Initial Organisation Emails

An important aspect of this unit was correspondence with charity and human rights organisations to gain information, means of aiding our represented political prisoners and even potential promotion, as their followers potentially knowing about our project could boost our audiences when it comes to exhibition, etc.

As this was something I didn’t feel the project was ready for in the previous unit, my aim was to get to a developed enough stage where it would be early on in the EMP. The conceptual idea was much more developed and the treatment was complete, meaning the beginning of correspondence could start.

I knew the main organisations I wanted to contact (Amnesty, Burma Campaign UK, The Assistance Association For Political Prisoners (AAPP – Burma) IranHumanRights.org, FreeGao (Via ChinaAid), HRIC (Human Rights in China) and they would be good places to start, however, the popularity of Facebook allowed me to tap into much more specific campaigning groups, giving me the possibility of accessing information much more directly.

To begin with, I felt emailing the larger organisations as a starting point was the logical thing to do and decided that writing a general message about the project would be the most efficient way of sending the first email out to these organisations, modifying each slightly by changing names and countries accordingly. This was my template email (* = text to be added):

‘Incarcerated: An interactive installation piece portraying *’s struggle.

Hello,

 My name is Al Hodgson and I’m part of a small arts collective currently studying at the Arts University Bournemouth, UK.

 We’ve recently begun working on an interactive installation project titled ‘Incarcerated’, focusing on political imprisonment in Iran, Burma and China. This incarceration will be represented through the plight and struggle of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng and Burmese human rights activist Zaw Zaw Aung.

The aim of the project is not only to raise awareness for these three prisoners and others like them, but to also encourage audience members to actively involve themselves with the call for their immediate release and for human rights reform in these countries.

 However, because we plan to portray *’s unjust incarceration and struggle, I felt it important that we contact you for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we were hoping to attain more information about *’s back-story and current conditions to help us achieve the most effective representation of them in our piece, and secondly, we hoped to find out what you believe to be the most effective method of helping aid *’s release (for example petition signing, donation, letter writing, etc) so that we can accommodate these methods during the exhibition of our project.

 Further information about the project can be found in the attached .PDF proposal, yet if you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask. I hope this project can become a collaborative representation of * and other political prisoners alike, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

– Al and the rest of the team.’

After modifying each message and sending it to the larger organisations, I moved on to the Facebook campaigns as a more direct means of gathering information and promoting the project Facebook page as this could mean much wider following of ‘Incarcerated’s’ Facebook page. This meant constructing a slightly different message template with this paragraph.

‘As we plan to portray *’s unjust incarceration and struggle, I felt it important that we contact you as we felt we should ask whether it is acceptable for us to tag your Facebook group in the pictures on our page that feature *. We hope this will promote your group, our project and above all, the campaign for *’s freedom.’

Feedback from all my initial emails (Facebook and otherwise) was not instant (with some not happening at all), yet after some waiting there was a fair amount of response. Groups representing Iranian political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh responded very positively, which has the potential of being massively beneficial as the official Nasrin campaign page (below) has over 60000 followers:

Also, information gained from a response from the AAPP Burma Facebook page proved massively beneficial to the project (albeit changing it’s course), making me realise the importance of trying to stay current. They informed me of the amazing news that Zaw Zaw Aung, the Incarcerated political prisoner from Burma who I was representing, had been released:

His release was not widely documented due to the quantity of Burmese political prisoners released at that time due to increase UN pressure for Burmese political reform. This demonstrated to me the importance of being able to change the political prisoners the project represents without too much negative implication, as if this project is to have longevity, multiple charity involvement and be used to represent multiple political prisoners, it must be able to cope with the freedoms of the prisoners it represents… Otherwise that would defeat the soul aim of the project. So overall, this hurdle was just good practice in the long-term development of the project.

As for the larger organisations however, I knew that due to their amount of correspondence it would take a while for them to respond if at all. So I planned to contact them by phone, as I felt that would most likely be the most effective means of contact.

The Proposal Treament and Sketchup 3D Designs

A hugely important aspect of this unit was to create a project proposal treatment .PDF, which could be sent to venues, organisations and festivals, etc explaining and portraying the project and its intentions in detail. Alongside this, I felt designing 3D Sketchup documents would be beneficial to create a stronger visual comprehension of the piece, both for me and prospective audiences, organisers and venues. The two would then work alongside each other to demonstrate the general intentions, themes, designs, layouts and aesthetics of the project.

