Running Space

For Objects and Spaces as Media, we were asked to pick something that is important to us and design a space that celebrates that. My space is intended to celebrate the act of running. It focus is on the environments in which we run and the feelings that we get while running in them.

Throughout this process I’ve learned two things about my runs. One is how, while I am running, my perception of things actually slows down and I am able to focus on whatever is around me or in my head. The second thing is how nostalgic I feel about past runs that I’ve been on. The memorable ones. It’s always a challenge to find a running route that is enjoyable. Some are too boring, some too busy, and so on. So to incorporate that struggle, I’ve created a track that has the texture of grass, pavement and dirt. Three of the surfaces most commonly run on. I’ve incorporated bridges to signify inclines and declines. On the outside of the track are 4 walls that project the certain environments in which we run, whether it be in the woods, on a beach, in the city etc. I’ve blurred these images to demonstrate the motion of running that one feels. On the floor in the center of the track, there are several of the different surfaces that we run on. These surfaces on the walls and the floor are intended to transport the visitors to a particular run or runs that they might be reminded of. In the center is a wall that is intended for the visitors to view great moments in marathons past. I feel that this can be very inspiring. On this wall is also an area for you to enter words of encouragement to other visitors and runners that will be projected onto the bottom of the bridges. This signifies the head space that one gets into and the things runners have to tell themselves in order to finish a run. And lastly, in the middle of the space is a sensory booth that visitors will step into to feel the senses of a run. They will feel the cold air, the hot sun, the smells, the sounds, the tastes and so on. All in isolation.

This was an extremely challenging project for me and I look at this space as a work in progress. I learned a great deal about designing and building spaces and about myself as a designer. With that said, the process was extremely fun and I look forward to more spatial design.

Want and Need

Manny Darden, Hoon Oh, Sara Moore

For our final People Knowing project, we were asked to determine a threshold that we wanted to explore and probe. Manny, Hoon and I chose the threshold of WANT and NEED to see how different socio-economic backgrounds play a role in consumption.

To begin our probe, we selected 8 participants, all from different economic statuses and asked them to fill out a “Consumption Log” each day for four days. We then invited them to come into our studio and shop at a fake store that we created, with an unlimited credit card. We called the store the Wall Mall and the results were more interesting than we could have imagined.

Despite the fact that the Wall Mall had little similarities to an actual shopping experience (see image below) participants were quick to partake in a fantasy world that the store and the card allowed them to have. We didn’t reveal the prices of the items until they were done shopping and we added everything up. We then asked them to pick 5 items that they would keep, rank them in order of importance and why.

Our main findings were that people felt the need to justify their purchases, even in this alternate reality. There was always a guilt associated with purchasing. We also found that there are mainly two types of shoppers, those that value material belongings i.e. a couch, and those that value experiences, i.e. trips. And it was fairly shocking to see how deep participants went into this alternate reality.

The Wall Mall

As another probe, we hit the stores at 6am on Black Friday and interviewed shoppers to see what got them up and out at such an early hour, the day after a holiday. Again, the results were extremely interesting. We found that hardly anyone was shopping for friends or family. When interviewing older shoppers, their responses to our question “What is the one thing that you want?” was taken with a lot more consideration than a younger shopper. And everyone had been motivated by the sales that they had heard about.

The Proposal: Consumption Junction

Based on our findings; the alternate realities that our participants created, the guilt that they felt from shopping and the dichotomy of those that value possessions vs. experiences, we proposed a consumption-based theme park, called Consumption Junction.

Members visit the park for a weekend, or however long they like and are immediately given a new life, as if they had just become millionaires. They are greeted by their own personal butler who takes them shopping for a new car, a new house, new clothes etc. They get the best treatment in the finest establishments. They are then left to their own devices to do whatever it is that they want. Go to a party, go to the spa, run for mayor, anything. However, they are, at every turn, encouraged to shop, thus, creating a guilt-free environment where they can consume to their heart’s content. What they don’t know is that they are being watched. In every room of every building are cameras and we are watching and observing their behavior as new millionaires.

We think of it as the Mall Wall at its absolute extreme. If people were quick to develop a fantasy world before, how will they act now? How will they act when they no longer have to justify their purchases and their accountability is taken away?

