Leonardo's awesome learning blog

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Assignment 3 - Live Industry Engagement

For the live industries brief I (with Margherita Cantiani) chose “The Sustainable Angle” project. We chose this one in particular for three reasons: first of all the deadline for this brief was set before our departure to Italy and it made possible to us to be able to complete the assignment, second reason was the possibility for us to create an installation for a London exhibition that would’ve been a really nice addition to our personal portfolio and, last but not least, it was possible to work in pairs and, working so well with Margherita, we thought that this brief was the one to apply for.

We had to choose between two projects, “AR & ’Augmenting Sustainable Fashion’ ” or “Revealing Transparency”. We chose the second one because that gave us the possibility to make an installation with projection mapping, field in which we are currently studying. We wrote the pitch in order to be chosen between the other students in the module with us for that brief and we were, in fact, chosen.

Next step was to write the actual brief for the company. We followed the template given to us and we explained our idea that was built around the key-phrase ‘Revealing Transparency’. We chose the tulle as leading material on which to project our idea (with a video). The tulle is obviously a semi-transparent fabric and this reflects the topic of this project: we loved it from the very beginning because it’s apparently fragile, but it hides an elegant power. We can see through it and this helped us to develop our communicative message: the waste of water in the fashion industries.

We thought about a hanging black tulle towel on which we will project a video. This video will show a dynamic montage of filming concerning the fashion world (from fashion shows, models to textile industries and clothing processing), with the relative audio which will be muffled in the first place, giving us the impression of being underwater, to return normal only after. All the audio track will be very discontinuous. The interactive part is made by a switch or button positioned in front of the tulle. Every time someone press the switch, a light behind the tulle will turn on and we are able to see something we can’t see before. The front projection, because of that more powerful light, seems to disappear (actually it’s still there but we can’t see it).

Once the backlight is turned on, what we can see will change in relation to the space we will have and the material availability. We thought about three main object the audience can see:

1. A big mound of sand to simulate a desert (fill the space behind the tulle with sand)

2. An fish bowl without water with a (fake) dead goldfish

3. An hanged empty bottle of water

What we are trying to communicate is in that pressed button. We would like to make people curious and active about find a meaning behind something in front of their eyes. What they will see behind the tulle (that represent the fashion world) is the waist of water and the future consequences.

After that we’ve send the brief to our contact, Amanda Johnston, as soon as possible, on the 19th of December 2018. As the correspondence shows, we received, the same day, an empty automatic email. Being an automatic reply we thought that she was already on holiday and so, we waited for a reply from her. As on January 3rd, 2019 we haven’t received nothing from her, we started to get worried and we wrote to her once again asking if everything was ok. Her reply was quick this time and, other than apologize for the late email, she asked us to adapt our idea to the ambiental disaster of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan.

We researched that topic and we found out that this is formerly the fourth-largest lake in the world but now is only 10% of its original size because of the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. This led to an ambiental disaster because the sea is, nowaday, almost non-existent. What shocked us the most were the photos, took over the years, that shows how the sea shrinked and that gave us the core idea for this iteration of our installation.

We removed the tulle and the button but we kept the sand since it's perfect also for this new installation. We thought to put a white cardboard cube over a stand in the middle of the sand, on which we will project an aquarium. The water inside the aquarium will go down until it's empty and then it will raise up again, until full in an endless animation. On the box there will be a series of marks with a written years on the side, these years represent the water level from 1960 until now.

Inside the box we would like to put a speaker that will play an audio track. The track will follow the water animation and will be sounds about sea.

Amanda really liked this idea, especially the marks on the box, and scheduled a call on January 10th, 2019. In the meanwhile she asked for a letter with our course and university details, contact details, any social media where our work is showcased (this letter is in the attached folder on Google drive). We send her the letter and called her on the 12th at noon as scheduled. Unfortunately she had a press conference the day before and she lost her voice so she asked us to call on the 13th hoping for her to recover. We, once again, called her the next day but she didn’t answer us. We waited to be called back but she didn’t. In the evening we wrote to her again asking if we would’ve have any possibility in realizing our project. She replied us that she completely lost her voice and that we would not have been able to make the installation being so close to the expo but she was really happy with our work and she said that “As an organisation we are really happy with your concept, and I would love Nina our Director to see it.”

I think that this experience taught me a lot. We had relate with an organizer of an expo and we stumbled across some issues (some technical and some of pure bad luck). In the end we weren’t been able to have our installation in the expo but I had the confirmation that I would be able to create for a situation like this. What I would've done differently is probably to write her earlier than January 3rd in order to have few more days to work on the project.

