This project requires you to set a problem and provide a unique, innovative, creative, informed and culturally aware solution. Projects are to be negotiated with your tutor through an initial proposal written up in your online workbook - blog. It is essential that the production work is informed by critical debate underway in seminars and lectures.
This is in contribution to the development of your professional practice and your final year project. It is essential that the development and production of the project is informed by critical debate underway in seminars and lectures. The proposal must include description of the topic, evidence of relevant research, critical references (bibliography, netography, filmography, etc), illustrations, diagrams, technical solutions and a realistic production timetable. This proposal contributes an important component of the overall mark, as it sets out aims and objectives against which the project will be assessed.
It will be assessed informally in week 19 and 20 in term 1.

You are required to produce and keep updating online workbook/blog (that works as a traditional ‘workbook’) that document your individual research and development of idea for the practical project. The document needs to include terms of reference (critical sources) relevant to your area of research, any ideas or examples that may support your project. It needs to be included on your website and will be assessed as part of your project.

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Part 1 - Organism 25% Delivered by Chris Speed

organism n. 1. any living animal or plant including any bacterium or virus. Jean Baudrillard, Simulations
2. anything resembling a living creature in structure, behavior, etc —-, organ’ismal or,organ’ismic adj. organ’ismally adv.

‘The artificial purification of all milieus, atmospheres, and environments will supplant the failing internal immune systems. If these systems are breaking down it is because an irreversible tendency called progress pushes the human body and spirit into relinquishing its systems of defense and self-determination, only to replace them with technical artifacts. Divested of his defenses, man becomes eminently vulnerable to science. Divested of his phantasies, he becomes eminently vulnerable to psychology. Freed of his germs, he becomes eminently vulnerable to medicine.

It would not be too far-fetched to say that the extermination of mankind begins with the extermination of germs.’ [ Jean Baudrillard ]

‘We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in the social, our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures. Perhaps our eyes are merely a blank film which is taken from us after our deaths to be developed elsewhere and screened as our life story in some infernal cinema or dispatched as microfilm into the sidereal void.’ [Jean Baudrillard ]

‘Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.’ [Bill Bulko]

Working in pairs generate “a living creature in structure, behavior, etc…”. The final organism should be a form of interactive media, able to work on any platform from mobile, desktop, internet, ipod etc. The intention is to make the organisms accessible on a web site so the shockwave movie should be embedded in its own web page. This will have a dramatic effect on the size of your organism, be realistic.
The rational behind this exercise?:

A: to generate a problem which is not technology driven, i.e. the idea drives the project. You should not start working on the computer until the ‘life forms’ spec is generated. You will then have to find ways of realising it within the limits of the technology.

B: to force you to consider a truly timebased, multidimensional, interactive problem. A life form needs to feed and be fed, sleep, move, multiply, expel waste etc. It will be sensitive to certain conditions and have a life expectancy. Do not use buttons, instead concentrate on a process of interactions. In defining a life form do not fall into the trap of using cartoon characters, question existing models, redefine and innovate! What is digital life?

For this project I’ve been looking at using different forms of website APIs to use as the generative content behind the project. I feel these APIs are very powerful and useful in the future for a number of applications. It seems a better idea to work on what will be the driving force in this project first, then see what can be built from it rather than the other way round.

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When I was doing my Artefact project last year in about February I planned on making throwies which needed batteries, magnets and LEDs. The magnets and batteries arrived, the LEDs were a no show, so I had to do something else.

I ordered the LEDs in February, they arrived in the post last week. It took over 9 months to get here haha! I made one anyway as a test and it’s stupidly bright and works well. It got thrown at some school building and managed to stay up until my friend climbed up, grabbed it, then threw it at a shutter as hard as he could which killed it. Oh well, anyone got any ideas of where to throw the rest? It’s gotta be metal and high up.