Once they leave the physical space, their experience will live on in a virtual Consumption Junction. They can reconnect with people they met in the park, make upgrades and improvements to their home and continue to shop. When they return to the park, the purchases will be reflected.

Consumption Junction

Personal Butler

Sampling the City

For our second People Knowing project, we were asked to find a “non-place” in or around Los Angeles and study it for two weeks. I chose an alley in West Hollywood. Alleys have always intrigued me as semi-private, semi-public spaces. I started by observing how the residents treated this space. Did they treat it like their front yard, a sidewalk, the dark corner of a backyard? The results skewed towards the later.

I was then asked to hone in on one particular aspect of the alley. I chose a doctor’s office that had been spewing liquid into the alley from the rear through a metal pipe. I returned to take a sample of what had been deposited from the pipe and found a laboratory in El Segundo that would test it. After finding an absurd amount of garbage and a used syringe surrounding the building, I started to make my own conclusions about what might be in the wet dirt that was being tested. While I had been letting my imagination run wild, the sludge was being tested and turned out to be extremely rich in minerals. My perception of the doctor’s office changed dramatically. To show these results, I placed photos that I had taken around the building in a periodic table to represent each of the elements that was found. I also listed the elements over an image of the sludge and sized them according to how much was found in the sludge.

The trap, the dispensing machine and the scenic route

Ina Xi, Hoon Oh, Sara Moore

For the first half of the semester, we were tasked with creating a trap, a dispensing machine and a scenic route and observe how users interacted with these interventions.

The Trap

Experiment 1: We decided to set our trap up behind a popular water fountain on the hillside campus of ACCD. Hiding ourselves and our projector under the stairs facing the fountain, we released a video whenever anyone used the fountain or stood in front of it for a long period of time. The videos featured footage taken from Niagara Falls. The results? Not as interesting as we had hoped. Perhaps people were too busy, perhaps they thought it was just another art installation but people did not give us the attention or reactions that we desired.

Experiment 2: With our findings from the last round, we decided to move our trap to a more comfortable place where people tend to gather and to play off of the idea of pushing a button, that we worked with at the water fountain.

We created a simple pink button using springs and foamcore and attached it to the wall next to a projection of a timer and a medal podium. This got people’s attention quite quickly. We invited interested participants to press the button for as long as they could and we manually controlled the projected timer through a laptop without them knowing. We then had them fill out a “plaque” with their name and major, that we posted under the appropriate podium i.e. the person that held the button the longest was #1. The results were incredible. We had no idea the kind of competitive streak our fellow Art Center students had. Some students stayed for as long as ten minutes pushing the button, others chose to be late for class just to see their name on the tallest podium.

The Dispensing Machine

Experiment 1: The one thing that we had observed thus far is the level of stress that Art Center students seem to carry with them on a daily basis. With that in mind, we chose to create a dispensing machine that might make them laugh while at the same time putting things in perspective. We had stumbled upon a website called fmylife.com where people share their sad, but funny stories of misfortune.

We decided to attach these anecdotes to the paper towels in the women’s bathroom at ACCD. We chose the bathroom for it’s intimate setting, allowing the participants to feel like they had just been told a secret. Much like the first trap experiment, this was not a success. People did not give the notes on the paper towels the attention that we wanted.

Experiment 2: We decided to move the dispensing machine to a more social area, outside the cafeteria, and ask the participants to answer a simple question, whether they thought that the story they read was funny, or funny but sad. They would do this simply by taking a story off of our rolling dispenser and putting it in a box on either the “FUNNY” side or the “FUNNY BUT SAD” side. This time, people gave it a great deal of attention and thoroughly enjoyed the distraction from their daily routine.

Check out the video below.

The Scenic Route

Experiment 1: Walking through the windowed hallways of the Art Center can often feel like a scenic route in itself. Situated at the top of a hill, the views can be breathtaking and very peaceful. We decided to play with these feelings and juxtapose them with unexpected images. We chose a hallway of windows and placed images of an atomic bomb explosion, a drag queen pointing a gun, a robotic hand and other odd images. Unfortunately the passersby did not share our affinity for these juxtapositions. Very few people stopped to look at their new altered view. Art Center student’s proved harder to distract than we had hoped.

