We’ve compiled a short sequence of some of the design experiments and tests in audiovisual media in the Touch project. Here we show some of the ‘behind the scenes’ tests and processes where we used cinematic/video/filmmaking tools as a means to uncover potentials and constraints around an emerging technology.
In these experiments we designed and invented spaces, objects, movements and audiovisual techniques that map and visualise the interactive phenomena of RFID. Many of the visual/cinematic concepts for Nearness and Immaterials were invented by exploring and experimenting with film.
Rather than investing time in creating complex software and hardware prototypes, the interactive experience can be quickly explored inside film compositing applications. These experiments have shown us that there is great value in having tools that offer efficient prototyping of interactions at an experiential level, that don’t need to rely on complex electronics or physical design. There is also value in working within a medium that is not tied to a specific location or a unique demonstrator, and that is editable, reproducible and transmissible allowing it to be shared freely and widely amongst a research group and across the internet.
This is the subject of a forthcoming paper that we’ll flag up here as soon as it is published.
Related things:
- Depth of field: Film in design research We’ve just had a new article (pdf) published as part of a Research by design issue at Form Akademisk. What follows is a summary of some of the key points, alongside the embedded videos......
- Designing with RFID In Designing with RFID we explore the potential for RFID objects in everyday contexts. Because RFID is a wireless, radio-based technology it is inherently invisible once embedded, and this raises issues around visibility and......
- New film: Wireless in the World 2 In this film, Wireless in the world 2, simple visualisations of radio ‘spaces’ are overlaid into urban spaces. The film has been made as a follow up to this video experiment and has been......
- Immaterials: light painting WiFi “The complex technologies the networked city relies upon to produce its effects remain distressingly opaque, even to those exposed to them on a daily basis.” – Adam Greenfield (2009) Immaterials: light painting WiFi film......
- ‘Nearness’ goes further Since the launch three weeks ago, our film Nearness has been seen almost 100,000 times, and favourited by over 500 people. Thanks for all the feedback and commentary! Creativity contacted us for a “Behind......
Are you guys really /designing/ with video? I mean, is it quick enough the way you do it that you can build one, find out it’s awful and make a different one minutes later?
I presume the color changing ones are color keys in post, but is the pen detector faked in any way or just filming a working device?
I design (mostly) screen-based interactions, so am interested in coming up with anything past wireframe/comp and before prototypes (rife with their own issues), so am now pondering how to use video/animation to fake up interaction.