In the end I’m pleased anyway of what we’ve achieved and knowing that a fashion organization in London likes my work, is a good incentive to continue to work on that road and it also open up possibilities for future collaborations as Amanda herselfs told us via email.

Here’s the link for a zip file with the project brief, the correspondence with Amanda and my cover letter for her.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SKh9zn2u5i21rRfwfoKuO8SdXFUcgSko

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Web Art Assignment

I’ve always loved art because it allows people to express themself and to communicate with others involving feelings and perceptions that would be, otherwise, really difficult to achieve. I think that art is one of the most powerful form of communication and “with great power comes great responsibility”. What differ from a standard form of communication is that, the information, is completely personal and reflects the artist’s view of the world. I think that’s mandatory to bear that final thought in mind when we analyze any artwork. Clearly express what we think about important or thorny news it’s both necessary and risky. It’s necessary because talk about our ideas and compare it with others it’s the only way we have to expand our vision of the world and understand different point of view but, on the other hand, it’s risky because, more than once, I’ve talked to people who, no matter what, would’ve never change their ideas or even try to see a fact from another point of view and that could bring to different kind of problems.

With my final project I’ve tried to raise awareness on the topic of security and the fleeting boundary between it and mere mass control. This topic is really felt here in the UK (more than once I’ve heard that “London is the city with most CCTV in the world”) but it’s not in my home country (Italy). That doesn’t mean that we are not “under surveillance” but just that we don’t realize it. Thinking about what to do, I’ve set two main aims: the first one that this project should’ve been easily accessible by as much people as possible and, second, I wanted it to be as interactive as I could’ve make it. Joining those two aims I’ve thought about making a 360°/Google Cardboard video for YouTube in order to have an easily accessible and interactive experience. I really like gloomy and disturbing feels and so I’ve recreated a round concrete room with some TVs and some hard to see CCTV cameras with Blender. On those screens I’ve put some videos from different CCTVs (one from Abbey Road, one from a bar in Malaysia and other one that represented violence, everyday life and so on) with After Effects and I used it also to export the video. There are two different screens (that doesn’t show CCTV footage) and those are the ones where the camera is at the beginning and the opposite one. The first one represents the crowd, the population, us and leads the viewer to identify himself with the people in the screens and the opposite one that is, in fact, the opposite, the “big brother” that “sees all, knows all”. Even if that last screen is maybe too much explanatory I really liked the feel of this big eye watching you and especially using Google Cardboard it feels pretty weird. It’s worth noticing that all the tv, apart the eye, shuts down at the same moment at 30 seconds from the end forcing the viewer to watch that eye until the end.

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Jenny Holzer @TATE Modern

I visited the artist room about Jenny Holzer at the TATE Modern. I didn’t knew her but I really liked her artworks. She’s a lot into human right and a lot of the works are about that theme and we can see that from that first room in which the walls are covered in text about that topic.

It was really interesting to see how Holzer is able to work with a really different variety of materials and media. In the main room we see a huge LED bar, some marble seats and a series of plaques. Those are very different materials and media but the ability to carry her message always shines through. On every artwork we can see sentences about human rights and, needless to say, to one that excite me the most was LED bar.

In the second room there is the artwork that I liked the most in this exhibition: a series of LED bars “supported” to the wall with a series of sentences on both the visible side and the other hidden behind with different colours (blue and red) to rehiterate the messagge. I’ve tried to take a picture of that but my Nokia 301 does not have a really good camera and colours where a bit off so I’ve downloaded a picture from the gallery.

In the last room there was another LED bar with Interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch with former detainees from Syria and, on the other side of the room, a sewed army sleeping bag with some pieces of interview with current and former members of the British military.

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Black Mirror

I visited Saatchi Gallery for an exhibition called Black Mirror (art as social satire). I liked this one but it wasn’t my favourite. What I really liked was that the space was huge and some artworks make use of that. One of them is the huge monolith/VHS of 2001 A Space Odyssey that I found both ironic and meaningful.

Another one is Coal Mirror which is, literally, a black mirror, made by coal.

What I didn’t like is that a lot of room where pretty much empty with only photographs on the wall and it felt wrong.

At last, there were a lot of artwork about social unrest. That is the part that I found most interesting. At first I saw a series of photographs about a family in which the husband is an alcoholic and the wife is an heavy smoker with a passion for animals.