To begin with, I felt I should look at a selection of treatments for other charitable installation works as inspiration. Amongst others, Samar Johda’s BHOPAL treatment demonstrated the power of considered aesthetic choices and how a running colour scheme alongside essential project context and information works to make the most effective treatment document. I took this inspiration to the design stage of my own document, discussing it with a third year Graphic Design student friend of mine who had agreed to help me design it.

We began by picking a specific, striking colour scheme (white and orange on grey to bring the text out and highlight certain aspects of the text) and two typefaces to run with throughout the document. This colourscheme later became the general colourscheme of the project; being used on its Facebook page and promotional materials. It also helped us come up with our logo:

The treatment had to inform readers of the piece, it’s context, it’s form, who it represents, the artists involved and some visual information demonstrating the piece. Thusly (and after I had written up all these segments), we decided to chapter these aspects on to separate pages to create a clear and easy read:

• Title page: Project title and tagline.

• Project and Intention page: A brief summary of the project and its intentions, creating an initial understanding of the aims and themes.

• Represented political prisoner page: Demonstrating each political prisoner, their back-story and their country of origin and a clean and simple to understand format.

• Project structure page: Demonstrating the form and structure of the space, the use of audiovisuals, what techniques it will implement and utilize and its long-term exhibition plan.

• Perspective layout page: An overview of Sketchup diagrams and photographs (when available).

• Artist page: Artist bios and images of previous works.

• More info page: Contact details, additional involvement, etc.

This is the first draft of the proposal: Treatment – Web

And this is the most recent updated (yet this will be continually updated throughout summer): treatment 02_04_13

I expected the treatment document to change and develop over time alongside the project; something that it has undoubtedly done. However, early feedback from Liam and Phil about the first draft of the proposal triggered one of the most important changes. It was made clear by them that despite being informative, seeming professional and having considered graphic design, the document would benefit from demonstrating the piece slightly more visually rather than solely through description. This helped me refine the text to make it more reader-friendly to those who it is aimed at, but more importantly led me to using Google Sketchup to design layout plans, which I could then use in and outside of the treatment as a visual depiction of the project.

Understanding Sketchup took little time, and once I had it understood I created the conceptual layout and design that was in my head, taking screen-shots to demonstrate the different angles. At the time, a strong benefit of this process was seeing the piece in a three dimensional environment, helping me consider what may or may not work well. It helped me contemplate projector, audience and interactive trigger placement, the sparseness of the layout and whether or not to include certain items such as toilets, etc. This is an assortment of my most recent designs, without toilets and with updated projections:

Once the treatment document and Sketchups were done, it was just a matter of sending out the most recent versions to potential venues, charity organisations and anyone interested in the project.

EMP Introduction

For this unit I am continuing on from the previous; developing my human rights installation piece to a stage where it is easily exhibitable at any chosen venue. Hopefully by the time of the critique I intend to have exhibited at least once with many more in the pipeline for an exhibition run throughout summer 2013 and onwards.

This unit will incorporate conceptual development, space and projection design, the treatment design, technical testing, material sourcing, charity correspondence and involvement, venue research and organisation, sourcing of funding, promotional material design, construction and potentially exhibition of the project I have now decided to title ‘Incarcerated: Three Countries, Three People, Three Prisoners’.

With the blogging of this unit, rather than linearly documenting the progress of the project as a whole, I have decided to chapter each separate element of production and do one post of each, demonstrating the progress of the specific process throughout the whole unit. Not only will this save me time, but I will be able to summarize my learning and the processes of that aspect of the project, simplifying it for the reader and marking process.

This is my Learning Agreement for my EMP unit:

 

Learning Agreement

Name: Al Hodgson

Course: BA Digital Media Production            Level: 6

Unit: Extended Major Project

Reference number: IMD603

Credit points: 60

Study hours: 600

Tutor(s): Phil Beards, Liam Birtles

Synopsis of study

For my EMP I intend to follow on from the early pre-production stage of my Specialist Project and create an interactive installation highlighting the hardships and injustices of three incarcerated human rights activists; one Chinese, one Burmese and one Iranian, in the aim of raising awareness and aiding the political pressure for their release. It will consist of an interactive room in which audi and mapped visual projection can be experienced by audiences as they explore it. It will be a relatively large-scale project intended for exhibition over a period of 3-6 days at festivals, arts festivals or gallery spaces.

