Showing posts with label MEDIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MEDIA. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Scale 0 - Augmenting the Gothic
“A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality”
By attempting to Augment the Gothic, a polychromatic narrative has formed between the realms of the physical (and its bodies), the fabricated virtual, and the indefinable psyche or imagination. The result is a contrived dramaturgic set-up which becomes a parody for the Gothic fiction from which it was initially inspired.
Playing on the human faculty of perception was central to the story. It is demonstrated on many different levels. Firstly, the audience’s perception of the performance as a whole is affected by the overall dramaturgic set-up - the setting of the story, as well as the course the plot takes – like the introduction of other characters wielding the i-Phone. Our understanding of the character also develops throughout the performance, and she has been deliberately ‘marked’ to evoke strong connotations and highlight social stereotypes within the viewer. The third level of perception operates within a different context altogether, and is the faculty of the technology (in this case the software Junaio coupled with the device the i-Phone) to perceive symbols and signs and react to them. These three levels of perception have allowed for a narrative which explores ideas of identity whilst we are thrown deeper and deeper into a world of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality, to the point where it begins to touch the body.
The Gothic Context
Gothic Fiction
“The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition the disability of being female.”[1]
With the emergence of Gothic fiction came the brand new domain of female authors. Social reform was taking place with the industrial evolution and the bourgeois society which came with it. The female Gothic novel became a symbol of femininity and sexuality and served to overthrow the classical patriarchal set-up of the domestic ideal. Insidious notions of body-image were epitomized by fashion garments like the corset, and women were portrayed as decorated ‘ideals of perfection’.
Gothic authors sought to overthrow this controlled state of consciousness in favour of a freedom of expression, indulgence in extreme emotion, and the creation of often supernatural atmosphere and mood. Authors such as Mary Shelley, the Brontë sisters and Ann Radcliffe, used a particular technique - the Supernatural Explained. In this, the terrorizing and frightening acts that take place in the text are eventually traced back to natural causes. The narratives usually involved a struggle between man and woman – mostly a male villain pursuing a victimised female. However it is the poised conduct of the heroines throughout these traumatic events which rendered the narratives successful and highly popular with their female (and male) contemporary readers. Young women saw these fantastical terrors as symbols for issues in their own lives and helped them deal with issues of identity and place in society.
Gothic Subculture
Modern Gothic or “Neo-Gothic” subculture also plays its role in “A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality”. Concerned largely with mood and aestheticism, the movement has no manifesto – nor any political or religious affiliations. Individuality, creativity and intellectualism are all concerns of the movement alongside a basic set of simplified ethics. Recognition and grief over what Goths consider to be the evils that mainstream culture has chosen to ignore or forget has paved the way for their extreme aesthetic sensibilities which can be seen very clearly in their dress and music. It “is not so much a way of life but a state of hopelessness – amplified with cynicism and derision, provocation and aggression in order to stifle despair”[2]. They deliberately pursue disassociation, largely through aesthetic means by piercings, tattoos, black clothes and their obsession with macabre imagery.
My Gothic Fantasy Narrative
The narrative that I have set up seeks to portray a victimized female character, awakened from her sleep of fantasy to find herself a kind of “freak-show” to society. She is adorned in black and decorated with tattoos and is at once meant to be vulnerable and victimized, while also retaining a certain predatory and unstable presence. An ambiguous fantasy world is created for her, and we wonder if her presence is in reality, or within her own psyche.
The villains here are other women. They are women from modern society, wielding their weapon – the i-Phone. They manipulate and attack the sleeping heroine, attempting to forcibly return her to her reality and her true identity.
The Marker
Women and Tattoos
“Examined against the shifting social backdrop of Western Culture in the last two centuries, tattoos serve as touch stones for women’s changing roles and evolving concerns during the most progressive era in women’s history, and as pass keys to the psyches of women who are rewriting accepted notions of feminine beauty and self expression.”[3]
The act of being tattooed has transformative powers for women, and can symbolise self-empowerment especially after traumatic events. Tattoos also serve to deliberately or unintentionally shift “the tattooed person” into a specific sub-culture along with which often brings social stigma. In the case of those who call themselves Goths, this choice is deliberate, a special marker or insignia which signifies rejection of the norm and affiliation with those on the margins of society.
