Final Project: Week 1

For my final project, I would like to continue to explore the comparison of type as content and as form. Specifically I want to show how words can be deconstructed into individual characters, reconstructed as new words, and then can be shaped into completely new and unrecognizable forms. The basic idea is as follows:

The project needs: one touch-screen monitor (as large as we can obtain), one microphone, and one computer.

The touch screen monitor will be mounted on a white wall at approximate eye level. In front of the monitor and to the right will be a pedestal/stand where the microphone will sit.

When someone speaks in or near the microphone, the words will be captured and displayed in a random position on the screen. On the touch screen, the viewer can then drag and arrange letters of the words they or others have spoken. After displayed, the words will have an (as yet undetermined) time frame where they can still be draggable. They will slowly fade to light gray. When they reach their lightest level, they will be undraggable.

The now immovable letters will form a background collage of letters that will begin to lose all content upon repeated overlap, then becoming simply shape. New words upon appearing above the background will be black and thus distinguishable from the background. I plan to allow the letters to be movable for a considerable amount of time so that people can manipulate (visually) both words they have just spoken and words that others have recently spoken. The fade to light gray of old words and letters will allow new words to be visible. I imagine that the program can be reset if the gray also becomes too muddled itself.

In addition to this manipulation of spoken word, I also want to show the general alterations that language undergoes. Spoken word is recorded and altered as it becomes written type. But once it undergoes this change, it can then experience a new change as it becomes line, shape, and eventual abstraction.

I created a new Flash sketch that built upon the memory wall sketch and incorporated some of the elements discussed above. The keyboard acts a input device activating letters hidden about the screen. The viewer can then move these characters around creating words or shapes. In the current sketch, I have not yet incorporated the fade to gray and inactivity. The letters are also in separate locations where as in the final installation, I want words to appear complete to start. The deconstruction of words into individual letters will be an act of the viewer on the touch screen.

Here is the current form of this final project sketch.

Sketch 3: Week 2

My general ideas for the memory wall involved a recorded path that type could form across a surface. For the new version of the memory wall, I wanted to include the input and recording (memory) of typed words.

I had planned to use a similar form as the earlier version. Rather than the rollover activation, though, I wanted keys pressed to trigger the corresponding letters in the movie clip in random locations on the screen. I had difficulties involving randomness and depth and could only affect one clip at a time. This prompted me to focus on an individual letter (and helped by simplifying the process for the sketch).

Involving aspects of the animated text example from the last class and my previous week's version of this sketch, I used the input text to trigger changes in the buttons. This allowed me to create new multiple copies of the same movie clip (or letter) that could become superimposed upon one another. I added a slight increase in the x position with each newly created clip, thus producing a left-to-right path with the overlap.

By using a single larger image, I was able to explore more of the aesthetics of the created path. It caused me to look at the screen (or wall) as a blank canvas and encouraged me to include a button that would clear the screen. This way, a user could restart and create a new composition. The variety of possible compositions (and differences between them) particularly interests me.

For the future, I would like to more fully integrate the idea of path. The large letters when clustered only form a slight horizontal progression. I would like to see inputted text to travel along a line determined by the content typed. Continuing from this specific week's sketch, I would like to explore variations in overlap and degrees of clustering also based on the content of what is typed.

Here is the current form of the memory wall.