Booklet Designed by: Thomas Kruck Serena Milesi Thi Nguyen Yemei Cui Sam Yip Yuzhou Yau Harry Sayers William Mellor Find us online: @digital_art_tech DAT Art Tho Exhibition
What’s DAT exhibition? An exhibition showcasing technological artwork by second year students on the Digital Art & Technology course. Digital Art and Technology presents DAT ART THO. An exhibition which explores space and sitespecific artworks and interventions by hacking, reconfiguring and hijacking the Roland Levinsky Building. The students will present work in response to the architectural space and its technological systems using a playful approach.
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Paul-Dacian Rotar Biography: Paul-Dacian Rotar is a Digital Art and Technology second year student from Romania. Ever since he was a child he was a lover of designs, sketches, drawings and basically eye-catching visuals. Paul also recently developed a passion for photography, doing both editing and taking pictures. This isn’t going unnoticed, different people appreciate his work on social media or in person. “Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.” This quote by Orson Wells inspires him everyday to be more and more ambitious and maybe someday, make a name for oneself in this industry. If you are interested in more of his works, check out his personal website, www.pauldrotar.com.
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Immersive Sunset Critical Context: Entitled “Immersive Sunset”, this installation tries to create the illusion of a different space, a more peaceful, colored and open place, in which the viewer should find harmony and be in a state of comfort. Viewed from certain angles, the layers create an entire picture which was taken in Sibiu, Romania, depicting a mountainous area during the sunset. Apart from the visual aspect of this piece, I incorporated sound in order to boost the experience and the feelings produced by it. “In this series, I attempt to depict time and space as sensations shared by both viewer and artist.” As described by the artist Nobuhiro Nakanishi, who is specialized in the ‘layered art’ topic, this type of art installations should create certain sensations for the viewer, based on the ones conceived in the artist’s body. In the case of “Immersive Sunset”, I tried to embody a colorful image between the grey, not exciting and not ‘alive’ walls of this building. Located near the Café, a place of relaxation and ‘escape’ from the usual work, this piece is consolidating this environment.
“Time itself has no shape or boundary and cannot be fixed or grasped. When we look at the photographs in these sculptures, we attempt to fill in the gaps between the individual images. We draw from our physical experiences to fill in missing time and space, both ephemeral and vague.” The main focus point of this installation is the sensation created by visualizing it, but certainly another aspect is the curiosity of humans. We tend to try and find a solution for everything. In this case the gaps between each layer, the struggle to create the whole image or even placing yourself in that certain spot by listening to the sound, are instigating curiosity, a thirst for exploring the unknown. This work was realized by splitting an image into 20 layers and printing each frame onto transparent acetate sheets. Each sheet has two acrylic strips that add weight to it in order to be hanged from the ceiling. Below them is located the sound system, which creates vibrations throughout the whole piece.
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Thomas Kruck Biography: Thomas Kruck is a second year digital art and technology student from hertfordshire. An aspiring UX/UI designer and frontend developer. Aiming to create beautiful content and experiences on projects that come in various forms. Contact Information: https://www.instagram.com/tomkruck/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-kruck54aa40139/ http://www.thomaskruck.co.uk/
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Private whispers Critical Context: Private whispers is an interactive piece that plays on the concept of privacy and security. A microphone records passing conversations in the room and livestreams them to the website: www.thomaskruck. co.uk/privatewhispers.html The piece is also being played into a room through a contact speaker, allowing the voices to be resonated from within other objects, such as walls or tables, in another location to the recording. This disconnection between the recording and listening locations represents the collection and distribution of information, whilst highlighting the absence of privacy and security. The definition of privacy, is the ability of an
individual or group to seclude themselves, or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share common themes. We believe that our ideas, feelings, information and even our conversations belong to us, until we wish to share them. The piece, Private whispers, aims to challenge this belief. Information is a resource. It is mined, collected, recycled and sold. The only way for us to keep something truly private and secure is to allow it to remain a though in our mind. The second a thought is expressed it is then open to the world.
