Evaluation

Since my last project I feel as though I have really developed my and pushed my skills forward in the visual area that I set out to achieve. I moved out of my comfort zone to be inducted in the metal workshop that I had never used before, and also on the Scientific Microscopes at Manchester University. Within my Self -Initiated brief I looked at Microscopic imagery that was inspired mainly from Pinterest and the Bev Shots series. but also by one of my favourite producers artwork, Jon Hopkins which was created by biochemist turned artist Linden Gledhill and art director Craig Ward. I really liked the idea of being able to use polarised microscopes to capture some great visuals that I would be able to use within my videos instead of just using ones I had produced from drawings, Photoshop and Illustrator. However this was not a huge success as the quality of the images were not good enough to use within my final work however I still believe was a great way to get some first hand documentation of this particular process. 

I then began to feed this work into my collaborative brief which was with fellow mmu student Zachary Snow who is also a 2nd year Creative Multimedia student. I approached Zac before the end of the last project as I was knew I was aware of particular softwares and technologies but wasn’t quite sure how to go about some of them. Me and Zac both quickly realised that we had very similar interests when it come to our work, both wanting to create Audio Visual Art of some sort. With Zac being great with the Software side, and me being able to create the visual imagery used through out the collaboration pretty much went hand in hand.

We come up with the idea that we wanted to create an Installation piece that would involve a Structure that we would then Projection Map onto. However, this was only just the beginning. Zac was going to write his own Audio Visual Responsive softare in OpenFrameWorks which we would then combine my images into and experiment to see how they could be manipulated, edited and mapped. Even though this was a great achievement that Zac was able to do this, I believe this did have massive set backs within out work as you shouldn’t really proto type in C++ when there is already many available software out there that does this job. This therefore meant that most of the earlier stages of out project were spent with Zac trying to create this instead of us being able to try and produce a strong body of visual work.

We began to look at different artists work that inspired the structure which we would create to project onto. One of these being Kit Webster. Not only were the techniques and processes influential on the final outcome, but the design of the structure itself is definitely influenced by his work.
Building the structure was definitely this biggest challenge we come across through out the project. We firstly played around in Sketch Up creating several structure designs before we narrowed it down to the final design. After speaking with the Metal workshop, Wood Workshop and Laser cutting technician’s they were all adamant that the design we had chosen would be almost impossible to create in the time span we had due to the lack of skills we had and over complicated design. We then went back to the drawing board to simplify the structure and get it down to as little faces as possible which was 21. We initially planned to create the structure from Metal and then cover it with a white fabric specifically designed to project onto. But now our only option seemed like wood. Even though Aiden was adamant that the structure would be impossible to create on the laser cutter due to the straight cut angle it gave and the abstract geometric angles our structure consisted off. However, at this stage close to the deadline we felt like we had no other option but to give it a shot anyway. The great thing about Sketch Up was that you could create it to the correct measurements so we re created the individual faces in illustrator to be laser cut. We decided to use 2mm MDF board, as this was light enough to work with. However was a real hassle to construct. We used a glue gun which did the job but left quite a lot of dried residue on the outside of the structure which was quite noticeable and weren’t completely satisfied as and end product. So decided this would be a proto type and that we were going to experiment using another material.

Our second choice of material was foam board. Now we already had the measurements we just increased the size so we could make a bigger structure this time. Because of the lightweight material we were able to join the structure together using masking tape and was much more flexible to work with and the white shiny surface definitely gave it that finishing touch. Considering the first attempt was such a disaster we were both relatively pleased with the outcome.
Since we were both happy with the Structure, we then felt like we had strong enough codes to start experimenting with imagery live in OpenFrameworks. We had several set backs when Projection mapping, a major issue not really having any were to store our structure so having to move it each time we wanted to project, resulting into us having to re map onto the structure every time which was a very lengthy process. Also not having a dark enough room meant that a lot of the projections were just too bright even with the brightness and contrast adjusted, and also not having a good enough quality projector.

Artists who's whom inspired the techniques and processes we used were Jean-Michel Verbeec, Kit Webster and Joelle Snaith. 
After the first few attempts at mapping, we both just were not really satisfied with the outcome and definitely wasn’t a final piece. We had now both started to get bored of the music and found that it wasn’t so suitable as the visuals were just too fast. Even though we had achieved the audiovisual goal we set out to achieve, we decided to re create more visual footage in Resolume and After Effects and edit them together in Final Cut Pro. We also agreed on a new track that we felt was more appropriate from Voice from the Lake. Even though this was not necessarily live visually produced footage as before in OpenFrameWorks we have demonstrated that we are able to do this, however would benefit from this process more as we can compile our best visual footage and re create a video which we will manually sync to the music so that we can manipulate without having the problem of it being to fast like before. I was really pleased with the final video we had created and on our final attempt at projection mapping, felt like we produced a much stronger body of work. The only down fall to this was I felt like the video recording definitely did not do it any justice due to the such bad quality of the video and also projector that we had hired out from uni. We hope to exhibit this final piece as it looked much better in person and actually being able to gain the best sound and visual experience possible.

I feel like I have now been able to build up a strong body of imagery which I can now start to present in a portfolio which I can send to nights within Manchester. Currently having quite a lot of connections with promoters in Manchester for particular nights and events I would be interested in working for I believe this is at a massive advantage as Manchester nights are crying out for this artistic style of work. And I am looking forward to presenting my visual work at nights such as Bohemian Grove, Selective Hearing, Meat Free and Ensemble Manchester over the next coming months. This is a great opportunity for me to really get my work out there as I know I have definitely found my specialist area I will continue to work in. along side this, getting the Artist Liaison role for Future Everything Festival should definitely be a big help for me to meet other like minded people in artistic background and also get advise from visual artists performing at the festivals themselves.

Over this project I felt like I have developed my practice by using a variety of techniques and software such as the Laser Cutter, Sketch Up, Resolume, OpenFrameWorks, 3D Mapping, After Effects, Arduino, Processing, Final Cut pro. Zac was very helpful throughout the project and without his knowledge and skills it would have been almost impossible for me to create anything similar within the time scale we had. However, I felt like he definitely did over complicate the project more than it needed to be, and I didn’t learn much from OpenFrameworks software as it was just too advanced for me. I do believe that I managed my time well throughout this project with the two briefs running alongs one another, making sure to meet up with Zac several times a week. I do hope to continue to work with Zac in the future as we already have a lot of ideas of how we can develop and take both our practice further.