Final Ideas

Through all our research, as a group we decided that we would focus on the soul and aura of Union Street in Stonehouse, using its rich history to help represent this idea. I believe that this soul/aura can be broken down into three key areas, firstly, the amount of people in the area, the more the merrier as they say. Secondly, those people’s attitudes and opinions, if people are content then the area seems to be happy and healthy. Thirdly, the volume of the area, if the area is silent then people aren’t chatting, no music is playing, and nothing is generally going on, so therefore noise is a representation of liveliness.

The old theatre is the perfect place to show both ends of the spectrum of this soul and aura idea. This is due to the fact that around a hundred years ago, the theatre was the center of Plymouths nightlife, and well recorded as a happy and lively place. Today the theatre is a run down, broken building, closed down after a police raid which found thousands of pounds worth of harmful drugs.

So using a side window of the old theatre (called site B on the previous posts) as a staging site, I plan to represent the three elements that I believe make up the areas aura in a visual way, which is both interesting and easy to understand, whilst at the same time bringing in the rich history of site.

This will be achieved by having three separate inputs running through a website, one for each of the three elements. The first will be a simple random questionnaire on the website. It will have two responses, one positive and one negative. There will be a short repeated video being projected onto site B which will change between positive and negative images, like the test in a previous post “Street projection test mock up”, depending on the ratio of results from the questionnaire.

The other two inputs will come from onsite. One will be a decibel meter, on site, which will record the noise levels in the area and distort the image angle, static effect etc. in accordance to predetermined levels. So when the levels are within 60db and 85db, which are the levels for normal conversation up to the level for a band playing, it is considered noise of enjoyment and the image will be clear. If the levels drop below 60db or rise above 85db, this will shown by a distorted image to symbolise the noise levels being outside of this ‘enjoyment’ zone. The final input will use the Mise en abyme effect, which will be mechanically controlled by pulling the camera further away from the site, or pushing it closer. This will give it a repeating void like effect. The further the camera is away from the site the deeper the void will become, and vice versa. There will be simple movement recognition software which will take the video from a high mounted webcam, and by tracking the number of different movements will give us the number of people in the area. The fewer the people in the area, the deeper the void will be as a symbolic representation of the life being sucked out of the area.

Therefore if the area is heavily populated by people who are happy and sound like they are enjoying themselves then the image projected will be clear, colourful and fill the whole projection zone once. If however the area is abandoned, and peoples are unhappy in their responses then the projection will be unpleasant and very distorted, whilst being ‘sucked’ into the side of the building.

Mise en abyme effect

This is the test that Luke Mears in our group has done. It is a test to show the Mise en abyme effect which is a basic feed back system to give a void like effect which not only looks cool, but can represent many things giving this changing depth and repetition effect.

Proxemics

(Taken from Wikipedia) The term proxemics was introduced by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1966. Proxemics is the study of set measurable distances between people as they interact. The effects of proxemics, according to Hall, can be summarized by the following loose rule:

“Like gravity, the influence of two bodies on each other is inversely
proportional not only to the square of their distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them.”

Proxemics leads nicely into my second idea for the use of the space at our site, and how to interact with the residents and commuters of the area. As our location, and ideas, focus on the life of the area by using the old theatre to represent that, my idea would be to position a camera(s) to cover the open area in front of the theatre, then using movement recognition software, track peoples movements. When people walk within pre-defined areas or ‘hot spots’ this causes the output of the projection to change, and music to play accordingly. The output itself could still be liked to another input, in terms of what it is actually showing, but the movement of people could affect the other aspects like when it was showing. Also if people figured out the link between their movements, and the music and displays, we could tune it so that it almost creates and encourages mass dance. This would link to the history of the building, and increase peoples positive aura. A good basic example of this is the old PS2 game ‘Eye Toy: Groove’.

Hand tattooing

Above is my first draft idea at the assignment for tattooing my hand with autobiographical facts about myself. I took the brief too literally and created what I believe is a good image, but not to the brief given. Many of these elements still exist in my final image below and are explained in the description under the image.

This is my hand tattooed with autobiographical features about myself.
The first decision I made was that I wanted the picture to be of my left hand. This is due to the fact that it allows me to show my wedding ring in the picture, and my wedding was one of, if not the most important and proudest moments in my life. I also emphasized this point by leaving my wedding ring in colour.

I chose to show my hand in black and white as I love black and white photography, and I wanted to show a contrast to the images tattooed onto the skin.
Each strand of colour is made up of facts from different aspects of my life. Each strand emanates from the finger tips, and flows and mixes with the other strands to join up as one ‘vein’ of life blood (all the things that make you your own person, and show your ‘life’).

The strands are also made up of different colours and fonts to represent what they are showing. The font size is quite small as I wanted the text to look almost like an aura flowing on the hand, and not look like a block of text. By doing it this way it also allowed me to increase the amount of history I was able to write.

The top strand is green as it represents my travels to New Zealand, a famously ‘green’ country. The second strand is all about my wife, hence the romantic, swirlly, red font to represent the passion I feel for her. This strand is also on the finger with the wedding ring as obviously the two are linked. The middle finger is about my family, so the colour is blue to show the family ‘blood line’. The finger nearest the thumb describes my hobbies which center around computers so I chose a blocky style font to look like the old computer text. Finally, the thumb symbolizes the place where I grew up, which I love, so I chose my favorite colour, purple, and my favorite font, Arial.

