Evaluation.

When writing evaluations, I often get a few problems, sometimes technical, sometimes not. These problems are often superficial and have little impact on the project itself. Then there are the problems you encounter that are project based, problems with the concept or problems with the way the idea is to be executed.

Well I experienced a heavy mixture of both, now maybe this was due to the pressure of a 'Final piece' or it was due to the subliminal complexity that I had never predicted. Well, for me, the final project should be an embodiment of what you wanted to achieve in the MA, and this too changed during the two years on the course.

Originally I wanted to get my digital painting up to the standard of the industry and hopefully gain my own style and further my dream of painting what I want how I see it. But for some reason that just started to come naturally with dribs and drabs of work I had been doing at home for personal use, I also developed a game, using an engine to create it, that’s now getting good reviews and features aspects I always wanted to see in a game, anyway, I'm sidetracked.

This project, Memory, was to be the first 'personal' project I undertook, I have never created work cantered around myself, mainly because I have a very selfless nature. Now with this project, which as I've said many times before, is a body extension project, the project itself would appear rather simple, gather images video and audio that for me, have memory connections, and add them to a program called Cooliris; this program is them embedded into a web page.

Now as the project progressed and meetings took place, I never discussed my project with other classmates, in reviews I would generalize the project, but never give much away, this was mainly due to a firm policy of mine, and that’s to not reveal my project's key elements this is because I feel it (the projects core) might get changed or morphed by other people’s ideas, this was my personal project and as a result I wanted to make sure if it was to evolve that it was because of me or situations that I brought about to the project.

First off was the projects layout, I was originally going to have text explaining the images, why they are important to me, and also text explaining the reason behind the project, and up until half way, this was the plan, but I decided that this was too direct, the user did not have to know the ins and outs of the project, after all this project is designed for me really and will just evolve into something else in a gallery environment.

Then after removing the texts I was faced with another problem, was it too vague? Could the user tell what the project was about with no information? Well I could only assess this once it was completed, so I pressed onwards.

Now originally I was going to create this using flash, but after a few weeks into the project, and after working on a prototype a friend sent me an email with something I had previously heard of, called 'Cooliris', this application can make the viewing of images easy and visually impressive.

After finally deciding that Cooliris was the application for me to use I next had to collect the images that would eventually become my work, so I had to go to my parents house and collect all the photo albums, then go through them and collect all the images that sparked memories, some memories were not of the picture but more so the place, smell or atmosphere that was associated with it, sometimes the memories sparked were that of me actually looking at the individual picture in the past. After collecting these images and photos of my parents house, I moved onto looking at other things I could photograph or store, I found my old high school photo, and then arranged a meeting with the headmaster to get access to walk around and take pictures of things I could remember, to be honest, the school had gone through a large metamorphosis, and the one thing that brought the most memories back was the smell, it’s weird, and has not existed to me in another location in my life, like the smells themselves embody the essence of learning. There were things I found difficult to take photos of, for example, if you have looked through the project, you will notice a large amount of doors in the high school section of the timeline, this was because in high school I was thrown out of a lot of class's, mainly because of my handwriting, it was called 'lazy' and I apparently put little effort into my work, this was untrue, I found it difficult to write, and found it even harder to keep up with the speeds in which we were expected to write at. So I'd get frustrated, and bored with the teachers always ignoring my requests for the writing to be slower, and as a result of their lack of understanding I lost my respect for most of the teachers, as a knock effect my behaviour would degenerate and I'd be thrown from class, which was fine, I was no longer writing in pain, and had my own company or a game boy for entertainment. It was later discovered at College that I was dyslexic, I never accepted help at college or university, because to be honest, I could cope, it was just nice for the tutors and lecturers to understand. With understanding comes knowledge and with that knowledge they can see I'm far from distracted and lazy, I am in fact the most focused person I know, and it was only at that point did my life, academically, improve, so as you can see, not all memories are pleasant but this cannot detract from their importance.

The next section of life is blank, there are a few things left from that era, like my EZ2DANCER trophy’s and a few items I have received through the years, in the next section was university, and images of work or events that were important to me, then onto this courses work and leading up to the present month.

After extensive research into the fundamentals on memory, I next turned my attention onto what memory is, why memory might exist and how we formulate memory. It's simple to assume that memory is nothing more than echo's of our past, but it’s much more than that. Memory is an entire fabrication of a past event, and as a result this fabrication becomes altered from its original form. This project was a bit like that, well firstly it was going to be a flash development, and then it became an application. It was supposed to have a textual theme, but then as the project evolved, it happened to evolve beyond the need of textual input. Of course after this were a lot of changes, and one of which was made right at the end, nearly during set up.

This change was the duel screen layout that was going to happen for the project, originally the design was to project the same feed onto both walls, and this was so that the user felt total emersion. But I had a change of plan near to last minute; I like the idea of total emersion and the whole ability to be trapped by thoughts and memories. But that was just it, it was not memories that trapped you in life that was thoughts, for me the one thing we always remember most is an event or place in time when you seemed happiest. I found such a memory, it was also the earliest video recording of me I could find, it was of a BBQ at a relative’s house, I am the child running around. Later other children arrive and it’s interesting to see what were at that time my own characteristics and proved a very interesting watch to see my social dynamics.

This video is now what takes the other projection, so on one side there is the Cooliris application, which is streaming the data for the viewer to browse, and the other wall is looping that BBQ video, this is because I felt it was a better idea based on the merits of what might be deemed the 'Good' memory of the collection I have got.

This project has been one technical difficulty after another, and I have at times, thought about why it is that I have to do things as I do, and why do they have to involve so much technology. Well it's not something I can really answer, with technology comes the problematic issues that follow suit. But this projects success is decided not on how a user might find this work, but more so on its practical merits towards me.


*EDIT* the piece is in the gallery now and it has changed as a result, previously it was a body extension project, personal and informative. Now everything in the space has a meaning, for example, a collection of audio tracks, no matter what genre, were added together and are played in the background, giving a weird sense of audio that’s fluttering between film music to rock and so on. From a first approach the viewer is greeted with the video of my BBQ looping, it might be hard to make out just what is going on, but then as they turn they see the screen with photos that seem to be of a baby or of a location, it is then apparent that the mouse is noted, and the user can navigate these images, it would not take long to realise that is in fact a recording of echoes from the past, this space, living in multiple years, embodying many other senses that it previously had never seen. The user will take away different experiences based on what they view and how that then relates to them, it is also give them a brief exploration of a person’s life, it might be possible for someone to study and work out why most of the images chosen for this project were in fact chosen but there are a great number of images where the user will just create their own view, a lot like memory itself.