final video

i have developed my concepts of remapping the space into another environment into taking away the control of understanding a space that mapping is intended to achieve. the hallway now ends in a flickering changing growth of shadows, threatening the space but not understandable, i have also added creatures into the space and referenced my research and ideas on media remapping through creating the creatures out of carebears. the video has been flipped horizontaly so it now appears to mirror the space the viewer is occupying. overall the video does what i wanted the project to do, it takes away control by remapping the viewers environment, it brings the dark mapped over places into their immediate space, the actual video work has been created out of many, many layers created in illustrator, then brought into after effects and opacity, blurs and layer effects added along with some parts retouched in photoshop as well. i would like to spend more time on this and would love to have many different looks to the remappings, i would also like to have more than one space remapped, or one space remapped from different perspectives.

development -

the core of my project is remapping the space in way that references the dark places on the map and the fear of the unknown, mapping over a space and control.

by changing the space the viewer is in and presenting it to them while they are in the space takes away the control that they have over the space, this is a reversal of mapping, breaking down the control and understanding of a space. the fear of the unknown - here be monsters - the night, the dark where monsters stalk.

http://www.geekologie.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=mirror&blog_id=1

experimental storyboard








should i change the space to a completely different one?

the space needs to retain features of the original even if it does, the viewer needs to be placed in two spaces at once and if the shown environment is a different one then that effect will be lost. does there need to be a new environment at all however, or just the possibility of one? this project is also exploring that dark place on the map and the fear of the unknown and the need to control it. the unknown being the key word here, on movies like Alien the monster is most effective when you cant see it. the screening needs to be obvious that is video as well.

concept environment image

dracula

vampire mythology exists in almost every culture in the world, the night stalking, blood drinking, immortal undead. they have been the focus of scary stories for hundreds of years and still today hold us in fear as you can see by the number of horror movies featuring them, however today the vampire is often admired, even romanticized. the vampire has gone from being a terror in the night to the host of a children's t.v show.









count von count - seasame street


how do we map over the unknown?

by changing the perception of it to one we can control. today's way of controlling perception is definitely through media, media forces a perspective on us much the same way as mapping forces one perspective of a space.

remapping


http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html

We can identify where the danger zone is located, which I call "the fourth quadrant", and show it on a map with more or less clear boundaries. A map is a useful thing because you know where you are safe and where your knowledge is questionable. So I drew for the Edge readers a tableau showing the boundaries where statistics works well and where it is questionable or unreliable. Now once you identify where the danger zone is, where your knowledge is no longer valid, you can easily make some policy rules: how to conduct yourself in that fourth quadrant; what to avoid.

—John Brockman

So the principal value of the map is that it allows for policy making. Indeed, I am moving on: my new project is about methods on how to domesticate the unknown, exploit randomness, figure out how to live in a world we don't understand very well. While most human thought (particularly since the enlightenment) has focused us on how to turn knowledge into decisions, my new mission is to build methods to turn lack of information, lack of understanding, and lack of "knowledge" into decisions—how, as we will see, not to be a "turkey".

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while this is en extract from an article on the dangers of predicting outcomes based on statistics i think that the ideas expressed about mapping and the unknown are relevant to the ideas i am exploring in my project. - a map shows you where you are safe, the next step is to domesticate the regions that are unsafe.

how do we make the unknown safe?

understanding ---> control - - - > desensitization

historically we have been fearful of the unknown, we tell stories about monsters in the night, the dark is scary because we cant see what is in it and we cant control it. an effective way of controlling it is by making the scary into something not scary, when we are children we are frightened by monsters, then as we grow up we ourselves they aren't real and surround ourselves with objects and possessions that make us feel safe. we have monsters reduced to cute little cartoon characters, we have hundreds of devices that allow us to control our surroundings, we have a setting where we go specifically to be scared ( going to see a horror movie ), we have locks, we have light. but we are still afraid of whats in the dark.

