Sunday 6 December 2015

ARTWORK ( interactive art, art game) Influence ( projection, net art)

To view the artwork visit http://artworkprocess.net/influence/



Influence
Paper, plastic, projection, javascript, laptop

In the digital era we are all connected. Friendships are formed and destroyed with the click of a button. What has not changed is the effect that social interaction has on us. You are the average of the closest people you spend time with.

Tristan Griffin 2015




press F11 to fullscreen then click here to play http://artworkprocess.net/influence/game.html
click here to calibrate sculpures http://artworkprocess.net/influence/calibrate.html
click here for the written statement http://artworkprocess.net/influence/written%20statement.html

To interact with this artwork: Once loaded click on the human figures, you will see small white dots appear, this is where you can move the selected human figure to. The figures will change once there is more of one type of figure around it, ie if there are two blue figures and one paper figure next to each other, the paper figure will turn into a blue figure. Once all of the figures are the same type either blue or paper the next level is loaded. 
About this artgame: There are 5 levels and one demo level which begins if there is no human interaction for 30 seconds.The demo can be exited at any time by clicking on a figure. As the levels increase players will experience a loss of control as pieces begin to move on their own. This artgame has a physical component (the sculptures) and digital. The intention is for the artgame to be displayed in a gallery, with the sculptures being lifesize, allowing viewers to walk around the sculptures. The computer which the 'player' uses is orientated so that they are facing away from the installation.









For project 1 the outline was to produce an artgame, with a minimum of 4 scenes/levels, a start screen that explains the work, gives it a title and lets you move to the artwork.

My arts practice focuses on the relationship of religion, contemporary society and the human condition. With this in mind my intention with the artgame was to explore the transcendental effect of social influence on social networks in contemporary society.

To realise the artgame I wrote a basic HTML game engine with javascript controlling the HTML/CSS elements, the code has notes through out it so feel free to browse game.html ( I recommend using Sublime text editor). The game is run on a standard web browser by opening index.html and made fullscreen (f11 on the crome browser). The device running the game should be a laptop that has video output capabilities. This output is run through a projector, which projects onto the figure sculptures (as seen in the video).

Display of work:The artgame is intended to be displayed in an art gallery or dedicated space, for this assessment a miniturised set of human figures are being used but ideally life sized figures should be used so viewers can walk around them. The ideal installation is for the sculptures/figures being life size, allowing viewers to walk inside the game and the “player” facing away from the installation with the projector above/near them.
The artgame essentially is a game board, consisting of 12(3 x 4) places for pieces to sit, both in physical(sculptures) and digital space(pseudo 3D/isometric). So when the 'player' moves a piece on the digital game board the move is then projected onto the physical game board.

To interact with the artwork: Once loaded click on the human figures, you will see small white dots appear, this is where you can move the selected human figure to. The figures will change once there is more of one type of figure around it, ie if there are two blue figures and one paper figure next to each other, the paper figure will turn into a blue figure. Once all of the figures are the same type the next set of figures is loaded.

There are 5 levels and one demo level which begins if there is no human interaction after 30 seconds, the demo level can be exited at any time by clicking on a figure. As the levels increase players will experience a loss of control as pieces begin to move on their own.
Level 1: Basic piece movement
Level 2: as above
Level 3: a piece moves by itself every X seconds
Level 4: a piece teleports by itself every X seconds
Level 5: a piece teleports and a piece moves every X seconds



Rationale and research
Too many people take for granted the effect that those around them have. I have become very aware of the effect people have on each other, teachers (you can only ever be as good as your teacher), friendships, family etc. Success coaches and inspirational speakers often say to surround yourself with people who are successful and to be aware of the negativity that can come from people.
Family members, including spouses, children, parents and in-laws, can be an ongoing source of discouragement and frustration.
During the holiday break I noticed that I started to take on the anger of those people around me. I ended up having to distance myself from them to find my peace once more. Since coming to Brisbane to study I have noticed the difference in the education level of my "social circle" which is changing the way that I approach my study and life. In particular when joining the PASS group the comment was made that the people around you right now are the ones you are going to want to be around because they are dedicated to study.
The late Jim Rohn, a contemporary motivational speaker, is credited with saying “You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with,” 