But the artwork that I really loved was an installation of low design (and maybe fake) commercial posters of all kind of activities from hair implant to fight classes.

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3js

Here are my three experiments in 3js.

For the first one I’ve experimented with lights and shadows. I’ve put two lights behind a sphere and tried to create something like a light setup for an interview avoiding the key light to see the lights behind.

For the second one I’ve used the same sphere but I’ve added a texture map. I’ve also imported a couple of 3D objects to see how that works (and to add a touch of christmas).

Last but not least I’ve merged that techniques and imported the 3D benchy and put an animated light over it to see shadows with a moving light. 

Here’s a link to download the three projects. The only way I’ve found to see them (especially the last one that include an animation) is to open the 3js editor (https://threejs.org/editor/) and import the “app.json” file.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YO-zhuqLVl45T-8CxVMKqfnj5O9dJAlH

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Awkward Narcissism

Talking about social media seems natural to start talking about Facebook. Among all the artworks that are available about this platform, one stand out the most for me: Rachel by Rachel Perry Welty. The artist constrained herself to the Facebook status dictum, answering every minute of the day the status bar of Facebook (at the time) “What are you doing ?”. That’s genius, I think, because even if the site itself asks for this information, I don’t think that even Zuckerberg thought someone to follow that advise so literally. The result is great, in my opinion, and shows how destructive a “vow” to a social media could be (even for only few hours). The artist herself said that this experience was excruciating because she could not achieve anything that day.

Continuing to watch to the big players, artist Benjamin Grosser, made few browser plugins which changes drastically how you see social media websites like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or Gmail. The most interesting I think is Go Rando. This plugin picks a random emotion for your Facebook reactions. This is done because “Facebook uses your “Like” activity to target ads, to decide which posts appear on your News Feed, and to manipulate your emotions as part of its own studies of human behavior.”. To avoid this kind of manipulation, this plugin fills your reactions with random one making the algorithm useless and unable of tracking your emotions.

The last one is the most ironic: “Tender”. This project is at the same time really simple but also interesting. It works so much because there’s a common believe that guys always swipe right (common enough to have some memes) and also because the object that swipe is a piece of meat. I loved that decision because it focus the attention on how girls are seen just as a piece of meat by a lot of guys and in a sexist society like ours I think that’s a nice touch.

For my experiment, inspired by Benjamin Grosser, would be nice to create a plugin that converts (analyzing the text) Facebook or Twitter statuses with emojis. That would make the web a better place I think.

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Session 6

Task 1: Youku vs YouTube

I’m a big Youtube watcher and looking to his chinese “competitor” sounded interesting.

Looking at their homepages we can see a lot of similarities but also some specific trait.

We have the same basic structure (with search bar on top and a big banner just under it) but Youtube looks more professional in his design while Youku looks more poor. We can see the opposite happening for the videos. I’ve started a small “sidebar adventure” (the column of related videos on the right of the screen present on both site) and what I saw is pretty interesting. While on the american site there is a lot of low quality videos, it was really hard for me to find something like that on the chinese one. It looks to me like Youku hosts mostly high quality contents with some kind of medium to high production value (paid probably by the fact that there’s a lot of non skippable ad per video). On that side, if the quality is higher, it looks to me that Youku is not so accessible as Youtube that allows everybody to enter the streaming platform.

Searching videos on Youku was not a easy task. The website is chinese only and even if translating it with Google translate made it somehow understandable, searching with only latin alphabet gives pretty much no results because but translating in chinese was a different story. With that search term, the sites showed me a lot of conferences, movies, tutorials and documentaries (like Ted talks and even one from the BBC) about art from making painting to design things but I found the strangest thing scrolling a little bit more. Between other videos popped up the Netflix original documentary series “Abstract”. A little premise is needed because, even if Youtube is blocked in China, Netflix is not but that looked strange anyway to me because you don’t find Netflix movies on Youtube. I’ve clicked the link and the thing is more complex than it looked. I’ve been redirected to another site (https://www.imeiju.cc) that looked to me like one of that shady illegal streaming website and there, the whole documentary (an not only that) is available to watch for free. I found that even more strange when you think to all the censorship that there is on the chinese internet and one of the biggest streaming website of the nation have links to some kind of illegal (I’m even doubting that that’s illegal in China) streaming website.

What the two sites have in common are the huge numbers. We’re talking about one billion hours of content being watched on YouTube every day and 800 million daily video views for Youku. Both companies have been acquired by two internet colossus: Google (for youtube) and Alibaba (for Youku).