Experiment 2: Given our lackluster reaction to experiment 1, we decided to give the students a role in this scenic route. Instead of placing the images on the windows in the same hallway, we placed them on the floor, backside up, with a written request to be posted on the window. Students were quick to partake in this new scenic route and took great care to decide where the images should go.

The Digestible

No one person navigates and reads the news in the same way. With that in mind, Haejin Lee, Jiha Hwang, Geoff Cooper and myself created a digital newspaper that gives the reader a variety of options and tools to better help them understand complex news topics in the way that suits their learning style best. To learn more about The Digestible, visit the website: http://people.artcenter.edu/~hlee45/digestible.html

The homepage in the Standard Format

The Visualize Mode within the Standard Format

The Topic Format

Relevant articles within the Topic Format

Topics related to the original

The MoonViewer 6000

This assignment required us to develop an information space, using either video or sound, that a user will navigate using a physical sensor (knob) attached to a media effector (Arduino board).

My project was inspired by the fact that NASA recently discovered a “significant amount” of water on the moon, therefore increasing the potential to sustain life there. This led me to think about what life on the moon might involve and reflect on what the state of our civilization would be like if things on earth ever got bad enough that we would have to colonize the moon.

My knob then became the MoonViewer 6000. I chose to approach this heavy subject with a light and humorous touch, while getting my point of view across. The viewer looks through the MoonViewer 6000 and turns it to see a social gathering on the moon while eavesdropping on what the inhabitants are talking about. This view of the moon was projected onto a large wall and the user’s view of it was blocked by black fabric that the MoonViewer peeked through (also known as “space”).

See the moon!

What Good is Here?

For Authoring Critical Media, we were asked to record a chosen lecture within the Design Dialogues series here at Art Center and create a reproducible design, in any medium, that reports on the lecture, while adding a more critical and reflective layer of our own.

My project was on Dr. Seth Ruffins’s lecture about the digital atlases of quail embryos that he developed using MRI technology.

While it was an interesting approach to biological representation, I kept waiting for him to tell us the point of it all. When asked to give examples of how his research is being used within the scientific community, he responded “It doesn’t get a lot of traffic. It’s nice to have, but not necessary.” Which got me thinking about all of the other uses that he could put his skill set to, perhaps situations that are hurting mankind. But on the other hand, who am I to deny anyone their right to be curious? So, as a taxpayer and a designer with a feeling of social responsibility, I created this poster. I’ve taken Dr. Ruffins’s quail atlases and created a more traditional atlas of my own, giving them a purpose I felt they didn’t have before. I’ve overlaid the description of his project as well as relevant events and concerns, surrounding the scientific community and it’s practices.

DownloadablePoster

Humanizing Data

For Assignment 2, we were again given a lecture to record and document, including our own perspective and critical response to the lecture. However, this time we were encouraged to use the project as a platform to discuss our own personal interests as a designer.

I documented Johanna Drucker’s presentation at UCLA on humanizing data; From Data to Capta. I found her humanistic take on the current trend of visualizing data incredibly interesting. In a digitally driven world where we are so used to viewing statistics and data, how do you avoid the inevitable desensitization that comes with it. How do you show that these squares, dots and lines represent people. People within a network of other people, with a job, a family and friends. I took this challenge on with great enthusiasm and equal naivety at the struggles I would encounter.

This project proved incredibly hard and I soon accepted the fact that I could not solve it in the allotted three weeks. My first attempt was a hand-painted map of Iraq, showing the death toll over the past 5 years. The second attempt involved de-facing a stuffed animal, putting it’s eyes on a plaque and labeling it with the name and age of someone that had passed. The third and final attempt is a PowerPoint presentation, using terribly designed charts and graphs to discuss the issues that troubled Johanna Drucker and subsequently, myself. As she reports, humanists have been wholesale investing in these data visualization techniques and this presentation is my frustrated response to that trend.

Hand-painted data visualization

The sacrificed

Watch the presentation:

DownloadablePresentation