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Thi Nguyen Biography: Thi Nguyen is a multidisciplinary art student from Vietnam. She’s currently studying Electronic Arts and Computer Science at Howard University, Washington, DC. In her creative practice, Thi strives to invent creations that possess both aesthetic and functional qualities. Having a great passion for bridging the gap between the arts and technology, she is pursuing a career in digital arts with a focus on UI/UX design. In her free time, she loves to brew coffee, shoot photos, and enjoy a nice hike. Contact Information: https://thi-tn.github.io/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinguyen12/ https://github.com/thi-tn
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In Bloom Critical Context: The project, In Bloom, aims to tackle awareness on emotional health by means of creative arts, which is one of the main objectives in my practice. The project is an interactive installation made with OpenCV and Processing, in which viewers are invited to look into a webcam to stimulate the motion of a wall projection consisting of flowery patterns, which would be triggered by the expression of smiling. Once a smile is detected, the floral shapes, generated by a Processing script, turn from rather static to lively animated, seemingly blooming across the projected space. The main aim of this installation is to remind people of the importance of positivity in everyday life. As a person who continuously struggles with anxiety, I am rather bad at being grateful for life, although I have learned through various occasions that life is amazing in all sorts of ways. By prompting the viewers to examine their facial expressions and get surprised by
beautiful animated patterns when they smile, I want them to have a pleasant experience, through which they get reminded that positivity, symbolized by the act of smiling, is crucial to nurturing one’s mental wellbeing, and also that life, represented by the vibrant floral shapes, has a lot of beauties to offer. In Bloom also reflects my attempt to dive deeper into the concept of emotion recognition, which has been developing over the past few years, alongside the booming growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning. A great example of the usage of emotion recognition in the arts is Synesketch, an opensource software for textual emotion recognition and artistic visualization, created by Uroť Kradinac. Synesketch analyses the emotional content of text sentences, and generate real-time animated visual patterns.
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Serena Milesi Biography: Serena Milesi is a Communication Design student from Politecnico di Milano, Italy, and she is currently taking part in an exchange program at Plymouth University. Her interests span from interactive art, light design, live music and pretty everything design related. As an incredibly curious person, she is always seeking new knowledge by surrounding herself with inspiring people and visiting creative places, as well as trying to combine her passions in what she does exploring pathways emerging from intersections between visual art and emerging technologies. She likes to think beyond a traditional art exhibition to create an experience that brings a social impact while encouraging people to get close with the work. Contact Information: milesi.serena@gmail.com https://vimeo.com/user63638656 https://www.behance.net/milesisere93a3
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Hidden Noise Critical Context: A sound-and-light installation that explores the invisible electromagnetic fields of Wi-Fi networks by turning the nonaudible sound produced by a router into a light visualisation from which you can actually detect the noise using a light sensitive device. We spend nearly every moment of every day awash in Wi-Fi signals and other electromagnetic waves that we tend to think as something strictly related to our laptops, however there are lot of other creative ways to display them. Light and sound can play an important role in data visualisation by changing the everyday experience and raising the awareness around invisible technology. Consisting of two parts, the first part of the interactive installation is made up by a pickup coil attached to a router, in order to increase the signal emitted, it’s connected to an audio stereo amplifier board which in turn is attached to an LED series circuit. The second part is the receiver and it’s designed to generate the interaction between the installation and the user, it is a simply photosensitive device connected to the input of a tiny hand held audio amplifier and a pair of headphones. The aim is placing the photodiode near a source of light to spot the LEDs connected to the
router in order to hear the noise emitted by the device, to deceive the user and add some aesthetic to the whole project I put other diodes around the metallic wire to keep a technology-pervasive atmosphere. I chose to place my project close to a router in a corner of the flight of stairs on the second floor of RLB, as it suits perfectly the main idea of my project, something hidden that we deal with every day and assume as normal but that sometimes underestimate its crucial function. When we think about electromagnetic waves and internet in general we can’t deny the fact that we are surrounded by invisible technology, it’s all around us, quietly and constantly powering our access to the world’s information. For the same reason we can consider this part of the building as a non-place, as explained by the anthropologist Marc Augé, an anthropological space of transience where the human beings remain anonymous and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places”. To investigate and expand this concept I tried to give a visual interpretation of it by placing the metallic wires up the pipes along the wall and in between the bricks which can be seen both as the “veins” of a living part of the building or as camouflage code.
