Christmas project on public spaces
For this project, we were set a brief by Grace Crannis & Emilie Loiseleur to create an interaction that revealed information of a public space. As I already planned on travelling to Abu Dhabi for the holidays I decided to base my project there. With the plan in mind that I would come up with a few ideas and generate an idea which would have led me to investigate my chosen location. However, when doing my investigation to find out peoples views of Abu Dhabi I found it difficult to talk to people and faced some hostility from the public. After this experience, I came up with the idea of inventing a facial recognition app to see if someone was approachable. A resolution that would help me to approach people but also be interesting. However, when doing my research and processing this idea I knew that I could not proceed with this so I panicked and emailed Grace. She reassured me and told me to not produce an app right away but to look more into this and probably produce a set of instructions which allowed the public to interact with. As a result, I did more research but saw the implications of creating this such as an invasion of privacy as well as the discomfort I’ll be giving so I decided to not proceed. Instead, I took time lapses of different areas in Abu Dhabi.
After taking the time lapses I looked into different ways that I could add information to the videos. But, since they were time lapses it was difficult to display information as the videos were fast paced and by reducing the speed I was losing the video quality. Consequently, I didn’t go forward with using the videos but as I was experimenting with Adobe after effects I learnt a lot using the program watching youtube videos and decided to visit the Louvre in Saadiyat island and take some footage not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it.
As I was in the art museum I came up with a few ideas one being where I was comparing videos of how people looked at two different art pieces. Then, I realised that there was a lack of information about the art pieces in the brochures that they provided and that when reading the art pieces the size of the description was very small possibly because it was also translated to Arabic and French.( Underneath is the front and back of the brochure)
Using Adobe after effects I created a prototype of an augmented reality of the description of an art piece with a link to the artist’s website as well as an image of their piece they referenced too. In creating the holographic text box I used Adobe Illustrator. The reason for going forward with this idea was to present the description of the art piece at a larger scale but also to give any visitor the accessibility to more information about the artist and to see an image of the reference.
By creating a hologram augmented reality I’m allowing a visitor in the gallery to view the information more clearly and be able to see the art piece for longer and appreciate it more as they have the option of for example using their mobile devices to read more about the piece or not. Also, by using a hologram they can still see what is in the text box.
From the feedback, I saw that there were a number of ways I could have improved this prototype. For example, I could have added the map of the gallery provided on the brochure onto the corner of the augmented reality in a circle shape like GTA game with a dot showing the user’s location. Also, the text in the box is not very clear so I could alter it and rather than it being fixed at one point of the art piece it could rotate around the art piece. This would allow more users to read about the art piece rather than having to wait for people to move out of the way so they can read it themselves.
Due to not being really confident in presenting I thought I could create a video showing what I did but I noticed that when using Adobe after effects that you could only create a 30-second video. Therefore, I just created a powerpoint. (No audio was added)
Grace & Emilie suggested that if I went with the idea of finding out peoples views of Abu Dhabi as many people are secretive due to not wanting to get in trouble with the law that it would have been a more interesting project.