Street projection test mock up

Above is a very short, basic mock up of the idea of projection at our chosen location. It shows two opposing ideals of happy, represented by a bright lively scene, and anger, represented by a dark upsetting scene. These ideas are linked to an input which means the projection symbolises the publics’ opinions, and the changes in this opinion.

Blog presentation - Pecha Kucha

The art of Pecha Kucha or, “how to squeeze 115 presentations in a day where there was only place for 95” Barcamp Gent 28/03/2008, is about delivering a presentation on exactly 20 slides, which show for exactly 20 seconds. There are many reasons for doing this;

1. Keep the interest level up


2. Everything fits the format


3. Pecha Kucha = [pecha-k-cha] = the sound of conversation

So on that basis I have to present my own blog to an audience in a Pecha Kucha style. I have decided to focus the main bulk of the presentation on my thoughts around ‘networks’ and ‘social media’ as it is only a short time, therefore not enough to go into detail on every idea. I have decided to keep the slides simple as firstly, I have not used PowerPoint in over ten years, so stick to what I know, but secondly, and more importantly, due to the time constraints I do not want my audience spending all their time looking up and not listening to the presentation. So I have mainly used pictures of key points to help emphasize these key points, when a picture says a thousand words.

The slides are now uploaded to slideshare.com, under Jon Moore idat 101, so have a look, though they might not make much sense on their own.

Location Recon 3

The end goal of this project is to display the work out in the environment, to an unsuspecting audience. So a location which has no audience would be not ideal to say the least. Therefore another factor in the location and the project has to be this possible audience. With that in mind a basic people count at set points, was a simple first steps in helping better understand the audience, and to a greater affect, what shape the project should take. These are the results of this first step.

1. People at bus shelter/opposite restaurants = 12 people/1 bus



2. People walking by on foot = 55



3. People walking by side of building on foot = 8



4. Cars entering and exiting car park = 38 cars



5. Traffic passing on main road = 422 vehicles

Location Recon 2

Below is the second possible site (B), again at the New Palace Theatre, but this time on a side window. The display area is a more uniform shape, making the final project more visible, but I feel it would be less interesting. Need to test theory. Again just off main road, so large passing audience, and opposite is a large car park for some shops used mainly in the evening (video rental, super market etc). Another good location, with a lot of practical qualities.

This is a scale drawing of the projection area showing all measurements and represented in a 20:1 scale when on A4 size material.

Location Recon

As a group I feel we have a good, basic idea from which to build upon and experiment, using noise to represent the ‘life’ of an area, then taking that input and using it to change the exterior of the New Palace Theatre through projection of imagery that reflects that ‘life’ as we see it.

However this clearly needs exploring and developing, so to that end, the location itself seemed the most logical place which to start to explore, both in the physical space and practicality, and in observation to see what we can bring to the area.

Below is the first site (A) which is a doorway on the front of the building leading to the main road. Located near by is a bus shelter on the same side of the road, restaurants opposite, and with it being a main road there are many passing pedestrians and much traffic. This is a good location to get maximum exposure to a non-captive audience. Also the doorway is covered blocking out street light, making the projection more effective.

This is a scale drawing of the projection area showing all measurements and represented in a 20:1 scale when on A4 size material.

PDP

Self development and improvement is key in every aspect of your life, whether it be educational, personal, or for your career. The plan below is designed to make you think about the key aspects which are needed to have a clear focus, and therefore achieve your end goal. Personally I view myself as a very organised person who manages their time well, and tries to succeed in every task they take on. However, I strongly believe that what one person views as a strength, another can view as a weakness. For example, I think it is a strength to keep my surroundings tidy, as ‘tidy person, tidy mind’, but my wife views this as a weakness as she views it as obsessive. My point is, I have done many of these forms throughout my life, and also I have had to administer them as well, and my findings and beliefs are that if a person wishes to succeed in any given task which is within their realm of capability, they will, if they are not bothered, they won’t. No form like this is going to change somebody dramatically if they don’t already have the internal drive, it would, and does, take a much greater agent of change.

After all that though I have completed the form for the purpose of the exercise, focusing mainly on technical skills, which I would have already strived to gain, and lack of confidence in front of unknown groups of individuals, which I may become better at masking but will never change.

Spacial strategies

Below are three links I was sent that deal with strategies for a non-captive audience. I just wanted to include them as reference points before we start developing our own strategies and plans as a group.
http://chaohanarch.blogspot.com/
http://kimberlycwalker.tumblr.com/
http://sirigoyen.wordpress.com/

Final Website 2

Having thought that I had completely finished the website, I had to revisit it to check it for compliancy against the disability discrimination act. I thought this would only take a couple of minutes, and I already knew that I had to add some ‘alt’ tags to my images, which I had forgotten, but I was surprised once I ran the code through the compliancy software at just how many small errors there were. With these errors I was shocked that the code even ran, as I believed it had to be character perfect, and also just how long it took to solve these small problems.