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Sam Yip Biography: A technical yet creative student, Sam Yip is currently wrapping up on his second year of study in Digital Art and Technology at Plymouth University. Diverse in his technological skillset, Sam has experience in various fields of work involving technology, from front-end development in HTML and CSS, to graphical work with Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and video editing with Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere. Outside of computer-based work, Sam enjoys cooking and gaming when at home. Outside the confines of his four walls, he often plays badminton, squash and pool with friends, and also enjoys travelling‌ when his finances allow it. Contact Information: samyip771@gmail.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/hoi-hung-yipa2ba59156/
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Round Sound Critical Context: Round Sound is an interactive exhibition piece displayed around a pillar. The name stems from the usage of a rounded circular pillar for it’s display. The project intends to allow the audience to interact with the piece by triggering 5 ultrasonic distance sensors which wrap around the pillar. Each sensor plays a different section of a track which will loop so long as the distance sensor remains triggered. Combining different parts of the track by attempting to set off multiple sensors simultaneously or setting off another sensor just as the music loop ends is highly encouraged as this will create a more ‘complete’ output. Due to there being 5 separate sensors, collaboration between multiple participants is recommended. The idea of timing the triggering of multiple sensors at once to combine the separate parts of the music is intended to offer participants a small, gamelike challenge. In terms of the technical side of things, the exhibition piece uses an Arduino Uno board with 5 ultrasonic distance sensors connected. Code written in Arduino and exported onto the board constantly feeds back data from
the sensors back to the Arduino to get the distance in centimetres. This data is also fed to a MAC that is connected to the Arduino board, and utilizing Max software tools allows setting various conditions and triggers. Currently, the conditions for all the sensors is if something is within 10 centimetres of a sensor, it’ll trigger and play the respective music part. The choice of music is Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel and the reason for this choice of song is due to it’s familiarity for most ages. The exhibit can also be easily adapted to play any other audio. Some quirks to this project includes hardware delay (and to an extent, software) where the data changes fed back from the sensors isn’t instantaneous, so there is an short split-second delay before the music starts playing when you cover a sensor. Round Sound does not focus on being aesthetically pleasing, but rather relies on interactivity and experimentation from the audience. Despite this, improvements could definitely be made to ensure that it is not only functional but also visually appealing.
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Lucy Robinson Biography: Lucy is a Second Year Digital Art and Technology student who is passionate about new ways to bring technology to life and discovering new ways to use technology in the modern world. Lucy is 20 years old and works within free time to come up with new ideas and projects which could hopefully be produced into larger or better projects or functioning pieces of technology. Lucy has produced a piece which challenges the outlook that people have on everyday basic activities like access and movement around areas and buildings. Lucy will hopefully show this idea to it’s full potential.
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Into The Dark Critical Context: The idea of my exhibition is to work with the idea of having fun within any environment and the element of surprise. I wanted to produce a piece within a small space which could be enjoyed by lots of people. I decided to use a motion sensor, speaker and LED Strips to create a space in which the element of surprise and enjoyment could be exploited. The idea is when people enter the space the motion sensor is triggered and the speaker will begin to play music and the LED strips will be activated onto a multicoloured strobe setting to produce the atmosphere of a disco. I have chosen to do this with a very dark and small space so the full effect of the speaker and LED’s can be felt by the people currently accessing this part of the exhibition. During testing for the exhibition I wanted to use canvases with LED’s built in and they would be triggered by a motion sensor but this was harder to create the effect of surprise so I decided to use LED Strips instead and this was easier to create the element of surprise that I wanted. I wanted the piece to be hidden so I place it out of
view from people I want to use the whole space even though it is not large so I will place the LED Strips throughout and the speaker as close to the centre as I can. I moved away from producing canvases to solely focus of the idea of shock and this is when I decided to incorporate a speaker with music that will play within the space. Hopefully after the overall shock of the first view of the exhibition the space will become like a mini disco or club space dependant in what type of music plays from a preset playlist which I have created. Overall I feel that my project works well with the brief to create a piece which works with the building and also intervenes with the space of the building from being a simple area in which people would walk through to something which can surprise people and make them realise that things are not always what they seem. The actual piece is not very advanced as far as the technology goes but the idea of transforming a space using the element of surprise is and I feel that this contributes to the exhibition very well.
