User:Zalán Szakács/4thsemesterassessment

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WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Thesis Research

• Diving deep into Media Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing
• Trying to understand the mysterious world of Phantasmagorias

Thesis

• How are media objects interpreted as phantasmagoria in the contemporary context? – Thesis Outline
• Imaginary & Real – Chapter I

Graduation Project

• Eigengrau

How does the concept relates to the original Phantasmagorias?

• Historical reenactment ↔ historical timeline → current times → Robertson → Schöpfer → Kircher → Antiquity (Roman and Greek times)
• Using the same tools → dark room, light and not showing the machine behind the magic
• Using dark feelings of telling a story
• Both phenomenas were presented in the entertainment environment → using the club context as experimentation field
• Circular spatial setup like at the séances of German magician Johann Georg Schröpfer, not allowing to enter the middle circle for the audience
• Using smoke as a projection display as Edme-Gilles Guyot, Johann Georg Schröpfer and Robertson used it

How does it relates to publishing?

• Publishing = presenting a story to the audience
• New ways of storytelling through creating atmospheres through light and sound
• Storytelling → collective experience from the past
• Rituals were often collective experiences
• The reason of installation controlling the whole environment (whole narrative)

Why is it worth to make it public?

• Using fear and manipulation and mystery to bound people
• Through collective experience the audiences learns about the senses and new body awareness
• We are in the information age → technology (lack of embodiedness) → interaction with screens → individual experience feels too detached to people → important to look → experience that counterpoising this action through a collective embodied actions

How I am going to create it?

• Creating a script (at which moment what is going to happen)
• Using puredate software for creating the visuals that will react to sound
• Creating different audio visual disorientation methods
• Using 4D soundsystem

How can I create a public around it?

• Using the club location as experimentation field → presenting in that context
• Hybrid audience
• Changing the perception
• Experimenting with the space
• Test Event in end of January 2019 → first testing of the first part in front of the audience → questionary about their collective experience → formulating my further concept around the answers

Prototyping

• Learned about circuits
• Setting up an Arduino + Adafruit Neopixel RGB LED strip
• Experiments with lenses and light beams
• Building a circuit for 4 Adafruit Neopixel LED strips
• Building a software setup to connect live MadMapper input to 4 Adafruit Neopixel LED strips
• Experimenting with Jem Com­pact Hazer Pro (haze machine) + plano convex lenses + 4 Adafruit Neopixel LED strips
• Experimenting with Jem Com­pact Hazer Pro (haze machine) + opaque acrylic sheets + 4 Adafruit Neopixel LED strips

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WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?

• Prototyping
  • Basics into Arduino / Processing / MadMapper
  • The importance of the right hardware
  • Finding a good prototyping working method → Dark Lab in the basement
  • Reflects always on the experiments and try to find new solutions
  • Trust in failures → gives new ways of critical thinking
  • Take time to experience the experiments → look from different angles
  • One experiment leads to the next experiment → you can't jump a few steps ahead
  • Having discipline for learning new programming languages and hardware

• Thesis
  • How to do a theoretical research?
  • Where to find trustworthy sources?
  • How to use the Harvard annotation method?
  • How to stay focussed while writing (switching off the internet)
  • How to draw conclusion and compare different opinions
  • How to find the core essence of the text

• Concept
  • Don't make overambitious plans, that you're not capable to realise due technical, practical and financial issues
  • Don't combine too many references together
  • Stay sharp to yourself and ask the critical questions
  • Finding a good link of combining the research + concept with the prototyping to crystallise the story
  • Trust your first intuition during the conceptualisation phase of the project
  • Better time planning (calendar) of the project - to do lists

WHAT DID I ACHIEVED FROM MY 1ST + 2ND + 3RD TRIMESTER WISHLIST?

• Graduation project this year → live generated 3D environments
• Creative coding, light - space installations, audiovisual performances delivered from a strong conceptual, technological (software - creative coding) and aesthetic foundation
• Wiki structure to use for documenting the process
• Using raspberry Pi in forms of installations as well
• Creative coding and spatial light design installation
• Developing a deeper understanding of sound visualisation
• Diving into pure data
• The way of thinking in code

WHERE DO I WANT TO GO?

• learning more how to think in code and realise my ideas
• Developing a deeper understanding of sound visualisation
• learning pure data + GEM (Graphics Environment for Multimedia (external plugin))
• creating audiovisual light installations

WHY?

• establishing my own artistic and design practice after finishing at Piet Zwart Institute → focussing on research and creation of audiovisual light installations with a strong focus on technology, critical thinking and aesthetics