What I found more interesting is the fact that while Youtube is created to fit a worldwide audience (with a lot of localization all around the world) Youku is tailored for China making it really effective for that market but really hard to understand for an outsider.

Task 2

This is a video I’ve made based on the “Shooting star meme” starring a friend of mine.

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Life on screen

For this reflections I’ve focused on three really different kind of screen. What’s in common with them is the fact that, screens nowadays, passively rule our word. With miniaturization and technological progress, we started to put screens everywhere and this is needed because of the digitalization of every item we use: audio equipment, for example, was only made of transistors, valves and needles, today, with DACs and audio processor everything is controlled with few buttons and a screen. Even fridges are morphing into computers more than mere house appliance.

The first artwork is more a technological achievement more than art itself but I found that pretty intriguing. The “Camera obscura” is the working principle of all video and photo cameras and is the phenomenon that occurs when a scene at the other side of a screen is projected through a small hole in that screen as a reversed and inverted image on a surface opposite to the opening. I found it fascinating because I’ve visited one in Edinburgh and it was a really cool experience. What is really impressive is the detail and the vividness of the image that is projected on the table (that became the screen) with only the use of mirrors and natural sunlight. That building was built with the goal to impress the public and it’s always been an attraction and it works like that. I can imagine impressing it visitors in 1835 (year when it opened to the public) because of the technological implication of it and it works now because it’s amazing to see it in relationship with the history of the photography or of technology in general. What’s weird about it is that the attraction is the screen itself, nothing more. The building is one of the tallest in the old town and is open on top with a breathtaking view of the whole city. You basically pay a ticket to see a reflection of what you’ve just saw with your naked eye and if you think about it in that way it suddenly changes your experience.

Second artwork is “Can you see me now” from the art collective Blast theory. This mashup of online game and art performance is really interesting and make me think about how your actions on the web have a feedback in the real world. Today, with smartphones, that is nothing to be impressed by (someone said Pokemon GO?) but even seventeen years after that artwork was made, the concept that either online or offline, you are the same person is not entirely understood. I think that a lot of hate speech or meanness that you can find online is because a lot us think that our online avatar is a different person from us.

Last one is something in between an artwork and a marketing campaign. Italian rock group Subsonica teamed up with Google+ to make fans able to interact with the band on the live stage. The band members weared special jackets with screens that looped ten gifs made by fan. I found that interesting because screen are usually used in live music either for make the audience empathize (with details of the band members) or to create a new experience with videos or animations. This experiment joined those two goals because even if those were just simple gifs, them were made by fans and, as added bonus, them were on the members and not on external monitors. In this case screens made a close connection between band members and his audience.

For my project I've created a mockup of a website. This page is about The "depersonalization" that internet could create as we talked before. As soon you land on the page, a pic of you from your webcam is shot and, after that, your face is printed on top of some social media platform reiterating the fact that, onilne or offline, you are always you.

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Tactical media

I think that art (tactical media especially) have the power to make people see a different point of view overcoming their instinctive first barrier and, somehow like satire, castigat ridendo mores (“laughing corrects morals”) but, instead of make us laugh, it makes us think.

Even if I really like that kind of rebellion, I also think that we should do that inside the boundaries of our civil society. The term “civil disobedience” works perfectly because it explains really well the idea to bend the rules from the inside.

Breaking the law is sometimes the only way to attract the public’s attention and it worked really well for Zevs with his Visual kidnapping, kidnapped a girl from a Lavazza’s ad in Paris.

Even if that artwork is really spectacular, I liked a lot more Hello mr. president from Johannes Gees. I think that this artwork is really effective because, in its simplicity, shows the power of communication and dialog and it is done to be viewed by the world economic forum. That artwork projects sms sent by strangers on a hill and that give the power for the people to talk to forum itself and share their thoughts.

The artworks that inspired me this time are really different from the two we talked about. First one are the POV glasses from Aram Bartholl and the second a graffiti from Banksy.

Those artworks are really low-tech unlike the other two but they made me think a lot. The graffiti is the one who started everything. I found that ironic, at first, but then I’ve realized the message behind that: people’s privacy. Thinking about it and merging that idea with the glasses from Bartholl I’ve came up with some sort of cardboard cover to apply over security cameras in order to make people and cars invisible to them.