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Tom Pendleton Biography: Tom Pendleton is a Digital Designer from Surrey, England who is passionate about new and innovative pieces of work to entice audiences and excite viewers. He is particularly interested in advertising and more specifically social media advertising as it is a rapidly growing and popular platform for businesses to grow their brand. Social media is the second most popular place consumers visit after a website to gain more info on the company therefore a strong social media strategy and brand image is becoming a necessity for businesses nowadays. Tom’s strengths are his knowledge and execution of popular Adobe programs such as Photoshop for photo editing, Illustrator for vector creation which he uses every day in the work place, Lightroom for photo editing, Premier for video editing and after Effects for his animations.
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ProjectAd Critical Context: My project is called ‘ProjectAd’. The main idea behind the piece is that it is a new way of displaying adverts using two mediums, one being the traditional paper and print and the other being a projector, this creates a hybrid not seen very often in advertising and as a result appears more interesting and if an advert can seem more interesting to a viewer then it is a good advert, companies always look for that new way to interest people. For my piece I chose to do a poster trying to capture people’s attention for an open day at Plymouth University with projector animations reacting to music. It will be displayed in an A1 clip frame that I will ‘borrow’ from the University, meeting the ‘Hijacking’ criteria in the brief. I decided to do it A1 because it was big enough to be displayed in an exhibition and grab people’s attention but small enough so that the animations didn’t become pixelated because of the quality of the projector. What I like about this project is that it is fun, it engages people to look at the piece of art at the same time as reading the information and taking it in subsequently resulting in an advert that has a high rate of interaction. I also like the actual poster, I went with
this hand drawn style because it is a nice twist on the traditional open day posters you see, it also showcased the university’s creative side which is important when trying to recruit design students. To better my work I could have added another component to my work to make it even more interactive and bring more attention to the poster, an example of this could be implementing a raspberry pie/Arduino that triggers the animation when someone walks by so they get the full animation, the reason why I didn’t do this was because I wanted the projection looping and the advert would be in a busy place so would be hard to register movement. If this idea was commercialised it would be able to be used on a larger scale with higher quality projectors. I also think it could implement new pieces of technology alongside, I looked at the use of conductive ink that would trigger certain parts of the animation to make it more hands on and the use of a semi translucent wall in which the projector shined though the back but was flipped to display the animation, this would mean that it would not be disrupted by the shadows of people in front of the light.
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Ben Tiller Biography: Ben Tiller is a young, aspiring graphic designer with an experienced background in IT. His passion is with logo design and branding but likes to explore new practices when given the opportunity. A dynamic team player who’s aim is to work closely with clients to help create visions and conceive designs whilst sticking to a given brief. In his free time, he enjoys sitting out in the sun with a cold beverage but also likes to stay active by playing lots of sports and going to the gym.
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Dat Boogie Box Critical Context: The purpose of this project is to explore the creative ways in which I can intervene with an environment by reconfiguring it and changing the way you naturally see it. I’ve shown a basic level of coding using both software and hardware such as Arduino as well as an understanding of music to create an intervention piece in one of the Roland Levinsky building lifts. The skills I have shown on this work have been learnt over the last couple years on the Digital Art and Technology course at Plymouth University, through many different modules each with different aims and each developing different skills. The thought process I had behind this project was that I’ve always noticed the lift to have a very unsociable atmosphere, people keep themselves to themselves and prefer to stare at the wall or lean on the rails with headphones in rather than socialise, I can say this from personal experience as well. With this in mind I have managed to create a way in which people are more likely to interact
with each other and for the lift to become something more than just a box that takes you up and down floors. Using capacitive sensors along the railing I’ve attempted to create a sort of midi keyboard but with fewer sounds and less technology, so depending on which pad you touch and how much contact is being made, the user is able to be playful with the sound produced and stay entertained whilst on the lift. I originally used a potentiometer, a device commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on audio equipment, but I was unable to gather any kind of reading. Given the time to create this in, I wasn’t able to produce all the work I would’ve liked. During a learning phase I was using a programme called Max and discovered a few tutorials on how to create audio visuals for a range of sounds. If I had the time I would’ve like to implement this into the lift by hiring out a projector and having it work with the innovative noise composed by the different users in the lift.
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Maria-Helen Fortsaki Biography: Maria-Helen Fortsaki is a Digital Artist focusing on 3D modeling and animation. Maria-Helen is influenced by international experiences, having lived for a period of time in Greece, Qatar and the United Kingdom. However, she still uses her own Greek heritage as the foundation for her artistic inspiration. Her work often reflects political, social and moral concerns from within a digital arts context. Recently, Maria-Helen has been commissioned by student societies in Plymouth University and has worked together with One Polygon on 3D Projects. Maria-Helen has also previously exhibited work in Qatar.
