No 20: NOISE Festival hub

9/07/08
An extract from the gRaphics blog

"Now this is the bit which I find interesting because I dont think this means responsive in the sense of clap your hands and the lights come on or write a comment and it appears on the screen in different coulour. I think in an exhibition these simply become toys and are in fact have a one way application."

I agree with this, the bTween conference last week was the first time I'd seen Twiiter/live chat altering an event in a genuinely spontaneous way. Speakers weren't responding to questions being posted on screen but were responding and altering their presentations in response to the conversation the audience was having.

This section of the NOISE site needs to act in a similar way. I want the site to respond to what the users input in a fluid way. A genuine exchange of ideas, as was being seen at bTween. Not a set out debate or QandA session but some genuine involvement with the festival from users across the country that allows participation
from users. Some allow the festival to devlop over the course of the month. Ideas could range from simple comments, live feeds through to audiences seecting and curating galleries- mini openings, short exhibitions of work curated and and shown for a half day. Gigs, music streams, live readings and so on. What meadia could be used to do this?
Could artwork from selected artist be creatd on screen or could new work be developed over the course of the four weks? How do artists repond to feedback?
9/07/08


Central area for NOISE October Festival.
Should act as a entry point for all other competitions/ showcases etc. Allow visitors to interact and help contribute to the festival during October.
bTween and Futuresonic both add interesting conference/festival sites that allowed users to record and experience the events online. Could this be developed further. Would also need to be adapted for the age group og NOISE Festival 25 and under. Use existing tech? Uploading images, video, commenting to YouTube, Flickr, Twitter etc

No 19: NOISE October Showcase part 3

Edit:15/6/2008
A mock up for the main page of this. This is the sensible, might get it built in time for October version. Involves live gigs, Stickam and Badly Drawn Boy samples.



The less sensible version involves first and second life gigs, a second life elements music mixer and an on screen elements mixer. But I'm still working on these bits.
Edit:15/6/2008

Edit:1/6/2008
My initial thoughts with this is an onscreen sampler with the Badly Drawn Elements and ready made samples that would allow you to remix a track on screen. There would also be the option to upload your own tracks.

So you need tracks to work with we already have a load of tracks on the NOISE site or do you use pre-existing songs. The biggest problem with this is time and resources so this should just be simple fun tool? Serious entries are uploaded to the site. The mixer is just a fun time killer?

The other really exciting thing that is being planned for this showcase is the live performance. Now this is being planned within Second Life but what is being discussed is having the gig in Second Life being streamed into the venue and vice versus so people could attend the gig through Second Life. I really like this idea of crossing over the Second Life stuff with the real life event, I guess there could also be web streaming at the same time. Also the sampling tool can be built into the Second Life and adds an extra interactive element.
Edit:1/6/2008


Elements project gallery
Project allows users to remix tracks by the curator. Key riffs.
How to showcase outcomes, possible live performance, video streaming?

Elements
Again reflect outcome of the project.
Music, musician’s discussions with Vic about visualizing music on screen. Concert streaming

See Red Bull Jam www.redbullbedroomjam.com
Diesel:U:Music

This is a similar problem to the BBC Sound Index, how to visualize sounds. Sound Index is easier in the sense you can map and link users so there is visual material to play with. With this gallery it's harder. I guess the starting point is this showcase doesn't have to show the final outcomes. The sample tracks need to be downloaded from the site and you can post your tracks on the site. So maybe that is the way to develop this section, it should be a mixture of work in progress and final selection for the showcase.
I like this phrase from CCMIxter
Download, Sample, Cut-up, Share.
That is what this gallery should allow you to do.

No 18: MA Site research section

Edit 25/5/2008
Mock up for an MA section of the CAGD website. Split into three sections news, images, text, it would work in a similar way to an RSS reader. Anything posted to your CAGD, blog, Flickr or YouTube account would appear on this page. You don't post here, it gathers group activity in one place. At the top is the memebrs of the group so you can toggle between different peoples feeds.