Frank Fietzek

- Blackboard

Memory is seen here not as an indelible imprint, but as being permanently written over.



http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/die-tafel/images/1/

The blackboard still shows the markings of erased chalk, by moving the screen over it quotations and fragments of quotations appear but once they are passed over then they are not in the same position if you go back to it.

This work has ideas that strongly relate to my own concepts behind my work, blackboard is exploring the idea of memory being overwritten, one of the ideas i want to explore in my work is the idea of mapping over the dark places, the scary places on the map simply labeled 'here be dragons'.

semiconductor

http://www.semiconductorfilms.com/root/Magnetic_Movie/Magnetic.htm

magnetic movie

jeffrey shaw

golden calf -

an empty pedestal sits in the gallery attached with a movable lcd screen, by moving the screen around the viewer is able to see the image of a golden cow on the pedestal, the cow even shows the reflections of the gallery on it excluding the viewer. this work shifts the viewer between two spaces at once, the space they are physically in and the virtual space that occupies the same space they are in, the movement of the viewer effects the virtual space as they move through the physical.





virtual museum -

this is similar to the golden calf but less about movemnt and more about two spaces occupying the same space. viewers sit in a chair in an empty room and as they turn it they view the space with works of art on the walls through the screen.


both of these works are exploring spacial mapping through placing the viewer in two spaces at once, however in these works the viewer has some control over both spaces, in my work i want there to be no control over the space, breaking down the intended outcome of mapping a space.

janet cardiff -

in janet cardiffs audio walks the participant is guided through spaces by an audio guide, they follow her instructions as she leads them along through the physical space they are walking through and the space that she is describing. this work seems to be very much about control as the two spaces the participant are in are dictated by the artist. it is a good example of spaces overlapping as the participant moves through two places at once, the place being described to them is where they are at the same time not in it.

environment for recreated reality -

the walls of the room slowly dissolve and fade into shadow, rustling whispers from amongst the darkness. Huge menacing shapes are glimpsed gliding, looming through the emerging dark forest setting, trees grow from tendrils of shadow writhing into existence, pulling at the hairs on the back of the viewers neck. Small creatures emerge from smoky ribbons, scuttling and slowly slipping through the rippled light and shadow, luminescent plants form sprouting light and mist which floats into small vortexes and the birth of radiant fireflies. Gradually the shadows draw closer dragging the grating sound of chains behind them, details emerge and disappear, briefly flickering into existence, components of the creatures, bindings, tags. The geared clockwork and networking veins of the trees. Robot limbs on the skittering critters. Genetic grafts on the skin of the plants , all carefully coded. As they flash back into obscurity the shadows grow overpoweringly close, warm breath onto the viewers skin, wrenching and paralyzing. Suddenly the shadows dissipate, vanishing as cute little cartoon versions of the imagined horrors playfully scamper into being.

maps - control, understanding and defining the dark areas of the map, "here be monsters".

if i make it so the video is still it will be easier to manipulate, also should i make it so that when the viewer is watching it they wont be in the frame? would this make it more disturbing or less?
i think it would be more uncomfortable to be watching a the space you are in without you being in it. i think.

or what if i made the video look like a surveillance feed and put a camera in the room and then the viewer isnt on the video, that could be cool

concept -

recreation of a selected space as perceived by myself and installation of the recreated space inside the original space.

basically i was thinking about recording a space and then changing it into my reality of the space and then installing the changed recording of the space in the original space. by remapping the space it breaks down the control of the space for the viewer, it no longer becomes safe.

peoples perceptions of spaces are based not only on the physicality of that space but also on their individual realities. spaces will change from person to person with context, experience, emotion, random links, and many more complicated influences. mapping any space will therefore change relevance with different perceptions.

"Every map or presentation is a kind of lie. You draw certain things and leave out certain things. Depending on what scale it is, it tells a different story."
- Brian McGrath, (Else/where: Mapping)

Elsewhere / mapping

“mapping has emerged in the information age as a means to make the complex accessible, the hidden visible, the unmappable mappable . . . . Mapping has become a way of making sense of things.” - Janet Abrams and Peter Hall.


mapping is an attempt to define the space around us, making it navigable and therefore 'understandable' and 'controllable', maps are a concept of the space they are trying to define.