The Marker > The Glyph > The Tattoo
Signs and markers are particularly relevant with today’s ever evolving computer iconography. Human perception allows us to make the link between the signifier (the marker) and the signified. “Umberto Eco defines “signs” as everything which stands for something else based on our social conventions.”[4]
Since the beginning of time humans have sought to signify and categorize physical objects and the non-physical - cultural ideas, information and association. A simple example of this working for a cultural group is the symbol used by Early Christians which allowed them to meet in secret by means of an “invitation-only” marker (traced into the dirt or otherwise).
The burgeoning computer-age has seen the number of visual symbols we humans see everyday rise exponentially. This will continue to increase with the development of Augmented Reality, whereby we will not only see imagery in the physical world around us, or in the virtual world of the computer, but in a pervasive amalgamation of the two. In this case the Augmented Reality is based on the idea that it must be activated by a symbol, which then causes a programmed outcome.
So this marker essentially serves to give us access to something – which we may or may not know yet. However, at this stage in the technology, both the human component of the equation and the technology (the i-Phone through Junaio) must be able to recognise the insignia.
The Gothic Heroine and her Tattoos
“In a culture where surfaces matter, skin, the largest organ, is the scrim on which we project our greatest fantasies and deepest fears about our bodies.”[5]
The heroine’s extreme tattoos serve as a voluntary branding. They help to place her inside her fictitious gothic fantasy world, and instantly signify her as different from the real people and from the audience. They are only one part of her heavily costumed appearance, which serves to evoke in the audience all the preconceptions they have when experiencing the narrative.
The tattoos transcend this aesthetic misconception however, and become the main subject matter in question here. They are integral to the project in that they serve to be the augmenting device. Their function is to connect the female protagonist’s fantasy with what we perceive is her reality. However, they also operate on an even higher level – that of wearable augmented reality. They allow for the development of the powerful connection between the body and the virtual.
The Technology – Making “A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality”
“A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality” was made possible by the application Junaio available on Androids and the i-Phone. A “Glue” developer channel was established, in which the marker and the “revealed” information was set-up. When the i-Phone is directed at the marker image – Junaio activates text, a still image, or moving image.
Accompanying “A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality” is the work produced for submission B, with slight variation. The nature of the story requires quite a personal exchange between the characters, thus I wanted to maintain a degree of face-to-face interaction between the heroine and her on-looker. In this case the protagonist is the passive participant at the point of communication. Hidden behind her created identity, she must be approached in order to begin the performance. The active participant/“audience” yields the iPhone, which becomes the key to the Augmented Reality experience.
Again the body becomes the performance device, and since Augmented Reality is the addition of Real Life and Virtual Reality, it seemed piquant to include the protagonist’s own physical presence in Real Life in the workings of the Augmented Reality Design. Her marker then, signifies that she is in costume, and invites the participants to “unlock” her true identity simply by the act of directing the i-Phone. In this way the costuming and masking is removed.
The Success of My Proposal
My original conception of this Augmented Reality fragment of the design has proved to be successful in terms of its overall completion. The process works, however due to slight technical issues it is not as poetic as it could be.
The first issue arose as a need to solve the problem of the protagonist’s false identity. In the end a still image of reality worked much more smoothly than the short film which had been uploaded for submission B.
