James' Crit Session with Place Team Awesome
Our studio lecturer, Maggie, felt it would be a helpful venture to have a crit session with another lecturer who is known for his meaningful interactive installations and research projects. James has a very artistic mind and is very knowledgable around philosophies that can be relevant to how people approach an artistic piece of work. As we are still finding our way with how we want viewers to think about our installation, this proved helpful in the giving us a direction we may want to go.
James discussed how we planned on displaying our installation on the day and how we could go about loading the projection mapping from the start. We discussed using webcams or laser beams, to just a red button that Stefan addressed earlier. I believe we are now leaning towards a webcam to activate the installation when someone comes near it, however I'm not sure at this stage how we are going to execute this.
We showed James our AR animations so far against the projection mapping and discussed how we would go about removing any lag. As soon as he saw any that looked somewhat literal such as the lantern, James felt were too directed for the viewer and some abstraction was necessary. Once James had left, I know we needed to cut a second animation so checked that Taylor was OK that this was the second to be removed. James appreciated the balloon perhaps the most as it was unclear what it really was. It was abstract enough to not have the original intention portrayed.
We were told to consider the other ways this installation could be projected. This included being placed on the floor, placed in a corner or having different tiers to the parts. How would the audience interact with each of these spaces that is perhaps unexpected. We had not considered the fact that in its current state it is quite framed like a picture. I hope when this is implemented this view may be taken away, but I will have to perhaps contextualise the set more in order to remove this visual effect. The origin box was also clearly too large to seem like a different part to the rest. We have already rectified this by using a smaller more square box place in the centre apart from the rest of the boxes.
The hour we spent with James, describing what we had done so far and where it fits in the theoretical concept of multiplicities of place, was a whirlwind experience. He suggested a few readings we could undertake that will help us contextually place the installation. I'm sure this will prove helpful in the long run, regardless of being left feeling rather overwhelmed.