After a bit of time and effort I managed to iron out all these things, and ran each page separately through both

1. http://www.contentquality.com/
2. http://validator.w3.org/

and managed to get all to pass WCAG-priority 1.
Also the css sheet passed compliancy when ran through
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Mini-Projection Ideas

As a group we have decided to revert back to our original idea of projection onto a structure to improve the general area’s perception and emotional connection. For this task, the initial idea is to make a projection onto a small area of the old theatre as it is not only central to the location, but also has a massive amount of history attached to it. The projection is also going to reflect a constant variable to the area in some way, from an input source. A basic idea of this would be to have a small projection of silhouettes dancing in one of the theatres windows, and this would be attached to a wind speed measuring device, then the winder the area was the more distorted, through a ‘TV static’ effect, the image becomes. This is one example of visually displaying the general wind speed in the area, whilst also improving the areas aesthetic quality. The same idea could also be used to show the communities feelings towards certain issues by having a simple form on a website, which has a series of questions with both a positive and negative perspective, which is then calculated and fed through as the input, causing a change to the image to represent these feelings. At the moment these are obviously just thoughts on the problem. The idea needs to be fully explored to create a solid foundation from which to build as we neither have the money or the scope to be able to achieve this as successfully as a project like ‘D Tower’

Final Website

The final website should be online now at www.jmmoore.co.uk

After finishing my first website I was pleased with what I had achieved, if you had asked me to do it 2 months ago, I wouldn’t have known where to start. However, there are a number of technical and aesthetical changes I would like to make when my skill set improves.

First, I feel the general layout and content is quite plain and shallow. I do like clear black and white layouts, but still think it could be a bit more ‘funkier’, and hopefully I can improve this in the future, whilst adding to the content.

The photo slideshow could also be technically simpler on reflection, and still achieve the same result. Instead of using modular division, simply adding 1 to the variable each cycle, then adding a statement to say once the variable reaches a certain value, return to 0. However if I had a greater skill set I would use different code to create a control system to manually view the photographs, I did try but couldn’t get the code to work, nor did I fully understand it, so I reverted back to the one I did, even though it may not be the most efficient. Linked to this point, when I create my next website it would be better to have one separate page to handle all my JavaScript, like I have 1 page to handle all the CSS on this site, and 1 page to handle the validation JavaScript for the contact form. It does not affect the functionality of the site, but it would make the navigation of the code easier and tidier.

The contact form on the site is centralised in style but the check boxes do not line up perfectly as I would like, so next time I would probably use a table to achieve this. Also with the contact form, it sends the information entered an echo form, where I would like it to be sent to me. The validation is also pretty basic, as discussed before, and I would like to improve on that. Finally before I had validation on the form, I had a line of code that enabled the pre-rendered message in the text boxes to disappear when the user clicked in the area, so they didn’t have to manually delete it, but I couldn’t get this to work alongside the basic validation so had to leave the text areas blank. I would like to include this feature again, which I think is standard on forms nowadays, and allows another area for the designer to communicate with the user.

Overall I am very pleased though, I think it is a good, solid start which I can build on, and have learned a lot from.

My manifesto

A manifesto is a declaration of principles and intensions, usually very persuasive in nature, and political in content. This is the ten key points which I believe everyone should try to live their life by. I feel that if everyone was to adhere to these points the world would be a better place.

1. Everyone has the right to seek comfort and guidance from whatever source they feel fits the purpose, whether it be spiritual or material, as long as this has no negative influence upon others.


2. Everyone has the right to free health care, if they live a relatively clean, healthy lifestyle, and the cause is not self inflicted.


3. No one should go hungry in the modern world.


4. No one should be denied love and companionship, as long as this has no negative influence upon others.


5. Every child has the right to innocence.


6. When the above points are achieved, those who commit crime and cause hurt to others should incur the fullest penalty of the law, and be treated as they have treated others.


7. Every man and woman should strive to be the best they can.


8. People should live each day. Life is a gift which is taken away to freely from many others who don’t have that choice.


9. Don’t worship greed, take what you need, share what you don’t.


10. Enjoy your life, you only get one.

Street Furniture Example

Below is a quick example of the ‘street furniture’ I found at the entrance to Union Street. This picture demonstrates just how much physical space these items take up, and if we could turn these into positive factors in our life (like those mentioned in the previous post), the sheer amount of sub-conscious positive data our brain would receive and have to process. Surely this increase of ‘happy’ data would, theoretically, have a proportionate effect on our mood, therefore the overall mood and quality of the area.

Street Furniture

Although it would be a nice idea to replace all the buildings and project 3D images onto the exteriors, it is not very practical, and would be very much a long term game plan. Another idea which could be used in the present to achieve the main goal of rejuvenating the areas life and soul would be by turning the everyday things we don’t notice, but hate, on the street into educational and joyful objects. If I look at the basic aerial map on Union Street and roughly block out the street furniture we all dislike but need, you can see how much space these items (street lamps, bins, pavement, bus stops etc) take up physically and in our subconscious.



To that end, if we were to take these necessary and transform them into objects of joy, this would in turn improve the area, and its aura.


A historical time line could be literally embedded into he pavement, and even the material of the street could change along the line, from cobbles to modern slabs, to help represent this history. Also a thing like the ‘Chalk bot’ could go up the street every morning and print peoples messages on the pavement, or 3D art could be used to represent/change peoples moods.




Street lamps could change the colour and intensity of lighting, linked to improving people’s happiness. The inputs could be weather sensors, sensors in bins which have compartments for both trash and recyclables, when people recycle more the light changes to a warmer, friendlier colour. When it’s cold out the lights could become an intense red to compensate.


The bins themselves could give out a positive message or feedback when people use them to help encourage people to use them, and the bus shelters could display images which people would laugh and smile at.