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Pi Me Critical Context: “Some information, some ideas, feel like our allies. We want them to win. We want to defend them. And other information or ideas are the enemy, and we want to shoot them down. So this is why I call motivated reasoning, “soldier mindset.” - Julia Galef “Pi me” is an AR Game Installation inspired by various online trends. Nowadays people seem to be more divided than ever, with a tendency of “only one can be right” opinions. Three years ago a trend went viral about a picture of dress. Was the colour of the dress blue and black or white and gold? How could the users of the internet see the same thing and yet also see something different? Humans tend to heavily rely on their senses in order to perceive reality, so their minds becomes defensive when fundamental beliefs are being challenged. Recently a new audio trend has caused exactly the same controversy, a small audio sample that if you hear it in different pitches you would hear either Laura or Yanni. A 2013 study from Ohio State University in Columbus
has shown that evidence of a person’s opinion being wrong makes that individual even more determined that he/she is right. The only gain out of this argument is the protection of our beliefs and nothing else, which is well known as the soldier mindset. However, even in areas more objective in nature like simple Maths people still have confronting opinions. In this case indeed only one answer can be right. This piece uses mathematical equations in order to see how far people will go to prove that they are right. It uses the exhibition’s theme to make a location hunt. This lead to another element to this piece, AR technology. There was one location game that shocked the world and managed to get people outside, “Pokemon GO”. A game heavily based on AR that it is on its core a location hunt. “Pi me” also uses AR but instead of working as a reward for the player, it works as an additional guide to get the player to the next equation. This piece challenges the people to experience a space with no real reward other than their own pride.
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William Mellor Biography: William Mellor is currently studying Digital Art and Technology, on his second year of university. His favourite thing to work with is sound due to his passion for music, with experience in using Ableton, Audacity and FL Studio. Using his skills in audio he was able to create a soundtrack for an educational game for primary school kids. He also loves doing Foley work. In his free time William enjoys playing lacrosse for his university team, and has won a tournament in Croatia with them. When he’s not playing lacrosse, William loves to let his nerdy side lose and sharp by playing chess and hanging out with his mates.
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Embodied Speech Critical Context: Embodied Speech, is a piece that allows the user to get involved with the technology. Being able to talk through a mic that triggers code in a computer to admit an image overtime, to eventually fade away after they stop talking, giving two perspectives for the art piece, one of them being a viewer looking towards the mic and the person, and the other one from being behind the mic. The reason I decided to create this is because it shows the main aspects of the course that I enjoyed this year, from a sound point of view learning that sound is not always loud, or quite but that I can be silent. My main goal of my project was to get people out of their comfort zones. When creating the piece, I mind mapped some ideas out to then finally decided on the Embodied speech project, after listing and collecting all the equipment I needed from the media hub, it was all about collecting images, and coding them to work with the input of sound from the microphone, so
that the images would become less opaque the longer someone talks, and then the opposite when they stop. After this was complete then it was all about finding the location of where to put it in the RLB, I decided to keep it downstairs near the reception as this gives the project enough room for the projector to place the image with enough room. Within the process I believe I could have got my equipment sooner as a lot of the high-end projectors where taken leaving me with an older model, that would overheat after time. Another thing that could be changed/ improved, is I could have used MP4 files to add a different depth of feel. However, what went well was the time scale I used for the project, as I had enough time to do everything in this assignment, and had time to fix any problems I came a crossed. Another thing my project did well was completing its goal of getting people out of there comfort zones, to get people involved, however to do this more successfully I could add more microphones.
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Dillon Terry Biography: Dillon Terry is a driven and enthusiastic digital artist with a strong focus on large scale installations, currently undergoing studies in Digital Art and Technology at Plymouth University. Using influences from his time studying Psychology and combining with skills learnt during his studies in Digital art and technology he aims to create work that will challenge people’s social norms and ideas. Outside of the digital art world, Dillon enjoys gaming and karting, and is especially passionate about boxing. This gives an opportunity to observe social behaviours within vastly different social groups.
