Author: Murray Wu Lu

Project Link:

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~mwl323/FinalProject/

Project Proposal:

For this project we wanted to create an interactive photo gallery that would partially be inspired by Google Earth Studio and would tell us the location of the places captured in these regions. During my gap year that I did prior to NYU Shanghai, I lived in Wuhan, China by myself where I learned Chinese with other foreigners and would travel around Asia during my spare time with friends. During these travels, I went to places that I never thought I would of been able to go to when I was back in America and I ended up going to Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and many parts of China that I hadn’t been to before: Zhangjiajie, Shenzhen, Gansu, Jiangsu, and many more. Throughout these trips, I would bring my dslr camera with me to take pictures of the scenery and the people while documenting my travels and would also talk with the locals so I could learn more about their own personal experience living there and to learn more about the place’s culture. So based from this experience, I decided that I wanted to use the pictures that I’ve taken and create a interactive photo gallery that would be able to list the details and location.

Design:

To best display the photos that I had, we decided to select photos that were related to nature so we categorized the photos into 5 segments: Forest, Beaches, Mountains, Sunrises, and Temples.The next step was to develop the aesthetic of the page. Ying found a real cool photo website called azab.es which was perfect for our project.

For this website, wherever you clicked on the screen, it would generate new photos from that area however after repetitive clicking, the website would stop generating new photos per click. I thought that it would be more interesting if the website would never stop generating new photos and perhaps play the photos through reverse which is what I did for the code.

In terms of coding, Ying created the home layout for our website while I created the buttons such as how one button would generate new photos per click while a different button would delete the photos on the screen. While the website that we used for inspiration would generate photos wherever you clicked, we wanted to differentiate our website from what we were inspired by and instead make the clicks on the screen generate the photos in random locations throughout the page.

One problem that we faced in the project was the size of the photos that I was using for the project because the photos were too big and when implemented into the website, the photo would cover the entire page rather than a small portion that we were trying to get when clicking on the screen. To fix this, what I did was through Adobe Photoshop, I changed the sizing of the photos through the export settings by changing the image size and canvas size by width: 400 and height: 600 which then solved the problem.

This project was really challenging for me because for the prior projects that I did, I didn’t have a big coding role since I had never coded before but I did have a lot of experience in other aspects that could benefit the projects we did. For the audio project, I used to record and produce music and songs that I had written in my bedroom back in high school so I used by music recording and production experience to voice out my character in the project. For the video project, I had a lot of experience doing photography and handling a dslr so I used my own camera for the project instead of the dslr’s the school offered (mostly cause I was already really used to the functions on my own camera and it was more convenient since I wouldn’t need to rent a dslr every time from the school) and I used my knowledge in photography to help film the project and direct the camera angles and shots that were used. For the Final Project, I suddenly had to go back and catch up on the coding I learned in the past throughout Communication Lab and try my best to create what I could with the best of my capabilities. After pulling an all-nighter at the IMA Lab as well as getting a lot of help from friends and the lab fellows, I would able to create the buttons that would generate new photos on the screen and remove them.

Future:

Even though I grew up in an environment where everyone around was did computer science (such as my brother, my father, and most of my friends in high school), I had always struggled learning how to code and I remember taking an Intro to Computer Programming course in high school but dropped out after a week later since I struggled too much with coding. However, Communication Lab really showed me a whole new aspect of coding that I had never thought of before. I have always been a lover of art myself and prior to Comm Lab, I had never thought art and coding could come together until I had taken Communication Lab.

Communication Lab was probably one of the most enjoyable courses that I had ever taken at NYU Shanghai and because of Comm Lab, I now have a much deeper and new perspective towards coding. 

Concept

For the final project, Ying and I will be working together to create an interactive photo gallery along with some stories about the place. Ying wanted to to do this because a photo shouldn’t just be visualized by the audience but it should also expose the audience to different senses such as hearing which I myself agreed with as well. Additionally, we planned to add more features on each photo such as time, temperature, and a definite location. Doing this will allow us to express our picture and convey a message that our audience will then be able to interpret.