All these little ideas could and would add up to improve peoples moods, and bring back a history to the area.

Networks

Just a quick post on network models. I have already made my feelings clear on ‘social networking’ in a previous post, but I didn’t talk about networks as a whole. There are three main types of networks, demonstrated by the diagram below.

Centralised networks work by many users having access to one main resource, i.e. most mass media. There are millions of people watching one TV program, from one source, for example, but the problem with this is that if you take that source away, everyone is affected, and the network stops.

On the other end of the spectrum there are distributed networks, where everything is linked independently from each other, the Internet was designed in part to provide a communications network that would work even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attack. If the most direct route was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternate routes.

This is really the ideal, with free passage of knowledge and resources, with no risk of the network collapsing when a few of these connections are broken. However, even though I feel that if we achieved this model in most areas of life things would be better for everyone, it would also destabilize both power and wealth, the two things people strive to achieve, and therefore our very human nature stops this from becoming a reality.

If we go back to the TV example Sky would never let the BBC show a brand new series of 24 at the same time as them, even though this would allow more people to view it, as this draw of the ‘latest and greatest’ is the USP (unique selling point) of that channel, and how they make money from their subscribers.

My Website design (part 2)

Bibliography

• “Dreamweaver CS3” by Nick Vandome, Computer Step


• “Brilliant JavaScript” by Ken Bluttman, Pearson-books


• “Brilliant HTML & CSS” by James A. Brannan, Pearson-books


• “HTML & XHTML Pocket Reference” by Jennifer Niederst Robbins, O’REILLY


• “JavaScript Pocket Reference” by David Flanagan, O’REILLY

Websites

• www.marvel.com


• www.playstation.com


• www.lego.co.uk


• www.NewZealand.com


• www.google.co.uk


• www.simpleflashblog.com

Acknowledgements

• Leanne Moore


• Luke Mears


• Chris Saunders


• Mark Dixion

My Website design

As previously discussed I wanted my site to fit a template like my mock-up. I changed it slightly so it just consisted of a main banner, side bar, and content. I created my own banner using simple shapes on Illustrator, before adding my digital signature, I created for IDAT 107, using Photoshop.


I wanted to use my digital signature as I put a lot of work, time, and research into making it something that truly represented myself, see the IDAT 107 labels for a full breakdown. It was also from that research that I decided that I wanted to use the font type Arial throughout my site as personally I find it a friendly, warm font which is slightly rounded, all of which could be said about me. Also I used the same colour scheme, black and white, for most of the site as I feel it gives the design a more ordered, mature look ( blue text is used to highlight certain things, but still compliments the black and white), and two, it signifies how I often see the world in things being black or white. To achieve this uniformed look and feel across the site I used one CSS sheet to style all the main pages.

In terms of content, I viewed the website as an ongoing project which I would like to add to and change in the future, so with that in mind I just added four additional pages which are about different aspects of me. I have a brief intro about myself on my home page, and then I have a separate page to do with my travels, one to do with my hobbies, a cool stuff and links guide, and also a contact form. Although some of these pages may seem a bit bare at the moment, my thinking was by laying them out in such a way it would make them easy to add to, or to add a separate page for another topic in the future.

The site contains links to other sites, and also to navigate around the content, this was achieved using anchor tags, and specifying the destination using href, reference point attributes. There are three other parts to the site which use specialised coding, the story, the contact form, and the photo slideshow.

The story was achieved by using alert popup boxes to gain information, then by using variables and if statements, to place the relevant information back into the text at set point to make it appear like I personal story.

The contact form also uses different data collectors, and that data is sent to a specified destination linked to the “submit” button. In this case the destination is just an echo form which displays back the information you sent, but demonstrates that, in theory, the information could be sent to myself. The form also has if statements built in to check the three main elements required when submitting. These are run client side using JavaScript to check that a name, message, and a valid e-mail address have been entered. If not an alert is activated to ensure the user knows why the form will not submit. I chose to check for these items because if it were to be submitted for a real person to reply, these are the only three items they would need, a name, a place, and a question, whilst the other fields are just additional data. The name and message are checked by simply having a value, whilst the e-mail address is checked, crudely, by seeing if there is an ‘@’ symbol after the first character.

The photo slideshow of New Zealand uses variables and if statements to place a picture into a specified source, along with another variable to control the amount of time that image is displayed, before the code is run again to pick up the new picture variable value, and therefore change the image displayed. The continuous cycle of these images is achieved by using modular division (represented by percentage symbol [%]), so the number used in the statement is the remainder of the sum, not the answer. For example if there were 5 pictures, and the variable in the equation was 1, then 5 goes into 1, 0 times, but has a remainder of 1, therefore the image displayed is linked to that number. The cycle is achieved by the fact that when the variable then becomes higher, say 6, then 5 goes into 6 once, but the remainder is 1 again, so the first picture will be displayed again. Similar to how a clock works I believe. The getElementById function is used to enable the line of code to work in any browser.

There are a number of improvements I would like to make in the future which I will discuss once the site is active.

My personal biography in hyperlinks

This is a represntative example of how all aspects of life are linked and 'net-worked'. Each word in the following paragragh is hyper-linked to a webpage which has some personal relationship to the word it is embedded in, some deep, some very shallow. However, here is a brief selection of moments from my life to this point.