The marker was the major technical obstacle to overcome in the scheme. Several images were rejected by Junaio itself, yet they were under the recommended KB limit. Others were accepted by the channel-creator yet failed when tested. Testing of a tattoo on the character’s skin also failed, but this is probably due to the image submitted on the channel in conjunction with a poor “tattoo” rendered on the skin. On the performance day of submission B, the marker, which had previously been tested and had worked smoothly, failed to work as some of the image had been slightly lost, in conjunction with a different set of lighting conditions. This is one of the major limitations of the technology. On a larger scale, if one was to attempt to set up some kind of “tattooed community” which held information on their skin, they would have a hard time keeping the lighting variables constant enough to yield a consistent enough result. The ephemeral nature of the body also comes into play here. As humans grow and age their skin becomes stretched and irregular. This means that any information imbedded into the skin would need to be of a temporal nature.
An area which was lost in the fabrication of submission B was the idea presented in submission A, of the imagination. This came to be depicted in “A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality” when the heroine falls inward into her own created world and becomes who she would like to be. This is integral to the subject of the Gothic addressed here; it serves to enrich the overall interactive dramaturgy of the performance, and sets up the satirical poke at Gothic fiction.
Bibliography
Buurman, G.M. (2005) Total Interaction: Theory and practice of a new paradigm for the design disciplines,
Byron, G. and Punter, D. (2004) The Gothic,
Celant G. (2001) Marina Abramovic: Public Body Installations and Objects 1965-2001,
Coyne, R. (1999) Technoromanticism: digital narrative, holism, and the romance of the real,
da Vinci Nichols, N. (1983) Place and Eros in Radcliffe, Lewis, and Bronte, J. Fleenor (Ed) The Female Gothic, Montreal, Eden Press.
Gröning, K. (1997) Decorated Skin: A World Survey of Body Art.
Mifflin, M. (1997) Bodies of subversion: a secret history of women and tattoo,
[1] Nichols, Nina da Vinci. "Place and Eros in Radcliffe, Lewis, and Bronte" in The Female Gothic, ed. Juliann Fleenor.
[2] Gröning, Karl. Decorated Skin: A World Survey of Body Art.
[3] Mifflin, Margot. Bodies of subversion: a secret history of women and tattoo,
[4] Späth, Jürgen. “Question on the Method of Visual Design.” In Total Interaction: Theory and practice of a new paradigm for the design disciplines, edited by G.M Buurman.143-164.
[5] Mifflin, Margot. Bodies of subversion: a secret history of women and tattoo,
Scale 0 - Augmenting the Gothic
Here is a sneak peak at the Animation entitled "A Gothic Tale of Fantasy and Reality"
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Augmenting The Gothic
The idea of a certain wearable/mobile Augmented Reality is the artifice by which focus of this excersize is shifted across varying scales. It allows dynamic and tangible interactions within the proposed scheme, between the physical world, the created virtual, and the indefinable realm of the psyche or imagination.
Several aspects of the project amalgamate to produce a poetic narrative (illustrated by the audio-visual collage) which becomes the basis of the design. Below I have outlined the areas of research which inform the design, beginning with the establishment of the scenario within the context of the gothic novel, through to the employment of the Augmented Reality software.
The Gothic Context
Gothic literature blossomed at a time when women needed a device in which they could grasp at emancipation from the patriarchal society in which they found themselves in. The female "gothic victim" blossomed with the emergence of female authors and a new type of feminine protagonist. Around this time Victorian women were highly decorated and corseted. “...the entire female body was one piece of jewellery, erotically stylized, deformed and alienated from its biological functions…”[1] However, for the first time in the history of literature, women were able to band together and write what their female readers had long wanted – an escape from reality. The literature became about breaking down the gender hierarchies and releasing the repression of female sexuality.
“(Gothic novelists were) constructing a series of ideologies – a set of literary masquerades and poses – that would allow their female character and by extension their female readers a fictitious mastery over what they considered an oppressive social and political system…”[2]
This creation of identity is poignantly represented by the classic symbol of a mask which becomes the first scale in which the entire scheme participates. The mask affords the gothic protagonist the choice of either concealment (a reaction to repression and marginalization) or disguise (the transformation into a character of choice) and operates in reality at a scale of 1:1. This physical prototype is to be worn by the gothic heroine to place her within a sub-cultural group of neo-Goths. Although this level is tangible both physically and symbolically, the masked character performs ultimately within a stage set of Augmented Reality, through the setup of interactive dramaturgy.