Some other quotes are:
  • “Birds of a feather flock together”
  • “Positive relationships support positive behaviors .”
  • “If you lie down with dogs you'll wake up with fleas”
  • “You can know a man by the company that he keeps”
  • “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person,    do not associate with one easily angered or you may learn their ways” proverbs 22:24
  • “Bad company corrupts good character.” 1 Corinthians 15:33
  • “choose their friends carefully,     but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” Proverbs 12:26

Social effect on who we are and its importance is not a new concept, the last saying is from over 2000 years ago.
Keeping this in mind I wanted to explore this concept of social effect and I wanted to extend it to include the effects of social media. Technology has become an important part of our culture, and has changed the way that we interact socially on a daily basis. We now have the ability to form and destroy friendships with the click of a button with people all over the world. But what effect is this apparent illusion of control and detachment really having on us.
(I try to keep in mind that my role as an artist is to propose questions to the view not answers)

The use of physical space in the artgame is to support the concept of influence and social interaction. The two forms of interaction the physical and digital allude to our uses of social media and every day interaction and play on our perceived sense of control over our social interaction and that it does effect the real world. Having the 'player' orientated away from the sculptures is to strengthen that sense of detachment from the effect that they are having.











Production of the art assets
Imagery:
The Game logo and figures used in the game are photos of sculptures that I created.
The aesthetic appearance and materials used in their production were chosen to support the concept of transcendental change. I wanted to represent the spiritual and the worldly. ( These are both concepts and terms used regularly in the church community. Worldy referring to someone who partakes and is often consumed by the daily barrage of the rat race,advertising, stresses ( financial,sexual etc) ) I chose to use newspaper clippings from the tweed daily, mostly advertising and headline articles for the worldy figure. For the spiritual figure I chose to use sticky tape, for its transparent and binding materiality.



Newspaper clippings used on the "worldy" figure







Creation of the human figure:
Step 1: wire armature
Step 2: build up form with fabric
Step 3: complete form with plasticine
step 3



Step 1


Step 2







Creation of Clear Figure:
Step 1 : cover plasticine figure in glad wrap ( to prevent color bleeding )
Step 2 : layer tape over entire figure, starting with One layer sticky side up then two layers sticky side down
Step 3 : Cut the sticky tape free of the plasticine figure and layer the entire figure in One more layer of sticky tape, sticky side down


Step 1


Step 2




Step 3

Step 4





Final step is to get that glow. This was achieved by filling the chest of the figure with blue cellophane and shining a small LED torch through it. See pictured the torch is attached to the sculptors stand.


Working photo of game logo






The second (worldy ) figure was made by layering the cutouts of text over the top of the plasticine figure, but it is NOT released from the plasticine. The next step was to import the photographs into Photoshop, cut out the figures in photoshop and save them with transparencies ( .PNG )


Creation and placement of the projection

To achieve the projection onto the figures, a set of paper cutouts were setup in the 3 x 3 grid and the projector attached to a laptop (a 4x4 grid was later established to maximise screen and projection usage) . This positioning was to minimise the distance of the object from the projector, the head of the front figures are as close as possible to the feet of the figures behind them. With Paintshop.exe open I proceeded to draw the outline of the figures.



This then enabled me to size the figures for projection in the actual game, the below image was used to calibrate the positioning of the game board.



Early projection test








Creation of Sound files:

There are two sound files used in the game. One is a ticking clock the other is very softly spoken “tongues”.
'Glossolalia, often understood among Protestant Christians as speaking in tongues, is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables that lack any readily comprehended meaning, in some cases as part of religious practice. Some consider it as a part of a sacred language. It is a common practice amongst Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. ' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia )

The ticking clock is to represent the Ecclesiastical concerns with life, that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape time and that it is all pointless. You just need to look around and you see people running out of time, rushing around, often at the cost of others safety ( traffic in the tweed region is a classic example ). To get this sound I took the back off one of my desk clocks and held my phones microphone next to the gearing. I also used my phone for the Tongues recording.

