Exhibition, Just why it was so complex.

The thing with Cooliris is that you can embed the application into a web page, but this, as I will explain later posed the most problematic of all.

Cooliris is an interesting app, it works of a script that’s server based, you, as in I, the user, only downloads the client side information (basically the information that’s needed to connect to their server and access the code to perform the actions necessary to work the application. And that, during set up, was one of the worst problems we (me and my tech guy, Kriss) had to solve. With the limited space and the feel / gallery atmosphere, we could not add much that would compromise the room’s attention, for example the floors are a light grey and the walls and pretty much everything else, was painted white. For us to use Cooliris we would (and we were completely unaware of this until set-up) need to access the Universities Proxy settings to allow the internet feed from Cooliris to send its scripts to our mini Mac display machine.

Well, there was no way we could access the proxy, because in essence the universities entire network would have been compromised and exploitable, so we had to think, how can we bypass this? firstly we set up an external server in the gallery, behind a wall which required a little skill to scale and set up, then after a few experiments we decided that this server, which was basically a tool for connecting the Mini Macs up to the internet to allow the feeds to be sent from Cooliris to the display machine, which in turn would project that output onto one wall. Once that was set up we (then realised the proxy problems) and had to create another server, and placed it at my friends house, 30 odd miles away, this server would hold all the visual information that Cooliris would require to function properly, it needed all the images, video etc all sorted and loaded into Cooliris code, this machine will run constantly, until the exhibition is complete. So, what we need now is a basic diagram for the set up of the project, and the reason I'm going into this is because this set-up alones complexity is almost that of the projects concept and I feel deserves equal elaboration. 

I'm on a laptop with no Photoshop, so knocked this up in paint, excuse its crudeness but it can show you its complexity, it all starts 30 miles away, at a friend’s house, the server is on 24/7 until the exercitation is over, it host's the webpage in which the Cooliris app is displayed in and also houses the files of the entire project, it’s the heart of the operation if you will.

Then from there the files are uploaded to the internet and sent to the Cooliris app, as well as the web pages location.

Cooliris then sends its information to the next server, 30 miles at the exhibitions actual location the data from Cooliris AND the ability to connect to the internet / by passed needing the proxy of the university, all collate on that machine.

Then the mini Mac, mounted on a shelf, is plugged by Ethernet cable to the secondary server and receives the media RSS feeds from Cooliris and the first server then displays that information and the Cooliris embedded application on the wall, while in the mean time the secondary Mac "Mac B" is projecting the Video (earliest footage I could find of myself) which is projected on the opposite wall making their two projections, one on each opposing wall of the two projectors in the diagram.