[THE LIFE CYCLE]: Project Development

 As I talked about it one of my earlier posts, I am working on a video for my Media+Communication class this semester.  Over the course of the last 7 weeks, I have approached the project from a number of different ways and have seen it change and expand a good bit in the process.

So, as I said before, we are working on creating a video experience that explains our interpretation of an "interface."  For mine, I am focusing on what I consider the life cycle: birth (begin), childhood (experience), young adulthood (involve), marriage (engage) and then eventually birth (begin), which restarts the cycle.  As you can see from the image attached above, I approached each of our assignments in how they would relate to this cycle and used those to formulate where my video will go.  I set this up to read almost like a genetics chart, so you can clearly see the relationships between different categories.  I'm going to explain each of the categories as they relate to my interface.

In the first category, [EXPRESS], I attempted to represent graphically with still images the different stages of life as defined by my cycle.  At this point, I intended to create a video "scrapbook" showing men at all different ages and stages of life to represent the progression a single human male makes over time.  Although there would be different people representing each of the categories, I planned on implementing a type of "willing suspension of disbelief" to make the transitions from one to the next clear.

In my second category, [SIMPLIFY], I was approaching the cycle from a diagrammatic angle.  I applied the principles of color theory (red+ blue=purple, red+yellow=orange, or in this case, yellow+blue=green) to show the process of connection and reproduction as well as scale to show the human development in a simplified manner.

It was at this point that we took our first pass at footage for the video.  Although I was pleased with the product I came up with, it was brought to my attention that I was trying to do too much in a short amount of time (maximum of 5 minutes) and I would be better off to stop thinking about it in a narrative fashion.  Shortly, I will explain how I went about doing that.

In the third category, [REPRESENT], we were charged with creating a "field" of information that could apply to our interface.  At this point, I had been struggling with how to remove the narrative from my concept.  To do this, I began to focus less on the human in those stages, but more on the designed objects that would go along with each and the difference between them.  I started thinking about the changes in how we eat at the different stages of life.  From there I developed my field off a compilation of different place setting diagrams.  Overlapping the formal and informal to create a informative diagram.  I then approached it with the idea that some of those designed objects would be used in certain stages and others would not.  That's how I developed the 5 variations on the field.

In the fourth category, [PRODUCE], I started thinking about what foods would be associated with those particular stages and how that could be represented in a way that the stages could be clearly understood.  As you can see, I settled on baby food (begin), peanut butter and jelly (experience), ramen noodles (involve), marinara and pasta (engage) and back to baby food (begin.)

With [OBSERVE], I took the original 5 field diagram interpretations and began thinking about the frequencies in which those items would be used over the span of the cycle.  That's how I began to develop a third level of depth to the video that started to inform the filming decisions.

In [CONNECT], I began to explore the connections between those objects, and the standard "routes" in which they would be used.  Using Rhino, I created a representation of those connections, which starts to create shapes and finds patterns in the chaos of an unpredictable event.

In the last category, [CREATE], I took the idea of the routes and went a step further.  By creating connections between these previously unconnected events, a series of interesting forms that replicate the shapes of the shadows that would be created  by the repeated actions, almost like a time lapse video.

Moving forward from here, I plan to continue editing the film and specifically playing with the idea of speeding up the video and the shadows created by different lighting processes to create a avant-garde interpretation of the interface.  I look forward to sharing "We Are What We Eat" with you soon!