This year our workspaces projects for university will be all about "transforming" the Stonehouse area in Plymouth. For this project we will first off be working in groups, composed not only of students from my year group, but also some fresh talent AKA the first year students. Within this project we have been asked to communicate something about ourselves, and our experience through the world defined in a site or area.
First off I will need a sort of outline of the Stonehouse area as there isnt really any sort of physical barrier seperating this area from another. After browsing through various webpages and council websites I stumbled across an old low-res district map of Plymouth. Using this low-res district map I was able to overlay it over a higher resolution map from Google Maps to find exactly where these 'boundaries' were.
First ThoughtsAs I am quite new to Plymouth, Stonehouse isnt much of an area ive explored. Ive visited the dubious 'Union Street' known for its bad reputation for violence and night life. Personally I have never had a bad experience of this area, but have always entered this area with a sense of fear and unsureness. I also know from experience last year that going past Union Street there is a nice area down Cremyll/Durnford Street, which has had alot of time and money spent into the area to improve the overall 'feel' of the area.
The next item on the agenda is to develop a very simple map of Stonehouse using this boundary map, notating/documenting parts of Stonehouse in areas of interest. This can range from collecting data about where social groups hang out, relaxing areas to something as simple as notating where its sunny. Our group has decided to document a wide range of things, so we each took on a different role. For my role I decided to notate the locations of bins and road-signs, as they are something which we all use every day and take them for granted.
In the image to the left I have marked out which areas we will be using for our data collection. In this area there is a large contrast in social backgrounds with abnormal amounts of roadsigns and graffiti; almost like a gradient going from one end of the area to the other. This has really took my interest so we will most likely be using something related to this in a project later on in the module.
Photographic ResourcesThe first walk-around with my group was a huge help to inspire me with new and fresh ideas for this module. Everybody had their own sort of view on the locations we visited, it sort of gave me an insight as to how others see spaces. As expected there was a great deal of contrast within the two areas we visited, and I managed to get some great examples of how the social backgrounds of the areas tied in closely with their appearance.
In the first image in particular the sheer amount of how many road signs that were in view seemed quite peculiar, there was even an OTT feel to the road markings. This was around the Cremyll Ferry docking area, where it looks as if alot of time and money has gone into making the area look appealing.
The second image was taken alot more south towards the end of Admiralty Road on the peninsula. Around here is a lush green area with seating and a car park, most likely intended as a peaceful area. Alot of money has gone into this area not only in the keeping, but also by the fact that there is a tourist board located there. There was a few spots in this area which seemed to be quite dark, especially inside these strange brick 'huts' which are decked out with seats. Inside these huts there seems to be a large amount of graffiti and nasty smells around.
The image below is my new experience of Stonehouse, after travelling around and getting a 'feel' for the area. By looking at the map you can see the two main areas that were visited on the trip, and you can visualise my point about the sheer amount of roadsigns in the Cremyll/Durnford area.
The next item on the agenda is to produce a collaborative map, combining all of the groups efforts into one single map. By layering the maps together, a focal point should form and should give some indication towards where we all took interest the most. At this focal point is going to be where we will 'transform' Stonehouse, atleast in theory anyway.
After much scanning around the depths of Stonehouse, we finally decided on a nice zone to perform our upcoming projection piece. The location itself is in the 'posh' area of Stonehouse, located south-west of Cremyll Street. The area itself seems quite segregated and done up from the surrounding areas of Stonehouse, as it is divided by a set of rather large gates.
Within this area there was one spot in specific which caught our attention. In the image below there is a new car park, beside a large chimney/old factory of some sort. If you examine closely there seems to be lines on the wall where a former building used to be, atleast the roofing for it anyway.
At times this car park is completely empty during the day, which would make it the ideal spot to project our idea. Upon initial scanning of this area for hertzian space, there was a enormous amount of Wi-Fi signals located in the area, making this an ideal place to get data feeds from the surrounding area.
For my postcard, I have tried something a bit different. In an email by one of my lecturers, there was a link to the Camera Obscura gallery. I really liked the way Abelardo Morell created his compositions and I thought I would try and create my own version of one of his pieces. Using this style I tried to create an image of contrasting areas in Stonehouse, creating a sort of dimensional barrier between the two. This effect actually worked better than I had planned, as in the image below the plain concrete of the wall adopted the texture of the floor in the contrasting area.
For this weeks task we were asked to explore the depths of hertzian space; more specifically around our chosen location of Stonehouse. Initially I had a bad feeling that there would be nil Wi-Fi spots in the area, as the location we had chosen was quite a vast size. Upon first arrival we discovered that the yard was a hot-spot goldmine; we even had to split up the points of data collection into the four corners of the car-park.
Using my iPod Touch we scanned each corner for any sort of Wi-Fi connection and logged it down to a list collecting information about the SSID, signal strength and its open status. In total we collected around 70 Wi-Fi signals from the 4 corners (not all of them are unique) but it definately is a shock to the system as to whats there and you cannot actually see.