Augmented Reality and Interactive Dramaturgy to Embody the Gothic
In this case the application of Augmented Reality through the iPhone sets up the multi-media dramaturgic performance space. Digital technology is not the creator of hybrid spaces[3], but certainly creates a fluid and interactive communication and information exchange environment. Since the Drama of Antiquity, interactive dramaturgy has been employed to convey shared experiences, practical knowledge and religious beliefs within countless civilizations. The Middle-Ages saw the development of Gothic Cathedrals. “The Churches, especially the more prosperous ones, with their suggestive use of architecture and light, were always hybrid locations, spaces that attempted, beyond their physical presence, to represent the inconceivable, the immaterial, the idea and to unite both of these levels. The believer found him- or herself at the intersection between the real and the virtual in an intermediate reality.”[4]
Theatricality plays across all scale changes involved in the overall piece of design. As we move away from the physical, through the character’s psyche, Augmented Reality helps to practically illustrate the schematics of the narrative which acts out the “virtual scale” component.
Augmented Reality – the Practical Application
The nature of the story requires quite a personal exchange between the characters, thus I wanted to maintain a degree of face-to-face interaction[5] between the heroine and her on-looker. The mask-wearing female is the passive participant at the point of communication. Hidden behind her created identity, she must be approached in order to begin the performance. The active participant/“audience” yields the iPhone, which becomes the key to the Augmented Reality experience. This face-to-face contact works well with the iPhone as opposed to a Head-mounted Device which restricts the field of view of the wearer to about 30° and hinders natural communication through potential nuances such as body language.[6]
The body is a primary performance device, and since Augmented Reality is the addition of Real Life and Virtual Reality, it seemed piquant to include the protagonist’s own physical presence in the workings of the Augmented Reality Design. Thus her “tattoo” places her (voluntarily) in my deviant gothic sub-culture. The iPhone, when directed at the image, peals away the mask which disguises her face - to reveal her true identity. In this way the costuming and masking is removed. However, this is an exclusive action – she must permit the user access to her “marker” in order to strip off the mask. The entire action becomes irrelevant as soon as the actor loses the right to her identity.
This loss of “identity” is fabricated through the device of an animation of the character in her raw, un-adorned state. The iPhone played its role in this stage of the drama, as it was used to capture the moment before the mask was applied.
The concept of a marker which “unlocks” the performance of the reveal is made possible by the Augmented Reality software Junaio. Like other systems, it uses channels which enable relatively straight-forward user-generated information to be accessed. Therefore the narrative “Gothic Deviations” is made possible by a channel which recognises the “tattoo” which then unlocks the animation by which the character’s identity is stripped.
The Success of My Proposal
My original conception of this Augmented Reality fragment of the design has proved to be successful in terms of its overall completion. The process works, however due to slight technical issues it is not as poetic as it could be.
The first issue is arose as a need to solve the issue of the “pealing” back of the physical mask and how to represent the unadorned face. Several options were considered such as an image-based solution such as one or more still photographs of the face which were activated by the marker. A video-capture of the physical person placed the character in context in the real world in a more lyrical way. This was not only due to the 3-D qualities of the footage, but also the fact that it afforded the data a temporal quality; the idea of the real world continuing in its own pace in the background. The quality of the image and the length of the animation come into question here as it is not as smooth and rich as it could be. Also, the playback is affected by uncontrollable elements like access to the internet.
The marker was the major technical obstacle to overcome in the scheme. Several images were rejected by Junaio itself, yet they were under the recommended KB limit. Others were accepted by the channel-creator yet failed when tested. The “tattoo” idea is fundamental to the design and the issue of image recognition must be addressed in the later stages. Testing of a tattoo on the character’s skin failed, but this is probably due to the image submitted on the channel in conjunction with a poor “tattoo” rendered on the skin. Also, an issue with the image could be a lack of detail and poor lighting, which stem from the limitations of the iPhone technology itself. These obstacles need to be further manoeuvred in order to progress with a more refined narrative.
