component of, let's say, pain with the help of the topic islands. Practically, this could be for instance, videos projected on the floor or other objects or something on the floor to communicate the several topics of these islands. Thus, an immersive but data-driven experience can be created.
Since it was a holiday on Thursday, the week ended with a prototypical production of acrylic glass tiles to use them as a first prototype. I chose different colors (red and translucent) and sizes in order to cover a wide range of possible outcomes. I thought about hanging these tiles from the ceiling and thought about how to hang most effortly without using all four corners of a tile. This enables me to overlay the tiles to provide different layers.
In terms of prototyping, I started with a spatial sketch of the 11 topic islands, based on a top shot of the data set (figure above) which in this perspective shows similarity clusters, to get a feeling for the dimensions. By doing this, I firstly created a somehow data-driven dramaturgy and secondly, was able to think of a reasonable way how to embed the parkour for the visitor. Parameters were that the parkour does not reveal the whole installation and all topic islands at once but rather keeps some kind of an explorative character. Only by following the parkour around its curves, the visitor can discover the last islands.
For further conceptual contemplations, I met with the fellow student Anina Riniker from Industrial Design. Since she is dealing with the topic of the hymen, our topics are somehow related and we decided to brainstorm together and give us feedback to our current states. We started with a quick recap in order to firstly refresh what its about and secondly, to practice the presentation of our projects. When entering our «office» for this day, we enocuntered some post-its of a previous group and decided to embed them into our brainstorming process. We took post.-it by post-it and formulated our associations with the term written on it or how this term could relate to our projects. This was a great and refreshing perspective on mindmapping and brainstorming which helped a lot in terms of opening up the concept again and allow other influences. Doing this together even enhances this fact, since the other person has often different associations with the same term.
After this collection of new ideas and approaches, we discussed our main statements by asking questions like «What do I want the visitor to learn from my project?» and «Where do I want my project to be exhibited or published?». I took this method from the BA concept seminar but developped it further to do it together. This benefits from the partner since he maybe knows something different that you may never thought of.
Another point was sketching what we thought of. This helped in terms of explaining our ideas and this was something I could benefit from when prototyping and the development of a more refined concept.
Taking these discussion outcomes into account, the next step was assembling the previously produced acrylic glass tiles (around 6 pieces) in the room by hanging them from the ceiling and mounting a beamer from above over these tiles. This way I could see how light falling through them looks like, which associations are raisen and what the general visual effect could be. I tried the several colors, several positions and different hanging methods. What striked my mind while doing this was that the tiles are not only light-transmissive and thus, leave a projection on the floor but also, due to their surface condition, create a reflection which is visible on the ceiling. This created an additional benefit to the concept, as the tiles itself as a first layer can symbolize the fragments of the statements of the women, the reflections on the floor could stand for the the second layer and thus, for the pattern that is left behind by the statements and which was discovered by looking closely at the statements and as a third layer, the reflection of the tiles can work as the relfective aspect of these statements.
In a further step, I tried sandblasted tiles and their effect with light. It turned out that they are reflecting on the untreated side but lose their transmissive character. This outcome can be used to create explanatory elements only used for displaying videos or to be used as an interaction tile.
