More Of The Same

This post is to look at similar forms of grabbing the attention on people in the area, but not by using projections. This method of achieving the public's eye is by making the images large and of a subject that makes you think.
Banksy is a British graffiti artist and has been creating street art works for many years. The topics of his street art are usually based upon politics, ethnics and culture. His name has become well known by many and he has definitely caught the the eye of many people with the creativeness of his art and designs.

Here are some examples of some of Banksy's street artwork:



These are all paintings that grab the attention of others, the reason for looking at these is that I cane use these successful methods of interacting with surrounding people as research and will definitely help me develop ideas of how me and my group can generate a similar visual project to interact with our audience.

The Drive:

Now that we have taken a trip down to the Stonehouse area we were able to take the footage and photographs and use them in the transforming of the area, paying more attention to Union Street.
Below is the video we as a group captured and created, taking the file clip and speeding it up using Premiere Pro. The result of this is shown here:



As seen the video is not in a fixed position, this is because we decided not to use a tripod to further portray that the experience of the journey was of the passengers point of view.

Manipulation Of The Floor:

As I have previously discussed in the previous post: Determining a Projection Sight, The tiles on the floor of one of our potential sights could be used to be measured and then project a video that would fit to the scale of each of the tiles o the floor.
One member of the group decided to take the image of the floor, and by using After Effects created a vision of what our projection could possibly look like.

Video/After Effect image, click on the picture below to see:

This video is very useful in showing the vision and potential projection we can come up with when generating a real, life size video for the chosen location.

Hand Tattoo:

For our next assignment we were set the task of designing a tattoo for our hands using Photoshop. the brief was fairly broad, in that we had to use an image of our hands, and write a list of words/sentences that basically sum us up as individuals, the text all had to be written at angles of 30 and 40 degrees in tolerance. That was it, so we all had a huge amount of play to work with in designing this tattoo. Immediately I was all thinking about skating and how I could focus my whole design around this, as well as summing myself up in the image as a whole.

Below shows the tattoo that i managed to come up with:


As you can see there is alot going on in my tattoo, and below is the explanation of how I came about producing this.
I began this hand tattoo by changing the image of my hand to generate a lot of colour. This is because I love bright and strong colour, eye sight is a gift and should be utilized. I then began to list things that identify me, such as my name, date of birth, hometown and family members at the top of my hand. This is because people read top to bottom, and by positioning them here this is likely to be the fist thing people see when viewing this, the reason this is important is because these things are out of my control and I am unable to change.
I then wrote in large font things that have an influence on me such as family and friends including some of my hobbies. These are in green as green has been programmed into us as being a positive colour, many natural and living things are green, as well as traffic lights standing for good to go. The reason for this is because these things are something I care about and have a positive effect on me and how I live.
I then listed down the fingers in the image the result of these influencing factors. Skateboarding for example is the reason I am a very determined person, it has taught me that commitment and dedication can lead to success, not only skating but in all areas of life.
I then listed some of my characteristics in a light shade of blue, in a font that looks like it has been literally written on. This is because these words describe the way I feel, and describe me.
Skateboarding has been a huge factor in my life since a young age, so I added the LOVE park sign from Philadelphia where many professionals skated. I also skate in a team called No Pain No Gain Skateboards back home, so added the name to my hand, aswell as abbreviating it to NPNG and making it appear like the LOVE sign, placing many along the vein lines to show its something in my blood.
I then left a small section on the thumb for the future. This is yet to be told, even though i feel you should live everyday like its your last, Id still like to live a little while longer.
Finally to finish I changed the background to play on the phrase 'state of mind' changed to Skate Of Mind. This is to show that no matter how much I have going on, stresses and problems life throws at me, as soon as I skate they all disappear and allows me to look at things in a new perspective.

A Drive Down Stonehouse: Photos

After visiting Stonehouse again with thee group in a car, we all decided that this method of research was particularly useful to the project. By driving in the area and many times back and forth down Union Street we were able to locate certain areas we believed would be a perfect place for projecting. We took many photos and video clips of the journey on the course we took, and below some of the images we captured that night.


This image above is clearly not of the floor of the street, but was taken from the roundabout that is fairly central to Union Street and a hot spot for the majority of people moving in the area. This could be a good building to project infront of aswell as the Dance Academy as I have previously discussed.


The above images show pictures taken that are not very blurred and give a clear shot of the street ahead. These prove useful to determine where pedestrians are in the streets aswell as revealing a good capture of the the light. The reason the light is so important for this project is because we need a fairly dark target area for our projection so we are able to project out our interactive video in the clearest it can possibly be. A dark location will provide the best projection as any other light source around the area will reduce its quality. All the images above show an extremely dark vision of the street ahead, making this an ideal place to carry out our projection.

Below are images with slower shutter speed to capture areas in and around Union Street that have many light sources which prove to be areas that are not suitable for the objective we have set out to achieve.



