Category: Ann Chen

Posted on

Final Project Proposal (Matthew and Shirley)

Our final project will serve as an online “mad-lib”-type interactive project. Users will be given the choice to choose between three stories, each with its own options along the way to customize as they see fit. User interactivity includes inserting a name to be used for the character, choosing what actions the character will perform, selecting the character’s clothes, among others. Granting the users the ability to shape the story as they wish, our project acts as a light-hearted, collaborative environment where anyone can make stories of their own.

Our project builds on inspiration from the works of both “The Flippist” and Peter Veverka. “The Flippist” is a flipbook artist whose achieved fame through his intricate flipbook videos on YouTube. His flipbooks cover a variety of topics, ranging anywhere from the Avengers to Usain Bolt to love stories. The vibrant images and intriguing storylines engages the viewer in less than a minute. The Flippist’s drawing style varies from video to video but overall there is consistency within each story. We are inspired by the way he chooses to tell his stories and admire the transitions he utilizes between scenes. We hope to reach the same level of smooth transitioning when making our final project.

In addition to the Flippist, we were inspired by Peter Veverka’s stop motion film called “In the Box.” The video was cleverly made and pushes the reader to figure out the significance behind the film without any use of dialogue. Veverka’s keen use of sound effects and background music allows the viewer to follow along with what is happening in the story. Especially, the sound of the clay walls moving and the figure tapping its foot gives the viewer a deeper understanding of the story’s progression. Choosing to refrain from narration was a smart choice because it allows the viewer to see the hidden message through the movement of the figure.

Our project will utilize a number of mediums to convey our story. Instead of following the ‘normal’ flipbook style of hand-drawn drawings, we will take pictures to give off the effect of a flipbook. Seeking inspiration from Peter Veverka, we plan to add sound effects that correspond with users’ choices and background music to set the overall tone. The project will be made using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and will provide the user a number of options to adjust the story to their liking. Trying to maximize user interactivity, there will be opportunities for users to change colors, type in text, and fill in gaps in the story. The three options for our stories will be (1) A day at the park, in which users select options such as where to go and what activities to perform (2) A day in paradise, in which users can select a vacation spot and choose options such as what to eat and (3) A rainy day, in which users choose what leisurely activities to perform and how to maximize their day indoors. Our stories have no direct relation and our various choices exist solely to provide the user with more options.

Posted on

Final Project Proposal (Cecilia Cai and Vivian Zhu)

Taking into account of feedbacks from peer-editing yesterday, we adjusted our idea and decided to take another approach to present the theme.

1. Concept

Is social media a sincere outlet to express oneself and link among friends, or a veritable battleground boasting and gloating to get appreciation from others?  While the answer could be subtle, it is undeniable that people are increasingly fascinated by the idea of “a perfect life” portrayed by Kim-Kardashian-like KOLs through social media posts. At the same time, people also indulge in hopping onto social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram every day,  reading posts, checking notifications, and sharing interesting stuff etc. A report by GWI reports internet users are now spending an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes per day on social networking and messaging platforms. We cannot live without social media.

Therefore, a critical examination among relationships of social media, branding and the definition to a “good life” is a timely topic. What constitutes a perfect life at present? When you’re choosing brands online, what you are actually choosing?… And, what if all the crafting perfect lives are destroyed? By adopting a critical, sarcastic perspective, we hope our project not just reflects a layer of the phenomena happening in virtual world, but also leads the audience to have deeper thoughts upon how humans get interconnected, and impacted by social media.

2. Sources

Amalia Ulman, Excellences & Perfections 2014-2015

Amalia used her social media profiles to stage a five-month scripted performance inspired by extreme makeover culture. She established herself to be a encouraging role through Instagram, profiling herself as what social media seemingly demands her to be. After repeating a lie for three months, she created a truth that she was unable to dismantle. We found this artist inspires us as she “boycotts” her online persona and criticizes the impact of social media. Our project is also about criticizing. However, instead of constructing perfect figure, we take a sarcastic perspective by making everything imperfect and ugly on social media, reflecting the topic from another extreme angle.