The piece will essentially be a tactile and audio-visual experience interactively initiated by audience members when they enter the space; gradually demonstrating the story and context of these three political prisoners; Zaw Zaw Aung (Burma), Gao Zhisheng (China) and Nasrin Sotoudeh (Iran) *(All subject to change depending on their judicial status). For the crit I intend to have this constructable space exhibitable with at least one of the sets of projections complete.

The main aim of the piece is to create a feeling of empathy within the audience for the experiences of the subject, with the overall intention of encouraging prosocial action through addressing and supporting the activities of relevant human rights organisations (via their preferred method, signing a petition, donating money, letter writing, registering with a charity, etc). Due to this, I plan to considerably focus on the relationship between all the case studies and the interactive experiences to create the most effective empathetic portrayal of each.

I will be contacting a number of human rights organisations in the aim of obtaining in-depth information about the case-studies, audiovisual content and representation of these organisations. I will also be contacting and applying to an array of potential exhibition venues (festivals, exhibition spaces, galleries, abandoned buildings) in the aim of multiple exhibitions over the course of this year.

I plan to also write up a project treatment to represent the piece and for use in sending to venues, collaborators and organisations. I will also set up a project-funding page with an accompanying video to help me achieve my funding goals to take the project further during Summer 2013.

From the previous unit I have developed a collaborative team of partial and full involvement, so I will be collaborating with others in some of the projects many roles, as alone the workload will be too extensive if this project is to be successful.

I will be following on from the previous unit, continuing with technical and experience-based tests and conceptual development to aid the creation of the finalized piece. This will include:

• Technical development; projection, mapping and audiovisuals.
• Development of layout plans, creation of 3D models, full project treatment and sponsor page/video.
• Creation of initial, exhibitable installation experience.

All of the work and development in this unit will be documented on my BA Digital Media Production blog.

Aims:

A1 – To provide you with the opportunities to exercise and enhance your knowledge and abilities in the development of a body of creative and technically competent work appropriate to your course aims and criteria at Level 6.

A2 – To provide opportunities for you to learn from the increased complexity and rigour of creative production required for this unit.

A3 – To encourage you to apply the advanced level of discipline and time-management which are required during the unit.

A4 – To encourage you to work independently, albeit with supervision, in the development of your work, in a way which reflects contemporary professional practice. You are also encouraged to work effectively as a team member where this is demanded by your project or subject specialism.

A5 – To foster an increasing self-awareness in personal planning and development.

Learning outcomes:

On completion of this unit I will be able to:

    LO1 – Demonstrate the ability to rigorously apply specialist knowledge, understanding and creativity in the production of your extended major project.

    LO2 – Demonstrate the ability to manage the complexity of practice demanded by the extended major project by managing your time and work efficiently.

LO3 – Demonstrate ability in the coherent use of various representation techniques, documentation and presentations to specialist and non-specialist audiences.

    LO4 – Demonstrate your awareness of the ethical, social and cultural issues appropriate to the concept of a responsible professional practitioner, whether working independently or as part of a team.

Assessment Requirements

Body of work to be identified through and in the negotiated Learning Agreement 100%

Specialist Project Evaluative Report:

For this unit, I set out to provide the preparatory planning, structuring, prototyping and initial experimentation toward creating an interactive installation focusing on human rights violation. Throughout the unit the idea development for the project has been fairly extensive due to the many different aspects of pre-production that have been covered. Each stage of this pre-production have had their own conceptual, contextual and general issues, but each were overcome in different ways, teaching me huge amounts about the necessary requirements and scale of a project such as this.

I knew from the beginning of the unit that I wanted to create a human rights installation piece, but as a way to initially develop on this idea I researched a selection of contextual examples from other artists, all of which represented a human rights cause. The work of these artists gave me inspiration to develop my idea into a more structured format, leading me to then write an initial proposal to develop on throughout the unit. Initially, I used these proposals as a means of obtaining feedback about the project, but as I refined the ideas and structure of the piece the amended proposals became a way of promoting the piece to potential collaborators and as a tool for promoting the piece.

One of the most important aspects of this unit and the project in general was the human rights and case study research, as this was hugely necessary in finding examples of unjust incarceration and the political contexts behind them.

An aspect of the stage that I did not anticipate however was how much my research within this area would alter the idea development and direction of the piece. Overall it proved massively beneficial in helping me structure the themes, context and narratives of the project and was hugely informative regarding human rights around the world. The decision to represent three political prisoners in three separate countries primarily spawned from extensive research into these case studies and the human rights of their countries, and I feel this was a very positive development of the format of the piece, informing the design of the floor and layout plans and making it more conceptually accessible to potential audiences.

