R&D Task: Frequency Festival – Liberation

And here we go again: second task is all about research and development. The first stage is obviously research namely for the Frequency Festival. The theme is LIBERATION. So all that is to follow is more of collection of statements and ideas than an actually thought trough blog post.

First of all what is Frequency Festival?

Frequency_logo

The Frequencyexperience:
For visitors coming to Frequency there are 4 ways to do Frequency
1. Our exhibition festival trail: from 10am to 5pm we open installation and
experiences to cultural adventurers of any age across the city centre.
2. On- off performances and events: often scheduled after the sun goes down,
this is those looking for a Frequency after hours.
3. Talks and Symposiums: a chance to speak to Frequency artists and curators
in relaxed venues across the city
4. Workshops: Creative playgrounds for children and big kids alike.

 

This year Frequency is all about Liberation. For our own ideas for a project we are supposed to look in to one of the three following area.

 Knowledge sharing:

Never before have we been able to step so completely into the lives of others. We
learn about each other via social media, the stories unfiltered by the established new
media portals. If knowledge is power then this transference of knowledge represents
democracy at work, shifting ownership and authorship from the few to the many.

The Enhanced imagination

Our imaginations have been turbo charged by the powerful digital tools at out
disposal. It took centuries for Da Vinci’s concepts of a parachute and a helicopter to
become physically possible. We have seen more accelerated and profound change
in a single generation.

The liberation of the Digital Human

Our minds and bodies, and the physical world are seamlessly intergrating with the
digital realm. We have transcended our physical limitations via the digital portal,
enhancing the vocabulary of the body, extending our senses, our real time social
reach.

 

Convergence Task – Trailer

Oh god it’s done.

This is what the final pdf looks like (below) or have a look at the pdf itself here

convergence task convergence task2

I didn’t find any appropriate music for my example video so I decided to upload it with out. Bad decision… Jesus it’s boring and I know it’s not good when you say that about your own work. But it does give you an idea of the concept I’m going for and that’s all that counts, really. But check it out yourself:

What I do like about the video and the pdf is that I managed to keep the same kind of design going for both of them. I used a turquoise and dark grey colour scheme which I think works really well together. I’ll show you the 3 buildings I drew too. The london eye obviously represents London, then I’ve got the Taj Mahal for Agra and Hamburger Rathaus for my home town Hamburg (yay).

rathaus drawing agra London

One thing I’m worried about is that people won’t understand what I’m going for. I really like the idea I came up with and would love to realise it too because I think that it would be a great project to work on and to see people reacting to it. I think in a conversation I could give a much clearer picture of the idea but then again I do tend to worry to much. Looking forward to see other peoples ideas!

Convergence Task – Arktos super spiel

Working on the pdf right now and just had a flash of wit.

We used to have this game show in Germany called “Tabaluga”. The final game in it was finding the way to the evil snowman, Arktos. The players had to memorize a path showing up on the floor and then walk along it when it disappeared.  Just a fun example for interactive floors.

Convergence Task – Research

For the “Convergence task” we have to produce a proof of concept PDF document that responds to one of the
following themes:

Making simple music
The death of newspapers/books
Personal security
The Digital Doctor
Toy Hack

Since these are the topics we worked on in our digital interaction workshops I decided to further develop the idea I worked on then (Part1, Part2).

 

Research

This will be more a collection of existing ideas then me talking through it.

This is what I found when searching for “interactive floor” (small warning at the beginning – the music in awefull)

 

 

– Short article for a DIY Interactive Dance floor on Hack n Mod that links to the actual Insturctions

– The web design is horrific for this one but all about flashy floors so enjoy!

– This dance-off floor and the paper on it is the closest I could find to my idea. I was worried that they where going for the same idea as mine but luckily it does differ from my concept. As far as I can see to this point I might have actually come up with a very individual idea (woop).

 

The above examples are all based on a pressure triggered led floor which at the moment I think is what I’m going with. But I also found some cool other interactive floor ideas, which I’d like to share.

– Touch-sensitive video-screen floor is in step with you

Really cool concept for a body operated system:

interactive flower pettals for wedding:

A really awesome way of playing Tetris:

Skill 4 – Improving “walkit”

First thing I did was look at the Walkit logo.

walkitlogo

Not very inspiring is it. But worst of all it’s not memorable either.

So I doodled around a bit and came up with this idea:

walkitlogo

Now I know that one can improve this as well. Give it more dimension, change the figure, colour and grading, but from the basic idea it is more memorable than just plain writing. It functions as the “W” in “Walkit” but can also be used a the logo individually. It represents the idea behind Walkit.

 

For the app itself I wanted a simpler look. I’m not to happy with my result but I do think it works better then the original. I’m thinking at the moment that a differnt background would work better. But I wanted to stick to a green/yellowy colour scheme representing nature. Also I think they are quite optimistic colours motivating the user to actually go out there and walk.

walkitapp