Posting tool that would allow you to post images, video and text to your CAGD account.
Working in a similar way "Add to my de.li.cio.us" or "Digg this" this would allow you to add and tag without navigating from your current page.
Edit 25/5/2008



Edit 21/5/2008
Some initial mock ups for the IM section





Edit:
OK so this is definitely going to be an RSS reader. What I'd want to do is combine the single page of Google reader, that groups a users post together which could be read at leisure, and the incoming messages of Snackr and Digsby.
See my post here
The idea would be to have a stand alone Adobe AIR package that you could download to any desktop. For example download it at University, create your login then if you wanted to install it on your home computer simply install it and use your log in. It would pull in Feeds from the course website, users blogs, Flickr, YouTube etc.

The flaw with all these feed/bookmark sites is multiple logins. This app needs to allow people to add from the standard web 2.0 sites quickly and easily, this needs to be done in the first sign up. The other issue is being able to add bookmarks feeds quickly nad easily, Digg, De.licio.us do this well, so something similar to this.

Another key thing to remember is the purpose of the RSS Feed is to strip back a website and deliver the key information, but how do you do this with have a heavy image based site like the CAGD site?

CAGD site, MA section. Research area, designed for specific needs of the MA course.
How "research" would work here.

Finding similar people into the same things
A way for designers to find work
RSS feeds
Sky Sports News
Scrolling, updating
Constant updates
Work coming in

Possible RSS Feeds, signing up adding external feeds from awards competitions, design companies, sites, blogs etc
RSS reader collect work, ideas as they come in.
Google layout- redesign elements for the MA make it MA specific?

No 17: How to Tag Without Words

Edit 26/5/2008 part two





Simplified this right down.

Tagging tool for the CAGD site. Instead of tagging with words users are presented with a selction of images from the site. Users must choose a minmum of two images to tag their work with.

The idea is tagging become a way of discovering of new work, tags are no longer literal and descriptive. You would be able to view work which other users have tagged work with the same images.
More info
http://no-bad-news.blogspot.com/2008/05/no-17-how-to-tag-without-words.html

Edit 26/5/2008

Edit 26/5/2008
This is part of the upload section as well. I'm trying to design the search tool but it's impossible without the initial meta data. So how do you start to tag images? Words are obvious but what happens if you use a random selection of say five images taken from the site, you have to pick three that "describe" your work. Should they be random or should they just appear to be random? I guess this also relates to the fuzzy data idea avoiding narrowing down a search to far.

OK so looking at the database Graham sent the following is of use
| title | text |
| description | text |
| subtitle | text |
| summary | text
| keywords | text |
| tags | text |

from here return to the course philosophy

animation, broadcast graphics, illustration, design for print, web design, photography, art direction, advertising, traditional print and digital imaging and editing, typography, letter press and bookwork.

11 areas there, now not to limit it to far search through the published text and search for key or related terms. Bring up one image for each of those terms.

Or is this too complicated? Do you just want a random selection of images that you choose to tag with? Neil tagged this "Apple Poster"
Also number of images. Deliberately restrict images to 1,000? so they could relate to the above terms?

So ten(?) thumbnails tag with three images.
edit 26/5//2008


Alternative tagging systems, purpose of tags.
Collecting information for user later on, curation, pushing people to use. What meta data are you collecting, why are you collecting it what are you going to do with it.

Is it possible to tag with images, sounds, colours?

Image from BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio Labs. From discussions with BBC Backstage how to visualize these tags, how do you develop more interesting ways of viewing tags.