However, the research stage of this unit was not without issues. It was a very long process finding each case study and their background information and political context for example, one which was only managed through many hours of research via human rights organisations and informative articles.

Additionally, deciding which case studies to represent was a very difficult choice, as all had valid reasons why representation would be warranted. Choosing which to represent involved a large amount of discussion and consideration into how it could benefit the project, and in turn be the most effective way of representing the causes. Eventually, despite the case studies I chose potentially not being the most appalling example of human rights denial, I felt tying the three case studies together with a similar cause (that of political imprisonment through being a human rights activist) would be the most effective, resulting in me choosing Iran; Nasrin Sotoudeh, China; Gao Zhisheng and Burma; Zaw Zaw Aung. I intend to continue building my research on these three case studies through continual correspondence with human rights organisations and more of my own extensive research, as if I am to develop a piece around each I will have to obtain more relevant information and audio/visual content.

Another important part of this unit was the experience-based tests I conducted in order to gain a good idea of people’s emotive responses to elements of interactivity, experience and audio/visual content. I felt it very necessary to emulate and represent the themes and potential aspects I planned to represent in the piece, as I needed to know whether they would be effective means of portraying the injustices of the case studies I plan to represent. I felt the most effective means of doing this would be to set up these experience installations, involve a set of willing audience members and ask them a series of questions, documenting their response.

The set up involved constructing three separate experience based tests (one primarily visual and two primarily audio based) in the back room of my house, giving me good practise in installation and audiovisual set up, especially in a space fairly representative of the one I intend for the final piece.

Overall, the findings from these tests were some of the most insightful from all the work during this unit. So much so that I felt the only viable way to discuss my findings and conclusions was to record a piece to camera describing them.

However, these tests did bring about some issues, one being that not all the emotive responses and the conclusions I gained from the tests were ones that I initially anticipated. With the second test for example, my initial assumption was that combination of reading a passage of text and hearing the corresponding monologue would enhance the emotive response, but after conduction the test I realised that almost the opposite was true, leaving me to have to question whether to include or modify that interactive experience within the piece. All in all however, these responses, despite being adverse to my assumptions, can be still be noted as positive and helpful findings, as all demonstrate how audiences would respond to the final piece.

I will continue to carry out tests similar to this one throughout the EMP however, as they were incredibly insightful in terms of gauging audience response to different experiences.

Another large aspect of this unit was the attempt of gaining collaborators to help work on the many different areas of the project, due to it being of a fairly large scale. I managed to gain a selection of collaborators throughout the unit, focusing on aspects of art direction, curation, event management, technical design and construction based roles, and have also gained interest amongst the Digital Media Production second years for taking on aspects of the technical design roles for their Professional Project unit, for which I will be presenting to them on December 4^th.

However, one prevalent issue I faced with this aspect of the unit, was the realisation that finding collaboration was throughout the University was much more difficult than I anticipated. Despite contacting course leaders, course Facebook pages and specific people; I got very little overall response. This hindered progression of certain aspects of the project such as the technical design and development, as I intended to progress through this stage with a collaborator. Thusly, the technical tests were not as extensive as I had planned.

Nonetheless, to combat this issue I broadened my search; promoting the piece through methods not focused within the university. Fortunately, this gained the project some initial collaborators.

Overall, despite not quite being in the position I intended to be in at the end of this unit, I am relatively happy with my position regarding collaboration, as an initial team has been constructed and there is the strong potential of further collaborators in the near future.

During this unit I found theoretical research incredibly helpful in the understanding the concept of interactive installations and the creation of empathy within them. Researching contextual reading from interactive artists like Don Ritter and psychology reports on the subject of empathy and it’s workings in the context of the third person proved beneficial for the conceptual development of the project, as I intend to utilise these aspects in my own project.

The only issue I faced during this stage however, was finding reading material specifically relevant to the creation of empathy in human rights installation art. However, in order to get past this, I focused on reading based around alternate mediums of empathy creation and applied the concepts to my own work, as the information could be translated to interactive installation relatively simply.

Something that I had initially intended on endeavoring to do early in the unit, was contacting relevant human rights organisations regarding information about case studies and to potentially obtain any audiovisual media thereof. However, the development of the project helped me realise that this contact should be made further into the piece’s progress, as it would prove far more beneficial contacting organisations with a strong idea of the themes, case studies and concepts I intended to employ. For example, I came to the realisation that I should concrete my three case studies before contacting human rights organisations for information or media, as contacting prior to this may have seemed uninformed and therefore I may not gain the desired information I required.