NW Corner: 19 connections – 1 open – 18 encrypted // Signal Strength: 00 strong, 10 medium, 09 weak
SW Corner: 22 connections – 1 open – 21 encrypted // Signal Strength: 04 strong, 07 medium, 10 weak
SE Corner: 20 connections – 1 open – 19 encrypted // Signal Strength: 04 strong, 06 medium, 09 weak
NE Corner: 09 connections – 0 open - 09 encrypted // Signal Strength: 00 strong, 04 medium, 05 weak
GPS Drawing, the bane of my life! After last years awful attempt I wanted to make sure we did GPS Drawing properly this year. We set the task to be instead of coming out with a set outline or image of our outcome, but to follow a set list of rules along our journey. The rules are as follows:
- Turn left at blue signs
- Turn right at red signs
- Turn 180 degrees at black signs
After a bit of a trek and some rule dodging we finally managed to reach close to our starting point, and our data was already visualised thanks to Google's Latitude service. Even though the GPS accuracy isnt *spot on*, it was a pretty awesome piece of kit for tracking.
For our idea we wanted to focus on the ideas of social interaction, as from our initial observations of the area we didnt feel too welcome. In our chosen location we wish to convert the horrible unsociable feeling surrounding the area and converting it into a social 'hotspot'. We will do this by adding a variety of modifications to the area, using different forms of the space around us.
To give the area a general feel of welcomeness and social interaction we propose to create a 'Propaganda Tower' which spiels out 'Conversation Instigators'. These include lines such as:
- "A stranger is a friend you havent met yet."
- "Lovely weather today isn't it?"
- "Be who you want to be, not what the world wants to see."
Propaganda Tower Voice Recording by youarenotoriginal
Audiolisation is the process of rendering audible, by physical or mathematical modeling,
the sound field of a source in a space, in such a way as to simulate the binaural
listening experience at a given position in the modeled space.
Hopefully using this will encourage people who enter the area to listen to the audio produced and want to engage in conversation with another person in the area. In the background of this social spiel will be audiolisations whispering the surrounding SSIDs of local Wi-Fi networks. By doing this it opens up another element in to social interaction showing that we not only communicate physically, but can also communicate through a digital medium.
Of course this alone will not be able to instigate conversation, so there will be other elements which make up this piece.
Wifi SSID Recording by youarenotoriginal
Conversation InstigationTo further develop this project we plan on adding in two extra features to explore the social medium. Not only will we be using Audiolisations, but also create Visualisations containing social 'interaction rings'; this is best explained by comparing distances between two people. The first instance of interaction is sight/acknowledgement, ranging to about 20+ metres where the two persons make eye contact. Within this space the two users can make out rough silhouettes of physical forms and communicate audibly at a very rough level. In a digital form the hertzian space in the area allows persons to communicate in a variety of forms; ranging from local signals such as Bluetooth/Wi-Fi to Mobile Phone signals.
The other instances of interaction change as the two persons close distance and gain better functionality of the previously listed communication mediums. The best way to visualise this would be to have an Augmented Reality overlay tracking the persons movements and combining the rings with the person. As the rings of the persons overlap the levels of social interaction would increase, making different features produce different Audiolisations/Visualisations. For example when the users are not overlapping, social instigators will be played back, but when the users get to a more intimate distance (tracked by an arduino proximity sensor) more social Audiolisations will be produced from equipment located on the persons themselves.
Social RingsThe 'Social Rings' Visualisation is motion tracking in its most basic form. The application will simply track users moving around a space, and assign Social Rings to them. If these Social Rings overlap different events occur, depending on which rings overlap etc. The test videos below show how the tracking occurs on a single object; in a real-life situation the subjects would not be this close (hence the small scale of the Social Rings), but as this is a test...
IDAT209 Social Rings Test Video 1 from Christian Cook on Vimeo.
IDAT209 Social Rings Test Video 2 from Christian Cook on Vimeo.
In the SWF below is the working version of the Social Rings Visualisation. To view this correctly you will need a large space and a webcam equipped. The code works by getting the difference between the current frame and the previous frame, creating a box around all differences, then applies a social ring to the base of this box. Currently this only works for one user at a time; had more time I would develop this further to use multiple subjects.
For the personal space interaction instance, an arduino device will be used in conjunction with a proximity sensor. Upon crossing of this proximity sensor more personal social spiel will be used to instigate a more one to one conversation.
This device consists of an Arduino Board (pictured centre) and an infra-red sensor (pictured right) which detects motion/proximity, and triggers an event on the Arduino Board to playback the social spiel. Currently on the photograph we have a buzzer (pictured left), had we more funds/time we would have purchased a MP3 Sensor Shield for the Arudino kit which allows us to play external .mp3 files from a hooked up SD card. Unfortunately these MP3 Shields cost over £50 and are hard to come by, so for now we have the kit set off the buzzer accordingly.
As you can see above, the language is very simple and easy to pickup; quite similar to Java/AS3 too.
As an extra, one of our group members decided to add a selling point of view in theme with our 1980s propaganda feel. A poster was designed with the style of old marketing to advertise the product as a 'conversation instigation tool'.
This device would be the Arduino setup we have posted above packaged into a tiny button/pin that would clip onto your person much like a poppy or small button.
(In my view it looks like a wearable land-mine but eh)
Albeit giving the project a humorous edge, it suggests a rather Big Brother attitude towards the situation and brings up some serious issues about social instigation.
Final Project IdeaSo to tie things in together sorting through the good and the bad of the blog posts, this is our final idea of the Social Hotspot project to improve the community of Stonehouse. Using a combination of the Propaganda Tower to lure users into the environment, and then having wearable PSDs (Personal Socialising Device) it would create the ultimate environment to engage in social interaction. The whole area will be projected to a website as a live feed with the Social Rings Visualisation overlay so curious onlookers of the project can examine and excite about the project.