I was born in Birmingham on the 9th November 1983, where my parents named me Jon Michael Moore. However my parents, sister and I moved down to Torbay when I was very young, and this is where I grew up and lived until very recently when I moved to Plymouth to attend university.
I met and fell in love with my beautiful wife, whilst attending Churston Grammar school, at the age of 15, before finally marrying her in June 2008 at Churston church, followed by an unusual honeymoon in Disneyland Florida.
After finishing school I worked in WHSmith. It was not for me, so my wife
and I packed up and left for six months in New Zealand. Upon returning my wife trained to be a secondary school teacher whilst I returned to brain dead work making aeroplane engine parts in a factory.
Today as I have previously mentioned, I attend Plymouth uni, and enjoy my hobbies of computer games and comics, yes I do know I’m 25, whilst living happily in the city with my wife.

Rhetoric

The effective presentation of ideas, or simply the art of argument. First a brief history. Rhetoric is one of three original liberal arts in western cultures, along with grammar (the correct use of language), and logic (testing and inventing knowledge, mainly through questioning things). It was taught by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and is just making a come back now after 2500 years. Classic philosophers believed it was essential in the discovery of truths.
There are many rhetoric techniques and devices which can and are used to construct an effective argument. I could list them but we would be here for a long time, however the main ideas are contrasts, three part lists, and language devices.
I was intending to put forward an intellectual piece on the use of rhetoric, but whilst trying to construct an argument of my own to show its’ effectiveness, I learnt and realised that most if not all people use these devices whether they are doing so consciously or not. Therefore there is no thing to prove, it works, and must do to have been an art form for so long.
I never set out to write a piece with these techniques in mind, I try to connect with my audience on a more personal level, rather than writing something which feels clinical and cold, but by doing so I inadvertently use these devices to make my case. I also think that this is an art form which has stood the test of time, and many great men and women have debated it for a lot longer than I am going to do, so I shouldn’t have too stronger personal opinion on the topic other than to acknowledge it exists and works, and everyone seems to have an understanding of its uses to one degree or another.

My Digital Signature- Final Design

The image has an ordered overall layout because as a person I live my life by order and rules, I can not stand chaos. It may also not sand out aethetically, but I do feel that as a person I don't tend to stand out from the crowd, I like to keep myself to myself.
The ‘JON’ part of the image is in a bigger, bolder font style to emphasize the uniqueness of my identity, over that of my family ‘MOORE’ identity. It is written in Arial font to show my warm and friendly nature, also it is slightly rounded as a text, not unlike myself.
‘MOORE’ is Bookman Old Style due to its long history, like my family name. The shadow was also added to show this point. Both are quite simple old fashioned font types, but that also represents my personality.
I decided on a cross shape form to represent the many crossroads I have had in life, also it indicates that there is more than one side to me. It is over to the left of frame purely for aesthetics.
I chose to use black and white as it gave the image a more stylized finish, and denotes how I tend to view the world in black or white, right or wrong. However the center ‘O’ is grey because firstly, it was a logical merger point, and secondly because in all life sometimes there are grey areas.
Although black usually represents bad, whilst white represents good, I decided to switch them around not only to make my first name stand out, but also to show that their is good and bad in everything.
For a full analysis please see all IDAT107 labels.
Some variations on the design show the light and dark the other way around, but again it doesn't make my first name stand out as much.
The second design shows the 'Jon' and 'Moore' side by side, but I do not feel myself and my family are 'side by side' in a lot of issues, so would not work.

Stonehouse future vision postcard

Building upon all of the previous ideas and research I have created an image using Photoshop to illustrate what the future of Stonehouse could be. Taking the Ann Demeulemeester store in Seoul as example for what could be classed as a totally ‘green’ building within my vision, and placing it over a run down, crumbling building, then adding an image of street activity from 100 years ago represents this complete notion of combining the best from the past and future. The Ann Demeulemeester store takes a modern, hip shop and turns it into a calm oasis in the middle of a heaving city. The building is covered in vegetation and moss:

“opportunistic plants that grow thick and green even in the midst of big-city smog while creating calmly insulated (and oxygenated) rooms within their folds.”

Joseph Grima “Go Green. Literally.”
This not only means the building is ‘green’ in an ecological way, it also brings this ‘green’ soul and aura, which was previously discussed, back to the area by having the modern structure and purpose, along with providing calm in the center of a city.
I also chose to represent the ‘green aura’ with the projection onto the side of the building, to bring the prosperity and soul from the past.

Original photo and 'future postcard' image.

My Digital Signature (part 3)

It would be easy to pick a font type for my design based purely on how aesthetically pleasing I find it and therefore the effect it would have on my design. Having researched the font types, there are many more aspects to take into consideration when picking a style like the history and connotations attached to it. There are many font types which would be technically good for the image. Verdana, Century Gothic, and Tahoma are all very similar rounded texts which were created to be versatile in the way in which they are displayed, i.e. not becoming distorted and visible what ever screen size it is displayed on. All would look good within the design but that would be it.
Impact, does exactly what it says in the name, it is a very bold font type that would make the image stand out, but I think it looks very condensed and squashed, which is in contradiction to me being a fairly open easy to read person. Therefore I have decided on the two font types Arial and Bookman Old Style.
‘Jon’ is to be written in Arial; personally I find it a friendly, warm font which is slightly rounded, all of which could be said about me. Also Arial was designed to be in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century, with a less mechanical appearance. It is the font’s uniqueness in design, along with its pleasant appearance, which make me feel it is the perfect choice to identify me.
‘Moore’ is therefore to be in Bookman Old Style. This font was created in 1858 so has a long history like my family name. It is also classified as a legible and robust text face, this links to the meaning of my surname, derived from working and surviving on harsh landscapes.