So overall I believe my decision of leaving the organisation contact and correspondence until later in the unit was a valuable decision, allowing the project to gain conceptual stability prior.

In conclusion, I am fairly happy with the overall work of the unit. The interactive tests and case study research proved massively fundamental in the idea and project development and vastly helpful in understanding audience relationship and understanding of a piece such as this, whereas some of the logistical aspects, such as the collaboration and technical tests proved slightly more difficult and therefore less constructive or extensive.

But overall I feel the work and findings of this unit have been very helpful in the progression and development of the project and have prepared me for continuing the project towards exhibition in the EMP.

Contextual Research on Interactive Installation and Third Person Empathy:

Throughout this unit and through my dissertation research I have found an abundance of contextual reading relevant to this project. It has helped me understand how to create audience empathy, its effect and the roles of interactivity and installation within it. Empathy plays a huge part in my project as that is the emotion which influences audiences to act upon what they are experiencing, so this contextual reading was vital.

The first of my reading was a book called ‘Interactive Media Arts’ and a chapter within by installation artist Don Ritter titled ‘The Ethics of Interactive Installation’. It began with a detailed definition of interactive installation, highlighting to me the criteria I would be adhering to with my piece:

This reading also taught me a huge amount about the linked relationship between audience judgement and their psychological beliefs (ethics), attitudes and behaviours, and how these aspects heavily effect the reception of works:

Finally it spoke about the social function of media (referencing installations), and in reference to mine, this would be the representation and promotion of human rights around the world:

As I would be trying to teach audiences about the political prisoners I am representing, I researched studies on kinaesthetic learning and interaction. I found a dissertation study by Maiken Hillerup Fogtmann titled ‘Kinaesthetic Empathy Interaction – Exploring the Possibilities of Psychomoto Abilities in Interaction Design’. This reading taught me a lot about the effectiveness of kinaesthetic learning (learning through bodily movement) and how it may be fundamental in my piece:

It also referenced the importance of continual interactive progression in order to keep audiences interested. Translating this theory to my project could mean keeping the initial experiences easy to trigger (floor triggers incidentally set off by walking through the space), and as the audience progress through the space and learn the interactivity of the environment, the triggers become slightly more complicated:

The next studies I looked at were based more around the effects of empathy and the power they wield in an audience context. The first was a journal by Chun-Yang Lee entitled ‘Relationship Between Empathy and Third Person Effect’ which gave me a strong insight into how empathy can create an ‘identification or similarity with unfamiliar others’. The importance of this in my project is that the creation of empathy is fundamental in helping audiences relate to the three political prisoners, in turn initiating them to help the cause:

Another piece of reading, highlighting third person empathy, was a book called ‘The Theory of Narrative Empathy’ by Suzanne Keen. This reading was hugely insightful on the theory of creating empathy for a portrayal of somebody via a medium (for example, the effects of empathy for somebody in a video versus somebody face-to-face). This is a hugely important factor as my audio/visual portrayals will aim to trigger audience empathy, and this reading gave me strong methods of doing so:

‘specific aspects of characterisation, such as naming, description, indirect implication of traits’… ‘depicted actions’… ‘quality of attributed speech, and mode of representation of consciousness’

 This highlighted to me that in order to create empathy for the case-studies I am representing I should give decent back story and character portrayal, in order for audiences to relate to them on a human level:

All this reading was hugely insightful and I plan to refer back to it (and further reading) during the progression of the project, especially during the narrative development stage early in the EMP.

Technical Tests (Stage 3 – Part 2) and Early Build Collaboration:

An important part of this unit was the technical development and testing of trigger ideas, concepts, methods and prototypes. However, I had intended on developing this aspect of the preproduction with technical collaborators, but due to the collaboration not being as extensive as I’d hoped I ended up having to begin the basic elements of this development on my own.

I felt a good start for this would be to begin with what I was relatively familiar with, using a pressure pad to trigger an action (like with Forest Floor). To do this, I took one of the pressure pads from the Forest Floor piece and using a keyboard controller that Liam had given me a few weeks prior; I began to conduct some experiments.