Another area which was lost in the fabrication of the work was the aspect of the imagination – the aspect of the narrative in which the heroine falls inward into her own created world, depicted in the narrative. This issue could be addressed via imaged based information, i.e drawings/photographs, or included in the process of the revealing of the mask, so that these images serve to set the scene of the drama before the mask is removed, thus enriching the overall interactive dramaturgy of the piece.
Taking my Dramaturgic Augmented Reality Further
The narrative proposed addressed the scales of virtual reality, the imagination, and physical reality at a scale of 1:1. Other scale changes relating to the entire scheme of “Gothic Deviations” are yet to be explored, and have the potential to enrich the dramatic world of my designs.
Trial work for submission A involved a deployment of a model through the Junaio Channel which was activated through a marker. I would like to continue this idea through with a different marker, that of a detail of my jewellery box, which brings up a rendered model of a virtual mask. This would complement scale two, which operates at the scales of 1:4 and 1:1.
Scale four is the design of a physical performance space nestled into an existing site. A geo-tagged POI giving cultural and design information about the physical building/institution would complement the scheme and firmly anchor all my Augmented Reality in the real world in a real location, and set the scene for the entire body of work.
Bibliography
Farneti Cera, D., Becker, V., Albanesi, R. (1992). Jewels of fantasy : costume jewelry of the 20th century. New York : Abrams
Hagebölling, H. (ed.).(2004). Interactive Dramaturgies: New Approaches in Multimedia Content and Design. Cologne: Academy of Media Arts Cologne
Höhl, W. (2009). Interactive Environments with Open-Source Software. 3D Walkthroughs and Augmented Reality for Architects with Blender 2.43, DART 3.0 and ARToolKit 2.72. Vienna, Austria: Springer-Verlag/Wien.
Long Hoeveler, D. (1998). Gothic feminism : the professionalization of gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës.University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press
Billinghurst, M., Belcher D., Gupta A., and Kiyokawa K.. (2003). Communication Behaviours in Colocated Collaborative AR Interfaces. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 16, no.3, 395-424
Fjeld, M. (2003). Augmented Reality – Usability and Collaborative Aspects. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 16, no.3, 387-393
Kooper R., and MacIntyre B. (2003). Browsing the Real-World Wide Web: Maintaining Awareness of Virtual Information in an AR Information Space. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 16, no.3, 425-446.
Thomas, B.H., Quirchmayr G., and Piekarski W. (2003) Through-Walls Communication for Medical Emergency Services International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 16, no.3 477-498
[1] Deanne Farneti Cera, Vivienne Becker, Rinaldo Albanesi. (1992). Jewels of fantasy : costume jewelry of the 20th century. New York : Abrams (1992), 52
[2] Long Hoeveler, Diane. Gothic feminism : the professionalization of gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës.University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press (1998), 6
[3] Hagebölling, Heide, ed. Interactive Dramaturgies: New Approaches in Multimedia Content and Design. Cologne: Academy of Media Arts Cologne, (2004), 10
[4] Hagebölling, Interactive Dramaturgies, 10.
[5] Billinghurst, Mark, Daniel Belcher, Arnab Gupta, and Kiyoshi Kiyokawa. “Communication Behaviours in Colocated Collaborative AR Interfaces.” International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 16, no.3 (2003), 395
[6] Billinghurst, Belcher, Gupta, and Kiyokawa. “Communication Behaviours in Colocated Collaborative AR Interfaces”, 411
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Deviant Augmented Reality
Gothic literature blossomed at a time when women needed a device in which they could grasp at emancipation from the patriarchal society in which they found themselves in. The female "gothic victim" blossomed with the emergence of female authors and new type of feminine protagonist. Around this time Victorian women were highly decorated and corseted. ..."the entire female body was one piece of jewellery, erotically stylized, deformed and alienated from its biological functions…” 1 However, for the first time in the history of literature, women were able to band together and write what their female readers had long wanted – an escape from reality. The literature became about breaking down the gender hierarchies and releasing the suppression of female sexuality.