There was a lot of background static in the audio recordings which I tried to minimise using Audacity software through the noise canceling filter. Its important to note that when recording on an android phone the file format is
.3GPP which needs to be converted for use on the windows platform. The website http://media.io provided a free online service for converting the file into .mp3 and .OGG which can then be imported into Audacity.

Changes made to the audio files:
  • Clock tick speed increased by 40% and tone decreased by 30% ( so that it wasn’t too high pitched )
  • Clock tick recorded in Left and Right channels
  • Clock tick Right's time is staggered half a second from the left
  • Prayer voice is recorded in Left and Right channels
  • Prayer voice Left is staggered and shortened by 6 seconds
  • both prayer voice and clock tick have had noise canceling audio filter run on them
  • both prayer voice and clock tick, Left and Right are saved in .mp3 and .OOG file type for browser compatibility.




Game engine

Initially I explored the gamesalad game engine to see if it would be suitable to use. But as I intended this artwork to use projection, full screen and to have greater flexibility by having access to the code and I am developing on windows I chose not to make the artgame with Gamesalad. The second option I explored was the torque 2D game engine, this was a better option as it had the code flexibility and was windows based. Still I needed to consider ease of use for either gallery staff, online environment and further use for future artgame projects. I chose to write my own game engine which is HTML based using javascript and CSS to control the HTML elements. It is important to note I had very limited knowledge of javascript before attempting to create the game engine, but I did have knowledge in several other programming languages. This meant that Google and w3 schools became my most visited pages during the 4 days it took to write it, as most of the issues I faced were syntax based.
By writing my own engine I will be able to adapt the game engine for future use on mobile phones, tablets, mac and PC desktops without major rewrites of the code. Essentially the current variables (which are written in camel code) will just need to be changed to percentages for responsiveness on the various platforms ( due to time constraint this could not be implemented for this project). Again feel free to browse through the code (game.html) , there is far too much to cover in this document without it becoming overly bloated. In short this is how it works.

  • The game board pieces, buttons and sounds are defined in HTML code
  • The CSS provides the initial positioning and size of the buttons and pieces
  • The javascript controls everything else

The game engine is launched when the game.html is accessed this is done with
HTML code:
<body onload="startgameEngine()">
this calls the javascript function start game engine

Javascript code:

function startgameEngine()
{
// declare all global variables here
// create arrays for data blocks
// load a level into the data blocks
// start the game loop, this is only called once
}
function gameloop() {
// this function is the most important as everything time based happens here
updateBehaviours(); // behaviors -- this is used to run the idle demo and to add extra functionality to the gameplay ie teleport
updateObjects(); // update objects
updatepositionbuttons();
updateAudio();
drawObjects();// draw objects on game board
updateCamera(); // camera
alignmentCheck();// check to see if still red or blue
checkVictoryCondition();
}
setTimeout(function(){gameloop()},50);
}

When the player clicks on the transparent buttons the javascript changes the images of the game board icons. There are also two types of sound, Clock tick Loop and Prayer voice Loop, they are both controlled by javascript. If the player is idle for too long the demo game plays automatically, on end of demo game the game reloads level 1. The demo is ended by the player clicking on a game piece. Loading animation is called on load level and pauses the gameloop function till loaded. The game has 5 levels, as the game progresses the player will have less control over the board pieces as they begin to move and teleport and vanish by themselves, this is done in the updateBehaviours function . The victoryCondition variable is set in the audioControl function which, as the name suggests, changes the volume of the sound files depending on the dominance of the figure colors .

There are many other function but the gameloop and startgameEngine essentially make the game work. Things like the animation for load level sequences ( the figures dropping into the ground and coming up again once loaded ) can be seen in the code file as they are long, but they are important. As are the sequences for loading the actual levels and moving the game pieces and the proximity checking of game piece.
Finally due to the nature of javascript, being that a ; being a : would mean that the program would not run I had to create a code console 'function echo(text)' to assist me with code errors and to check that if/else/while statements were functioning correctly.