No 16: NOISE October Showcase part 2

Adobe/Peter Saville/Computer Arts brief
Gallery outcome, needs to work online and offline

1.Adobe
Stand alone interactive application (Adobe AIR) that could be distributed with Computer Arts Magazine.
Needs to be able to reflect:
Print A3 portrait posters and A6 fliers
Screen 30 second television advertisement
Online Innovative online banner ads or virals

No 15: Fuzzy data

Chris Heathcote mentioned this at FutureSonic. Fuzzy data, the idea that narrowing peoples searches is not useful, what people like is data that is more open to interpretations

The outer circles are the "fuzzy data"

From designing Dopplr

We’re sitting on the grass in the sunshine with a bunch of early Dopplr users, including Stowe Boyd and Stephanie Booth - when Stephanie is the first to voice something we’ve heard a lot from Dopplr users since: “make my trips more ‘fuzzy’”.

By which, she and others meant that they would like to see coincidences in the surrounding area of ‘social spacetime’ to their trip - i.e. “show me if there are going to be people I know nearby the stated destination of my trip when I’m going to be there, as I’d probably like to change my plans a little to see them.”

This is a cornerstone of our goal to help optimise travel for Dopplr users - surfacing information about such near coincidences to let them judge whether to alter their plans to make their trip more worthwhile.

We’re going to be releasing a lot of functionality to exploit fuzzy, social spacetime through the early part of 2008, but the first part of it has leaked out into the journal.

How to do this visually/ graphically. Use exsiting sites and services such as Amazon, Last FM, Google etc

No 14: Calendar

Following from Chris Heathcote's talk at FutureSonic

Who what where
(meta)
Last FM collects meta data, no one else does this. Why?
Time- Designing for the future
What are you going to do ?
what have you done?
Rare to find sites that map what you intend to do
flickr maps records what you have done, when you did it
Real calendars vs virtual calendars,
How people interact, time slots, chunks, blocks of time

Design development of a site/tool that allows you to map what you intend to do, move away from standard chunks of time eg outlook.

What do you doing the course of a day week month. How can you plan what you intend to do?
Blogs, Flickr, even Twitter document what you've done are doing what about what you intend to do?

No 13: MA Publication part 2

Change of heart with this. This is going to be my proposal for the outcome of the collaberation on the Graphic Arts blog. I need to trawl through my posts on there but there's some intersting discussion about playing with the role of curator, how this relates to current web 2.0/3.0 ideas, repliacting this in a gallery space.

No 12: NOISE Mapping and documenting users

Edit 8/6/2008
So this has changed quite a bit(and may start to fit in with the fuzzy data proposal) Last week I had a meeting with the head of BT regions in the north west about the NOISE website. One of the things that kept coming up was how we document where users are submitting from, which postcodes are creative hot spots, where users are signing up from and so on. Eventually how do you tie all this information together and make some sense of it. For this proposal I'm going to create a series of maps or documents that illustrate users on the NOISE site and how they use the NOISE site. These will be in form of visuals, similar to the Dopplr images below and the work of Edawrd Tufte.

Next step is to start selecting which data to use. The simplest starting point is to use the data on the NOISE admin section and start to work that up. Also start to visualize the information on Google analytics. I need to select the key information that is going into these reports. Again this comes back to this idea of selecting and choosing data, what do you want to do with it five or six stage later. What is the final outcome? Start from there and work backwards. These need to be ongoing documents, so creating a template that new data can be dropped in and compared weekly or monthly
Edit 8/6/2008


No 12: NOISE Festival Arts Council Evaluation Document








Design and visualistion of how NOISE Festival was used in 2008.

This information sheet introduces the idea of self-evaluation for artists and arts organisations. It provides a brief definition of evaluation, explains why we think it is important for everyone and suggests some approaches to self-evaluation. Finally, it lists resources to help with self-evaluation, many of which are downloadable from the web.

1 What is evaluation?
Evaluation involves gathering evidence before, during and after a project and using it to make judgements about what happened. The evidence should prove what happened and why, and what effect it had. The evidence can also help you to improve what you are doing during the project and what you do next time (Woolf, 2004).
2 Evaluation helps artists and arts organisations
Evaluation is a valuable tool for learning and involves critical analysis of your activities. Artists all make evaluative judgements about their work and evaluation makes the ‘reflective practice of creative work explicit and conscious’ (Moriarty 2002).