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Obedience Critical Context: Obedience is a large-scale installation project aiming to encourage curiosity and discovery through perceived restrictions on freedom of movement in a public space. The inspiration for this piece is through personal observation of other restricted public spaces and how the general public will follow the socials norms. For example, in an airport there are lines on the floor and giant footprints people will follow these lines blindly and will also place their feet in the feet marks out of social obedience. This piece aims to play with the previously mentioned idea of social obedience by creating pathways with yellow and black caution tape. The yellow and black tape is already a pre-conceived idea that the area should be avoided or followed furthering the idea of abiding by the rules. There will also be a camera watching from above being streamed to a PC and then projected onto the wall. This is included with the intention to further increase the perceived social expectation to follow the pathways and is also included
to comment on the idea of big brother. The installation also aims to comment on misinformation and misdirection by having dead ends within the pathways forcing those following the pathway to backtrack and take another pathway. There is going to be no person in the exhibition to direct the viewer to follow the pathway laid down however relies on its own social devices identified and then implanted into the instillation to create social compliance from the viewer. The pathway itself is planned to make the viewer interact with the building differently to how they normally would. Whilst doing this it also works in collaboration with other artists in the exhibition to highlight their work if the pathway is being followed. Future development for this piece would be taking over a city with pre-defined pathways overnight so they appear over-night taking the concept to making a city follow pre-conceived rules and creating a new way to interact with a city.
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Yuzhou Yau Biography: Yao studies at the university of the Plymouth, His ma jor is Digital Art and Technology. Yao comes from Beijing China. Before coming to the UK, Yao studied at the Communication University of China; his ma jor was Media Art. He enjoys drawing and designing and photography. He wants to be a photographer or designer. Yao loves sports. He likes to play basketball, go skiing and riding motorcycles. He knows motorcycles very well. His dream is to travel the world on a motorcycle and take many pictures.
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VR glasses and 360 degree panoramic picture Critical Context: My project is about virtual reality. I made a VR eyeglass using some cardboards and two convex mirrors. The VR eyeglass can make people see the picture more threedimensional and true. I used GoPro to take two 360-degree panoramic photos. When people move the eyeglass, the screen moves. Every different direction lead different picture. This project will make you feel immersive. The item can relax yourself when you want to have a rest in a building. Let you enjoy the sunshine and sea in the building. I plan to put the project next to the chair in the ground floor lounge. In addition to the two panoramic photos, there is also a video, which is also taken with GoPro. With VR glasses, the picture will be more realistic. 360-degree panoramic photo production method: Firstly, I used GoPro shooting 5 photos of the same location with different angles. Then importing the photos into your computer. Using PT GUI software to compose photos. The software would help you to identify the similar objects in each photo, and then the similar object will
be covered. Finally the software would help you to make the picture into a sphere. It would become a 360-degree panorama. Importing the picture into the phone and then using the balance function of the phone to move the picture along your line of sight. It will make the immersive feeling. Production of VR glasses: The cardboards were made into a spectacle by trimming. Embedding two convex lenses in the middle. I used a single-sided convex lens. After I did some experiments, single-sided convex lenses work better than double-sided convex lenses. Then making a cover case with cardboards, so that the phone can be placed in front of the glasses, just like a real VR glasses. Although the effect may not be as good as Google Glass’, it can still achieve 3d results. Nowadays virtual reality gets more popular, this project will make people understand this technology quickly. Hopefully the project can make people feel relaxed and happy in their nervous studying life.
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Yemei Cui Biography: Yemei Cui born in Beijing, the capital of China, she is 21 years old. She studied at Communication University of China and studied digital media. She was the president of the International Student Union and the chief of the school orchestra. Her artworks and films have won international awards many times, and she joined the school orchestra to receive the Russian President on behalf of China. She is now in the digital media design ma jor at Plymouth University. She has a wide range of interests, such as painting, playing the piano, playing the french horn, directing the film, designing, reading, playing games, playing chess, playing tennis, badminton, billiards, riding, skiing. She has a bright character and likes to make friends.
