Projects

PLAY - Information Street

Background

ISNM's Project Week is a part of conducting Master of Science in Digital Media degree at ISNM. The Project Week aims to expand the perception of the idea of information. The specific task is to design a project that documents the nature of an 'information' street as the team see it.

Excerpt from "Project Week 1, Information Street" Guidelines

Spaces are rarely experienced in static fashion; spatial experience results from moving through a space. While the previous analyses of spatial quality involved studying spaces as static entities, this part of the analysis will consider spatial quality as it is dynamically experienced.

Gordon Cullen, in his book Townscape, writes about the experience of urban spaces in terms of optics, place and content. The focus of this exercise is on what Cullen calls optics: the experience of space as a series of existing views and emerging views, also described by Cullen as serial vision. Existing views are what is immediately apparent to us at any given point, emerging views are what we glimpse or sense lying ahead. Tension between the two views creates a sense of excitement and pleasure.

Team

Idea and Concept

This project explores two major elements; firstly, people love to interact and play with something that interest them, and secondly, playing with people's perception, sensation and the way of thinking about spaces.

Realisation

PLAY invites the observer to interact with a touch screen, selecting images of Lübeck from an animated menu. When clicked, three randomly chosen video clips of the city are played. The invitation to interact with the screen satisfies the first concept of the project; the randomness of the video playback, based on a different view of the serial vision presented by Cullen, refers to the second element of the concept.

The interface/software was originally created using Macromedia Flash MX but for the second phase was rebuilt from scratch using Macromedia Director MX .

In the first phase, the project was presented with just an iMac with point and click mouse interface. The second phase of the project implements an advertising pillar (Litfassäule - in German) and a touch screen. The advertising pillar is plastered with old newspaper. The combination between the 'old media' (advertising pillar and newspaper) and the 'new media' (touch-screen and software) intends to create a merging product between the 'old' and 'new' media.

Gallery

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