No 11: Buildings as social networks

Very briefly, this is based on work from MIT in America. The original MIT project mapped in real time the activity of users in a city. In this case Rome.

In essence what they did was use mobile technology such as Bluetooth and GPS to turn the city into a social network site. What I am starting to work on is using the idea of a city as a social network and applying some of these ideas and theories to H Building. This is involves number of difeferent elements. Alfred Korzybsk quote that the map is not territory is perhaps key here, in that the work will be about mapping the use of the building and how people interact with building and the spaces. This ties back into work such as the design of Harry Becks London Underground Map, where distances don't matter or the work of Edward Tufte, and the visualization of information.

For example do you start to map specific areas and of the building. Routes through the building, from entering the building to the 9th Floor in H Building. Corners, corridors, lifts where people move through or places where people meet such as vending machines, lifts stairs. How do you map all these areas (hotspots) Then what do you do with these spaces when you know people are there. Can you make use of these "dead spaces"?

Initially using myself to map how I enter and walk through and use the building. Develop this to times of day when spaces are busiest, what days are busiest, what time of the year are busiest? What courses(graphics, fine art) What years are busiest?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/wikicity-0830.html

http://senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/rome/

http://senseable.mit.edu/wikicity/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map-territory_relation

http://realtime.waag.org/

http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/

http://www.senseofthecity.nl/sotce/sotc.jsp?cmd=autoplay

http://www.mlgk.nl/

http://www.carloratti.com/projects/015.htm

http://mobile.mit.edu/component/option,com_deeppockets/task,catShow/id,32/Itemid,76/

No 10: BBC Sound Index

Edit 8/6/2008
Just seen this is being scrapped in July
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/06/sound_index_data.html

it's currently a public service beta and, as it was intended as a proof of concept, has an end date of mid July.

It is currently owned by BBC Switch, the new BBC offer for teens, due to the way in which teens consume and discuss music online and generate buzz about tracks and artists. There will be more functionality within the site added in the next couple of weeks, allowing more interaction and adding more value to the Index. However, we are keenly monitoring all feedback as the Sound Index trial is just as much about learning as it is about innovating - so please do leave a comment.

Beth Garrod is Producer, BBC Switch

A bit late but some notes from FutureSonic that relate to this.
One of the things BBC Radio Labs showed was a thing called Radio Pop, which is similar to Last FM but for BBC Radio stations

http://www.cookinrelaxin.com/2007/08/radio-pop.html

Radio Pop enhances your radio listening. Enabling you to create a personal record or the programmes you like, and see what your friends and everyone else is listening to.

So if you want to tap into your amigos, let your pulse spread the good vibrations, and feel the buzz from the crowd - register for Radio Pop. The radio service of tomorrow, today!

I asked about the the Sound Index which is separate from this and being developed by a different BBC team. Whats interesting is developing this, combining it with the Sound Index. Is the Sound Index a way of providing new tracks, is this a new way of charting music. So the outcome for this proposal would be a combination of both sites.







FutureSonic notes from BBC Radio Labs

bbc.backstage.co.uk
BBC online but not part of the net(see software not as tech community, spaces to be
alternatives to our content
audience
more importnt things to do
splitting time
telling their own story
expect particiaption
expect time shift
everything
expect sharing
taking note
explore beyond
have great distribution methods
content is never finished (perepetual beta)
you (audience are in control)
BBC backstage is a license similar to Creative Commons
Backstage cahnging the BBC
Ian Forrester BBC Backstage

BBC Radio Labs
Collin Murray Black Hole
Audienece participitation
ten hour take over
listener six mix
sms visualize- they need more, ambition.
Trying to visualize what is happening- sound index
MMS
Networks visulization
ownership
personal relationship
community
visualises
showing off sharing
Radio Pop
Last FM Competiton role of Radio Pop
Radio Pop API

Olinda Radio, combining web and physical
information labs
Visulaizing radio
Whats being turned up turned off
Whos listening to what
Volume
Mapping, linking, aesthetic etc

Edit 8/6/2008



Case study, redesign development of the BBC Sound Index Site use existing data from the BBC redesign the way the information is used and presented to an audience. Encourage users to find unexpected songs, music, artists. Visualize the breadth of activity across all these sites.

