Going with the Flow

Back to my days of college it was 100% coursework produced in a sketch book and I always used to start each brief with a flow chart, so here we go, a blast from the past.

My main objective here is to think of every angle which needs to be covered in the Analyse stage of this project.

Particle Systems; where did they come from?

Focusing more on why the idea of Particle Systems came to me rather than where the actually thing originated from, you can search that on Google

Why Particle Systems?

When the sun is shining through a window through a specific beam you can see the dust particles in the air, this is something I have been bought up with at my parents place and I never really noticed the beauty of it. Until my friend Lawrence was explained his thoughts on it, him showing me that the slightest movement from any part of the room caused a reaction in the dust particles. This related back to the echo I believe is cause by every motion of man and women in the world. Leading me to want to investigate into Particle systems.

Where could this go?

More to ‘Where do I want this to go?’, there are of course many options here and the possibilities are endless. To get me started I’m going to draw up some concept ideas and go from there.

 

These next steps require individual Analysis 

What inspires me?

Particle Systems of course, but this is where it has all come from –v–

Identify some problems I could encounter?

Something other than Particle Systems?

Flow Chart of Thought Track  ^

A Particle System Considered an Original Idea

Here we have a particle System, this not being the simplest one I could find, the basic physics behind it are circles following the mouse around and dropping to the floor.

Just had a meeting with Liam (my course lecturer), to be honest he caught me out helping my self the the kettle on the third floor and asked the dreaded question “how is the project going?”…My response being one of “I could not be any further from the answer you want right now”. To my luck Liam has heard this excuse many a time and pushed me for a meeting to discuss what I was going to do.

Starting focus ‘Particle Systems’, I knew where this was going because my friend Sam Jones had the same thought track leading to the idea getting botched a few weeks ago, but I can be quite stubborn with my ideas and wanted to stick with it.

THE IDEA

To create a Particle System which using a webcam picks up the space of movement people walk in acting as a negative space pushing away particles (small dots) into the space which has no movement. 

THE SYMBOL

This idea is supposed to symbolise that beings are not the only things moving through this world; everything action we take leads to and echo or a response which we may not see, even the movement of an arm causes some sort of motion or power we may not realise.

THE ORIGIN

The idea came from personal experience; having the usual life stories of everything, a realisation has to be made that everything you do has a reaction. 

Here below is a simple example of a particle system and part of the code, I have added part of the code so you can understand what I’m in the motion of doing, I will explain technicals later on.

// Particles, by Daniel Shiffman.

ParticleSystem ps;
PImage sprite; 

void setup() {
 size(1024, 768, P2D);
 orientation(LANDSCAPE);
 sprite = loadImage("sprite.png");
 ps = new ParticleSystem(10000);

 // Writing to the depth buffer is disabled to avoid rendering
 // artifacts due to the fact that the particles are semi-transparent
 // but not z-sorted.
 hint(DISABLE_DEPTH_MASK);
} 

void draw () {
 background(0);
 ps.update();
 ps.display();
 
 ps.setEmitter(mouseX,mouseY);
 
 fill(255);
 textSize(16);
 text("Frame rate: " + int(frameRate), 10, 20);
 }

An Independent Dorset (Reaction in a Space)

Cutting the story short,

our objective for this short project was to create a poster which is to promote an Independent Bournemouth, relating to what was going on at the time with Scotland trying to become independent.

The purpose of this was to have the poster located in Weymouth House Foyer and us to get an analyse of peoples reactions; taking into account…

• Number of people walking through in a space of time.
• Average time spent in Foyer.
• Do people take notice of what is on the walls.
• (If Yes) What do they notice to most

1. Within a 10 minute boundary : 30+ (People who did not stop)
2. Average time spent (Under 10 minutes) mostly groups
3. The main sight focus was the long strip of screens and the space between the two lifts.

This short hand information influenced the location which my group placed our poster.

In the middle of the two lifts, just above the button

The Space –v–

A little bit about the poster 

Here what we are trying to get across is the fundamentals of a jigsaw puzzle, this originated from an idea I had when I was thinking of the little cartoons you get in Newspapers. I thought what would be funny is if you had a member of the Monach (The Queen) hunched over a table trying to complete a puzzle of the United Kingdom, but the piece for Dorset would not fit (Always a problem when you’re trying to to a puzzle). This developed on and with a short amount of time on our hands this is what came to us. 

–v–The Results

We presented this version to our seminar group and we were met with positive comments about the imagery of the poster and how it brings to light the situation of an independent Dorset however we did get some criticisms. The criticism was aimed at the slogan/tag line ‘Un puzzle Dorset’ as it came off as rather attacking to people as well as giving of the idea that Dorset was the problem as needed to be removed for the United Kingdom’s sake. From this feedback, we as a group decided that we should come up with a better slogan/tag line for our poster – in the end we decided that ‘Some Pieces aren’t meant to fit’ was fitting. – Shaun Skeen http://shaunskeen.com/blog

People did notice our poster when it was located between the lifts, but it wouldn’t get many long looked observations so we did have to push for people’s response.

	NUMBER	TEA	SIT	TIME (MIN)	WORK	SOCIAL
GROUP 1	6	0	6	10	NO	YES
GROUP 2	8	0	4	20	YES	NO
GROUP 3	1	1	1	2	NO	YES
GROUP 4	2	1	2	10	NO	YES
GROUP 5	2	0	0	5	NO	YES
GROUP 6	10	0	0	WALKING	NO	NO
GROUP 7	6	0	0	WALKING	NO	NO

Processing Relevance

Here I have been given a brief knowledge of how to present my Processing piece when I put it in the open space, with the information gained it should hopefully benefit to results.

• Make pieces bigger.
• Add an eye catching design.
• Something which people can relate to ‘Participatory Culture’
• Interesting
• Nothing Offensive

The Brief (Processing)