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Ocado reflection

I was really excited when I first learned about the Ocado assignment, first of all because I like working with After Effects (and I think that every time I use that software I learn something more about it) and especially because I’ve never done a real work for such a big company. As an intern I’ve paginated a book for a small publishing house in Ancona but you can easily tell that this assignment was far more important than that. Everything started to get real when the chief artistic director and the photographer from Ocado went to our class to explain us the brief for the ad and that was pretty much as I was expecting it: straightforward and concise. They explained what they’ve expected from us and off we went, started to research what kind of visual style they use for their ads and think about what we could do.

Being a teamwork, I need to say who my partner was: Margherita Cantiani. I’m here with her in my erasmus and she was the obvious and easy choice and that’s my first thought about this project. As said, choose her as my partner was the easy way to get the work done both because we live in the same house and because we’ve already work together on many projects and we know the  weaknesses and the strengths of the two of us and how to relate with those. I know that, working with her, was going to get us the most, professionally speaking but, on the other hand, it could’ve been an interesting situation to work with someone far from me and with a different background. That said, I don’t regret our decision to work together because, being so physically close, allowed us to talk about ideas anytime we wanted.

The relationship with Ocado continued when we visited their offices and I was really pleased to see that they really cared about us, it really make me feel like a part of the team even if for few hours. I didn't expect that at all and it really make like I really wanted to do something to be proud of, even more than a normal assignment.

In the meantime we researched the brand on the web and on social medias in order to understand what their style is for their advertisement. We spotted that unicolours, top down photos, simple animations, photos of real food (and not drawings) were used. We added all of that to the creative proposition “The world’s foods at your fingertips” and to the demographic of reference and we started a brainstorm reach for some ideas. After a bit, we came up with two main ideas: first one was an animation of a stylized guy, holding a groceries basket, who stumbles and, as soon as the basket would’ve hit the ground, all kind of food from all over the world would’ve explode from the basket itself; the second one, that was also the one that we choose, played around the roundness of the logo, making the letters from Ocado bounce and transform those into food every time they would’ve bounce on the “floor” of the screen. We focused on the second one because we felt like it would’ve been the right amount of challenge for the time that has been given to us. While the first one would’ve been more visually striking it would’ve been technically easier because the animation should not have remembered an organic movement (like in the second one) and it also didn’t fit very well with the ad style of Ocado.

So, for the final animation we started to think what we already knew we could do and what kind of knowledge we needed in order to solve the problems that we could have met.

Having already worked with the Adobe suite we knew how to integrate the workflow between After effects (to animate the whole video), Photoshop (to edit the photos of the food we choose) and Illustrator (to extract and edit the materials given by Ocado) and add to that Ableton live for the soundtrack. But those were not the main problems.

What we needed to learn, on the other hand, were the key aspect of that animation: how to make the food bounce in a realistic way (like a bouncing ball), how to work in the 3D environment of After effects in order to create realistic shadows to make them pop from the background (because using only the shadow effect, that would’ve follow the rotation of the objects), how to use null objects to create a continuous animation and link the food to them (in order to have a seamless animation through the whole video) and how to join all together (because we feared that with no transactions between the nations the video would’ve seems weird).

The first problem we solved was the use of the null objects: we found out that with only five objects (one for each letter) we could’ve create a single animation for the whole video. That also meant that, if we would’ve had any problem with the bouncing animation, we would’ve edit only five objects instead of twenty-five. First problem solved, but that one was the easiest make the animation was the real challenge.

Looking online on how to make a realistic animation, we found out that we could’ve use Ae’s expressions. Those are code-like expressions that make an object behave in any way you want. We found a simple expression that looked like we could use and we were pretty excited but after a whole day trying to get that working we gave up and decided, in the end that, for a twenty second video, it was not worth all that effort and that we could’ve done that by hand making the animation. We wouldn't develop it by hand because we know how difficult it is to animate something to make it looks realistic but time was not on our side and even if with expression, the bounce would’ve been perfect, we think we’ve achieved a good result. We choose to make them by hand only because we needed to make only five bounce animations, if we would’ve needed more than that we would’ve probably tried to make the expression work.

Making the shadows was really satisfying because I really like when the computer does the work for me but we made a pretty huge mistake there. We added the shadows as last thing and we activated the 3D function of Ae only in the end. That should be a pretty normal thing but when we moved the objects from the background (on the Z axis) all the other dimensions messed up and we had to redo almost half of the rotating animations for the food. Next time we’ll activate the 3D as first thing, I won't do that mistake once again.

