London trip

I thought I'd share one more of my train journey's with you. This video was taken on the train down to London. It shows footage from Glasgow and has some unfortunate reflection in it of me and my friend on our journey.

Aesthetics

In nearing the end of PLAY I began to think more about how this product would look and where it would be placed in the home. For inspiration I looked at other relevant projects. . .




This is a project by Dean Brown who graduated from the same course I'm doing a few years ago. His product, Table with a View, is a beside table which projects footage from an outdoor camera into a room. This next product is by Bill Gaver who came to speak with us during our day with the designers. His product is called Drift Table. . .

"The Drift Table allows people to float slowly over the British landscape from the comfort of their own home. The weight of objects placed on the table controls the slow scroll of aerial photographs displayed on a central view-port. Adding weight causes the table to speed up and 'descend' towards the landscape below. Progress is slow - travelling from London to Devon may take days." Having looked at these projects I tried to gather some initial thoughts on what form my product could take. I really like the idea that it could be a small and unexpected product in contrast to the vast images it produces.

Wiimote

When looking at navigation I began to think about how people would use the product. Some options I thought of were the obvious touchscreen interface or the more playful idea of a physical action, like turning the object, to change what you can view. I then got an idea from watching the RIGB christams lectures where infrared LED's and an infrared camera are used to interact with a product. I found more ideas like this on the web. . .the best site is by Johnny Chung Lee. He is a bit of a genius when it comes to adapting the technology used within the Wii console and remote.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

I followed one of his tutorials which make use of the technology within the Wii remote.

I wanted to use the Wii Multipoint programme I found on Johnny Lees site. This would be perfect for my product if it ends up being a projection. I could change it to take in different videos which people can interact with Minority Report style. By moving their hands around they can choose what they want to watch. However I couldn't get this programme to work but I still wanted to PLAY with the infrared technology. I downloaded the Whiteboard programme instead and managed to get it up and working as you can see in the video above.

PLAYing with lenses

Here I wanted to find out the effect different lenses would have on my footage.

Polariser fun

I decided to do more PLAY with polariser film. Having watched the Royal Institutions Christmas Lecture on channel 5 over the holidays I found there was more to be done with polariser. Here's the site. I would recommend watching it if you are interesting in knowing more about how screens work, computers and the future for our interaction with both.
http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000002537

The area I was interested in came up on show 2. Here they showed us how screens work and how they had developed new table top interactive screens.



Here are some more of my videos showing my experiments with polariser.

This next video shows another method of revealing an image from behind polarised film which has blackened out the image on the screen. I saw this experiment on the christmas lectures and thought I'd try it out. Basically the polarised film blocks the light from reaching our eyes and the screen appears black or off. In order to allow the light through again we can use the simple formula of water and sugar. . .

Subtle experiences

During the day with the designers I had the chance to chat to Anab Jain. She had some really great suggestions for my project. One idea she mentioned was to attempt to recreate extreme travel. I experimented with a few videos I found on YouTube but in the end decided to steer away from this. Here are some videos I made. . .

Anab also made the suggestion of creating a subtle experience when bringing travel into the home. I liked this idea. . .the thought that when sitting at my desk at home I could catch small glimpses of the travel experience. . . a flicker of a station clock. . .a peek out of a train window. . .a hint of travel intertwined with daily life.

This led me on to think about how I could transform my idea into a more subtle experience. I considered the idea that the footage might always be there in front of us but somehow hidden until we chose to reveal it. One way of achieving this was by the use of polarising film, the same film used to make the sunglasses that on the outer surface show a clear reflection.

Polariser works by playing with the direction of the light beams through a Liquid Crystal Display. If you turn a piece of polariser film it changes from a clear view of the screen to blacking out the screen completely.

I also saw this on YouTube where the maker is trying to fake the experience of using a flexible LCD screen. He manages to show how polariser can be used to make an image reveal itself to us.

A world of journeys

For some inspiration I decided to look at how other people experience travelling by train. Here are some of the videos I came across. . .







These gave me the idea of creating a website to go along with the product I make. A site where people can upload and share their experiences with travel. I think this would add a great social aspect to the end product.

Involving the senses

As I said in the previous blog there are many factor which make an experience what it is. Another area I want to look at is sound. Sound is an incredibly important feature when travelling by train.

"silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise"
-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel

What De Botton describes here is the hypniotic sounds from a moving train. The sound of the outside where the train seems to beat in rhythm with your heart mixed with the deep, muffled sounds of people talking in the carriage. To make my experience believable I have to look at recreating these aspects of the train journey.

In this video I have used the sound of a train recorder outside the window. You can hear the beat of the train againt the rails. In the second video I have used the sound from inside one of the carriages.

PLAYing with projection surfaces

An experience is hard to recreate, especially a train journey. There are so many different factors that work together to create the experience. One important aspect when sitting on a train is that your not looking at a flat image. In order to try and add another dimension to my footage I created spaces where the video could be viewed. The image and videos below show some of my attempts at this.

