Week 5 Studio 6

This week we focused on furthering our work with our project plan. We worked on quality, expectation management, about the company, SWOT and external factors. All of these fields we feel are important to highlight within our plan, so that we will have a far stronger basis to focus our work on and better guidelines to follow throughout the semester.

Week 4 Studio 6

This week Andrew and I began making our timeline for our project plan. This time line will be used throughout the course of the semester to ensure that we do not fall behind in any of the areas of our work. We also looked at what actually would be most helpful for a design company within the advertising community. We felt that posters and business cards did not feel appropriate and decided that creating an animated logo instead would be more effective.

 

The reason we felt that posters would not be effective is that we looked out our output to clients and what would they get out of the advertisements the most and posters did not seem like an effective form of communication to get the design companies reputation known with in the target community.

Week 3 Studio 6

This week we discussed more on what we were going to choose for our final project and what would be most useful for our preferred work. After much contemplation I asked Andrew if he was interested in working together on a project. We discussed out skills and areas we felt we were strongest in and thought a good idea for our project would be to produce a Portfolio Package for a design company.

 

Using our best areas of expertise we decided that we would produce a Website, a short film reel, posters and business cards. After discussing this with Lorna she agreed it would be a good idea for a project as it would be something we could show potential employers after we graduate from the course.  

Week 2 Studio 6

This week we presented our “Quick and Dirty” Project which we have named MEdia. MEdia is a program that searches for your favourite media materials whether they be movies, books, music or paper. This program is made to be an all in one search engine for Media material and help the user find similar and matching media.

 

Our presentation involved Luke, Grant and myself introducing the project and what it is. We also spoke about how MEdia was better then other competition and why someone would want to buy it. We delivered an A4 poster to accompany the mockup program we had created for the purpose of the presentation.

 

Shuffle Up (The influence of Melbourne’s dance culture)

A while back when I was first being introduced into the world of techno I noticed there were some people dancing in a way I’ve never seen before, Their feet moved lightning quick to the beat and seemed to be able to slide across the floor at the same time while keeping their body moving to a separate beat all together. After asking a friend he said it was called the Melbourne shuffle a dance that originated in the Melbourne techno scene.

Slowly over the past few years since I have started clubbing I have noticed an influx of this style of dance into the clubs and it seems to be growing all the time. This form of dance has intrigued me and I have decided to look further into it to find out just how the Melbourne shuffle began and just how much information I could find on this distinctive style of dance that is invading the Brisbane club scene.

 It is believed that the shuffle began back during the 1980s during the “acid house” era, along with other dance styles in the underground dance scene in Melbourne. The dance was performed to the House and Acid house genre of music and then in the 1990’s the world was hit with the trance phenomena and “Shufflers” quickly adopted it and altered their dance moves for it, only to have it converge back close to its original style when Minimal house hit the scene. Today the Melbourne shuffle is danced to a variety of music styles such as Tribal House, Hard Trance, Jump Style, Hard House and practically anything with a solid beat or techno vibe to it.

 The name “Melbourne Shuffle” was formed by foreigners and visitors to Melbourne’s dance scene who tried to describe the dance to others, but to the locals it is simply known as “Rocking”. Slowly spreading overseas to Asian countries and the UK, Its popularity is continuing to rise with each passing year and it now appears that Brisbane is coming aboard.

 The Shuffle is performed with 3 basic steps in mind, sliding, shuffling in a triangular pattern and shuffling on the spot. Sliding is to give the effect that the shuffler is defying gravity by moving across the floor in different motions, this is also incorporated into some break moves in the break dancing scene. Shuffling on the spot is used generally to save energy or while waiting for another shuffler to do their dance. The final and most energetic is shuffling in a triangular pattern which can have many different methods incorporated into it depending on the style of the dancer. Such styles as breaking, popping and running man have all been incorporated into shuffling to give some originality and diverse effects to the dance.