Nick Burcher
http://www.nickburcher.com/2008/04/bbc-sound-index-great-new-way-of.html

This BBC Sound Index is currently in Beta mode and over time the BBC aim to enhance the Sound Index by, amongst other things, developing a weighting system, "to allow the more active forms of interaction to contribute more heavily to the Sound Index."

The BBC Sound Index is yet another example of how buzz tracking tools are quickly developing and is the latest in a list of tools that can be used to track buzz and what online communities are saying. With the Sound Index the BBC has stolen a march on others (this could have sat well within Google / Yahoo! etc) and if the Sound Index is promoted / developed properly it could be a major draw to the BBC online music pages. As the Guardian says "don't bet against the enormously usable Sound Index establishing itself as the first definitive music chart for the internet age."

My reply to the above blog post

I really like this concept, how do you profile/map users and what people are searching for and listening to but it still comes down to the most popular, most viewed, most downloaded, your playlist. After a while does it become narrowed down to music and genres you know you like without finding something unexpected?
I don't know. Is there a way of doing something more experimental with this data?

I also find it fascinating that it's the BBC doing this and not someone like Google

Not sure what I mean by experimental, maybe the way it visualized. How users are finding songs, artists, bands, groups. How do you visualize these links between usesrs. Crawling, mapping, web, chains, links.
How do you visualize what is going on at this moment

This Index is made up of 25,778,447 comments, posts, plays and views

How can you show this activity? How do you show what other people are searching for, commenting on, downloading, sharing?

EDIT 28 April
Nicks response

I think it is still early days for this service as there is not a lot of info as you filter things and become more specific, but I am sure this will improve over time.

I also think this would have sat well within Google's portfolio, however there is still a great opportunity to mash this up with Google Earth!

See this is interesting, the idea of combing Google Earth visulizing in real time clusters of users. I can see this being mapped links, similar to realtime airline traffic data

No 9: Mailing list and newsletter

NOISE newsletter as a case study. Use the information from Benchmark mailing reports to redesign the Newsletter to make users visit specific areas of the NOISE website.

Visualize this through mock ups, graphs, feedback and observations

No 8: Sign up page

Edit:18/5/2008
Following on from this post
A site search tool needs relevant meta data from users, so this intail profile age becomes crucial. What needs to be thought about is the information that is being captured at this initial stage, how and where will it be used later on I what to link students work together, by common themes. By styles, interests, ideas, colours and so on. So at a later stage this can be pooled and used to link work together. What I want to try and avoid is narrowing people down to typographers, animators, graphic designers or web designers. This isn't the course philosophy, from the course website

"The course has an unusual profile recognising that once discrete disciplines with graphic arts and design have now converged.....

The diverse range of practice and process you can engage with are animation, broadcast graphics, illustration, design for print, web design, photography, art direction, advertising, traditional print and digital imaging and editing, typography, letter press and bookwork."

OK so maybe this isn't just a sign up page, it's a profile page as well. You can update your status likes dislikes ala Facebook

What needs to be done those is make people update their profile on semi-regular basis. In the case of CAGD site could this be done at the beginning of every term, after tutorials, seminars. Do you auto log people out and force them to sign in or give them the option say every six weeks?

The extreme of this would be to automatically add books you've loaned from the library and feed them onto your page so you don't have to add them. Could you auto add RSS Feeds and contacts. See MA research tool, how to eliminate that extra navigation step.

