Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Blending the images (memories)



Here i came across an experiment done by developing a computer program which blend Flickr images which share the same tags. No human is involved in choosing, positioning, or blending the images.


These are few examples which will be kick off point for retrieval part of our project where we can make the whole project more exiting.

Memory recollection - Jim Campbell



Memory/Recollection, 1990Black and white video camera, five CRT's, 286 computer, custom electronicsMemory/Recollection is an interactive video installation in which a series of captured live frozen images are displayed on a series of monitors. The images fade from the first monitor to the last monitor so that the last monitor has the oldest image on it. The piece stores images for up to 2 years and at times displays these older images from 10 minutes, a week or six months ago. i.e. The piece keeps track of and is defined by its own history.


Memory Works installation - Jim Campbell


Memory Works installationThe Memory Works (1994-1998) are a series in which each work is based upon a digitally recorded memory of an event. Some of these electronic records represent a personal memory and others represent a collective memory. These electronic memories are manipulated and then used to transform an associated object mounted on the wall. Avoiding the usual notions of what a memory is, none of the original memories is an image or a sound. These works explore the characteristic of hiddenness common to both human and computer memory. Memories are hidden and have to be transformed to be represented.









Pancinema - Project by Kinecity






Pancimena is a cylindrical diffuse glass screen on which is projected the daily life of the city. A series of panoramic cameras are located throughout milan, pointed at the sky, at people in front of the train station, at trees and from the tallest building. The life of the city, at various scales and timelines, is continuously streamed to the server which then stores the images chronologically.

These panoramic image feeds are collaged and shown on a giant glass cylinder in front of Milan train station, so forming a memory of the city that starts at the inauguration of the sculpture.

The archived images are played as continuous time-lapse movies on the glass cylinder. The circular balustrade acts as in interface, each section of which marks a period of time past.
Pancinema was a competition entry for the Milan Station Art Competition 2000Collaboration: Luke Lowings, Richard Kress and Marek Walczak
This is an example which i find interesting and can be related to our project to some extend.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Narrowing Our Focus

To tackle the tough questions we ran into and try to focus our project from what it was at the last presentation we had a long meeting discussing our project. Here are the criteria and focal points we have come up with which we think reflect all our collective interests and focus our project so it can be effective.

1.The project is called "The Museum of Yesterday". It will be a physical space, tunnel/tent like structure in front of the union. We have picked the union because it is a symbolic home base for campus and it has high traffic flow of the campus population. We chose this specific site out in front because it is public, not a room you must go to, and is highly visible to anyone who passes by.

2. The users who engage with this project will take video and photo based on this criteria "If you would like to submit to The Museum of Yesterday then follow these instructions: Take a 1 minute video or 1 photograph of something ephemeral that you find meaningful. The context of these visual artifacts should be from your experiences on campus. Then upload your video to the museum website."

We decided AGAINST the mission themes for each week. There will only be this one constraint criteria. We felt that choosing the words ephemeral and meaningful were important aspects of what information we wanted to collect. "Meaningfulness" is very subjective and we are interested in the users' interpretation of what they find meaningful. We feel that this notion of cataloguing a community's idea of tiny things that are meaningful gets at the issue of meaning in memory. What memories do we find meaningful? Why do stupid things that might seem insignificant stick in our heads, but others don't? This question to the user also brings up value systems and subjective selection in memory. Ephemera is a criteria we are interested in because of its relationship to the museum and all the artifacts being not lasting, but displayed for a short while.

3. The display of artifacts will be anonymous, but the submission will be based on your net ID.

4. We will have either a voting system for the community to vote out "bad" or "innaporpriate" videos at a computer station in the museum OR we will have a jury that reviews all the material the night before and eliminates irrelevant or lude material. We have not chosen which of these we will do at the moment.

5. The videos and photos will be collected by uploading to a website with a cut off of a certain time (9pm?) or there will be a drop slot. I think the uploading makes more sense because who will want to burn a disc with one photo or mini movie on it? its a waste. Then those visual artifacts will be loaded to the display screens for the next day. They can only be viewed at the museum! Then at the end of the day all the artifacts will be deleted. Nothing will be saved.

6. Although the museum structure is the only thing we may physically realize for our final project it will be accompanied by a future proposal to have kiosks with uploading computer screens and cameras that you can rent out by swiping your icard. You can have the camera for a set amount of time, 15 minutes, half hour, no longer than 1 hour. This idea adds to the notion of equality, ubiquity and access to the entire community.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

run up 1





Example of images which are ephemeral that i find meaningful...........

Schematic design proposal






These are few images for the schematic design for the museum of yesterday.