Olivia Cabello

WEEK 12 (12/8/2017)

FINAL VIDEO AND PRESENTATION

Link to presentation





WEEK 11 (12/1/2017)

STORYBOARD AND DOCUMENTATION RAW FOOTAGE

Link to Storyboard

Transfer from Vuforia to ARCore

I transferred my project from Vuforia to ARCore because Vuforia's image recognition was not able to detect large statues. In order to be able to place the augments where I wanted them to be on the statues while testing them onsite, I wrote scripts that would let me drag and drop augments at specific spots in space.

Footage:
I spent the past few weeks onsite experimenting with different angles to display my AR project. Here's a sample clip:



The phone screen is not very visible and the camera angle is not so great so I need to go back and get better footage. My main issue was that I was attempting to hold the camera + my phone alone so now I recruited a friend to help me out with this.


WEEK 10 (11/10/2017)

MVP #3




This week I focused on getting the materials right for the laser beams and testing the prototype onsite.

Problems I encountered:
Target was not recognized. An alternative is to develop this project using AR Core.

Tasks for the upcoming week:
-Finish transferring project over to AR Core
-Test onsite and start getting footage


WEEK 9 (11/3/2017)

MVP #2


Feedback questions:

1. After watching this demo, what do you think the piece is about?
2. Is the data being presented credible to you?
3. If you don’t believe the data being presented is credible, why do you think that is?
4. Have you learned anything new after watching this piece?
5. What could be done better/ what did you like the most about the execution of this piece?

Main takeaways from feedback:

- the cylinder animation is too fast and it's hard to read the data

- it also grows "out of the screen", so it would be better to shorten it

Next Steps:
-improve visuals
-make animations smoother
-test onsite

WEEK 8 (10/27/2017)

MVP #1

Location: fearless girl and bull statue - Wall St.

Marker: floor between two statues

Data source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/women-pay-gap/?utm_term=.e0ff7a85caa4

Flow

1. User approaches area between statues
2. Oppens AR app and focuses camera on that area
3. User sees that the floor area on the bull and fearless girl sides are slowly covered by blue and pink colors respectively. A line, resembling a cracking floor, appears between the colors. On both the blue and pink sides, the count is at 0 cents.
4. As the seconds pass, the values shown on the pink and blue sides start increasing at different rates. As this occurs, the line starts progressively moving towards the fearless girl.
5. In the end, the line/crack starts getting bigger until it reaches the shape of a black hole.
6. Black hole absorbs the numbers plus the colors.

Objective: demonstrate the reality of the gender pay gap and how this division can be destructive for society.

Next steps:

1. Make animation smoother
2. Improve graphics
3. Transfer to Vuforia
4. Test onsite
5. Add interactivity (?)


WEEK 7 (10/20/2017)

RESEARCH FOR FINAL PROJECT: ACTIVIST INTERVENTION WORK


AR activism in advertising

These are some examples of replacing an ad with your own message in AR. I think this piece is not very impactful because does not attempt to create a connection with the audience. It simply states the point of the intervention without letting the audience figure out the message on their own. It would probably be more memorable if it was more abstract.

Rosa the virtual activist

This was a project that was active during the women’s march in January. It involved a virtual activist/avatar, Rosa, that served as a placeholder for women to express themselves. People could send their messages using the hashtag #istandwithrosa and the message was displayed on Rosa’s sign. I liked this piece because it did a good job at starting a conversation around the women’s march and giving people a voice. Through this technique, the Rosa accomplishes to bring the audience into the piece.

Jeff Koons' Snapchat augment gets vandalized

Protest work against the digital pollution that might occur as companies take over the AR world to create “digital art” as part of a new marketing strategy. Very simple but gets the point across very clearly through the use of a form of urban vandalism that we’re all familiar with outside of the digital world. This is a strong piece because of the familiarity of the method implemented here.

Border Memorial: Frontera De Los Muertos

AR public art project and memorial, dedicated to the thousands of migrant workers who have died along the U.S./Mexico border in recent years trying to cross the desert southwest in search of work and a better life. This project allows people to visualize the scope of the loss of life by marking each location where human remains have been recovered along the border and the surrounding desert. Uses real data to bring in a shock element into the piece.

Children of Arcadia

Link to installation

Room-sized installation continually updated with information gathered from the Internet about national socio-economic events. It translated stock market data into a large-scale Baroque-style projection. If the stock market was down, the clouds would gather and the world would become foreboding and apocalyptic. If the stock market was up, the clouds would part and shafts of sunlight would illuminate a utopian world. I think this piece is a great example of giving data meaning through motion/animation and making the message abstract enough to the point that it evokes emotions in the audience.

Priya's Shakti

AR comic book that tells the story of a sexual violence survivor turned superhero. Based on true stories that the artist collected through interviews. Great awareness piece that relies on true stories and cultural factors in order to give meaning to the experience and connect with the audience.

Interactive billboard against agression

           

Billboard that encourages people to take action if they see a crime happening on the street. This piece manages to create a strong connection with the audience and does very well at inspiring empathy by having the user play a role in the narrative.

Barbie liberation organization

Activist group swaps voices of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls. They also place these modified dolls back in the store. It’s especially interesting to see the kids’ reactions to this intervention. They actually thought it was entertaining while they adult at the end of the video was outraged. This demonstrates the social impact of this piece. It is one of my favorite activist works because despite its simplicity, it managed to perfectly expose attitudes on gender and the discomfort/ strangeness that a non binary identity awakens. In other words, it skillfully brought to surface the binary attitude on gender that society imposes on us.