 Shuffling is very quickly establishing itself as a strong dance community and the fact that some of its strongest founding’s have come from Melbourne is a compliment to Australians that we can still invent some new moves to show the rest of the world that has been around many years before us.

For those of you that stilll dont know what shuffling is i have included some links below enjoy.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=616867486
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3evoNeD45g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE1I7cTJlnE

Week 11

More exploration of the programs we are trying to use to achieve the desired outcomes of our assignment have been implemented. We have also prepared a fall back plan should our project fall through which will be pre-recorded footage for the prototype. we have also planned to design some wall frames to go over the imacs for the aesthetics of the project in the final presentation. We plan to have all of our coding/programming completed by next week for at least 2 computers to be interacting between one another so that we may then focus on the aesthetical side of the project and if we have enough time to include a third machine into exhibit.

Performance is Perception (DJs vs Intrumental Artists)

On the 4^th of may The Family night club in
Brisbane held The Central Energy tour hosting some of the most poplular DJs around. The night started with 2 DJs (Tydi and Syke) battling each other song for song to improve on their rivals last each time. As I stood on the balcony watching each DJ mix the tracks and “perform” to the crowd I could not help but think to the reading of week10 “laptop n roll” and there discussion on how even tho the laptop performance was now widely accepted as a music genre it still lacked in the “performance” department. The reading discussed how people from the audience would walk up to the DJ in the middle of a set and ask when is the band starting or the DJ would be cordoned off from the audience in some little box almost out of site.

 

Obviously they hadn’t been to The Family I thought to myself as Tydi and Syke continuously laid down tracks that wowed the audience both visually and audibly. Tydi would play a specific song and then pause it or wind it out to tease the audience until they almost begged for it to be played. The times of the “hidden” DJ seems to be a thing of the past with the DJ adapting to their surrounding and learning to “perform” in an appealing manner. At the end of a track when the music would go into a low roar where you could actually hear on a normal level the crowd would whistle and cheer for the DJ as they swapped over to start the next song and the next DJ would pump up the crowd by starting a mix then completely scraping it and playing another to keep them wondering what song was coming on next. If that wasn’t showman ship I don’t know what is.

 

As I likened the cheering of the crowd to one that would be seen at a rock band I began to think about why Tad Turner (author of laptop and roll) was arguing that this wasn’t a performance like something out of a rock concert. Surely each musician is confined to the instrument to which they play and therefore “hindering” the level  physical activity that one can do, a drummer for instance cannot leave the area in which they are seated to reach the percussion instruments or a piano player must also keep there fingers on the keys at all times to play the music. This leads me to believe that “performance” must be a perception among the audience rather then the physical nature in which the show is performed.

 

Once the 2 DJs had completed their sets it was time for the central energy performance to begin, As Amber Savage, Archie and Baby Gee played an hour and half each, the crowd continuously surged up and down in rhythmic dance with the music (and some individuals to their own). As people left, others took their place and the beats and dance continued into the night with each DJ busting moves and making mixes to wow the crowd and keep them entertained as well as audibly pleasured. I myself believe that the ability to “perform” comes from the person themselves and not the style of music or the object that they play. With the DJ and electronic music being a relatively new genre on the scene one cannot help but to think what it will evolve into in the not to distance future and what “performances” are to come.

Week 10

Our group continues to research and develop our technology with various programs like flash, quartz composer and i chat. so far we have worked out how we could display live video between 2 computers but the prospect of dividing it in to a 3 way live feed is proving difficult. As for the prospect of having prerecorded video to play on motion sensors we have easily worked out the technology needed and just need to implement it. each of the pre mentioned programs that we are looking at all contain aspects that could be useful to use but finding that has everything we need is becoming difficult and wil require further investigation.  

Hittin up Toowoomba (the club scene of Toowoomba)

Recently a friend of mine has moved up to Toowoomba for work related reasons, and being my main drinking buddy I simply couldn’t wait for him to show me what the inland city had to offer in the terms of nightlife. So one spare weekend I headed up there for a night on the town, to see what the inland city had to offer for night time fun related activities. 