My Digital Signature (part 2)

Above are the main ideas for the layout for my digital signature, each with a brief explanation. All the designs are very ordered in appearance, which was a conscious decision from the out set, due to the fact that one of my main, and possibly best and worse, characteristics is that I am a very organised person always thinking through to the next thing, with every possible variable, to the point of being obsessive. I always like to be in control of situations and can not stand chaos. Also all designs emphasize ‘Jon’ more so than ‘Moore’ for the previously mentioned reasons of believing my name ‘Jon’ is my unique identity, whereas ‘Moore’ is just a given family name which has no bearing on my person, like my family doesn’t.
The designs on the right hand side of the page all show these qualities but I feel that they don’t show anything beyond that. The three on the left hand side have deeper meanings. Again all show the previous qualities but the bottom design is drawn to be like a mirrored reflection, showing that your family does have an imprint on your personal traits and makeup. The middle design shows a similar theme with your uniqueness being linked and merged within your family influences. However the top design represents all those ideas, but also has the added dimension of creating a cross like image to represent that I am more than one sided in my personality and that my life has had some crossroads where I have had to make brave decisions to make me a better person, and the person I am today.



The page above is the cross shaped format refined into a final layout and colour design, again with full explanations. First off I tried the design with the colour purple for ‘Jon’ as it would show another aspect of myself, with purple being my favorite colour. Then the ‘Moore’ would be coloured light blue, a colour below purple on the colour spectrum, denoting ‘Moore’ being below ‘Jon’ in my opinion. However throughout refining the design I felt that it would be better to symbolize this opinion by having ‘Jon’ in capitals, and ‘Moore’ in lower case, along with using widely different font sizes. I also returned the design back to being black and white, black for ‘Jon’, white for ‘Moore’, for two reasons. One, I feel it gives the design a more ordered, mature look, and two, it signifies how I often see the world in things being black or white. The final tweaks to the design were to make the connecting ‘o’ in the two words to be grey as this is logical to show the merger between the black and the white, but also signifies that I am only human and sometimes there are grey areas. Finally I’ve decided to add shadow to ‘Moore’ as it adds depth to the family name, and therefore represents the history. I also feel that this would make the design more aesthetically pleasing, which is the reason for placing the design to the left of frame.

My Digital Signature

Having looked at the task I have concluded that it should be broken down into three key elements. Firstly my name itself, what it means, where it comes from etc. Secondly, the choice of font(s) to represent the aspects I want to illustrate. And finally, the positioning and styling of the text within the frame.
As mentioned on a previous post I have already done a mind map of the factors which go into making me, me. However for this task I wished to simplify these influences to be as personal and identity focused as possible, so I created the following image to represent this idea.



After looking at this image I have chosen to focus in on the character traits I have, as I feel these are unique to making me who I am, as opposed to just experiences I have had.
The main points I want to point out with my name are that firstly it is two parts, ‘Jon’ being a name given individually to me, whereas ‘Moore’ is a family name linked to a large number of people. Secondly I feel that due to having a distant relationship with my family, other than my immediate family, the surname aspect of my name doesn’t define me in anyway, it just acts as an identifier. Therefore, thirdly, ‘Jon’ is the part of my name I wish to be mainly connected with.

Stonehouse aura

Going back to the idea of the aura and soul of Union Street I took a quick walk back along the street with a blank map and some coloured pencils to capture what I believed the aura of the place to be. The green represents areas of newness, life and prosperity. The red is the reverse, areas of decay and relative poverty, whereas the blue has factors of both, areas of wealth which do not help or improve the area, like the bars and nightclubs. I have left on the margin of the page showing the swirls of blue and green heading in the direction of the city centre because I believe there would have been a flip in the other direction of this aura towards Union Street less than 100 years ago. So with my ideas, it would be ideal to make Union Street a ‘green’ area again, in every sense.

My Website

As I have already discussed I do not tend to spend an awful amount of time online, and when I do it is the same sites every time. So having decided to create my site about myself I have no real problem with the content, but need to establish a basic site template with which to work with. To achieve this I have looked at some sites which interest me due to there author. I read a lot so have visited the sites of some of my favourite writers:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
http://www.eoincolfer.com/
http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/
http://www.philip-pullman.com/
The common style between these sites tends to be a header top of page, followed by a quick links bar directly underneath, and the content with a sidebar underneath that.
Expanding my net I decide to look at the website layout for my favourite TV show, holiday destination, and a person who knows how to use the media to their best advantage.
www.fox.com/24
http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/wdwi/en_GB
http://www.jordanfanclub.co.uk/
They also seemed to follow the same, if not similar template. Therefore I feel this will be a good, solid standard with which to base my own site on. Basics I know, but planning from the basics means a good starting point to build upon.
The picture below is a rough template I have designed for my website based on my findings.

