My final project is essentially going to refine my most recent project, so people making themselves small with little to no threat or reward. Reminder image here:
One of the issues with this project when I presnted it recently is the program was shooting out the pixel value of a person within the canvas. My intention was not for this, but for it to give the “percentage of person” compared to their previous percentage.
Say you’re standing at full height, facing the camera. Your size or pixel value should be 100%, then if you were to double over your size or pixel value should be 80%, and then if you laid down and got as small as physically possible, maybe your size or pixel value would be somewhere near 60%. This was the intention, but not the outcome, and one of the things I would like to fix in the adjusted version. This way there won’t be priority given to people with naturally smaller figures.
I feel like because this makes the person’s initial size much more important, I’ll also need to figure out a way to make the “game” elements much cleaner and easier to navigate. EX: “stand in the frame,” game auto starts, “make yourself as physically small as possible,” timer and pixel value are clear at all times to viewer. This way it can be operated by anyone and they will have clear preparatory instructions without me just talking at them. I don’t want to have to sit behind a screen during the showcase.
I still don’t want it to be too game-y in a kitschy sense, so it’ll probably be closer to an interactive art piece. The thing that encourages people to interact is the main point of contention as far as my thought process, and it’s the portion I think I could use the most input on. I have a lot of ideas and I feel kind of okay-ish about them all.
Some of those ideas:
- physical output (golan mentioned receipt printer, but open to other ideas here) example here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thart2009/53094225345
- scoreboard on a separate monitor
- website with compiled images of people at their smallest
- email sent to participants of their photo(s)
- some other form of data visualization or image reproducing (???)
Like I mentioned above, these all feel kind of “meh.” Either I’m interested in it, but it feels disjointed from the general vibe of the project, or it fits well with the project, but I don’t really care about it as a concept. I liked Heidi’s word choice of “turtleing” and I think there are ways the game/interaction could become more specialized like that. Like, this isn’t just “getting small,” its repeating a familiar/symbolic gesture. (using my bus example,) “rush hour [bus line], with the instruction to get small, and a receipt printout with some “thanks for riding” -esque text.
I’m most concerned about unnecessarily weighing it down, which I think the above concept may do, but I think it might be (?) in my favor to think about things that way. IDK!