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AR 3D floor plan Critical Context: My work mainly uses Unity to implement the AR product. I took several photos of Roland Levinsky Building, and I’ll show it in the corridor of floor 1 to show its functionality. People only need to install app, open app to scan photos with mobile phones, you can see the internal structure of RLB, and can interact with 3D model. Visually, giving people a visual impact, you can see the internal structure of RLB’s 3D and its introduction. On hearing, when you click on the floor, you can hear voice prompts, such as ground floor, floor 2. On the interactive side, people can use their fingers to slide the screen from all directions, 360 degrees to understand the building structure. While clicking on the floor, you can see all the spaces on the floor and hear the voice hints. In terms of creativity, people can add different colors to each floor, which can add colorful effects to the vision, and also allow the building to have a custom function. I think it’s very interesting. Finally, I will manually process the whole process with a projector to the wall, so that people can clearly understand the work. I have made a detailed survey of Roland Levinsky Building for this purpose, but there are still shortcomings in this product, such as the inability
to display the internal layout of each room in detail. I have done a research of similar cases, China now has a app called Wisdom Travel man, which connects ma jor tourist attractions with AR, VR, products with 14 cards and VR glasses, Download app, scan cards through mobile phones, and identify historical buildings, and cards will present opera performances, stereoscopic models and other forms to let users from We know the history and culture of architecture, and combine 3D stereoscopic architecture with real life, users can experience the interest according to their interest, and increase the understanding of local culture in the entertainment interaction. So my work can not only increase the understanding of Roland Levinsky Building through interaction, but also extend it to other buildings so that users can understand the buildings they want to understand. It also made some contributions to our team and our team can mark the location of each member’s needs on this three-dimensional map, so that the members can understand the concrete structure of the building, and let the members understand each other’s specific location.
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Melanie Thallapally Biography: Melanie Claudia Thallapally is a MultiMedia Artist who was born and raised in London, England. Her artwork focuses on how we perceive the world around us, with influences from social media and interactions from people. Her work makes use of a variety of physical materials within a Digital Arts context and has developed a mixture of techniques from photography, fine art, mixed media and digital art.
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Light the Looking Glass Critical Context: The Roland Levinsky Building is used by many people; students walking to lectures, tutors grabbing coffee to class, group lunch meetings and more. With all these activities, when do we take the time to stop and observe at our surroundings? “We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is” (1847); this quote by Samuel Johnson shows that light can be anything we want it to be. The concept of ‘Light the Looking Glass’ looks at how we perceive a building when we take time to observe our surroundings. Taking inspiration from contemporary artist Rashad Alakbarov, who uses light to create shadow paintings to reinforce meaning and embracing the basics of simplicity from something which looks difficult to create. Despite differences with his pieces of work and this piece, ‘Light the Looking Glass’ embraces emotion and reflection which are also a key part in the overall piece. Emotion is a big part of who we are and what we feel, therefore, this piece uses colour changing light to convey emotions of what
we may feel about the building, and ourselves when we see the mirror in the elevator when it opens. Refractions of water help the viewer see a different point of view which they would not normally observe. Interacting with this piece is quite simple; observe the glasses of refracted water while viewing different angles of your surroundings. Take the chance to step into the elevator and view the glasses of water from a reflected point of view, of yourself and the background surrounding. Think about how you feel with the colours of light changing as you view the building with different perspectives. What does the refracted light in water make the surrounding look like? Even though ‘Light the Looking Glass’ is quite a simple piece, the refractions of water emote differently when we look through one glass of water compared to another. Distorting perspective could help us understand what buildings can look like a strange parallel world. We use the building for all sorts of purposes, so why not light a different point of view?
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Angus Davidson Biography: Angus James Davidson is a 20 year old student originally from Brighton. In 2014, he finished secondary school studying I.C.T National Diploma at The Weald School where he progressed to The College of Richard Collyer in 2015 to study Computer Science, Film Studies, Maths and Information Technology. Now in his second year studying BSc Digital Art and Technology, he has explored his passion for photography and film making by regularly uploading videos to YouTube. He now is part of running the photography society and regularly photographs University events and sports team including rugby, netball and airsofting.