Although these images are not clear and cannot really show any of the potential pedestrian hot spots, this is not the purpose of them. As mentioned before, these images were captured strictly to display well lit areas which will help narrow down the locations we could use to project out interactive video.
By taking these images on route, they have made choosing a projection location much easier and we as a group now are much closer to finding it.

Car Time Lapse

To further investigate how people interact at night and to find a good location for the projection, myself and group decided to drive a car around the Stonehouse area, more down Union Street than others to pin point an area we could project. We also decided it would be a cool way of showing this by speeding up the footage we capture as a time lapse, this would mean we are able to film a lot of footage of the area, but only take a small amount of time watching it, helping find a target area quickly. Not only that, but by doing this the light captured also becomes distorted, focusing again on the light in the area which is another factor we need to consider when carrying out the projection.

Below is a car time lapse taken from Youtube to show the kind of video we are going to attempt to capture ourselves.



This video is almost perfect to show how we want our outcome to look like, however, we have decided we would like the camera to be more of a passenger point of view from the front, this makes it easier to spot pedestrians and give a clearer outlook on the streets being driven down.
We also chose not to use a tripod to give the impression that it is infact the point of view of a passenger in the car.
It was also captured by a DSLR (Digital Single Lense Reflex) Which is a type of camera that takes immensely details sill images allowing the user to have manual control on its performance such as changing the ISO, Shutter speed, Aperture etc. The effect of changing the Aperture and taking photos every so often on a timely basis makes all the images appear to stream together looking alot like a video. The difference with the way we as a group are going to create this style of video is infact by using a video camera to record our journey, and then speeding up the time it takes to play which will give a similar effect...we hope.

Here is another example of a time lapsed trip in a vehicle, but I am showing this video for an example of something we as a group are not looking for:



This video is purely for visual effect and does not give any information on what we are looking for, which is a good area for projecting out interactive video. The video we capture has the purpose of finding a location with low light levels as well as a place where there is high activity's in peoples movements.

Determining a projection sight:

Now we have decided on creating an interactive video that is going to be projected on the floor of the street, we decided to take another trip to Union Street taking photographs of potential spots where we thought suitable to project. We kept the timing specific to when we were told the projection would be taking place, which was between 16:00 and 18:00, so at 16:30 me and my group strolled down to Union Street, walking up taking photos along the way, and then repeating this for on the way back down. Some of the images were useful, but I have specifically chosen the ones below to show where we believe would be the best place to project.

The photos that are being shown first show the journey up and down Union Street:




This image shows a bus stop just up from the start of Union Street. Bus stops are a very good starting point in looking for a suitable place to project our interactive video as they are a place people will be spending time at, waiting for periods of time that make this a perfect opportunity for interacting with them with our video. One concern is as shown in the photo, there is alot of excess light in the area, this could weaken our chances of grabbing the attention of surrounding people as the projection may not be as clear as it could be.



The image above clearly shows a large area shaded by the surrounding light and is much darker than the other areas. I found this interesting as not only will the projection we make become much clearer and more likely to interact with passing peoples paths, but is also more likely to attract attention as its such a different light any way. I feel this spot in this location could prove very successful when projecting our groups project video.








As mentioned above, I have discovered that shaded areas will be a very good place to focus on when projecting this interactive video. The image above shows the Dance Academy. I have focused on the Dance Academy before in previous posts, so I feel it would be nice to continue the focus on this particular building, even though we as a group have decided to project on the floor, there is no reason we are unable to project on the floor in front of the Dance Academy. In the image above it can be clearly seen that the overhead canopy of the building blocks light coming from surrounding lamp posts creating a very large long shadow. This could also be a very good place to project as will be considered when we choose our final projection location.

The 5 images below were taken at the end of our Union Street visit. We all also liked this area as it seemed to be the most busy with people walking by every few minutes. It also provided a very large space where we could project upon, much larger space than any of the other pavements we walked along during our trip.




As you can see from the three images above, after only standing there for 2 - 3 minutes, there were people in every photo taken. This strongly sways the argument that the projection should be positioned here. The fact that people always use this route on their travels in this area proves that the chances of interacting with pedestrians with our video are greatly increased.


Another factor to the area we spotted was the fact that there were tiles on the pavement, all of identical size (square). This could provide us with a great advantage of measuring the tiles, and using an editing program to further intensify the video to use these square tiles, taking there measurements and making the elements in the video fit to these specifics. This could further increase our chances of interacting with passers by as it would look even more aesthetically pleasing and in return gaining more attention.


My biggest concern with this location however, is the the fact the right in the middle of this particular spot there is a huge light source directly above. This in effect would greatly decrease the impact the projection has on the floor, making it less clear and therefore resulting in less of a chance in interacting with passing people. This is a huge problem with this site and gives me strong doubts in whether this spot is the best place to project upon.
This will have to be resolved with the myself and members in my group coming to a conclusion at a later date.