Assignments

Assignment 1:

Project Description
1. Background: This assignment is inspired by a series of podcasts by Tod Maffin, radio and new tech guru at CBC Vancouver. The purpose of this assignment is to introduce creating with audio and participating in virtual communities. What is podcasting? Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). Podcasting allows you to listen to programming on your computer or on your digital audio player. It's the radio equivalent of taping your favourite TV show with a VCR. Podcasting has also been compared to a subscription service for radio programs.
2. Goal: For the assignment, students will record original audio in order to produce their own podcasts & post them online.
3. Theme: “Something I know how to do”. It may be something you do well - or not! Feel free to be playful.
4. Method: Create an audio recording on the theme. Your recording will include:
1) spoken word
2) at least one location sound / sound effect (e.g. Maffin’s ‘how to run a relaxing bath’ podcast includes running water).
If you can, edit your audio clip. Garage Band is good audio editing software, and it is installed on some of the computers at OCAD. If you cannot edit your clip, record it live, striving for the best performance possible. Bring your audio file to class in MP3 format if possible in Week 2. If not, bring the recording in another format. Learning Objectives, (as per our syllabus): 2 Gain insight into interactive storytelling and community-building, in a context of technological and social change. 3 Acquire skills in interaction design and non-linear narrative structure through creative project development.

Due Date
Week 2: original audio clip in class. Week 3: Audio clips posted to the webblog and presented in class.

Deliverables
Using the invitation you have received in your student email, join the class webblog - virtual communities blog.
Here’s how to post your clip:
1) register with ourmedia.com
2) then register with archive.org
These are both excellent sites for our class, with their virtual community tools and creative commons sharing. YOU HAVE TO REGISTER WITH BOTH.
3) Then, you can then upload your MP3 file to the Ourmedia site. (You can upload any sort of media you like to this site. It's free, and you license your work for use, so you have to fill out the license form. You can decide to grant whatever sort of licence you like, to share or not to share).
4) Create a post on the virtual communities blog.
First, log in to the blog at blogger, go to: blogger.com and go to Posting.
- Add the title of your audio clip for Podcasting in the Title field.
- In the Link field, add the url that you get from your upload at Ourmedia.
- Then in the comments field, add your short introduction to yourself and your piece – 2 lines. If you like, you can add an image, simply by clicking on the ‘add image’ field (looks like a picture) and browsing your computer for an image.

Assignment 2:

Project Description
1 Background: [murmur] is an archival audio project that collects and curates stories set in specific Toronto locations, told by Torontonians themselves. At each of these locations, a [murmur] sign with a telephone number and location code marks where stories are available. By using a mobile phone, users are able to listen to the story of that place while engaging in the physical experience of being there. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze.
2 Goal: For this assignment, students will identify story-tellers and stories from the Spadina neighbourhood. In teams, you will then record, and edit the original audio recording in order to produce your own [murmur] story, which will be posted to the internet via our community blog and may be, with your consent, included in the [murmur] Spadina project.
3 Theme: “Stories from Spadina”. These may be historical, personal, diverse, and community oriented.
4 Method: You only need to complete one story, although you may record more than one and choose the best to edit.
1) Start by doing your research on a story of interest to you, as per the information sheet. Once you have identified an area or theme that you want to capture, find your subject/s. Arrange a mutually convenient time to meet at the location where the story took place.
2) In teams, create an audio recording ‘interview’ with your subject on the agreed theme. Book the Marantz audio recording device from AV loans, or use the best audio recording device available to you (mini dv camera, mini CD, your camera phone, or tape cassette with an external mic. Always use an external mic if possible! Your recording will include:
a) spoken word – both your questions and your subject’s answers. Make sure you can edit out your questions so that the answers will contain the information that you need for the story to make sense and flow well. (Hint: ask your subject to repeat the question in their answer.)
b) location sounds / sound effects – this is a natural outcome of recording live ‘in situ’ – make sure your subject can be heard over any local ambient noise.
c) take a digital photograph of the location of the story. This will be included as part of the post for your project.
3) Your recording team may include:
1) The Interviewer – that’s you 2) The interviewee – that’s the person you are interviewing 3) the sound person – someone to hold the recording device and mic, check levels, record the interview 4) The Producer – this person will assist by keeping an eye on the interview, guarding against intervention from passers-by, traffic, etc and will also watch out for interviewees missing questions, going on over long, etc. and will take notes. IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to ask your interviewee to sign the waiver form, and pay them $1 (will be reimbursed to you by the [murmur] project for their recording.
4) Edit your audio clip. Garage Band is good audio editing software and it is installed on some of the computers at OCAD. Audacity is a good sound editing and sound source conversion software available free. Other good editing softwares (which allow you to dump down and edit the audio only from a video recording) are imovie and final cut pro, both installed on the computers in the college.

Due Date
Weeks 4-5: original audio clips in class. Week 4: my own virtual community seminars. Week 6: audio clips edited. Week 7: Project due date. Audio clips and images posted to the webblog and presented in class.

Deliverables
A short, (best 1-2 minutes, max 3 minutes) edited audio story about the Spadina community, accompanied by a digital photo of the story site. You will use the same method as you employed in Assignment 1 to post your audio clip and photo to the virtual communities blog.

Assignment 3

Project Description
Interaccess: "This Must be the Place" featuring the work of Interactive Artists: Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Nell Tenhaaf and Norman White, curated by Dana Samuel. & MOCCA – Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art - Sobey Art Award Show, and "Future Species: Cyborg Living" by artist KC Adams.

We will be given a curated tour of the shows in both galleries. Come prepared to look, listen, ask questions and take notes! You will be doing research, and writing a short review of a chosen artwork. Project 3 – A short written review Write a short 1000 word review of your chosen artwork & artist.

