#sem1

Stepping wood

This tourism center location is at Suaka Margasatwa, PIK, North Jakarta. It has two observation decks, one coffee shop, and two entrances. The first entry is for the cafe service area, and the second is for public visitors.

The concept of the structure comes from the contour swamp land of the site, different levels for every chamber lead to the observation deck that has the same height as the surrounding trees to observe plants and animals, then continue to the following observation deck that is higher than the surrounding trees to prevent the view from being blocked. The first floor is filled with cafes for visitors to enjoy the river view.

Week 6

Craft Project

This week we presented our work for our first data project. We are using a wiip board to document our data, processes and final outcome. Group projects can be difficult, especially when people have clashing ideas. Having to do a group project over the internet is even harder, but my group and I have done an awesome job working together. We have all been very helpful and supportive of one another. Over our online class, we heard everyone else speak about their project and had the opportunity to give feedback. We were given some good points from everyone. This included things like emphasising the quilt aesthetic of our final project and including more about the purpose of Instagram, which has since been added to our wiip.

Bridging the gap

A warm up teamwork project before really dive into an individual studio project

This is a group project that consists of 3 people each group. The task is to connect the two places without touching the middle ground (grey area) using one material only. So we decided to use the skewers with the help of rubber band, and create this same repetition of geometric shape.

Teamwork and balance were needed in this project.

This project got me learned to accept each person's idea, not to refuse but join the idea together to form a new stronger idea. Not to mention that stronger friendship was developed here too.

As they say

“Teamwork makes the dream work.”

Learn from Maestro Assignment

This sketch was drawn with 2B lead graphite pencil from Rembrandt’s work example. We were told to redraw the artwork from Maestro artwork. First, I didn’t noticed that my drawing was out of proportion because I drew too long and do detail on one’s side while the other side is still blank.

I learn that to draw something proportional we must draw the outline first, then do detailing and rendering in the end. If you work on detailing first, it will cost more time. Not to mention that if your drawing is too big or small, then you must delete the entire detailed side of the drawing while the other side of the paper is still blank and repeat the same draw again. Beside proportion, what I got to learn from this assignment are the artist’s sketching technique, the pencil scratches / hatch techniques, and rendering skill.

Week 11

Data and Power

We spoke about different works from data artists that explore the idea of power in relation to data. There are people who are in power in many different countries who exploit that or use it in a way that exacerbates already difficult situations (i.e. always Donald Trump). A great example of this type of work, which I really appreciate, is Jonathan Moore’s ‘Artificial Killing Machine’. It is an instillation in which cap guns are hanging from the roof. Data is tracked on drone attacks around the world, collecting the number of casualties and location of the strike. It collects this data in real time and when there are casualties being reported, the cap guns go off, creating a very loud and jarring sound (his data collected from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism).

I also had an opportunity to speak to other people in my class who are also looking into sound analysis and song generation for their final projects. It is nice to know that there are other students in my class that are as worried about this project as I am. Not having a lot of coding behind me, this part of the project is quite difficult. For this week, I am going to focus on gathering the midi files required for the code and edit them to the length I want (12 bars). From there, I’ll be able to create the code that analyses them. In terms of my final output, I originally thought of having the music that is generated correlate to a certain graphic. Since that thought, I have decided that given the time period and my skill level, it would be best for me to focus on getting the code correct and working, generating my songs and their sheet music, and comparing the songs created for the different artists.

I chose this concept because I thought it would be interesting to condense a musicians music into one song, which encapsulates that person’s personality and musical style. The image above is of a small music box that I own from Paris, which plays La Vie En Rose. I was given the idea that my generated pieces of music could be displayed as a music box. My only concern with this is that it would be hard to control the tempo, as it is played with a lever, and music boxes usually have a note limit, usually up to 36 notes. Another thought I had was having vinyl records created of the songs. It would be a really nice way of cementing my work and having a physical element. Ideally, the vinyl would play all three songs after each other (the three songs being the generated music of three different musicians).

Ok but for real though.

This is going to be a long one. (Lecturers, I’m sorry, I do this too much).

It ranges from before Level 4 Lockdown to this week(ish). Click to read more below!

So, big news. A global pandemic happened.

I’m not kidding! I haven’t blogged in an insanely long time mainly because things got crazy. Something to start off with is that working with BrightSide (previously Wiser) is no longer a possibility at least for this semester. As seen with the image below.

Understandably, the pandemic was/is(?) completely unprecedented – one of the most used words as of this year – and because of this everyone has had to alter their priorities and lifestyles (especially with lockdown). Although this message from BrightSide was disappointing because our Studio group was on the right track with working with them, it wasn’t unexpected because of how things had already been.

As a group, we tried our best to keep moving forward. During lockdown, even before semester restarted online, I’ve been having video calls with my group members Aurora and Nat to see how they were going in lockdown and ask about their opinions about our current scenario with BrightSide. In particular, I enjoy the reciprocation of resilience in this group; it’s healthy and makes us strong – because instead of wallowing in disappointment, we’ve already begun to brainstorm how to move forward and what new paths we may take to adapt and still challenge ourselves.

For the first day of online Studio, our group were still in a bit stuck as to what to do upon not working with BrightSide. Our project was completely focussed on working with BrightSide and their ‘no tech’ rule, so our main ideas were about creating a physical environment for our space. But since that can’t happen anymore, it would be interesting if we could somehow explore the idea of digital community spaces/environments. We spoke with Sangeeta who suggested that we find the “fuel for our project” – our core. Take away BrightSide and the physical space, we wanted to create a closer student community Sangeeta pointed out that at the very least, we already are in contact with our target audience. It’s just a matter of “how can we do with this?”