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presentation -

so for the presentation of my project i created a shell website for a company called biospark industries, i then created an "advertisement" and a link to it from my blog. unfortunately web design and html hurt my head so i couldnt create the real things, i used another blogspot page as the base for my website and some of the applications built in to blogspot to create an ad. also i think there needs to be more depth in the company i created it, this would be a good way to give more depth to the ideas behind my project and also add more realism to it.however as a starting point it worked well as a platform to present my video and could serve as an interedtin medium to ecplore further.

as for the video itself i think it worked very well and was pretty much how i had envisioned it ( not quite as perfected as i had imagined it). it followed through my concepts well and achieved what i had intended for it, it was designed to be quite simple in acknowledgement of time restraints but it still works on a few levels i think and the main ideas are easily grasped i feel. the images themselves lost a bit in transition and i would like to spend more time on them to clean them up and perfect them, the feel of the video worked but could have a bit more depth and polish as well.

overall i think my project was a success in its exploration of ideas, the presentation was not as great as i would have liked however.

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The evolution of fusion energy technology is here!


Click Here to take the next step now!



BioSpark Industries.

i have created a 30 second loop of layered images, i decided to speed paint the images in photoshop instead of inking them as i wasnt quite getting the feel that i wanted. the images are not as polished as i would like as speed painting is a technique im kind of learning as i go, hopefully i will get to spend a bit more time on them if i can figure out how i am going to present my work.
i envisioned it as being installed in a dark room on a screen that would turn on when approached. this might be possible with the use of sound to trigger the video. i have also been thinking that due to the ideas im exploring with my work then using the internet might be a more applicable medium. this would also give me a bit more time to polish my images.

project concept -

for my project i have gone from my first image of the creation of energy boy as my starting point and have developed it into an overlapping of around 20 drawings, each being one frame. then the layers of drawings will change order, be removed and be added in different ways so as to be animated but the drawings will be unclear. im also going to have them flicker and have some effects so as to give it a kind of old film style. the drawings will be in black and white ink and be scenes from a section showing the creation of energy boy. the loop will last for a limited time.

evolution

energy -

energy has evolved side by side with technology, in my project one of the ideas i want to explore is the next step in energy evolution. this is where energy boy comes into it as the 1st experiment in fusing humans with energy in some way. in this he is created as an experiment which is where frankenstein concepts came to mind and began to tie in.


information -

the other main aspect im looking at in my project stems from the evolution of energy in the pixel, as information and how information has changed because of this. as information is so easily accessible to us all the time all around us have we become desensitized to it simply because of the sheer volume of data we are confronted with. apparantly the average viewing time for a piece of art is 30 seconds...

frankensteins monster

using pilfered body parts, dark sciences and massive amounts of energy victor frankenstein created a living being. after then being rejected by his creator the monster then went after acceptance and revenge.

this story explores creation and consequences, experimenting and technology and acceptance in society.

evolution of energy/ evolution of information

using the creation of energy boy as my starting point for the ideas of the advancing of energy and technology, exploring ideas from dr frankensteins monster which also tie into these themes.

- evolution and creation
- experimenting with energy and humanity
- consequences of experimentation

im also looking at the evolution of energy as information

- interpretation of information
- volume of information
- attention span and desensitisation

from the spark to the pixel -

aspects of energy; fire, light, electricity, pixel.

these are things which dominate our every facet of our lives, integrated into every layer of the human world. we expend and consume them voraciously to sustain our needs.