The first experiment I conducted was linking the pressure pad to the computer via the keyboard controller; linking it to the ‘O’ key. I then opened up Word and attempted to trigger by pressing the pad. The reason I conducted this test is that if I can link up audio/visuals to a key-press system or software (the audio/visuals trigger from the letter ‘O’ being pressed for example) then I will have a simple way of triggering the audio/visuals and will not require the creation of a complicated max patch. This is a video of my basic key-press/pressure pad tests:

I then linked this idea into software called processing; using the ‘keyPressed()’ function within it to trigger media through pressing the ‘o’ key, through which I could then attach the pad to the computer via the keyboard controller and trigger it that way. First however, I had to find out how to work the ‘keyPressed()’ function and how this could potentially trigger media. I researched it via the Processing ‘reference’ section on their website and spoke to Liam about how to achieve this. This is a screengrab of the Processing sketch:

And this is a video of it in use:

As an alternative test I then spoke to Tom about MaxMSP and how I could create a basic patch (similar to that of Forest Floor’s) where the use of a pressure pad linked to the computer via an Arduino board or keyboard controller could trigger a piece of video or audio. He created a basic bang, which could be used to trigger media, and we linked this trigger to footage of the Burmese crackdown and start/stop webcam playback alternatively. This is a screengrab of the Max patch:

And this is a video of it in use, though a pressure pad linked via a keyboard controller:

I then moved onto the projection mapping aspect of things. After a fair amount of research and talk with 3^rd and 2^nd year DMP students, the general consensus was that I should look into a software called ‘MadMapper’ I knew that the DMP computers had copies of the software, so I looked into basic tutorials of how to use it on their website:

http://www.madmapper.com/basic-introduction/

Finally, as I felt my idea developed throughout the unit and I had a set of floor plans, conceptual experience ideas and a body of research, I felt now would be a good time to attempt contacting people who may be interested in collaboration on the set design and build of the production a few months down the line. I spoke to a friend of mine called Ben; he had a background in film production and currently works in construction. I asked him about the possibility of collaboration; working to help design and create an interactive set representing a prison cell or something similar in nature. He was very interested in the idea, as it appealed to him in the conceptual design, the interactive nature and the themes of incarceration and human rights. I plan to continue correspondence with him over the next few months in the aim of concreting another collaborator for this project.

Plans for Contacting Relevant Human Rights Organisations – Amended Proposal:

Since the beginning of this project I planned to involve relevant human rights organisations in my project in some way or another. Although as the idea has developed throughout, I moved away from the idea of contacting them early as I felt it would be premature to begin contact until I had a concrete idea of what I was doing and how I intended to do it. I feel I am nearing that stage now, but there still is a little development left to do before I begin correspondence.

However, I still felt that as I had secured the case studies I wanted to represent, this unit would be a good opportunity to research how to contact them directly, why I needed them specifically, how I could help the cause of the case study I was representing and how I should approach the subject.

Firstly, I compiled a list of the organisations which had strong involvement in each of and search each website for their contact email addresses:

Amnesty International

Burma Campaign UK

Iran Human Rights

Free Gao – FreeGao@ChinaAid.org

Now that I had these contact details, I had to be sure my proposal was completely up to date and acceptable for a professional context. This meant refining the current one to an acceptable level where the project is concisely described and the roles removed, subtly graphically designing it and saving as a PDF for sending to each organisation (and collaborator, venue, festival, etc. if necessary).

Once the written side of the proposal had been refined, I spoke to Jack (the graphic designer who designed my floor plans) about how to make the proposal look professional. We discussed the design idea for a while and agreed that subtlety with a very basic colour scheme would benefit the design. We felt working on this over the next few weeks would be the most beneficial idea.

This is the amemnded proposal (subject to change with the development of the project and design alterations):

*

I then needed to know exactly what I intended to obtain from each organisation through the first email I would send, and why each was important. I felt the most important aspect in the early stages of correspondence would be to acquire more information about each case study, in order to help me further understand their situation and to begin building a narrative around them. In this first email, I would also ask about the most effective means of helping the cause of each case study, as I feel the organisations representing them will know the best means of doing so.

I feel that after this initial correspondence I could move on to talking about obtaining any audio or visual media for the piece; whether they had any to provide or if they knew somewhere I should look/ask. The audiovisual media will play an important part in this piece and I feel asking the charities representing each of my case studies how best to obtain it will be a beneficial step.

I feel that before I begin this correspondence however, the project may need some further developing (such as the decision of a name) and I will have to write up some proofread email drafts. Nevertheless I definitely feel I will be at the right stage in the project for this correspondence by the New Year and the beginning of the EMP.