Virtual Friendships

Yesterday I went out and bought a game for my Playstation 3 called ‘Eye Pet’.
I did this for three reasons. Firstly it was a cheap way of getting the camera which was packaged in the box and I have wanted for a while now, secondly I had a voucher to use up, and finally the game is really an advanced digital pet which you interact with through your movements captured on the camera, and anything like that has always interested me. I rushed out on day one to get a Nintendo Wii because of the immersive nature of the machine, and wasted all my pocket money on a VR arcade game when I was a kid.
Why am I telling you this? Well when I booted up the game my wife sat there for about ten minutes, whilst I waved my hands and arms about like a lunatic trying to get the monkey thing on screen to jump, before asking me,
“What have you wasted your money on that for? You will never use it again, you do know it’s not real, don’t you!”
My wife probably is right it will sit there collecting dust for a few months, before I trade it in for a fraction of what I paid for it. But she was wrong about the reason for buying it. I didn’t buy it to have a ‘pet’, I was just curious as to what level the technology worked.
The point of that massive rambling story was to point out the fact that my wife thought I had purchased the game for some kind of friendship or relationship with this piece of software, I didn’t, but with 99% of the sales this is possibly true. Little kids playing with fresh air and a TV screen instead of a puppy or kitten. People can argue that it is purely for entertainment or educational purposes for the eventuality they ever got a ‘real’ pet, and I have no problem with it on a moral or ethical stand point. However I do feel it raises an interesting argument, at what point do our friendships and relationships with ‘others’ through a digital medium become ‘real’, and what impact is that going to have with people’s social interaction skills?
What I didn’t mention earlier is that whilst my wife was mocking me for playing with my ‘pet’, named Gizmo by the way, she was sat there with a laptop on the arm of the sofa, signed into Facebook, like she had been for the previous hour and a half. On a base level I have no problem with social networking sites, I use them to keep in touch with friends who live too far away or arrange meetings with others, but that is it. If I want to talk to someone, I phone them up or physically go to see them and spend time with them, however more and more of my friends and family just use those screens to send messages back and forward to each other without actually ever seeing or talking to the person anymore. I have younger relatives who are still children, and when you ask about friends and what they do, they do know the person from school or a club, but they play computer games together over the internet not even in the same room, talking through headsets. My understanding is that 90% of communication is achieved without a spoken word, i.e. facial expressions, body language, but in these ‘friendship’ situations 100% of communication is achieved through spoken word, and that is what I mean by worrying about these people’s social skills.
I also worry that friendships seem to be becoming ‘diluted’. Everyday I receive friend requests on my Facebook page, but they are from people I once bumped into on a street whilst on holiday in 1998, and maybe said “sorry” to. I exaggerate, but my point is they are people who are not really my friend and never have been, they are acquaintances at best, yet people are willing to except them and allow them to view personal thoughts and comments at their leisure, along with 500 others. I don’t think I have even spoken to 500 human beings in my life. Yet people continue to collect others like Pokèmon, and lavish time replying to each and everyone of them but at a very shallow level, never truly building a strong friendship.
I know these views seem like the extreme negative side of products which are basically designed for consumer enjoyment, and I also know that I am very funny when it comes to issues like trusting others, especially with personal information, however I can say with confidence that this is an increasing trend over the past few years and don’t want the word ‘friend’ to only mean a name in a list of hundreds, within a few more years.


To check out 'Eye pet' visit www.eyepet.com

Stonehouse compiled area map (part 3)

Going back to the idea of the soul and aura of Plymouth I envision a merger of old and new along Union Street. Returning the area back to the thriving, fun playground it once was but in a modern/futuristic way. One half formed idea to represent this notion would be to have all the building brought up to a modern high standard, and have a purpose (i.e. nightlife), then project an image of the old historic union street onto the buildings exterior. For the buildings which can not be altered, like ‘The New Palace Theatre’ the same could happen in reverse, with a futuristic version of Plymouth being projected. This in my mind would capture the spirit from old and new, and create a new modern aura for the area.

As I say this is just one idea, but the potential is visible in works done by EMF Technology Ltd -Projection onto buildings for promotional purposes (mainly films). http://www.emftechnology.co.uk/
Or NuFormer Digital Media, they develop state of the art 3D projections. http://www.projectionsonbuildings.com/

Stonehouse compiled area map (part 2)

Picking up on an idea of the aura and soul of the location, Union Street seems to be an ideal choice due to its historical value and modern day state. It was designed by a man called John Foulston, and laid out between 1812 and 1820 as a grand boulevard to connect the three towns of Plymouth, East Stonehoue and Devonport. It was thought of as the home for the rich and famous around the area,

“…the buildings are neat and handsome, and the streets straight and commodious, particularly those of Durnford-street, Emma-place, Edgcumbe-street and Union-street. These are almost entirely occupied by genteel families, chiefly those of naval and military officers, and other persons holding situations under government. The addition of Union-street … is an improvement of the greatest importance … [it] affords a spacious thoroughfare, and presents … a succession of neat and uniform buildings”

“Guidebook to Plymouth” 1823

Union Street was considered one of the most notorious and infamous streets in the south west of England, and was often populated with sailors from around the globe due to its red light districts. Sadly however, the majority of the area was destroyed during WW2 bombings and subsequent events leaving the area in the state it is in now.

About half way along Union Street you will find a dilapidated building named ‘The New Palace Theatre’. The building is grade II listed, and was included on a list by ‘The Victorian Society’ of the UK's ten most endangered and best Victorian and Edwardian buildings, yet its last use was as a nightclub and now just stands there crumbling and broken, a long way from yesteryears grandeur. However this is not a unique example along a road which now has a massive conflict between the old and the new, absolute poverty and aspiration. Union Street now consists of council flats, derelict buildings, late night pubs and shops selling goods which could not be described as essential. The geographic theory describes this as ‘Inequality of space’ - when a geographical area is used by different social groups for a variety of purposes. This may result in conflict increasing the divide between these groups.