Conclusion

The process of making this artgame has enabled me to seriously entertain the possibility of integrating digital work into every aspect of my current arts practice. I am currently studying Interactive media as my arts minor(Interdisciplinary drawing is my current major which I intend to supplement with sculpture) . But if it was offered I would study Interactive media it as my major field. I truly feel that digital arts should be offered as a primary medium not just as supplement to the current art studios especially as the digital is a dominant presence in our culture. From my research there are many artists who are dabbling in digital, experimenting with its potential but not really allowing the medium to support the concepts that they are exploring. Many treat digital in the same way a painter treats the canvas, just as a surface to work on ie the many video artists(projecting into a space but not considering the space, perhaps that is just the sculptor in me).
For me contemporary art thrives on the questioning of current ideas and trends, primarily focusing on philosophical concepts. Materiality, form, process and technique are secondary concerns, but all need to be justified as being relevant to the artwork.

The potential for the digital medium to create art that is performative, sculptural, ephemeral, interactive, globally accessible, self running, adaptive, voyeuristic, experiential/emersive artworks excites and inspires me.  

ARTWORK( Interactive art) Gratitude (Projection, Interactive)



Gratitude
Net art
Digital display, online webserver, responsive interface, javascript/php

Consumerist society thrives on our dissatisfaction. Shifting us away from values of community, spirituality and integrity, and toward competition, materialism and disconnection.
But a sense of gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation each day, positively molds and shapes our entire life. Helping us be content, shifting our focus to appreciating what we have. Wether its friends, family, the objects we have, our financial circumstance, lifestyle or most importantly that we are alive today.

To interact with this artwork, visit www.artworkprocess.net/thankful/index.php

Tristan Griffin 2015

(note: the above web address will be using a different database file for the June 7th installation )






For project 2 the outline was to produce a Net Artwork, this could be anything that uses the internet as the artistic medium.

My arts practice focuses on the relationship of religion, contemporary society and the human condition. With this in mind my intention with the Net artwork is to provide a medium for viewers to express and contemplate the transcendental effect of a sense of gratitude on an individual in contemporary society.

To realise the Net artwork I used my web host server (www.thankfulday.com) to host the database that the user input would be stored.The net artwork consists of two major portions the user interface (responsive design layout) and the gallery interface. This project has been designed to run within the Crome web browser with support for Opera for the gallery Interface and the user interface has been designed to run on most devices ie laptop, desktop, tablet and mobile (some incompatabilities may exist due to the nature of technological advancement). The gallery interface is intended to be viewed projected ( at 4m+ x 2m+) fullscreen ( by pressing F11 on the crome browser, PC version). The device running the Net art gallery interface should be a laptop that has video output capabilities. The output is run through the projector onto a large blank wall as seen in figure 1.


Figure 1



Display of work: The Net artwork is intended to be site specific, to be installed at c3 kingscliff on 7th June 2015, and additionally suitable for an art gallery or dedicated space. For assessment purposes the gallery interface ( www.thankfulday.org/galleryInterface.php zoom out to the desired text size) should be viewed side by side with the user input. The ideal installation is to project the gallery interface in a darkened space, with comfortable seating facing the artwork and projecting at a size of 7m x 2.5m with surround sound audio.

To interact with the artwork: users go to www.thankfulday.org this will bring the to a webpage that prompts the user for input with the phrase “I am thankful for”. Once data has been input into the field located in the center of the screen, press “submit”. The data is then sent to the web server, where that data is accessed by the gallery interface and the visual text is updated.


How are you doing it ?
This Net-Artwork is intended to be a gallery installation.
Technical execution:
Two components:
1. Gallery Installation, either projected or on screen which displays the data collected by a
website in a graphical way.

2. An input webpage where viewers are able to input the data ie www.thankfulday.org
Both webpages will be written in a .php file using html/java/css and stored online/server.
visuals:
1. Gallery Installation: the image of a sunrising over the ocean made out of text, the text being
the data input from the input website. The image of a sunrising is animated, as users input
data, that data is added to the text on screen and the next frame of the is loaded. The idea is
to have the sunrise from just peaking over the horrizon to fully risen. NB. Audio of the
gentle waves is playing.The Gallery Installation resets the data once a day, to support the
concept of the importance of gratitude each day. When text is added it will initially appear in
"glowing bold italic" font, then fade to regular font, the size of the font will depend on the
keywords used, ie family, friends, coffee etc. Also note that while the sunrising animation is
updated by the data input the water is always animated.
2. Input webpage: the interface will have "I am thankful for" text and an input field, with a
blurred text background.