Victoria Siemer “Human Error,” 2014

Victoria is a graphic designer who imagines a world where everyday actions and scenes get a computer error message. She updates the photos of this series on her blog Witchoria every week. The photos look like Polaroid pictures, ranging from flowers to people to abstract nature scenes. On top of the scene is a modified error message. We get inspired in terms of the art of error conveying via her work. We had a difficult time thinking how to express the theme of our project, and we found exaggerations and sarcasm would be effective ways to present, and error art helps our project stand out.

3. Production

We will construct a “fake” social media webpage, mimicking the style of Weibo. When the users open the page, all the posts appear to be normal, with beautifully edited contents (such as pictures, texts, and videos). However, when users interact with the page, the contents will gradually break and become disordered. For example, when clicking on the pictures to enlarge them, a window will pop up showing the pictures, which, instead of applied with pretty filters, are intentionally made uglier. As for the videos, they would appear as a pretty frame, but on playing, their contents are actually messed up. As more interactions are generated, the webpage itself becomes disordered, with texts displaying randomly and contents not showing orderly. If the user tries to exit the page, an alert will be generated and the users would be unable to quit.

The production of our project will make use of pictures, videos and audios. The coding part will mainly be based on javaScript, HTML, and CSS, and we will also use P5 for some part of the web page.

Posted on

Week 13: Final Project Proposal

Final Project Proposal (Winny & Sebastian)

For final project, we plan to present our recreation of Jorgen Leth’s short film “The Perfect Human” in an interactive webpage. Through this recreation, we aim to build an original dialogue with “The Perfect Human” adding our own understanding, and connect this old film with our present life. Our version of “The Perfect Human” will be based on NYU Shanghai and its students. We will re-record the narration and most likely tweak it to make it more relevant to our university. We are also going to have another version called “The Real Human” made up of bloopers (mistakes made during filming). The message we want to convey through our recreation is that humans are not perfect objects, they have feelings and emotions, they make mistakes; in a setting of our real life, our audience can better relate with this idea.

The two sources we are referencing are Jorgen Leth, the director of the original “The Perfect Human” and Lars von Trier, the director of “The Five Obstructions” version. In addition, we also drew inspiration from Chris Milk’s “The Wilderness Downtown”. We chose these artists as our sources of inspiration as we are intending to produce our own version of The Perfect Human. Moreover, we will construct our video in a different way, more akin to The Wilderness Downtown’s way of having multiple windows pop up. The pop-up windows will have the same scenes but will feature different parts of the school as well as different actors.

Within our final webpage, first, we will show the original versions of “The Perfect Human” and “The Five Obstructions” to give the audience an idea of what we are trying to emulate. We will also have text on the side to help explain the videos and as a result hopefully make it more obvious for our audience to see what the message of our version is. We chose to imitate the “The Perfect Human”, or more precisely “The Five Obstructions” as the editing of “The Five Obstructions” fascinated us. The ability to create something so varied and different, yet with clear roots to the original was intriguing. We felt like our project would be important to our audience (NYU Shanghai students and regular students in general) in dismissing the notion of a perfect human. We intend for our actors to represent all of us at NYU Shanghai (as they are NYU Shanghai students).

After receiving feedback from the class we fleshed out our scenes more. We decided on three different scenes, each with three actors doing different things. One scene is eating. However, we are changing the dialogue, and the scenes will be more relevant to the school. We will have a focus on the three different students eating different things (homecooked lunch, cafeteria lunch, wai mai) and then zoom out to show they are all at the same table. Another scene depicts students walking down the stairs. Lastly, our third scene shows students studying for different subjects. We plan on emulating “The Five Obstructions” style of zooming in and zooming out. We are still thinking about the dialogue/narration as well as the obstructions we want to give ourselves.

We will film around the school using the IMA equipment room issued cameras and tripods. We will also rent out shotgun mics and tascams to ensure a high level of audio quality whether it is for the voice overs or for the audio recording during filming.