Method:
Choose one piece that you enjoy the most, or most respond to, from either of the shows. Using that work as a jumping-off point, research the artist, their work, and their philosophy, interest or point of view, as expressed in this particular /interactive/electronic/time-based/kinetic/ artwork.

Choose one piece to write about by one of the following artists:
A Memory Lasts Forever, 2004, by Althea Thauberger
Future Species: Cyborg Living, 2005, by KC Adams
Guardian Angel, 2001, by David Rokeby
String Games, 1974, by Vera Frenkel
Swell, 2003, by Nell Tenhaaf
The Music Lesson, 1984, by Norman White
Uncertain Markers, 2005, by Jean-Pierre Gauthier

- choose 1 artwork by the above artists only!
- Please look at but do not review the other artworks in the Sobey Art Awards show at MOCCA.
- Use the exhibition as an opportunity to do your in-depth on-site research for the assignment. Take notes, record your impressions and create documentation.
- Do your own research into the artist’s body of work, the background to their work, concerns, techniques and considerations. Document your research resources.
- Put this work in context with other interactive artists and designers working in the national and international sphere.
- Draw your own personal conclusions and formulate a critique of the work you have chosen to review.

Due Date
Deadline for hand-in of Project 3 - WEEK 6

Deliverables
- A short 1000 word review of your chosen artwork & artist.
- include a bibliography of your research resources.
- This written assignment should be typed on a word processor, spell-checked, double-spaced and printed out, for hand-in, next week, Week 6.
- We will have an in-class discussion about the shows, in Week 6.

Assignment 1

Project Description
Read Mike Wu's list of memory problems. Select an area of difficulty you would like to research and solve. Consider the creative tools you will use to do so. Upload 1 - 2 paragraphs to the Class Blog, outlining the problem you will work on and tools you'll use.

Due Date
Week 8. November 8 2005

Deliverables
• 1 - 2 paragraphs uploaded to the blog with your FULL REAL NAME.

Assignment 2

Project Description
"Emoticons" - creatively explore how to represent feelings.
The assignment is designed to address the problem amnesics experience in remembering emotion. Not only are important events forgotten, but the feelings surrounding these events are lost. Using the creative tools you selected in the previous written statement, select a group of images or sounds to represent various emotions, for example “scary”, “annoying”, “sweet”, “passionate”, “cool”, “sad”, “guilty” or “desirable”. Your selection could include, for example, musical clips, lines of poetry, drawings, icons, video clips, or photographs, each of which represents a different feeling. Feel free to create complicated feelings if you prefer.
Select how many feelings you want to represent. It's up to you.
The purpose of this assignment is to use your skills as artists and designers to conceive and create sets of emotional identifiers. Keep images as simple as possible, keeping in mind that they may be adapted for Palm-type devices.

Due Date
Tuesday November 15

Deliverables
Upload your files to the web, and provide a link on the class blog. Write a brief report on how you developed your images or sounds.

Assignment 3

Project Description
In a series of short stories called “Just a Walk”, Ojibway teacher Ron Geyshick used a traditional form of storytelling that combined exciting spiritual encounters and events with descriptions of landmarks along his walking route. Thus, his story could be remembered and used as a memory map to find your way around the forest. Maps can take many forms, and many experiences and concepts can be mapped. For this assignment, you will create a series of “signpost” drawings, photos, words, audio or video clips from OCAD to a nearby destination of your choice. Alternately, you can create a “Just a Walk” story of your own, or based on the experiences of a friend, collaborator or imaginary Avatar. Like clues in a treasure hunt, your “signposts” will be used to help someone reach a real world destination – a doctor’s office, subway station, coffee shop, homeless shelter, or even a hard-to-find office inside OCAD are possible destinations. Upload your files to the web, and provide a link on the class BLOG. Write a brief report on your development process.

Due Date
Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Assignment 4

Project Description
Now we will adapt our ‘orientation device’ ideas into recipes that “users” (amnesics) can prepare or customize for themselves, in collaboration with others (caregivers, computer programmers, artists & designers, family). Altogether, our “recipes” will form an online “cookbook” we will present to our friends at OCAD, the Baycrest Centre, U of T, and others. Your final assignment is to create the recipes and assemble illustrations, pictures, bios, and artists’ statements for this - a “collective memory” of all the project ideas we’ve completed.

Reviewing our past orientation device assignments ( 1 – 3 ) :

• You chose memory impairment problems to address, and tools to solve the problems with. You posted your ideas to the blog.
• You created a set of multimedia “emoticons” (reminders for feelings). You posted your files and wrote about your development for the blog.
• You created a memory map using multimedia signposts from OCAD to nearby destinations. You posted your maps and descriptions on the blog.

For this assignment you will convert your ideas into simple instructions. I will use Tara’s project as an example. She suggested using documentary video clips to trigger memories of friends and of emotions. Her “recipe” might sound like this :

Ingredients :
- a video camera (could be a feature of a cellphone, PDA, web cam or digital camera
- file storage (could be in a computer, online, in a PDA)

• using your camera, shoot short clips of footage of yourself with a friend during everyday activities.
• download files and label with your friend’s name, the place and date
• give the file an emotion’s name (fun, annoying, too noisy, happy)
• index these files so they can be searched by topic, name, date or emotion.

To do :
1) write up one or more of your ‘orientation device’ assignments in the form of a recipe, or “how to” set of instructions. These instructions should help “user-participants” create their own set of emoticons or map of signposts.
2) include a picture of yourself.
3) prepare files of your visuals, MP3s and any other text you’d like to include as an “artist’s statement”.
4) upload to blog. If necessary, bring large files to class on storage media (CD Rom).

Due Date
Tuesday, December 6 2005

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