The Assignment

In the Spring of 2005, the CTIN542 Interactive Design & Production Class was a semester-long focus on interactive media in public spaces. The class examined public space pieces for several reasons:

1) Public spaces interactive media are one-offs and designed around particular environments;
2) The newest and most experiment technologies often appear in public spaces before being mass-marketed;
3) Conceiving, designing, and producing interactive media for public spaces
is a macrocosmic example of doing an interactive media thesis
project.

The semester began with researching prior public space pieces and museums and developed into the production of a public space installation, conceived, designed, and executed by the class and with the assistance of faculty from the Division of Interactive Media, Cinema-Television School, and TrojanVision.

The Development Process

The class decided to use the Trojan Vision Interactive Kiosk for their experiment. It is conveniently located at the center of campus and already equipped with many of the necessities for a public space installation. The kiosk had gone through many iterations, last of which was a sound-off station for students. The basic idea was to give a voice to the USC campus community by allowing passers-by to "Say What You Think." The questions ranged from "Does the United States have the right to make pre-emptive military strikes?" to "What is your favorite Homecoming memory?"

The responses from faculty, students and staff were recorded, sent via a live fiber optic cable to the Trojan Vision studio in the Zemeckis Center and recorded to a hard-drive. Thereafter, they were edited and played during commercial blocks during regular programming. However, the kiosk did not get many students to interact with it, and at the time of the class project, was being used only to display Trojan Vision programs.

The CTIN 542 class examined the possibilities of pushing the recording/distributing element already exisisting within the kiosk. To create a unique experience, night time was chosen as the best display time, since the campus is relatively dark at night, and so attracting attention would be simpler.

This development process led to the creation of a performance space, in which students could record stop-frame animations that were then displayed as projections around the kiosk.

The Implementation

Using Jitter running on a G5 with an iSight, a still image is captured every few seconds to the hard drive. After 30 seconds, the captured stills are saved to a Quicktime video, and the process begins again. A central monitor displays what the camera is currently seeing, flashes each time a frame is captured, and displays a timer bar that shows how much time is left before the process restarts. While stills are being captured for the next video, the previous video is /played back and projected for the participants to receive immediate feedback and a payoff for their interaction.

The kiosk was draped in white sheets that served two purposes: 1) to project the movies on, and 2) to effectively and simply change the look of the entire kiosk.

The kiosk ran for two evenings at the end of the semester, managing to draw crowds of otherwise disinterested students for short bursts, and even held the attention of some students for more than an hour at a time.

This experience in transforming the kiosk is one that will now be passed on to the future second year Masters students, hopefully beginning a new tradition for the Division of Interactive Media.

This week
Brad will get G5 from Kiosk and place in Electronics Lab
Brad and/or Jenova will assemble/organize all assets on the hard drive
Susana will digitize mini dv footage
Everyone who shot digital images will organize & prep their photos

Sunday May 8th, 2005
- Noon @ Kiosk:
All meet @ Kiosk to restore equipment and return items to the IML (not to disrupt the ZML).
- 1:30 PM @ IML:
All meet to discuss assignment and make assignments
- 2:00 PM @ IML:
Individuals/Teams will start produciton on the assignment (see below).

From: Michael Naimark
Date: May 2, 2005
Subject: 542 final plan

In lieu of a final exam, here is a final assignment:

As a group, produce documentation of the kiosk project, including:
- Final 542 blog entry as a photo-composition
- Short (MTV length) DVD-quality video
You all have a lot of great material, and the kiosk is particularly photogenic, so this documentation is expected to be presentable as finished work.
Deadline is Exam Day, May 10, noon.
Am here for any/all questions/concerns.

-M

Projectors:
Kellee - Take down and bring 2nd projector
Kellee - Test S-Video projector to projector

Screens:
Andrew –two 5’-2x4s for base of screens

Lights:
Naimark – strobe form (David Yamamoto)?
Susana & Ashley – one or two light kits and extension cords

Space:
Ashley - Brightly Colored Tape & Chalk (erasing?)