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Time Lapse Manipulation Critical Context: “One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.� -Christopher Nolan (Film Director, November 29, 2010) This project, Time lapse Manipulation, aims to use technology to play with our perception of time. It involves using an ultrasonic sensor to measure proximity of the viewer to the work. When someone walks past the sensor, it will change the speed of the video playing. The video footage that will be playing is a time lapse that has been shot around the University campus. The audio playing in the background include sound recordings from interviews I shot for the Student Union. The interviews were for getting feedback from society members and committee to share their experience of being involved with a UPSU Society. The audio was also recorded in the Roland Levinsky building. The exhibition is made to change how we experience time through time lapse. By moving closer to
the sensor, the viewer will find the video will increase in speed. The viewer will experience time much quicker, seeing world moving quicker. This idea is interesting because humans cannot change the speed they view the world, whereas video gives us the power to alter that. When the viewer moves far away, the video will play slower. As a time lapse contains multiple frames, they will experience seeing the world in more detail. Slow motion video offers us the ability to view detail we miss in standard video, including microscopic vibration and movement. Cars, people and nature will change in speed which will intrigue the viewer as we are used to seeing the world in normal speed. In the film Inception (2010), technology is used to slow down time, allowing new ideas and thoughts to be created. If a video can be seen slower, the increase in detail can help the viewer see time in a different perspective. If the video is increased, our perception of how we use our time in our daily lives could change. This is because the video emphasises how quickly life is changing.
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Laura Stewart Biography: Laura Stewart is a multimedia artist, born and raised in County Down, Ireland. She is currently a second-year student studying Digital Art and Technology. Her current piece of work focuses on disrupting people, casually snapping them out of their usual patterns, drawing their attention to relatively ignored corners. It is a combination of everyday material and interactive art.
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Sand Waves Critical Context: Sand Waves is a project that basically aims to visualise sound. It is a somewhat interactive piece, using an ultrasonic sensor to detect the distance of audience members, which will in turn determine the frequency of the sine waves and effectively how the salt moves. The project ‘Sand Waves’ serves as a distraction piece, within the Roland Levinsky building. A building generally used for learning, teaching, study and meetings. Many of its users at this particular moment in time will likely be stressed thinking about exams and deadlines. As a fairly noisy piece, Sand Waves will hopefully distract them for long enough to realise that there’s more to life and to chill out.
Sand Waves is influenced heavily by the work of Ernst Chaldni, a pioneer of experimental acoustics. Through researching different kinds of vibrations, one of his most notable experiments involved sprinkling sand on a thin sheet of metal, and by bowing (violin bow) the edge of the plate, the vibrations of the plate caused the sand to bounce and then accumulate on areas of the plate that weren’t moving. Sand Waves follows a similar concept, instead using a transducer and computergenerated sine waves to create the vibrations to set the salt into motion.
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Harry Sayers Biography: Harry Sayers is an interdisciplinary designer and creative technologist, whose work is based on pushing technology in a creative means. He is influenced by the works of Zach Lieberman, Field and Universal Everything and how they use novel technology to produce a creative outcome. His background is in both Graphic Design and Programming, however over several years has merged his skillset to align with his creative outcomes. Using a range of technologies and methodologies, his work has included Data Visualisation, User experience design and Art Installations and is focused on the relationship we have with technology and other beings and how this interaction can be questioned.
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Thousand Motions Critical Context: A Thousand Motions is critically exploring the relationship between time, motion and how that has a direct effect on the spacial setting the work will be exhibited in. Time implies change while motion implies the passage of time has evolved, these fundamental concepts are examined within the piece. The piece is actively displaying visuals representing the audience’s point in time and motion relative to both still and moving features and people in the space, allowing for a comparative perspective on four of the six dimensions of time: Chronology, Duration, Tempo and Sequence. If a subject within the piece is less visible, the object or beings motion is recorded in accordance with to the systems time mechanics and has either not interacted long enough with the piece or the duration since they interacted has increased. Motion is depicted through an expressive and abstract form of directional motion blur; aligning the junction between motion and time as explored within the works of Eadweard Muybridge such as The Horse in Motion (1878)
which layers the gallop of a horse to produce an animated illusion, effectively layering the time which is directly a concept A Thousand Motions builds upon. A Thousand Motion builds upon core principles from that are played with artists such as Andre Tarkovsky, who plays with a new film form which he calls “sculpting in time� which gives the viewer a sense of time passing and loss. Kinect art is generally split into two main categories, sculptures with little movement and real movement: a movement that is visible through an illusion or exploring one of the many forces such as gravity or solar power. Although A Thousand Motions ties into both of these sub-categories, the main conceptual mechanisms of the piece are heavily linked to the latter, instead of delving into a force of nature, the piece visualises the kinetic energy of people in a space and the in turn effects of time, with interaction acting as a suture between the two within the art piece.
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