Well, we started with looking for possible references.

Distant Touch (Screengrabs seen above) is website created by Germán Greiner that allows you to go in an interactive musical room. Clicking around the screen makes different tones play and you can also hear the other person’s sounds and movements – the most exciting thing is when you and the other person click on the same spot as spark fly! It’s beautiful! It’s novel, and fun, although as a group, we would want something more purposeful than an interactive musical black-screen web page.

We also looked at r/place (seen above) which was an interesting reddit thread; the epitome of chaos ensuing from freedom of creativity. (Video of this actually in action is here: https://youtu.be/0QO0yZldC2M). It was very entertaining to see how the interactivity of the pixelated thread allowed for this chaotic visual to be created. Our Studio group want to create something digital, but we are lacking in programming skills. So this is an issue in the back of our minds. BUT!! From reflecting on these as well experiences last year, I was able to think of a new idea which I shared with the group.

If we wanted to create a closer community, which was distinctly separated because of the pandemic, the first and easiest place to start – rather than the whole university – would be the DCT community. Last year, Vaani created the “Test For A Treat” event where students were able to showcase their raw and unfinished projects in an open space on WG Level 3 to get as many random students and bystanders to give feedback and experience their projects at their different stages. Being creative students, we are normally used to being in a physical space and giving each other critiques, pitches, etc face-to-face with other fellow students and lecturers. Because of Lockdown, we’re not in our respective areas, our hubs/project spaces – we can’t walk around asking how people are going, if they can have a look at our prototype or processes, etc. and so what if we made it digital? What if we brought the space back digitally? Upon discussion, Nat and Aurora seem to like this idea, but I wanted to start with a different activity about this idea. I wanted us to think of the possible negatives first. As seen below: the main one being the ability to code the website that we want! We have since then named the idea “PitchedIn”.

Then we did what we thought were the positives of this project. (See below)

I believed that by doing this activity (which is something I have not done before with previous groups) we were able to get a sense of what issues we could run into and then the possible solutions for these problems. In this way, I think that we will be more aware of our limitations and issues but work on them to prevent these issues from disabling us from completing the project to the best of our abilities.

Nathaniel has been trying to gather academic references for our project (See here: https://natpeabct.tumblr.com/post/617972301602930688/rugby-pyjama-movie-night) while Aurora and I have been trying to suss out our Creative Workflows for this project. (See below)

We’ve also gotten the Statement of Intent, etc. done for PitchedIn too (As seen below)

Also just to put it out there we won’t be using ClickUp as what we’ve been using this far: We are now using Miro.I pushed for this because I believe that this is such an amazing website that allows for us to dump everything we need, everything that is necessary and it’s all in one place. It’s essentially like the T-Walls in studio – man. I wonder how it will feel once we’re back in our space. I feel like third year, our last year at studio was sort of robbed from us because of the pandemic – studio was more of a home than my own home because of BCT. Huh…but anyway, Miro is below!

I’m getting tired with typing now, so I will link Nat’s reflection on what we did this week, here: https://natpeabct.tumblr.com/post/617978030133067776/x-rated-cheese! Sorry Nat, I’ll pay you back promise, hehe. But from here on out, the group knows what our tasks are going to be that we need to have done by next Wednesday before our SCRUM meeting. Keep an eye out in this space to see how we go with online studio!

References

Greiner, G. (2020). RASK - Distant touch. Retrieved from https://live.driangle.org/distant-touch.html?fbclid=IwAR2yx_sbT8cGRmxjdlBS2piQky356eVnqMqD_05D5Qx5oDq_qa_3JPIly1c

Greiner, G. (2020). distant touch screen-grabs [Screenshot of Website]. Retrieved from https://live.driangle.org/distant-touch.html?fbclid=IwAR2yx_sbT8cGRmxjdlBS2piQky356eVnqMqD_05D5Qx5oDq_qa_3JPIly1c

2kliksphilip. (2017). /r/place screen-grab [Screenshot of YouTube Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QO0yZldC2M&feature=youtu.be

Peacock, N. (2020, May 6). Ella Fitzgerald. Retrieved from https://natpeabct.tumblr.com/post/617353673778069504/ella-fitzgerald

Racasag, C., & Agustin, A. (2020, May 7). PitchedIn general creative workflow [Flowchart and Timetable].

Racasag, C., Agustin, A., & Peacock, N. (2020, May 4). Positives and Negatives of PitchedIn [Blackboard Screen-grab].

Racasag, C., Agustin, A., & Peacock, N. (2020, May 13). PitchedIn Miro Board [Miro Screen-grab].

Week 10

Data of the Absurd

We looked at some examples of absurd data to remember humour is an important part of the data vis process.

Firstly, the image I’ve added here was made by myself and one of my classmates. A small activity we did in class was creating a flow chart or diagram of any kind of data collected from pretty much anything - remembering that humour and absurdity is important here. We chose to look at the ‘This is America’ music video by Childish Gambino. We mapped out the different facial expressions made by Childish Gambino, looking at frames of the video in 20 second increments. We created a spectrum of happy to sad, and normal to weird. The smaller images show the frames from 40 seconds in, 1 minute in and 4 minutes in. It was actually really fun to put this together and also let me get to know my classmates a bit better.