Initial Floor Plans and Trigger/Experience Placement Ideas:

An important part of this unit was the preproduction stage of designing floor plans and trigger layout designs for the interactive installation; developing floor plans through a series of refined layout ideas and working out ways in which experiences can be built into these are the main aims of this stage, all with the overall goal of creating a final floor plan.

I had to take into account all the conclusions I had gained from my experience tests before the conceptual design began, as these were massively insightful results regarding the emotive responses to different experiences and environments.

I began by drawing up a series of general floor plans and layout ideas as initial space idea development:

Each of the three primary ideas had positive and negative attributes, I felt some aspects could work successfully and other maybe less so.

The first plan was three separate (non-interlinking) rooms either aside each other or placed space specifically, all with roughly the same layout but representing each case study individually. The benefits of this layout idea is that once the space is set up it will be self sustained, and (if all went to plan) would not need arranging multiple times as all the case-studies (décor and audiovisuals included) would be portrayed simultaneously.

However, this plan does have a fair few negative aspects, one main example being the scale of setting up a project/space of this nature, as not only is it a lot of work setting up three individual spaces, but it is also necessary to obtain and use three times the amount of décor and technical equipment, which is relatively impractical and expensive. There is also the issue of desensitisation to the subject matter after viewing in three separate spaces. For example, the portrayal of ‘case-study C’ may not be nearly as shocking or effective after the audience has experienced ‘case study B’ and ‘A’, subtracting from the overall effectiveness of the representations and thusly lessening the audience emotive response.

Plan number two is similar in concept to one, in that it will be a space partitioned into three rooms, yet rather than three non-interlinking rooms it will be a progressive narrative journey through the space, covering each room and each represented case study. The benefits of this over plan one, is that the whole space is progressive, leading to a stronger narrative creation and potentially lessened desensitisation (despite this issue still coming into play) due to the alternated layouts of the rooms and more differing experiences. Like the last it would also be self-sustained for the days it was exhibited, not needing the media or décor changed per room.
However, again the issues of the logistics come into play, as setting up a three-room progressive space would need a lot of setup time, a suitable space that could house (or cater to) the specifics of the installation and roughly three times the amount of technical equipment as a single room space.

The third and final of the initial plan ideas, is the idea of a single room in which the case studies are represented individually. How this will be done is not pinned down to a specific method, as the case studies could be portrayed on alternate days, hours or even narratively during the same experience, just not at the exact same time (which could be seen as an issue. I also included the idea of a toilet trigger and multiple projections amongst the room.

There are many benefits to having a single space as opposed to multiple, one fundamental one being the ease of the set-up compared to a three-room installation and the additional freedom this brings when looking for a space to house it. Also, the need for less technical equipment brings freedom in allowing more technical elements in one space (as opposed to 3), as all the technical equipment accessible can be put to use in one room.

However, as mentioned before, the primary issue with this idea is the lack of freedom that comes with only being able to represent a singular case study at a time. If they are to be represented narratively in one exhibition day then strong narrative consideration will have to take place, yet if they are each specifically represented on alternate days or hours then audiences are unlikely to experience all three case studies. If I choose to implement this layout idea (or the others), I will have to work towards creating a method of exhibition where each case study can be portrayed equally and have the same effect on audiences.

Overall, there were aspects from each I liked and disliked, and these can be applied and removed from and to each accordingly, but I felt for now the most effective plan would be basing my idea around the layout concept of plan three, as it seems the most logistical and (if worked correctly) effective installation layout.

Now that I had refined some of these ideas, I felt I should talk to my housemate Jack, a third year graphic design student. He was fortunately willing to create some floor plan diagrams/blueprints for the project (both in this early stage and when the project is more refined) and drew up these plans with guidance from me:

Until the project develops further and new floor plans are necessary, I plan to use these floor plans as a way to generally portray the space environment of the installation.

My Final 3 Chosen Case Studies:

In aid of finally deciding which case studies I planned to represent, I felt I should discuss the matter with Phoebe (now assistant director the project) to get a second opinion and to see what we believed to be the most effective portrayal. After an in depth discussion we came to a selection of conclusions about the most effective means of representation:

1. Firstly, that all three case studies should tie in together with a common aspect of incarceration. Thusly, we felt that political imprisonment of human rights supporters and activists was a prominent example of unjust incarceration and remained apparent through all countries I had looked into. This common factor could then tie in with the design of the piece, becoming a template of representing people who have tried to better human rights in their country and have consequently been imprisoned by their government.