We also want to add as much interaction as possible between the user and make it visible and clear for the user to interact with. We’ll also utilize the mouse cursor which will then tell user what to do by showing a small text over it. We will also add sound effects to several texts that users can hoover and make it visible and stand out. We hope that the aesthetic of our page will be modern and clean will minimal color mixing, so we may also use a background that’s mostly white or black. We also plan to add a video by showing a zoom-in clip to the specific location by using Google Earth Studio. 

Rachel Greene’s “A History of Internet Art” describes the details of how internet art (net art) was first created and it’s impact in the digital world. This discovery marked a new age of digital media as well as a new revelation for artists as well. With the internet initially being used as a means of technological work, one at the time may have not expected the internet to also become artistic in the ways of sharing one’s art. For thousands of years art was always shared around through word of mouth or a company would sign you but with the internet, anyone could now become an artists. It’s like of like how musicians back in the day would need to be signed by a label in order to be successful but now as long as they have a laptop and an internet, anyone could really be a successful musician independently without the help of others. I also thought it was interesting for how art suddenly became more collaborative than ever with the help of the internet since art I feel is often viewed as a personal solace for an individual but with the internet, it could be shared much more interchangeably between other users and one would be able to provide direct feedback and critique on one’s own art.

http://www.staggeringbeauty.com/

I chose this website because I remember when I was in like the beginning of high school or late middle school, this website was really popular and people would reference it a lot. I also just thought that the character in the website was particularly interesting and mysterious as well.

Also if you move your mouse really quickly in the website, the character will start flashing (to the point that your eyes hurt, at least for me) and dramatic music will play out as well.

The website was created in 2012 by George Michael Brower and it because popular when famous YouTubers began including the website in their videos.

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~jh5231/VideoProject/

This project was definitely one of the most fun and exciting projects that I got to work on ever. I already had experience with photography which is something that I’m very passionate about but I never had experience around filming and video making before so finally being able to implement my own video skills in the project was definitely really exciting for me.

In the beginning, we had many ideas but we weren’t too sure on which to pick. Initially, we thought that we were going to make an ice cream making machine for our project and film each steps of it so it would kind of be like a build-a-bear workshop but for ice cream instead which would be video based and interactive. After digging into this idea for too long, we felt that it wasn’t a project that we were passionate enough to plan out. After scrapping the ice cream idea, we considered doing a day to day life comparison of the Chinese national students compared to the international students at NYU Shanghai. However, we also felt like this idea was already played out a lot in comm lab and it also wasn’t very originally. When brainstorming new ideas, I thought of the “expectation vs reality” scene in the film “500 Days of Summer” and proposed we make an “expectation vs reality” that students had of NYU Shanghai. Jon and Allie liked the idea a lot so we went along with this.

When planning the clips for what we would do, we first thought of our own expectations and experience of living in China. For me personally, I was on a gap year in Wuhan (China) prior to coming to NYU Shanghai where I was in a very traditional Chinese environment unlike NYU Shanghai so I had a different experience with China and Jon used his own experience as being a Junior and NYU Shanghai and Allie who was living in China for the first time ever.

During the filming parts, I decided to use my own DSLR camera instead of the one that the school provided because although the school cameras were better than mine, I was a lot more familiar with my own camera and I’ve always believed that technique and skill were more important that the quality of your gear and equipment. I also borrowed my friends tripod and we were able to film around the school.

For one instance of our project, we wanted to do a traveling scene that shows an expectation people have when coming to NYU Shanghai. So for this, I decided to book a ticket to Tokyo on 4/19-22 because I truly believed that taking the extra step to travel somewhere would of helped our project greatly.

Jon and I were directors and actors for the project and Jon was in-charge of the coding while Allie was in charge of video editing since she had prior experience with video editing while I didn’t. I felt like our group dynamic worked very well together since each of our own strengths fit perfectly with each other for this assignment.

This project was definitely my favorite project and one of my favorite assignments that I’ve ever done for school and I would love to film again if the opportunity arrived to me again.