Week Summary:

This week we needed to prepare for the “IDEA MARKET” Happening on the 15th. 

at the IDEA MARKET we’ll have to showcase our team’s concept for the brief in a short presentation. 

Over the last 7 days we managed to narrow down our interesets and set off in one direction; 
Alex Pollman, our tutor, was really instrumental in getting us going when we all met up. 

Meeting Alexa and gathering our ideas together was such a great experience for our KP, Richard and I on the 8th. 

First we each reviewed some of the research we’ve been doing as individuals. 

She made us read each other’s words out loud which was a clever trick, I thought. In the end i think we were grasping who each of us is as a designer a little better. 

KP as always is very invested in AR/VR. He’s very rooted in storytelling experience. 
Richard has experience with music/audio and is very interested to move forward creating something that reflects a union between person & bot...like a collaboration of humans and Ai to create art. It relates back to his manifestol 
With me of course I wax on and on about movement, and dance, celebrating gesture, etc. 
I’m also very intrigued by the relationship between the master and the pupil and how that can be rethought today. Can you be an apprentice to technology? 

Kat: Movement notation, the old methods and new technology available...What is alive, what is dead?
The master/apprentice relationship is less and less present today.For example, a master like Laban had his core pupils, people who went on to found the institutes that celebrate and disseminate his teachings today. How does one access that kind of relationship now? Can you access that kind of relationship with a master who has passed away?
Can we use sensory and responsive technology to provide that experience?
What expertise can I lend to this group?

• Performance Experience
• Teaching Experience … what does someone need to latch on to a concept?
• How do you excite, entertain, and educate, all at once?
• Speaking, writing, and graphic design skills focused on making sense of the absurd… clearly communicating abstract concepts, cementing multi-facted ideas into one condensed thought, or goal...
• Interactive Dance technology experience
• willing to make a fool of myself to present a concept
• knowledge of the language of gesture

Richard:Interface design
Thinking about the process that translates gesture to sound, sound to 3D sculptures, movement to light. How people will interact with the piece. What the touchpoints are? The elements that people can interact with. What do they look like? How do we signpost them? Make them usable. Is the interface clear or is there some mystery within it?
What does the ‘box’ or object that contains the Arduino look like? Feel like? Sound like? What is the environment.
Is the translation one way? Or does the user get feedback (haptics, smell, sound, light)?
Creating or designing a process that will translate one type of input into a different output.
Research sensors and how they can be used.
Use skills in audio production and composition. What are the inputs and outputs of any audio / sound content? Create a musical score that explains the process of how the sound / audio / composition is generated.


Research Goals (all)  

• Research technology: How does Arduino interface with GPS & w the various sensors (the 37 sensors)
• Bending/Flex sensors as trigger points
• Research immersive experience: how does the user feel?

• Arduino has to play a big role in what we do so of course everything we discuss is through the lens of what we think we might accomplish. 

• Music boxes/ Punch cards
• Pioneer pendant
• Tracking movement - sensors -
• Dream machine
• LED clocks
• 3D print gestures in a space - 3D printer rhythm creates a piece of music
• Motion capture

Lights & paper & motorsFlickbooks
Photo Booth that creates a 3D portrait (Matrix bullet scene creator)
37 (Arduino) sensors: https://tkkrlab.nl/wiki/Arduino_37_sensors

Shanghai Spheres - World Expo, Shanghai, China

http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/areas-of-research/centre-for-dance-research/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/wild_things/2014/04/10/bird_guitar_art_exhibit_c_leste_boursier_mougenot_zebra_finch_guitar_installation.html
http://www.ka5.info/index.html
http://instagtrends.com/media/BbAntdLlKRm
http://dancewriting.org/
http://bodaborg.com/
DIY FLEX SENSORS:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7zT94WV-Ek
Research tech - GPS Arduino, messaging, sensors (light / temperature)
Signals that mean something. Translation.
How do people experience reality without augmentation? Experiencing environments through narrative / storytelling
Playing with the city
Tools that allows you to tell the story.
How much do you believe the story?

Summary: 
The piece involves two people.
The first, The Conductor is alone in a room.
The Conductor is connected via an Arduino-powered radio signal to a second person - The Player or The Actor - who is outside, wandering around in the city.
The Player / Actor wears an Arduino equipped with various types of sensors and a radio transmitter.
The types of sensors are tbc, but options discussed were:

The Conductor gives voice instructions to The Player / Actor via a radio headset, which could include moving to a particular part of the city to generate more or less light / heat or bending limbs in dance movements. LED indicators on the left and right sides of a set of DIY-looking goggles can also indicate which direction The Player / Actor should go next.
The information received by the various sensors and movements of The Player / Actor would generate sound.
This sound is used to create a new audio composition, dictated by movement and the environment.
The data could also potentially generate a new form of dance score, with each sensor creating a different symbol for a particular dance step / move. This could be printed out and referred to again later.
Also discussed was the idea of The Conductor live-mixing the various sensor outputs to create an audio piece in real time.
There is no specific end to the ‘game’.
It is an adventure that encourages people to explore (we also discussed the idea of it being ‘multiplayer’).
The purpose of the work is to:

With the Idea Market coming up we had a few specific goals which we’ll present tomorrow. 

I condensed everything down into a small flyer/leaflet we can hand out tomorrow. Richard’s design for our system has been cleaned up & designed at appropriate size, printed and ready to go.

Where it started: I’ve got the space ready to present:

Richard sketched out and actually produced a cardboard prototype for the wearable: 




KP has been hard at work already trying to get LED sensors to communicate across a radio frequency. It’s beyond my current capabilities though I spend a lot of time with him listening to whats going on and helping troubleshoot when I can. I want to learn as much as possible even if I’m not the one doing it right now...