The last problem revealed not to be a problem. When we joined all together everything worked more than we thinked. That was not random because we choose to use the music from the U.S.A. to end the video and that really helped to tie all together. Next time we’ll believe more into our ideas.

We thought that we’ve made a good work and we were really proud of it, last step was to present it to the Ocado team. When the day arrived, we were pretty nervous but everything went really well. We’ve received a lot of congratulations and the whole team was satisfied by both our video and our presentation.

All in all I think that everything went well. I now know how to manage time for a project like this and far I can push myself. Next time I’ll probably try to end the work earlier than the day before the deadline because that’s pretty nerve-wracking and even it’s not the first time that I promise myself that I know that, sooner or later I will achieve this.

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Hooked

Last week I went to “Hooked”, an exhibition about addictions at the Science museum. It was very interesting and it was particularly focused on digital addictions. This kind of topic is the one that art can explore the better because it’s current and we can’t see the “big picture” while we’re in that, art can give us a different perspective. Just like cocaine was used as a medication, smartphone and technology could have adverse consequences on us but, in the end, it make feels us so alive, isn’t it? I don’t think that’s the future but only time will tell us.

The work that I like the most was an interactive installation in which the user played two games: the first one was a digital version of  Whac-A-Mole where, instead of the moles, you had eyes to catch; the second one was a slot machine like game with body parts instead of numbers.

The crazy part is that, for the whole game your eyes are tracked by a webcam on top of the monitor but you don’t know that until the very end when a nice graph shows you where you focused the most. I think that’s really effective to show how easy it is to track our body language in order to do anything we want with that data and it’s impressive because, if you sit on that strange chair and play the game, you don’t see that coming and you ask yourself what this artwork is about.

Other two works that I really liked were “Sugar rush” and “No change”.

The first one is a sugar tea table which is destroyed by tea. This work is both ironic and pessimist. I don’t wanna try to explain that one because I think that can be interpreted in a lot of different ways but what I liked is that “Sugar rush” makes you think about a substance like sugar, that it’s not obvious, and, above all, it does it in an exhibition about addictions.

Last one was a pretty funny one and I won't spoil you how it works. All I can say that there is a red box on the wall with two slot for the coin and two coin on top of the box itself. You choose what to do.

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ACE full report

As an Erasmus student, this was my first assignment in an university in the Uk and I am really satisfied by it (even if I was pretty skeptical at first). The Assessment Centre Experience goal is to start to achieve confidence with a simulated assessment situation and, the only way to achieve that is by experiencing it. All in all I think it was a good test for me and a productive day. Here’s how it went.

As soon as we arrived we were welcomed in the Sir Elton John Suite at the Watford stadium, by the assessment team that reassured us, gave us the informations for the day and explained how everything would’ve work. Even if I was a bit nervous, being in a suite room just above a football’s club stadium was an exciting event for me especially because I went only once in a stadium in my life. That helped me to calm myself and to focus on my tasks for the day. My biggest fear was the language because not being a native english speaker and being here for only two months, I was scared that i couldn’t express myself at my best (in which I’m really good in italian) so I promised myself to do my best in order to compensate for that. We had three training exercises, a presentation about a topic chosen by us (from a given list), a group exercise and a one-on-one interview. My order for the day was: one-on-one, presentation and, lastly, the group exercise. For the role, I’ve choose to apply for the Creative Technologist because it was the closest one to my studies and because I felt like that i could have fit the description.

The one-on-one interview was the one I feared the most but has turned out to be the one in which I succeeded the most. I was glad to start with that because I wanted to do that as soon as possible. The recruiter was very kind and he started to ask questions about why I’ve chosen that kind of work, what are my strength or weakness, how I like to work on creative projects and, as a last question, if I had anything to ask him. That last one, I must admit, got me confused and as I started to talk, just so i wouldn’t be silent, he stopped me because he saw that I was not prepared for that question and he explained me that, in a case like that, it would be awesome if I would’ve ask something inherent the company that I could found from the news or about any of their projects on the internet that impressed me. It bother me because I actually saw the website of the company and they have an interesting ad (for non-government organisation BRAC) in which a cathode-ray tube Tv is sent into space with a weather balloon and I would’ve ask were that Tv went after the balloon exploded (and the subsequent freefall) and how they achieved the permits to do an experiment like that because I don’t think that it is so straightforward to send Tv into space. Even if that last part wasn’t so good, i think that this interview went pretty well, I’m really satisfied about that and i think that it was the most successful exercise of the day. The thing that I am most proud of is that even if I’ve got some troubles (a bit of fear and the language), the assessor didn’t noticed that at all and he actually ticked with, not one, but two positive ticks my relaxed body language and my enthusiasm and noticed that there is little to work on and that I’m an “excellent base to build on”.