These created characters or borrowed identities are what informs the Augmented Reality component of the media project. The “tattooing” or “branding” that I have applied to my Gothic victim’s neck is a marker which places her (voluntarily) in my Deviant gothic sub-culture. The I-phone, when directed at the image, peals away the mask which disguises her face - to reveal her true identity. In this way the dressing up and masking is removed. However, this is an exclusive action – she must permit the user access to her “marker” in order to strip off the mask.
In this way the technology reveals reality through its Augmentation – technology engaging with reality, but also in the idea of what our culture terms "true reality".
1)"Jewels of Fantasy; Costume Jewelry of the 20th Century" Farneti Cera, Deanna. Harry N. Abrams, Inc, New York 1992
Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is no longer a state of the human mind delving into the fabric of virtual reality, but also a real virtuality which physically and mentally envelopes the user. Our lives are already punctuated by pervasive technologies in the form of mobile phones or gaming devices. Now we can expect these new technologies to be woven into the fabric of the worldy architecture around us. This creation of the mediascape is Augmented Reality. In this, the subject participates in both the virtual reality VR, and the real virtually, RV.
VR + RV = AR [1]
This overlaying should be entirely immersive – the distinctions between VR and RV should be indiscernible. It is set to strengthen the relationship between the environment and technology. “This expression represents a paradigm shift from building virtual worlds, toward embedding information technology into the ambient social complexities of the physical world.”[2] Augmented architecture is made real by individual technologies all playing their part to create this multifaceted immersive experience. These could include sensors to respond to a certain change in state in the environment – either portable or embedded. Microelectromechanical systems or MEMS make click-based operations old technology. MEMS allows for skillful and unobtrusive operations like the tilting of a GameBody to effectuate a command.[3] Pressure Sensors have very real applications in architecture – built into an environment they could be responsive to human presence. Hewlett Packard’s pressure sensitive dance floor reacts appropriately with software to produce a real-time environment[4], while deCOI’s Aegis Hyposurface façade reacts to the presence of movement or sound in the building. Other technologies include Bluetooth, GPS, tagging and digital fingerprint authentication, implemented to create an immersive mediascape.
Augmented Reality is also emerging as a new cultural and social tool. At the University of Singapore, students have created a hybrid game of PacMan. RV technology is applied to the cityscape, in other words, reality is virtualized. The user is completely enclosed by the virtual when a VR mask is taken up, plunging the body into AR. “Players’ movements are tracked using GPS receivers and motion sensors and they are linked back to a central computer system by a wireless Local Area Network.”[5] The game remains the same as the original, with ghosts and players moving through the maze whilst trying to collect both virtual tokens and physical tokens – which are fitted with Bluetooth receivers. The actualisation of this technology has highlighted many uses for this tool. Although this project was military backed, Augmented Reality could be used in the areas of medicine to assist surgeons, while physical challenges in the construction of engineering/architecture could be overcome by the experience of the plan before actual construction begins. There is no question that Mediascape will soon be a reality. It is an inevitable development of the complex technology already so integrated into our lives. By amalgamating virtual reality and true reality it becomes and exciting new tool. It is now up to the forth-coming spatial practitioners to embrace this idea and run with it, for a more pertinent architecture of tomorrow.
[1] Skrebowski, Luke. “Augmenting Reality: Pervasive Computing, Spatial Practice, Interface Politics” in Did Someone Say Participate? An Atlas of Spatial Practice, edited by Shumon Basar and Markus Miessen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 46
[2] McCullough, Malcolm. Digital Ground (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004) IX
[3] McCullough, Malcolm. Digital Ground 76
[4] Ibid
[5] Knight, Will. “Human PacMan Hits Real City Streets”. www.newscientist.com/article/dn6689-human-pacman-hits-real-city-streets.html (accessed October 27, 2010)
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