Here I projected the image into a simple paper cup. I loved the way the projected image followed its curves. Also I think a space like this would make watching the footage a more personal experience as, at this size it would only be able to be viewed by one person at a time. I like the idea that when a person views the footage they enter a different space. . .both physically and mentally.

From my expeiments with the frosted perspex I found that the use of this material gave the footage a more 3D effect. So the next stage for me was to combine the qualities of this material with the idea that the footage can be viewed in a separate space. Below is a video showing the results of the footage being projected into a cube I made out of frosted perspex.

Again like with the cup I loved the fact that the image follows the corners of the material and bends around them flawlesssly. When viewing the footage like this you begin to feel totally enveloped in the experience and find that your mind begins to drift off with the passing landscape. I hope you can get some idea of this through my videos.

Like I said above there are many aspects of a train journey that create the experience that I love so much. This next experiment was looking at the reflections of light and shadow that we experience when looking out the window. As I had previously found that when projecting an image onto frosted perspex the image shines straight through it. This means that the image can be viewed from either side and also creates reflections and shadows on any surfaces behind it.

For this experiment I projected the image through the back surface of the cube. Although the image doesn't bend around the corners the way it does above, but it still creates a new space where the footage can be viewed. When viewing it from inside the cube it almost creates the feelong of sitting in a carriage. The image reflects off all the other sides and produces moving shadows.

PLAYing with perspex

I've worked with frosted perspex in the past and have always loved the effect it has when you shine light through it. For this reason I wanted to experiment projecting my footage through it. Here's how it looked. . .

The nice thing about using frosted perspex is the almost 3D quality it can give to the image. When projecting the footage onto the perspex the projector focuses on the frosted but light from the image travels through the perspex and onto the surface behind. As you move the frosted perspex further away from the wall the image appears to hang within the perspex.

As you can see in the video above using this material also allows you to manipulate the image. By holding the perspex at different angles we can make the footage bend or make part of it appear closer to us.

PLAYing with mirrors

From my experiments making the navigation footage and screens I found that at times it could take away from the experience I was hoping to create. A way around this which would allow the viewer to enjoy the train journey video but also know what it is their looking at was to split the footage again using mirrors.

Navigation

Saw this video on YouTube and thought it was quite interesting the way the footage was split into two. One part showing the view from the drivers point of view and the other showing exactly where they were in relation to where they were going. . .

The problem with this kind of layout, as I found in my own video, is that splitting the screen in this way takes away from the original footage of the journey.

Here are a few other types of navigation videos I made.

Knowing where you are part II

Another way of letting people know what they are viewing is by actually showing them on a map. To prototype this I had to make a short film using about a hundred still images from 192.com. Each still image had to be photoshoped to show exactly what point on the map the viewer was at. I did this intially using a red dot.

To integrate this navigation screen into the footage I had to learn how to make a split screen movie. I'd never used Premier Pro before but I found this tutorial which made everything much easier. . .

http://premiere.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=193167&afterinter=true

In my first attempt at the split screen video I decided to split the screen about 60-40 with the navigation footage at the right hand-side of the screen.

Knowing where you are

The problem with just showing footage like the video below is that people might not know where or what they're looking at. I decided to experiment with different ways of showing people they're looking at the view from a train window. To do this I tried covering the screen with some card with the shape of a train window cut out. Here's how it worked. . .

Here's another video I made just experimenting with different, random screen shapes. . .

Finding the right footage

When I caught the train to Edinburgh for the day I decided to take a video out of the train window as it crosses the Tay. I've used this footage throughout the PLAY stage so you might see it a few hundred times.

Private Vs Public

Using different viewing methods the footage could be kept private or transformed into a public experience. To start looking into both these options I went out and bought myself a few LCD screens. I bought a twin dvd kit but unfortunately I haven't been able to get the screens to work with my laptop. So I then went and bought a 7" digital photo frame which works with my video files. This offers a small viewing area appropriate for personal or private viewing.

I then bought a small projector off ebay. The idea was to take it outside and test projections in different areas and on different surfaces. But I realised that is not what my project's about. It didn't have to be in a public space to make it a shared experience. By projecting onto surfaces in the home it could be turned into an experience that more than one person can enjoy.

I've found that the great thing about projection is that the footage can be enjoyed as a family- familiarising themselves with other places- or alone as a tool promoting a relaxed and calm way of thinking.

Areas for PLAY

Having focused my thoughts I made a list of everything I wanted to look at through PLAY.

• Public or Private
  
• Projection
  
• LCD screens
• Effects of perspex
• Effects of mirrors
• Screen shapes
• Projection surfaces
• Effects of polarising film
• Split videos
• Navigation
• Senses- sound? touch? smell?
  