Misc.
Erin – Duct Tape
Michael - 10 sandbags

Max Patch:
Brad & Jenova – fine tune max patch

PR/Schedule:
Julie & Michael – postcards & poster for center window
Kellee – Daily Trojan

Production Schedule:
Sunday 7-10 (everyone except Susana)
Monday 7-10 (Kellee, Brad, Julie, Susana, Michael)
Tuesday 7-10 (Jenova, Andrew, Ashley, Erin)

Sprinklers: Julie

Name: EVERYONE post ideas!

5 mb video

premiere in 2 weeks.

What Didn't
Strobe - needs constant light

MAX patch
save each file to two directories:
1) immediate playback
2) larger database

2hrs = 5 gig/ 12 hrs total

Lighting
- kino-flo's
will bleed light
poss. solve this with duvateen/cinefoil

- project on the people recording

-performance in front of the sheets

Set Design
- Add two strips on either side of the monitor window as framing
-White duct tape
- Something to raise the projectors

- firewire to NTSC adapter: dv camera
-xtra firewire cord
-xtra material for back (has logo on it?)

To Test Next Week
Lighting, Lighting, Lighting
- kino flos
horizontal from the bottom
mirrors
- any steady light feed
- having feedback on the inside of the kiosk

Sound, Sound, Sound
- Speakers

Bring rest of screen material(s)

PR
-postcards?
- Daily Trojan article

Other
- gift for Gary (bistango gift card?)

Schedule
Rehearsal
Mon April 17th: 7pm - 10pm

Run
Sun April 24th - Tues 26th:
Setup: 6 - 8pm
8pm - 10pm

Strike
Fri April 29th

Brad's patch

Perry working on patch, interesting time lapse effects

By way of (sub)urbanism.blogspot.com: "In keeping with the contemporary trends of privatizing public space, Millennium Park is a copyrighted public space... The [Chicago] Reader [the printed version of the newspaper] recounts the experience of photojournalist Warren Wimmer's attempts to photograph Anish Kapoor's sculpture, Cloud Gate (more commonly known as "the Bean"). When Wimmer set up his tripod and camera to shoot the sculpture, security guards stopped him, demanding that they show him a permit. Wimmer protested, replying that it's absurd that one needs to pay for a permit to photograph public art in a city-owned park... Ben Joravsky, the author of the Reader article, attempted to contact park officials for an explanation and received a response from Karen Ryan, press director for the park's project director: 'The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist.' Hence, Millennium Park--a nascent destination for countless citizens and tourists that was built with $270 million in city funds--is slowly emerging as Chicago's most privatized public space. Photographers beware!"

NIGHT won, hands up!

issues related to NIGHT
LIGHT and ATTRACTING people
light could be IR or STROBE or LIGHTS
LIGHTS have spill
IR is last resort (or alternate)
STROBE is cheap and will possibly solve the attraction issue - a large
flashing light will attract people

STROBE:
procure: rent/buy
number of strobes: one bright
placement of strobes;
on the roof or under the eaves
(idea of pointing it at building to cause silhouettes)
timing: would prefer a 3-5 second interval
finding a strobe that fires automatically that goes at a slow enough
rate (1 second)
programming
CAMERAS
one or two
ONE
PROJECTORS
one two or three
TWO (tilted for vertical windows)
MONITOR FOR FEEDBACK
the monitor or screen is probably sufficient
SCREENS
number: TWO PROJECTION SCREENS
size
roughly 9' X 5'  96"X 60"
note: a CA KING sheet is 110" X 102"
a DOUBLE bed sheet is 96 X 81
more or less:  6 yds @ 60" width
material -
white, tranluscent, cheap
shape: tapered, vertical
anchoring
frame it, staking it
15' of  1X1 wood stretchers
branding
INFORMATION PLACARD
PROMOTION
BUDGET
$25 per person is $250
(including Naimark!)
2 Screens
Fabric
6 yds of 60" width
stretcher bars
15" of 1X1 stretchers
Strobe
Other design elements

STROBE
Kellee (Ashley)
SCREEN
Fabric - Erin
Stretching - Erin, Ashley,
MAX
Jenova and Brad
PROMOTION, PLACARD
Julie
INSTALLATION
Andrew
Michael, Suzanne

showing Jenova's stop motion video Jitter patch at work in the field. (the color shifting is just an illusion between the projector sync rate and the camera image sensor).

finally...