Club 1 The CBD

After consuming a few beverages at my mates place (I am a uni student after all and prices on alcohol in Toowoomba’s clubs and pubs, sadly aren’t any different to those in
Brisbane) our first destination was The CBD club. This was a one level building with a small dance floor and bar beside it, out the back was a dining area and through the hall into another room was a pokies room.  

Overall a nice place to drink at but very sadly lacking in the dance department as it was put in as an afterthought, being built primarily for the purpose of dining and drinking. The music they played mainly consisted of house and electro genre, which was probably not the best choice of music for such a confined area but whatever draws the crowds, is the important thing these days. 

Club 2 TATTERSALLS

Two hours past before we decided to move down to a more popular nightclub called Tattersalls or Tats for short. Tats is a two storey complex that has a pool area, pokies and a live band area on the bottom floor with a large bar accompanying it, defiantly a great place for relaxing and having a talk amongst friends. The upstairs area consisted of a large dancing/bar area and a main area purely for the people wishing to “bust a move”, opening out from the dance area is a veranda for people to cool off after hitting the dance floor which was becoming very tight and constricting around 12:30am.   While Tats hosted live bands down stairs for the people that preferred to listen to the old classics like copperhead road and black betty, The upstairs couldn’t be more different all of the most recent songs being played in the RNB, Hip Hop, Pop and House genre, which proved to be far more attracting to Toowoombas female inhabitants. Unfortunately for myself a found the pop songs to be a little irritating for my taste especially when I heard the same song start up for the third time that night, so we opted to move on. 

Club 3  FIBERS           

1:30am and my mate suggested Fibers would be a good place to check out. Upon entry I was immediately inundated by the smell of stale alcohol, and looking around I could see why. Fibers is an old style pub, the walls lined with memorabilia of the old days and turned wood everywhere giving it that historic appeal. Also a two storey building fibers has a live band downstairs (although there is extremely little room for them to fit in) and a “clubbin” scene upstairs where they play house and electro.

The downstairs defiantly hosted a more senior audience where four x seemed to be the order of the day but after making our way upstairs the scene changes entirely with a far younger age group on average preferring the music in the 2^nd level to that of the afore mentioned. The dance floor wasn’t as large as the one we had been in at Tats previously but seemed to be the right size for the crowd that was there. 

Club 4 RUMORS           

Nearing 3am and my mate suggested heading for Rumors nightclub, the only place to remain open till 5 in Toowoomba. After paying the entry fee (At which point I realized it was the first entry fee I paid all night, I guess you can charge what you want when you’re the only club open) we went up a set of stairs onto the second level as there was no bottom level of this place, we preceded through the doors which opened up into the largest venue I had ever been in. One massive open area with bars along the side walls and a pool table section in a corner, a stage sat at the front with a huge dance floor and tables and chairs at the back of the room which could easily be mover for performances and other reasons. This obviously was Toowoombas main venue for anything big that came to town and was more then large enough to cope with a sizeable crowd.            

With all of the other clubs closing at 3 this is where everyone congregated that still had enough steam left to continue partying into the early hours of Sunday morning. Unfortunately even with the convergence of the other clubs Rumors sparseness took something away from the clubbing atmosphere which conventionally has a dance floor for people to get up close and personal with one another rather then being spread out all over the place. The music also lacked in presence as RnB and House were played but constantly remixed versions of good songs (in my opinion that didn’t need to be changed) damped the overall effect of the quality of the music. 

5AM CLOSING TIME           

After a long night we left the club only to see the sun beginning to rise in the east and with the alcohol wearing off I began to realise how cold it actually was up in Toowoomba. On the whole a good night was had, (while leaving a few personal details out of this blog) the clubbing scene was defiantly a thing to experience although it cannot rival Brisbane’s well established club scene, In 10 years or so it could defiantly have some pull for the nightlife community that live halfway between Brisbane and Toowoomba, especially with new clubs opening up there all of the time Toowoomba could be the next place to be.