My Mission

After speaking to Jon and Polly I decided my ideas needed more focus. They made me realise that although the live streaming would be exciting to work with, the most important part of the end product would be the user experience. How people interact with it? How they use it? How it affects their life?

In order to focus my mind and work out exactly what I should look at during PLAY I went back and looked at my insights, my ideas book and the reason I chose this area in the first place.

"half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape: the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows, a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and have access to thoughts and memories that may not arise in more settled circumstances"

Alain De Botton descibes travel for me perfectly here. His book has acted as a great source of inspiration for my project and this is the reason I have named my project after his book, The Art of Travel. His book is about describing his experiences of travel using the help of great artists, writers and thinkers. Although my project has nothing to do with this aspect of the book, the title allows me to describe in a few words why I love travel so much.

The art that I want to look at is the great, flowing views that we see from simply looking out of a moving train window. The vast, fluid landscapes and the glimpses of other lives we catch in a second. So taking all of that into account along with the insights gained from people during my research, heres my initial mission statement:

Through this project I want to recreate the enjoyable experiences of travel. The monotony, the serenity, the time for thought, the opportunity to delve into our memories and the chance to enjoy the beautiful scenes that we often take for granted.

Starting PLAY

To start this stage I wanted to look at streaming footage from trains and buses. I did some research into live streaming. The idea was that people could log into a site and view the footage as it happens. This is a really expensive thing to do. . .but it is possible. . .especially now that most trains and buses offer a wifi connection.

Moving from FIND to PLAY

Before I tell you about my PLAY stage I want to show you how I moved from the insights gained in my research to picking the ideas that I wanted to carry forward. Basically my strongest ideas and the ones I was most interested in were those to do with creating environments to do with travel. From the day chatting to the designers I found that this was the area I should focus on in PLAY.

In my cultural probe pack I asked people to take photos of parts of their journey they enjoy and parts they don't. This image below along with results from several questionnaires -telling me people love to look out the window and relax when travelling- helped me to form my ideas about recreating an experience.

These insights helped me to produce the ideas about the environment as seen in my previous blogs. There were several on bringing travel home where people could view live footage on their computers or projected onto windows or on screens around the house. This also led to the ideas on changing the current travel experience. Trying to make the daily journey to work more enjoyable by projecting images onto stations ceilings, or creating platforms made from natural, earth materials. Although I liked the strange contrast bringing the outside-in would create in these spaces, I decided to focus on bringing travel into the home.

Venetian Casino

Once the day with designers was over we began the PLAY stage of our project. For inspiration I decided to look at some of the suggestions made by the designers.

Gareth told me about his trip to the Venetian Casino in Las Vegas. There they have tried to bring the outside in by painting a sky on the ceiling and creating artificial streets with street lamps and bridges over canals. Gareth said the downside with this is that the sky doesn't move. So when you move from one end of the casino to the other the ceiling remains the same which can be quite unsettling. I found this video on YouTube to give you an idea what its like.

Artificial Environments

Following on from our day with the designers I decided to focus on my ideas surrounding the environment. The advice given led to a few adaptions on my original ideas.

One idea from Gareth Thompson was to do with my idea of bringing the meditative experience of travelling by train into the office or home. He suggested I look at creating a new environment based on what we already use. . .for instance using office partitions to create a projected environment that surrounds the user.

Anab Jain suggested that I look at extreme travel and bringing that travel experience into an environment where you would never expect to see it. She liked the idea of seeing bungy jumping or deep sea diving footage just sitting on a park bench. She also suggested that the created environment be a subtle one where the user only catches glimpses of travel.

Another suggestion made on the day was that I play with the idea that we see more when we travel. That instead of just seeing one view out of the window, allowing people the opprtunity to see where they are travelling by setting up cameras on the front of planes or underneath in the instance of the plane. This grew into the idea that when you fly over a place you are able to see photos of the area you are flying over. . . perhaps access to tourists photos on flickr or images showing a birds-eye view of the place.

100 ideas to 20

When I had my 100 ideas, or in my case 70 something, I had to filter them down to 20 for our ideas day. I decided pick the ideas by putting them into groups. These were. . .the environment, ticketing, capturing moments, charging on the go, safety and one last one for fun. . .travel etiquette.

On the day we had the opportunity to talk to designers from NCR, Nokia and Microsoft. Chatting with them individually helped me to single out the strongest group of ideas I had. These were the ideas to do with the environment - creating new or recreating old environments. Here are some of the comments left by the designers and the ideas they liked.

Talking with the designers allowed me to expand and develop on my initial ideas.

Generating Ideas

Once I started getting my research materials back I began to look at the different areas within Travel that I could generate ideas for. These areas included. . .

• Safety and protection
• Travel for the elderly
• Capturing moments
• Bringing travel home
• Organisation
• Comfort
• Social interaction
• Knowing more about where you are
• Travel etiquette
• Travel environments