Assets :
video/timelaps: of sunrise and ocean
audio: gentle waves on beach
technical: 2 webpages, gallery installation(.php) and input webpage( .php)












Rationale and research
Gratitude, thankfulness, gratefulness, or appreciation is a feeling or attitude in acknowledgment of a
benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a
focus of several world religions, and has been considered extensively by moral philosophers such as
Lee Clement over the past 2000 years.
Being thankful each day helps you be content and appreciate what you have. Wether its
friends/family the objects you have, your financial circumstance and lifestyle and most importantly
that you are alive.

Aesthetics: Why a sunrise ?
This choice of aesthetic is making references to academic art , the sublime and romantic landscape
paintings, the sunrise also aludes to the ephemeral quality of the digital medium itself. This imagery
and sound also creates the atmosphere for a contemplative space.
The use of digital input: making reference to social media in that the viewers experience is
interaction with the artwork as well as voyeristic in that they are seeing a potentially intimate part of
a total stranger and that it is all recorded ephemerally.
Importants of Gratitude ? Gratitude has been said to mold and shape the entire Christian life.Martin
Luther referred to gratitude as "The basic Christian attitude" and today it is still referred to as "the
heart of the gospel."
In 2005 I had a neurological illness which resulted in multiple organ failure and nerve damage in
my legs ( i couldnt walk properly ) and hands. Being told that your life is shortened considerably
shifted my perspective on what is important considerable and each sunrise was given greater
importance. The sun will rise with or without me. Since then I have lost almost 50kg in weight,
remarried and have 3 wonderful children, and have become apart of a supportive community in
kingscliff. But most importantly I am here to share my time.

The benefits of being grateful:
1.It helps you to be in the present by noticing what you do have and stopping to acknowledge it.
This can be the company of a person, having food, or even being able to see.
2.Being grateful has the power to change your mood almost instantly from negative to positive.
Good feelings and positive energy arise when you start acknowledging what you are grateful for.
3.It generates good vibrations. Quantum physics applied to positive thinking state that the vibrations
of your thoughts affect and modify the reality around you.
It is said that the first seventeen seconds of any thought are the most powerful, and they create
enough energy to start attracting what you are thinking of into your life.
Studies have shown that people who regularly practice feeling thankful have a leg up when it comes
to their health. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, has
been a leading researcher in this growing field, termed “positive psychology.” His research has
found that those who adopt an “attitude of gratitude” as a permanent state of mind experience many
health benefits. ( healthline.com )


(I try to keep in mind that my role as an artist is to propose questions to the view not answers)

The concepts of transcendental gratitude relate to the concepts applied to colorfield painting in that the artists were trying to explore a state of being. For example Rothko was exploring "tragedy, ecstasy and doom." which are "basic human emotions," (Mark Rothko). To further reference colorfield painting this artworks scale is important, with the heroic scale of colorfield paintings ( as in Barnett Newmans painting , Vir Heroicis Sublimis) and the intention for viewing it upclose ( less than 2m away ). The repetition of the animation and monotonous audio are intended to enhance the comtemplative explerience and make reference to the sublime.

Production of the art assets
Art asset list
user interface background image
ocean/ sunrise animated .gif
sound of waves and tongues
Creation of the User Interface background image:
The text behind the user interface was hand written (illustration 1), then photographed using a Digital SLR camera. Using the cameras maximum zoom the photo was taken so that the focus point is on the text “thankful” putting the rest of the text in each line out of focus (illustration 2). Underlying conceptual reasoning is the focus on being thankful, while still important the content of what you are thankful for is secondary as it is very individual and perceived differently.
Illustration 1



Illustration 2
















When viewed as part of the interface the image is responsive which can be seen below in the mobile interface (illustration 3) and the desktop interface (illustration 4)
Illustration 3

























Illustration 4









Gallery interface : text and images

The gallery interface consists of two parts; the animated background image and the text.