(Providing there’s any water left!!!)

Compare and Contrast (Undercan and “You are the art”)

As stated in my earlier blog I will be compare and contrasting our project with the “Underscan” project. This is a large scale project which set in an outdoor area that works primarily at night. The Underscan works by using a motion tracker to trace the direction that people are walking and places a video projection in their path. The projection then begins to play when the person walking past, moves their shadow over it and plays for as long as the persons shadow reveals it. The video played is a prerecorded clip from the video servers which has been taken by the designers, of everyday people in the public; over a thousand have been recorded and are randomly played to the people moving through the scene. The Underscan is set on a huge outdoor scale, where our intended project is comparatively smaller using only small screens set in a hallway. The Conceptual focus of the Underscan is to “take over public space” and use it for artistic purposes, in which the Underscan provides entertaining clips to the public via large scale projection. Our project is working on a similar basis but differs slightly as our intentions are to make the viewer feel as if they are being watched by the portrait itself and turning the viewer in to the “viewed” rather then just being entertained by the project itself. We felt that rather then simply provide a piece of interesting art that entertained you; we could design something that actually made the audience feel that they were not only being entertained but interacting with at the same time. 

The aim for the Underscan is to give the audience a unique experience that made them have fun and intrigued them with a space that would normally be a boring concrete open area that is normally used for foot traffic and nothing more. One audience member interviewed states that “it’s like a story where little bits and pieces are revealed as you go along” thus adding to the entertainment purposes of the project for the audiences experiences. Our project also aims to give the audience an entertaining experience similar to the Underscan where it makes the audiences feel as though they are interacting with it by the movements that they do “You are the art work” also intends to make the user feel like the project is interacting with them. However rather then just playing a prerecorded video clip and the person being recorded does what ever they fell like we intend to provide some constraints to how the recorded clip will display to the viewer as due to the nature of the project. For “You are the art work” we are intending to do two forms of visual display, the first one being prerecorded clips where the art comes alive and looks at you as if you are the “art” and they are the ones in the gallery. The second plan is to have a recorded clip where the person in the frame will actually watch you as you move around the room giving the literal sense to many famous art pieces of the “being watched feeling” as Marcel Duchamp quotes “watching the watchers, the look makes the painting”.  

The underlying technology in the Underscan work greatly differs to the intentions of our own technological developments. While the Underscan is an outdoor project it requires expensive and large machines such as the world brightest projector, a computerized surveillance system, 14 video servers and 14 robotic video projectors. These devices are necessary due to the shear size of the project and that nature in which its being used. Our technology will be consisting of a much smaller motion sensor system for a confined space and 2 or 3 apple Imacs due to the built in video camera capabilities that they contain. Due to the recent development of the Imac we can greatly reduce our workload as the video camera is incorporated into the machine itself.  By taking notes from the Underscan project we have been able to develop our concept further in looking at how the audience interacts with the project and to which the level of interactivity is used to reach its desired effects. By limiting the level of interactivity to prerecorded videos playing in peoples shadows, the Underscan manages to keep its audience entertained for a fairly long amount of time by using tricks in the recordings to make the audience think the project is interacting with them. Our project is drawing upon those ideas with prerecorded video techniques so that our intended audience will entertained sufficiently as well.  

The Underscan overall inspired our team within regards to designing the project because the Underscan is designed as an artistic statement mentioned before where it takes the public space and uses it for its own artistic expressions. With our project being designed for an art gallery exhibition we felt it appropriate to draw upon the context which their intentions to display the piece were. We also learned from the exhibition piece that designing a project on a large scale would be very difficult and would become increasingly expensive for every square metre used. So with this in mind we have begun prototyping our project on a much smaller plausible scale to what we originally intended to test and determine whether it would be effective if increased on scale further down through the course of design.