So what to collect and how to do it? One thing is to make it visual, can you upload thumbnails of your like/dislikes? Could your lists of favourite be visualised- do you take these from Google or do you start to cannibalise the site- my profile says I like Willem De Kooning paintings, do I get an image that is has been tagged De Kooning, abstract, Pollock- do you get a random image from one of these.
Or could you do what Wikipedia does and start to link to general information. For example the first sentence of the De Koonings biography on Wikipedia mentions abstract expressionism, Rotterdam and the Netherlands. Could I start to be linked and fed images relating to these terms? Hmmm....

This feeds back into the search tool. For example if I use the graph layout, my most relevant images are 1950's American Abstract expressionist but at the other end you could have Rem Koolhaas and Dutch architecture.

Edit:18/5/2008

Develop a mock up page and/or series of interactive tests that could be incorporated into a website sign up page to help profile users likes and dislikes.

Find out what tests exist at the moment (abstract, impressionists, cubist)
Developing templates form this
Options for skins
10 questions. What do you like, why do you like it?
How to tag without words
Animations, visual. Remember art and design a visual language
Testing to see what people like
Find out what tests exist at the moment (abstract, impressionists, cubist)
Set up a simple interactive test
Fine art versus design

What do you do with this information, how and why you are profiling people

Art personality
Pick a Palette
Colour Quiz

No 7: Add me to your friends

Develop ideas for users to connect with each other. How do you create collaborations with other users, avoid cliches? Friends lists,

Look at case studies such as Facebook and MySpace. Create friends lists. Genuine friends, collaborators. Anti-friends lists, people you have a an association with. How do you know people online, through others, through groups, similar ineterests, things you like/ dislike.

Again how to visualize this. Is it possibel to create work with people

eg
"Enough room for Space" a network, a loose group of people with different skills that can be called upon.


Network

* Introduction
* Artists
* Architects
* Curators
* Designers
* Exhibitionspaces
* Institutions
* Initiatives
* Residencies
* Support
* Theoreticians
* Web/Graphic designers
* Writers

No 6: NOISE enterprise section

Edit 14/7/08
This needs to be a map of some sort, a mock up of a search tool or a Google map, with NOISE specific overlays. Some reference to publishing on demand sites such as Threadless, Wooshka and Zudacomics. The importance of public rating with these sites, public ratings feedback. "Wisdom of the Crowd"

Edit 14/7/08

Development of enterprise section on the NOISE site. A way for young creatives to collaborate develop ideas and work together. Use current social networking tools and ways of networking to develop new patterns of working and ways of collaborating.
Do you work remotely or do you start mapping where users are uploading and start creating physical enterprise spaces. Are these long term or short term collaborations?

Existing networking tools. Existing social networks.


Notes from meeting with BT
BT Trade Space

http://www.bttradespace.com/

He was keen on the selling of artists work and how we were thinking of doing this. He mentioned Trade Space, at the moment this is in its early stages and BT is still developing this. Trade Space is being developed along similar lines to Amazon and Ebay but BT are looking to create a social networking or community element. They are open to new ideas about how this might develop (for example the Second Life area BT have opened) so are interested in NOISE enterprise or NOISE shop and how this might work. He liked the idea that a musician could find a graphic designer and film maker and work together via something like NOISE enterprise or a NOISE shop space. He was also keen on how we mapped users, postcodes, where work was uploaded from and so on. He also said we would able to talk to some of there technical and design team involved in Trade Space

No 5: Upload Tools

Edit 14/7/08
This stays as a case study explaining the importance of meta data. Some suggestions abut experimental upload options, what data could be cpatured

Edit 14/7/08

Case studies from YouTube and Flickr.
Develop ideas for how upload tools might work, look at meta data, tagging, algorithms. What information do I want to capture, what am I trying to archive and what do I want showcase/ curate later. How does this effect what information I capture at the upload stage.

Use YouTube and Flickr as case studies. Improvements that could be made, how theses sites already work.