Animated background image(sunrise):
The first stage was to capture a sunrise, in this case the 'sunrise' was made using a Digital SLR camera at the Kingscliff rock wall. Rational: The rock wall is a significant place for me as I often go there for prayer/meditation and to watch the sunrise. The 'sunrise' was then uploaded to a computer, a short loop was cut with Adobe premier then imported into Adobe Image Ready for editing with a wave loop( Due to issues using adobe cs2 I ended up having to create the looping gif with http://gifmaker.me/ )

Text:
As part of the development of the text portion of this artwork I ended up creating a page where people can upload an image and convert it to text. I called it textify. Essentially it is creating a transparency IN the text and setting the internal background of the text to be a background-image.
To see the development example www.artworkprocess.net/textify/index.php

Default of text in the gallery interface:

Thank you God for giving me another day, another chance to become a better individual, another chance to give and experience love. Thank you God for giving me health, for the food you provide, for the awareness you have awaken in me...Thank you for the energy that feeds my soul, the sun that warms our bodies and the air that fills our lungs... Because of you I believe in the good without the bad and the ugly, because of you I am learning to love and accept myself, because of you I believe in believing. My source, stay connected to me today and always, for I need you in order to fullfil my spiritual tasks...God, show me how to love myself, to be able to love others. Help me become the type of person that I would like to befriend, help me forgive myself and forgive others... God, make me a channel of your energy and help me understand. I thank you God for giving me another day, another unused opportunity to do it right. Keep us all close to you and listen to our prayers. Amen.
Screen shot of Gallery Interface


















Creation of Sound files:

There are two sound files used in the game. One is the sound of waves rolling in the other is very softly spoken “tongues”.
'Glossolalia, often understood among Protestant Christians as speaking in tongues, is the fluid vocalizing of speech-like syllables that lack any readily comprehended meaning, in some cases as part of religious practice. Some consider it as a part of a sacred language. It is a common practice amongst Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. ' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia )

The ticking clock is to represent the Ecclesiastical concerns with life, that no matter how hard you try you cannot escape time and that it is all pointless. You just need to look around and you see people running out of time, rushing around, often at the cost of others safety ( traffic in the tweed region is a classic example ). To get this sound I took the back off one of my desk clocks and held my phones microphone next to the gearing. I also used my phone for the Tongues recording.

The recording of the waves and tongues was made on an Andriod phone. The looping waves sound is to create depth of the sublime experience. There was a lot of background static in the audio recordings which I tried to minimise using Audacity software through the noise canceling filter. The android phone the file format is .3GPP which needs to be converted for use on the windows platform. The website http://media.io provided a free online service for converting the file into .mp3 and .OGG which can then be imported into Audacity.

Changes made to the audio files:
  • Waves sound is faded in and out to create a 1 minute loop
  • Waves speed decreased by 40% and tone decreased by 30%
  • Waves recorded in Left and Right channels
  • Prayer voice is recorded in Left and Right channels
  • both prayer voice and waves loop have had noise canceling audio filter run on them
  • both prayer voice and waves, Left and Right are saved in .mp3 and .OOG file type for browser compatibility.
























The code
The code for the user interface and gallery interface has been written in php, javascript, jquery, ajax, PDO, sqlite and html. Initially I was using ajax to read a database file directly from the server without a handler BUT my ISP decided that this was a security issue and blocked access on 31st may. I am now accessing the database using PDO (php data object) language calls which are secure. Another issue with the original method was that it would occasionally time out and stop sending/recieving data. Developing an application which is server side takes a lot longer than developing offline as you have to constantly update via applications such as filezilla OR use the build in 'code editor' of the ISP.