Stonehouse compiled area map

Having all focused on a different aspect of Stonehouse, and plotting them, as a group we have placed all these layers onto a single map to represent our combined idea of the area. The red wavy areas/lines are, as before, to represent the main areas of noise pollution and focus on the main roads and activity sites. Within the group Luke placed the black dots to show people density in the open, the blue star like shapes to symbolise quiet locations, and thin black lines to indicate the field of view along Union Street. Ben chose to illustrate the aura/soul of the area with long thin blue lines, whilst Matt represents the desirability of the area in block colour on a sliding scale of red to green. Red being the least desirable, green being the most desirable. Finally Karla symbolised the flow/movement of people through and out of the area with a series of bold lines and green markers.

After having the combined map we decided to concentrate on an area of high interest within our group and with in the area, Union Street.

Media and the ‘Social’

Within groups we were tasked with mapping what we understood by the term ‘Media’ so on paper we wrote down all the different forms media takes, and without listing them we concluded that people are influenced by media in every aspect of life. Media by definition is anything which can convey a message, so with that in mind we divided our list up into the different types of media, focusing on the way the user /audience is engaged, to produce the following mind map using free software available from http://www.mindmeister.com/.

The three main areas which represent the different ways publishers interact with the audience are,

• One to one communication




• One to many communication




• Mass media communication

As you can see both the one to one, and one to many communication routes have relatively few outlet possibilities compared to the mass media, but do offer a wide possibility for feedback/response, and are able to change their audience size to fit their needs. Mass media tends to be one way, and published by large organisations.

“The mass media have two important sociological characteristics:
First, very few people can communicate to a great number; and, second, the audience has no effective way of answering back”

C. Wright Mills “The Power Elite” 1956

Mass media also takes the form of what many would consider traditional media types, like TV and cinema, radio, photography. All of which were developed during the period of 1860-1930, when people didn’t have the opportunities like today to self-publish so media was a very one way thing. Of course there were dangers attached with this one way, one side, process. Adolf Hittler’s use of propaganda through print and radio during WW2 shows the possible dangers of mass media, but also there overwhelming power and success. During the late 17th century it is believed that early newspapers were the cause for the increased spread of literacy and education, however it is now believed with modern electrical entertainment, and people having so much freedom of speech and limitless platforms on which to be heard (i.e. blogs, facebook , Youtube etc), that we are now in the reverse of that trend.
Do I believe either form should dominate? No, I feel that both mass media and our own outlets are very important in today’s world. However mass media is heavily monitored and regulated, so maybe with everyone now having the capacity to generate ‘media’ something/someone should be responsible for the ownership of that content, because when you can look on somebody’s own website to find out ‘how to make a bomb in your kitchen’ or racial/religious commentaries on why one group of people deserves to live, the other deserves to die, what is the difference between that person and Hitler’s use of the media in the 1930’s? Both give the reasons and tools.

Digital signatures examples

Just two quick examples of digital signatures I have pulled off http://www.flickr.com/. They both seem very basic but actually say quite a lot about the author of each piece.

The first one shows not only their name but also their religion, which is a massive part of the influences which make you an individual and unique.

The second is a cool one letter approach, which shows exactly that, the person is cool, modern, and maybe a bit mysterious whilst at the same time in your face.

Digital signature

Although I have not technically started this project yet, when I do, a great deal of thought will have to go into personal reflection so that the image I create will truely represent me.
So this is just to point out the recent post I made in the IDAT 101 strand of my blog which shows a mind map I created of myself. Whilst this was not done for this project it is, and will be, a great aid in showing what makes me an individual and reflecting that back in my digital signature.

Understanding myself (IDAT 101)

The picture below is a photograph of a ‘mind map’ I made about myself. The purpose of this piece was to better understand what influences and factors shape me into the individual I am perceived to be by others. We were asked to create an image to show this, and the task was meant to be purely for ‘fun’. However, I used this as a good opportunity to create a piece which I felt would be useful to ‘self justify’ any creative decisions I make.
The centre of the image represents me. It is surrounded by the seven major influences on my life, and shows how they are linked to me. The pink lines are a lifestyle connection, the blue lines are an enjoyment connection, and the green lines represent an emotional connection. Everything else within the diagram is an offshoot from those main connections and the orange lines show the links between them. Although I see this as a good overview of myself, it is no way near as comprehensive as it could have been, but it was a logical finishing point for this exercise.

Stonehouse stage one

The task has become clearer. Using a blank map of Stonehouse as a starting point, as a group we are to plot/convey aspects of the area that make up parts of the whole ambience/essence of Stonehouse, not just the obvious day to day visual. After visiting the area to collect more data and refine any previous ideas, we are to identify these unique aspects, and possibly improve, and represent them in such a way that an audience can decipher individually and draw their own meaning.
With all that in mind my first task was to identify a factor which I felt could be correctly mapped without/before going to the area. I chose to plot the factors which I thought would produce the most noise pollution within the area. These included the main roads, recreation areas, and the military barracks. The highest intensity of noise is marked with solid red lines and the spread is represented with wavy ripples. Whether my predictions are correct will be determined when we visit and re-plot our data.