The second one was the presentation. I was in a group with only one other guy from engineering. He hadn’t a powerpoint presentation but only some notes with him but his presentation was really interesting. He talked about artificial intelligence, how that technology could change our world, the work in companies and factories, everyday life and the security and ethical challenges that this kind of automation will face us. From the list of topics, I’ve chose this one: “Present the major challenges faced by independent filmmakers at this time and suggest strategies for overcoming them.”. Studying filmmaking in Italy, I felt pretty confident about that topic and I’ve prepared a Powerpoint presentation about the three main challenges that I’ve spotted (competition with other filmmakers, price of the equipment and the knowledge of the medium itself), some ideas on how to fight them (originality, study the media) and some examples (still frames and videos from major blockbuster movies and an example from a really bad movie). I was spot on time, finishing my last sentence at the end of the five minutes mark. The feedback was a mixed bag of feeling. On one end this confirmed the first one because the assessor wrote that I had good eye contact, I emphasised my explanation, that the topic was well researched and that I made a good use of the computer. On the other end, she ticked that I had no visual aids to support the messaging and that the visual aids were complex and difficult to understand and I’m sorry about that because with the examples I thought that my presentation would’ve been pretty clear but it wasn’t the case. I think that I’m used to talk about this topic with people who have the same background that I have but, doing so, maybe I’ve missed some basic information that I take for granted but that in reality are not.

Last one was the group exercise. I am a quiet guy and I was worried that I would’ve been completely silent if the topic of the project we’ve been given wouldn’t be interesting for me. In the end, the subject was interesting and funny: help “The Galleria” (Hatfield’s shopping center) to attract new customers and retain old ones. We came out with the idea of create an app with a news feed which would show events, discounts and infos about the shopping center. We also came up with a couple of events: a marathon (which would’ve been great for the sport shops, for the gear and for the restaurants for the food) and a world food fair (because the restaurants have different kind of food from around the world). I was silent for most of the time but I had two ideas that were quite useful. The first one was the world food fair and, the second one (but also the most important) was the news feed for the app. At the beginning we thought about a menu with different categories (students, family, over 60, events and so on) but I’ve realized that this kind of layout would’ve been messy and not so easy to use for everyone. So I thought to simplify that creating a feed that would’ve bring together all the news and color coding every one of them by the said categories. In this way the fruition of the news is more easy and streamlined and I was satisfied with that idea. Unlikely the previous feedback, this one is a bit more harsh but I deserved it. The only tick in the whole table was in “Makes sensible, balanced and fact based contributions to the discuss”. At least it is a positive one. As I thought, the positive observations are about how helpful my influence was on the group, how engaged I was by the project and how I presented my ideas with confidence. On the other hand, my biggest problem here is that I talked really rarely and, as the assessors make me notice, I cannot be evaluated if I don’t make any contribution to the the discussion. I must find a way to express myself and to show my ideas even if i’m not totally comfortable with the assigned task. Of course the linguistic barrier didn’t helped me but because the previous success i don’t feel like I can hide behind that excuse.

Time for the conclusions. This experience was really helpful and I really enjoyed it. To be honest, the first time that I’ve heard what would’ve been the first assignment for that module I was pretty shocked because, in Italy, we are not used to that kind of test as we usually have theoretical exams but I was pleasantly surprised. Experiencing a situation like that is not something that you can learn on books and the only way to learn about it is to live it, receive a feedback from someone who knows more than you that have an objective view of the situation and, in the end, learn from your mistakes because practice makes perfect. I’m really glad that I had this opportunity as I think that this assignment gave me some real and practical instruments for a situation that I certainly will live in the near future.

Here is the link with the folder containing my CV, my presentation, my cover letter, my application form, evidence from the training sessions and my feedback for the day.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19NgXl-TkPaNT8Q0YjzdUHIEcVZBzTwRE/view?usp=sharing

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ACE training sessions

The training sessions with Jo were really helpful. As I’ll say in the complete report, i was pretty skeptical about that assignment but the examples, the videos and the enthusiasm that Jo shows us were really encouraging. She showed us the basics for the recruitment day and I’ve really appreciate it because I’ve never done anything like that. I really enjoyed all the tips that she gave us for example how to read, understand and look for what the recruiter will search for in a job description, how to shake our hands, how anybody in the room (or even from the moment you step out your home’s door) could be your recruiter for the day and how it’s important to be professional with them, how to behave in the group exercise and so on. Evidence of the training sessions and the application form are in the folder linked in the full report.