Illustration 5: Issue with old method of updating the text from the server





















How the code works

Below is the 'File structure' of the entire artwork.
screen shot of Cpanel ( thankfulday.org )




Flow of data
index.php- user accesses → index.php
index.php sets screen type for input ( responsive layout )
they are asked for input
input is sent to → data_get.php
data_get.php - data_get.php alters the input and sends it to → data.db for storage
data_get.php then loads an interface thanking user for input → END

meanwhile galleryInterface.php has been running a loop which is checking data.db
galleryInterface.php - javascript loop calls ajax updater
ajax updater calls → update.php
update.php - PDO calls sqlite database → data.db
returns the data from data.db to → galleryInterface.php as a $string
galleryInterface.php – string is added to the default string and compared to the previous string
if the string is different then the difference of the two stings is sent to 'newText' string
random numbers are then generated which are used to position the 'newText' string and
jquery. The new string from data.db is then added to the body of text for the galleryInterface image and it is refreshed using an ajax call.

Gallery Interface ONLOADING
galleryInterface.php php header sets access control for database
javascript loop is started (setTimeout(function(){loopLoader()},2000);)
- javascript loop calls ajax updater
ajax updater calls → update.php
update.php - PDO calls sqlite database → data.db
returns the data from data.db to → galleryInterface.php as a $string
galleryInterface.php – string is added to the default string and compared to the previous string
if the string is different then the difference of the two stings is sent to 'newText' string
random numbers are then generated which are used to position the 'newText' string and
jquery. The new string from data.db is then added to the body of text for the galleryInterface image and it is refreshed using an ajax call.
<body> - onload starts playing the audio loops after the head
css style sheet is loaded in-document

Problems, considerations and changes made

considerations: I considered adding human forms to the sunrise/text to further alude to 'a sense of gratitude creating the “sunrise” within ourselves' , I chose not to pursue this as it moved too far away from the colorfield and sublime experiement I was exploring in this net artwork.

problems/changes made: on the 31st may my ISP decided to block the access type I was using for updating the Net Artworks interface, this required a complete rewrite of the code, both structural flow and language which was very stressful due to other assessments being due this week. The change was from straight javascript to php file writing to intergrating the sqlite database which I developed for the c3 kingscliff church website. Which requires the use of ajax, pdo, sqlite, javascript and jquery.
One significant change that I made was in the storing of the input data. Originally I had intended for the data to be reset each new day, which this is appropriate for a gallery installation or publicly accessable installation, for a site specific installtion ( as this version has been designed for display at C3 kingscliff on the 7th june ) I chose to not delete the data, but instead retain it as an archived event. For the purpose of a gallery installation a javascript call ( ie 'var day = new Date().getDate(); if( day > oldday) { <php? Cleardata() ?> }') would be made to the server and compared to the stored data on the database (ie to compensate for the galleryInterface.php not being accessed overnight) to see if it is a new day, each new day the database would be reset.
Also my old version of adobe cs2 was unable to create a looping Gif, and to open/create a gif with this version meant passing the files between Image ready and photoshop then to an online editor.



Conclusion

As I normally use the human figure in my works creating a work which is essentially a landscape 'painting' and primarily text was definitely out of my comfort zone. The purpose of this net artwork was to explore the use of the internet to create a 'gallery installation' artwork that was a 2D projection (as most galleries support this type of artwork ) that plays with scale , interactivity and spaciality. The focus being on an interactive element so that it supported the concept I was exploring.
Areas of research to consider for the future:
how do you sell a digital artwork ? Do you sell the rights, if its an online based artwork? sell the entire installation?
how do you sign a digital artwork ? How do you confirm its authenticity ?
I guess really these questions were answered by Walter Bengamin when he wrote about the loss of the aura of authenticity in photography but I would like to see if that is relevant for the digital era, especially as the fine arts, from my observation, still clings to that concept of the aura.

As a result of interactive media and new media classes I feel that my programming knowledge and traditional fine art techniques are competent enough to be able to focus primarily on conceptual development. My intention over the july holiday break of 2015 is to brainstorm/draw/experiment with the potential of new media art within my own arts practice and how that intergrates into current fine arts fields. Ie printmaking, painting, drawing, sculpture and traditional digital ( internet based ). As before mentioned in project 1 I will focus on conceptuality with materiality, form, process and technique being secondary and justified. Experiments/research will include performative, sculptural, ephemeral, interactive, globally accessible, self running, adaptive, voyeuristic, experiential/emersive artworks.