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exhibition -

instead of having a short animated piece i have instead presented my work as static images printed out and displayed on the wall with 4 very short animated sections projected in between them. the animated pieces and the static pieces work well together and capture what i was trying to achieve. the finished work doesn't quite look how i wanted it, with time being a factor i didnt have as many images as i would have liked, i wanted to have a more pixelly mosaic look to it which didnt quite happen. the image size in relation to each other was too different between the static images and the animated images. i think adding white frames for the statics will also add cohesion to the work as at the moment the animated ones stand out too much from the others.

overall i think the work represented the ideas and theory behind it well and is a good starting point for the concepts presented and for energy boy as well.

entropy - the measurement of the probability of energy loss

i really like the analogy of entropy as a demon in a box who lets energy into it but tries to not let any out. if you're fast enough you can keep the box warm.

energy boy - character study

-theory

energy boy represents possible outcomes of the breaking down of physical rules in the world. where the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can only be transferred and not created, energy boy is the embodiment of the breaking of that law, he can create a limitless amount of energy through his body. because of this he is able to break free from the system of control that he lives in, in this created world. his actions are affected by the oppression of this world and his reactions to this oppression with new found power.

-presentation

i have developed his image to as an outcome of the system that he lives in. from this oppression he has become desensitized but longs for freedom. i have presented this in energy boy as black holes for eyes and no mouth, his search for freedom manifests in the images of birds and the sky.
his hair is also used to represent his situation and also his energy output. at the beginning his hair is scruffy and hanging down at a shortish length, as his situations change and his energy output grows his hair grows to wild lengths.


energy boys actions are based on many variables and this project is a beginning to understanding him and his actions as a result of this breakdown of systems and the consequences of that are played out on a personal level.

references -

i have looked at a lot of material in researching this project, my style has always leant towards manga in my drawing and this project represents that, i also adopted a more simplified style as time was a factor in completing the work. i looked at anime such as tekonkinkreet and the animatrix for inspiration. the animatrix also helped in developing some ideas behind the theory of my work. for creating energy boy the book pictoplasma was incredibly helpful especially the introductions explaining theory behind character design.

concept -

a short animated piece exploring random decay and malfunctions of the physical rules of the world. focusing on the actions of 'energy boy', who stops transferring energy and continuously creates an exponential amount, as he reacts to the effects of this occurrence and others.

exploring controlling rules of the system and possible consequences of changes to them or complete removal.

the law of conservation of energy states that energy can only be transferred, not created or destroyed.

clip from Beyond, from the Animatrix

moving through in a world not quite understandable, governed by rules put in place by incomprehensible forces and motives, just out of reach. laws which govern every facet of life, categorized and labeled to fit the model, reasons invisible.

make a representational model for the world and add random system decay to fundamental rules.

- witness the birth of energy boy

decay/evolution

system decay -

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20030302/ai_n12581159

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/New_Zealand_students_able_to_use_txt_language_in_exams

control -

















mediated encounters
four Japanese fighting fish placed in separate suspended bowls, by crossing the light beams which are connected to the computer that controls the robotic structure the fish are able to move their bowls and 'explore' their environment.

systems -

systems surround us in our everyday life, we use them to help maintain and control our environment and to function in our daily lives. we interact with them on a personal level and others operate without us being aware that that they exist, systems that manage vital components of society without which humanity would fall apart, invisible systems, individual, intimate systems on a tiny scale unique to us and separate.

systems are made up of components that interact with each other to produce a result or action. they rely on each part to function or the desired outcome will not happen.

- organic systems
- communication systems
- social systems
- communication systems
- critical systems

seek -

a machine trying to respond intuitively to actions incomprehensible to it, trying to correct and create order and control over uncaring and unreachable minds.

seek addresses the problem of communication between humans and machines and seems to explore some kind kind of dark premonition of the future of human and machine interaction, systems attempting to control us and keep order, understanding between us lost, conflict between natures.

brief One

Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group - Seek - 1970

gerbils and aluminium building blocks placed in a perspex cage. when the gerbils moved the blocks an overhead robotic arm responded with pre-programmed actions and repositioned the blocks.




Digital Decay - breakdown of the system and immateriality.

what happens when the systems we rely on don't work?

http://viridiandesign.org/notes/226-250/00237_digital_decay.html

"The system doesn't really work, it can't be fixed, no one understands it, no one is in charge of it, it can't be lived without, and it gets worse every year." - Stewart Brand

if we don't understand the systems we rely on then when something does go wrong, as it inevitably does, then how do we fix it?