2. Secondly, that we should focus on three separate countries; Burma, China and Iran. These countries have stood out to me during all my research and I feel passionate about helping towards these causes and freeing the politically and unjustly imprisoned of these countries. Also, having three political prisoners from three different countries may help towards the overall theme of the piece, utilising the idea of 3 people incarcerated for similar reasons in different parts of the world. This aspect could also develop the aesthetic, interactive, experience and space design; representing these three people through three separate spaces for example. I plan to develop on this idea as the project progresses.

3. Thirdly, that we should represent a mix of male and female political prisoners, as it is clearly apparent that a majority of the time this incarceration is not gender restricted. I also feel it necessary that women are represented equally in the project, as women’s rights in countries such as Iran are a matter for human rights concern. This is something I will be taking strongly into account when I make the final case study decisions.

4. Finally, that we should write up a shortlist of the politically imprisoned Burmese, Chinese and Iranian human right activists in order to eventually pick one from each country. This is that shortlist:

BURMA:

Zaw Zaw Aung

CHINA:

Liu Xianbin

Liu Xiaobo

Gao Zhisheng

IRAN:

Nasrin Sotoudeh

Ronak Safazadeh

 I then went about making the difficult and important final decisions from this shortlist, taking into account the important factors; such as which case studies would be able to have the most information and media provided about them, which were most unjust and how each story would affect an audience member. Despite the fact that this may be subject change depending on the information I can gain on each case study, the final three I chosen are:

• Burma: Zaw Zaw Aung – Aung is a prime example of a Burmese human rights activist unfairly imprisoned. He has a relatively large dissident following and is a Burmese forerunner for human rights. I feel he will be the most effective case study to represent in the aid of freeing Burma’s remaining political prisoners.

• China: Gao Zhisheng – Gao Zhisheng is a perfect example of China’s tyrannical incarceration of any who ‘defy the state’. Coming from a respected background as a lawyer, his work speaking out against Chinese human rights had him arrested multiple times, and his incarceration and treatment thereof has been hugely unjust.

• Iran: Nasrin Sotoudeh – With not only the poor human rights of Iran, but it’s diabolical women’s rights, I feel Nasrin Sotoudeh is the ideal case study to represent, as she demonstrates both of these. She too has a large activist following and information about her, her work and her case will potentially not be too difficult to source.

I now intend to go about contacting relevant human rights organisations for each case study; in the aid of finding out more information, finding out the best means of aiding the cause and potentially obtaining any relevant audio/visual media.

Initial Collaboration Potential:

Throughout this unit I have been attempting to build a team of collaborators for helping work on the pre-production and future production of the project. Although something I didn’t foresee was how difficult this would proove…

After contacting multiple courses throughout the university (Fine Art, Arts and Events, etc.) I have had a fairly limited overall response. Nevertheless, this is something I can continue to progress as the project develops, and I fully intend to follow up these courses in an attempt to ensure that progression.

However, despite little response from courses thus far, I have had collaborative developments through talking to peers and through spreading the word about the project. Two people have shown strong interest in collaborating on many of the different roles within the project; Tom Moon – who I worked with Forest Floor on, and Phoebe Fleming – who was involve in the interactive tests and has shown strong interest in the piece.

Phoebe:

Phoebe is a first year Film Production student at AUCB. She came to me after finding out about the project, aiming to learn more and asking about ways she could potentially get involved. She is studying film, but has a background in fine art and wants to experiment with installation and alternate mediums.

She has had experience with exhibition curation and is a very politically and ethically motivated person; ideal traits for involvement in the project. I met with her to discuss collaboration and she is interested in taking on some art direction and event management roles. Hopefully this can develop into a production partnership as the project progresses.

Tom:

Like me, Tom is a third year DMP student with an enthusiasm for experience based interactive installation projects. Having worked with him before on an interactive experience piece, I’ve experienced his conceptual mindset, his technical trigger ability and I recognise how this could benefit the piece.

I met with him to discuss collaboration and to find out what he could bring to the piece. He felt he would be interested in getting involved with some basic art direction and design, some technical assistance and some material sourcing; all valuable roles which would benefit the project. However, as he is also currently working on his third year DMP project, the time he can commit may be relatively limited. Despite this, we still felt he would have enough time to be a valuable collaborative asset to the project.

I am very exited about what these two can bring to the project with their involvement, and it is a great start in the collaborative development.

I also am yet to present to the whole of the DMP second year (December 4^th), which has the potential to prove fruitful in the technical assistance and production of the project. Creative elements such as projection mapping, audio and interactive design will hopefully entice second years beginning work on their professional project to collaborate with me.