MAIN TAKEAWAYS

• Evoke emotion in the viewer through striking visuals (especially strong if these visuals are interactive or animated)
• The use of real-life data as a driving force behind visuals not only strengthens the point that you’re trying to make, but it also helps the viewer connect their own reality to the visuals (data has therefore the potential of introducing this shock element)
• Works that are strong at evoking feelings of empathy in the user and a call to action usually have a “personalized” experience (the user is brought into the narrative)
• The use of a form of protest or activism that is well-known in the physical world is a great way to get a point across in the digital world due to its familiarity.

WEEK 6 (10/13/2017)

AR FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL

In the year 2017, there are many instances of inequality that are not visible to the naked eye. Through augmented reality, I want to make these instances visible. More specifically, I want to create a piece that addresses gender inequality in our everyday lives.

View concept presentation

WEEK 5 (10/6/2017)

PORTAL TO THE PAST


I dug deeper into last week's idea and using Maya, I recreated the mural that was once at this location. I then placed the model at the location using Vuforia. By adding a script to the mural object, I attempted to make the object static and its location GPS-based.

WEEK 4 (9/29/2017)

UNEARTHING THE PAST THROUGH AR



For this project using AR Kit, I wanted to bring back objects that were once there at specific locations. The location I picked was one of the new condos in downtown Brooklyn.

After some research, I discovered that the property belonged to a catholic church and community center before the condo was built. The church and community center were demolished a few years back. In an attempt to visualize the community center (unfortunately I could not find any pictures of it online), I discovered that it had a mural that was painted by a few kids back in the 1980s.

Given all this information, two objects came to mind: a broken church pew and spray paint. The user can then unearth these symbols of what used to be there by opening a portal.

PROCESS

I started out by working on the assets. I took a picture of the sidewalk in front of the target location and modified it in Photoshop to create a "portal" effect. Below is the mp4 file of this portal (this is the final version that can be seen in the AR app):

I then looked for a church pew and spray paint can in 3D Warehouse and Turbosquid.

I wanted the bench to be broken (in order to symbolize the demolition of the church) so I modified the model from 3D Warehouse (pictured above) using Maya.

Finally, I combined all these assets in Unity (I included the ARKit plugin to my project) and wrote simple scripts for these objects in order to have them "emerge" from the portal.

WEEK 3 (9/22/2017)

URBAN AR

For this augmented reality project, I wanted to go beyond print and experiment with street art. I wanted to bring to light "what was once there". I went to downtown Brooklyn and picked sights that are representative of the new, urban Brooklyn. I thought this poster near Fulton street especially represented this modernized and "hip" Brooklyn that we see more and more today. Through this AR piece, I symbolically bring to light the "death" of the old Brooklyn.

WEEK 2 (9/15/2017)

ENHANCING PRINT STORYTELLING THROUGH MOBILE AR




In last week's issue of the New Yorker, I encountered a book review for Jesmyn Ward's "Sing, Unburied, Sing". The author of this book is a native of the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in her work she discusses life in a Mississippi town in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, an extremely devastating hurricane that hit the area in 2005. Having spent four years in New Orleans, I felt a personal connection to this story. Even though it has been twelve years since Katrina, you can still see the destruction and trauma it has left in people's lives. Every local you meet will talk about their two lives: the one before and the one after Katrina.  I think that most people who haven't been directly affected by a hurricane of this scale do not realize how long this destruction lasts.

Through this AR experience, I wanted to create awareness of this long-lasting destruction after a devastating hurricane. I took the beautiful illustration from the article and animated it. My goal was to start out by placing the reader in the middle of the storm by adding sound effects and animating the rain in the illustration. By doing this, I hope to help the reader create a personal connection to the story. After the storm, I display a series of headlines related to the aftermath of Katrina from the New York Times archive. By showing these headlines, I wanted to make the reader ask themselves a question: what happens after the storm?

I haven't read "Sing, Unburied, Sing" yet, but I hope to check it out soon.



WEEK 1 (9/8/2017)

1. AR APP TRIAL - WIKITUDE

This week I tried the mobile AR application "Wikitude World Browser". Wikitude describes their product as a one-of-a-kind augmented reality browser. The idea behind this AR browser is to find a wide range of things to do and places to visit in the area that the user scans with their smartphone camera. The target audience is clearly travelers or people who are unfamiliar with a particular area.

I tested this browser around the NYU Washington Square and Brooklyn campuses to see how many dining options/general information pop up. After scanning the area with my phone camera, I was slightly disappointed to find that Wikitude did not show me many options. The highest number of recommendations I received was in Washington Square and even then the app only displayed two businesses (see fourth screen capture). Overall I think that having an AR browser would be a great idea. However in order for me to use this application on a regular basis, I would need to see more recommendations.

2. MEMORY

My memory is a very simple one of my childhood in Vienna, Austria. This scene represents my walk to school on a winter morning. There was a snow storm and the streets hadn't been cleaned yet because it was very early. I remember my 10 minute commute taking 30 minutes instead. I can still clearly recall the windy and extremely cold weather that day as well as my struggle to walk through the snow. This memory doesn't really represent an exceptional moment in my life, but for some reason I still remember it and think about it every now and then.