I brought one of my foot casts in to give them an idea of the types of body casts I will be making for my project, and also a hand cast that I had made very quickly as a tester with the last bit of Alginate I had left. It was basically moulded and casted within an empty 2L bottle of Coke that I had cut in half.
They seemed very enticed to want to touch and feel the casts, and this is the exact reaction I want from users when they come into contact with my tree.
My tutors were asking how was it going to draw people in to interact with it, and my answer was simple. When people go to see art, they immediately have this urge to touch or engage with a piece of art, it's human nature. However due to restrictions people are always forced to stay at an arms length of a piece of work.
With my sculpture though the whole point of it is for people to get personal with it. To explore it's surface, it's texture and nature, hopefully coming across the interactive triggers to then set of the projector to then create this narrative side to the piece. That's when it becomes a lot more dimensional, and almost gets the user questioning what's going on? What did they do to trigger that image? Is there more?
The tutors reacting the way they did just to me displaying a simple cast of a hand and foot was how I see reacting when they come into contact with my tree.
We discussed mainly the interactive media content side of my project this time around. I mentioned how I would be having help from my good friend Robert Myler creating the video content as he is amateur film maker who was very interested in getting involved in my project. Also he has his own equipment which means I don't have to book equipment out from the University itself and compete with other students at getting a piece of equipment out.
In my mind I initially pictured the tree having a full set of organs dangling down from the branches which would act as the interactive part of the sculpture. Users would then either have to bump into or touch the organs to activate the projector.
My tutors were still kind of questionable about the set of organs being the idea for my interaction. They thought I should keep it small and maybe instead of having a full set stray my focus onto just one organ. I could see where they were coming from and as they talked other ideas were sparking in my mind of how to make it seem less cluttered and also reflect the essence of a real tree.
They suggested that I come up with some storyboards of all the different ways that it could be interactive before I settle on one idea. Seeing as it's still early days it's possible for me to still be juggling about with various ideas.
My tutors were really still focused on my casts that I had brought in and kept mentioning how the hand seemed to be drawing them in, more so than the feet. This again acted as almost user feedback because the feet are acting as the roots of the tree so will be situated at the base meaning very little interaction will be made.
The hands though will be on the branches at the top of the tree where the organs will sit/dangle meaning that there is a chance that people should instinctively be drawn to the interactive parts.
I began to re-imagine the design of the interaction the more they talked about the hands.
They kept trying to almost sway me to keeping my whole project small, stripping it back and instead of doing a tree made out of human body parts just do various body casts that are interactive.
This suggestion just reminded me of Bruce Nauman's work that I have featured in my blog and had showed them before. I didn't want to replicate someone elses work. I was happy sticking with what I was already doing.
They admitted that they were worried about the work involved but after showing them how much I had done so far, and the fact that every little part of risk that needed assessing I had already assessed they became tolerant that maybe I could pull this off.
I started to think that if I wanted it to reassemble a real life tree then maybe certain aspects would need to change. I mean what exactly dangles from a tree?
I thought it maybe worth working around this focus that they have around the hands. So I started to imagine what if the hands themselves held an organ, almost like a branch clinging onto an apple. The attraction of the hand then would hopefully draw people into wanting to touch the organ which holds the key to it all becoming interactive. This was a possibility I thought up whilst they were talking amongst themselves.
They added other suggestions such as using QR Codes on the hands, even having the fingerprints themselves acting as a QR Code. This way instead of having a projector hidden within the trunk of the tree, the users would have to use their smart phone to gain the video content.
Not that I have completely dismissed this idea but I just hate the fact of using QR Codes. In my past experiences with QR Codes I find them just to be very cheap and unreliable sources of activating content.
Again I left on a high note at the end of the tutorial, full of inspiration and motivation.
My focus now should be the continuation of building my tree at a steady pace as well as concentrating on creating storyboards that display various forms of interactivity. I can continue building before I finalise on my final form of interaction, but obviously only so far. Therefore it is crucial that I weigh out my options and pick an appropriate form of interaction as soon as possible so that construction can progress.
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