Posted on

Week 13: Final Project Proposal

Project Proposal: Angel and Ploy

A. Concept

We would like to explore the relationships between different foods and the different cultures in various parts of China. Even though China is one country, different provinces have their own unique cultures and distinctive foods. For instance, some parts of China rely on rice as their stables whilst others rely on noodles. The types of food that are consumed also reflect the cultures of the places. For example, people from northern China rely on rice because the weather is favorable for plantation. This portrays the cultures of the plantation. The flavors of the food from different parts are also significantly different. For example, Sichuan food is very spicy, whilst Shanghai food is quite sweet. The reason why Sichuan food is spicy is that those spices keep them warm in the cold weather. We believe that food and culture in China are very unique as it shares a special relationship, however, many foreigners might not know about it. From this project, we hope that the viewers will be able to learn more about China’s unique cultures and also delicious food.

When we are looking for places to travel around China, food and culture is very important. Food is an important aspect to consider just like the attractions and the hotels. Every time we would like to be traveling, we often look at food and see what is there to eat. We often search on the internet to see which places have the best food so we can try it out. Thus those food portrays the cultures of these places.

We would like to create a web page of a map of China. The audience can move around China to see the food in each place. This would help the audience to decide where might they travel to given the different foods and cultures.

B. Sources

http://www.playmapscube.com/

Playmapscube.com is a game about Google maps. The game is for the audience to navigate the ball to the destination that was indicated in the mission card. The player would navigate it by moving the mouse and then the plane of the map would move according to our navigations. Since it is the real map, there are many buildings that serve as the obstacles to the game. The routes on the map and the freedom given to audience interaction inspire us to create a web page based upon the decision of the player. In our project, the player would be in control of where they want to go and from that decision, the project continues.

https://www.tasteatlas.com/search

Tasteatlas.com is a page that incorporates much different food on the map of the world. When we clicked on each food, it opens up a new page and there’s the detail of the dish. Every time you want to travel, you want to find the most famous food. From the display of the website, the audience can instantly and directly know information about the food of various areas without searching individual places on the browser. Therefore, we are inspired to create a website with the design that assists the audience with the maximum level of simplicity.

Starving Time Channel

We really like to see reviews of food at different places. I subscribed to a specific food channel – Starving Time – as they travel around in Thailand to try different food. It makes me feel that there are so many foods out there that I really like to try. Sometimes food is the reason where you are traveling. Since there are so many people who are interested in trying all kind of foods, this artist inspires us to work on a project that would interest the current society

C. Production

On the first page of our website, it would be a map of China with a character. The audience would be able to navigate the character around the map of China by using the arrows on the keyboard to different places. After arriving at the destination there would be well-known food at each place. We would like to draw the food on our iPad, so it would be easier to use various colors and are easier to edit. Corresponding to the drawings, there would be the sound of the food. For instance, the sound of the water boiling for hot pot or the grizzling sounds of the barbeque for the street food. In addition to that food, we would have information such as culture and the environment. Another audience interaction is that they would be able to like or dislike the place/food. The audiences can go around China to see the food and culture of each place.   

Posted on

Week 13: Final Project Proposal – Hanqi Deng

Concept

I was inspired by a famous American reality game show called “The moment of truth” screened from 2008 to 2009. Contestants were required to answer 21 increasingly embarrassing and personal questions correctly in order to win a vast cash prize $500,000. The game has six levels like a pyramid, the higher you go, the fewer and trickier questions you receive. The authenticity of answers will be tested by a rigorous polygraph. One answer false and the contestant receives nothing. Since the screening of this game show it has gone viral. Although the game process seems a piece of cake, but when certain questions regarding family history, romantic relationships, jobs, religion, ethnicity, et cetera were asked, the contestant’s relationship with closest people could be at stake. Sometimes it is too high a price to pay for the cash. As a result, no one has ever made it through all 21 questions. Despite its controversy, this game show, though ceased to be shown, makes us contemplate on our honesty in daily lives. Can we remain truthful at all times? Can integrity still be guaranteed in a modern era of deception and suspicion? 

Production

The production will be very similar to the game show itself. At the beginning, questions will be asked about the player’s gender, age, race, sexual orientation, financial conditions, et cetera. The questions will then be presented based on the blanks above that players fill. However I still need to think about what to do with the prize part because we cannot really offer the cash to players. Additionally there will be an exit button so that the player could exit whenever possible if it makes them uncomfortable.