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p5.js

Here’s my three experimentations with p5js coding.

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Net Art

Net artist uses the web in different way, someone completely digital and other in a more physical way.

An example that i loved is Red Lines by Evan Roth (http://www.evan-roth.com/work/redlines/) in which the artist try to show us two things. The first and most recognizable is the world looked through the infrared light that we don’t see with our eye. The second one (and the one I loved the most) is a peer to peer network which shows not online the connection between us and the server which stores the video (that is located where the video was shoot) but also the IPs of other people that are watching creating a something like a live social event around the web. Not without reason, the page of the project shows a screen with the sharing site The Pirate Bay.

A more physical approach is used by Julian Oliver with his Solitary Confinement which is a “non-interactive installation comprising a computer quarantined within a glass vitrine that has been deliberately infected with the Stuxnet Virus. It sits in a vitrine, powered on, with one end of a red ethernet network cable that is connected to the gallery network laying unplugged near the port on the PC. The vitrine cover is screwed down and the cable cannot be accessed.” ( https://julianoliver.com/output/solitary-confinement ). I love this kind of approach because it makes real and tangible a kind of infection that  is usually only virtual.

Last one is Laimonas Zakas who tried to break the barriers of a fixed social media like Twitter with his glitched account ( https://twitter.com/glitchr_ ). Here, what we see, it’s pretty straightforward but equally interesting. Breaking the rules of an existing platform and explore possibilities that were not coded by the developers is a sort of web anarchy.

My work is a representation of a user in trouble that tries to avoid all the doubtful informations that crowd the internet.

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Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt

I recently went to the Victoria and Albert Museum where there is (from 08/09/2018 to 24/02/2019) an interesting exhibition: Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt. This exhibit it’s worth its pricy ticket even if you’re not a videogame player but also if you are into tech and PCs. For a player, though there’s for sure an added value. In the first part of Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, a lot of sketches, storyboard, behind the scenes and researches done by the development teams of the selected games are shown. Some of sketches or storyboards are works of art by itselfs and if you’ve played the game, a shiver will run down your spine while you see, for example, the entire storyboard of The last of us hanging in its entirety in front of you (spoiler alert) or the sketches from which the main character of Journey took form.

After all of that, you can view (projected on an huge ledwall) four short movies about multiplayer games and competitive gaming which is a growing up community.

The last section is more interactive and we can experiment with our hands some indie games and other that (like Line Wobbler http://wobblylabs.com/projects/wobbler ) are worth playing only with a strange kind of controller.

As said, the exhibition is really worth visiting and I was really excited after that. Now I can say that all the hours spent on Zelda are for an artistic purpose and not (only) for fun.

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What a wonderful day to ǵ̞͇͖̈̈́͜͠l͎̱̀́̒͢itc̙͉͡͞h̼͘

I’m always been interested in technology and how to make art with it. I like to use PCs as tool with endless possibilities so, as soon as Julian said that glitch art was made just by opening an image in a text editor and modify some random bits I was excited to try it out.

I started to play with some random pics i found on my drive opened them with an hex editor and changed some values, deleting entire rows of code or copy-paste section of numbers elsewhere in the editor. The results were the following.

As soon as I was pleased with the images, I thought that I could have tried that with some music (because I’m a big music fun and a musician myself) and so I took this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtF4O8OGcLI , followed the same procedure as above, and this is what came out.

I’ve, in the end, decided to try to bring this two elements (glitched images and music), together. For the image side I’ve used Processing, a coding software very used in glitch art and datamoshing. I’ve used this code for Processing in order to create a glitched animation https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/13491# .

Julian, in his class, talked about a software called Supercollider that is a platform for audio synthesis and algorithmic composition. I thought if it would’ve been possible to make Processing and Supercollider “talk” to each other and make the animation sounds. Searching on google i’ve found that guide https://funprogramming.org/138-Processing-talks-to-SuperCollider-via-OSC.html and adapting the code to my image. This is what I (or my pc) came up with. 

The result of the animation wasn’t as nice as I’ve excepted but, as a first experiment, I’ve been really pleased with the outcomes.

P.S.: My computer obviously started to hate me for those experiments because he hided Supercollider from my launchpad and i cannot find it anymore.

L.