Outcome 2 - Evaluation

Evaluation: The People of St. Enoch

Over the course of the project a variety of different things have changed a great deal from my original ideas. This has allowed me to rethink my ideas and see how they would fit with the constraints outlined in the project plan. Each new idea and decision takes an effect on everything else in the project With I will attempt to out line with in this evaluation.

Creative Objectives Including Methodology

As stated before in the project plan my original idea was to create an installation piece of art representing the history of the square. After some research and developments I found that this was to large an idea for the project considering the constraints that were pointed out. Money, time and labor were all huge factors that would cause difficulties.

Getting rid of this Idea I then went on to start thinking about ways to let the audience know and learn about the St. Enoch train crash. After some thinking and researching I Then decided to create a multimedia piece of work for my project, interviewing the public and finding how the public reacted to the crash. This worked well but one major flaw was that the public don’t particularly want to give up their time for nothing. After a few days out in the square I only managed to acquire three interviews with the public. I then went to interview family and friends with in and about the square, gathering more interviews until I got my target of nine (I wished for nine interviews mainly for layout issues.)

After this I then went about developing and thinking about what to do with these interviews to make them into a multimedia type project. Once again I wanted to dip back in to the realms of installation art but following more in the terms of Maurice Benayouns virtual art installation work. I wanted to create a 3D type wall that would display all the interviews and media and that could be clicked and dragged to move around and engage the audience. I though that this would be quite gimmicky and would be more aesthetics than substance so I decided to scrap that idea and see what other ideas could work.

I then began to start thinking about ways in which I could combine the interviews and media together creating a mash up style of work, making way to engage and allow the audience to play the interviews in interesting ways. One of my favorite idea that was created from this was to lay each of the interviews out in a 3x3 square and when ever an interview was moused over it would play for the length of time that the curser was on top of the video. Unfortunately though I felt as if this would be another gimmicky idea that was style over substance.

After some more developing and thought I then came to the idea of making use of the audio and mixing and creating an interesting effect with only the audio from the interviews. This then led me to recreating the audio from the crash using samples from trains and clips and words from the interviews. Though my favorite idea and the one I used for my final piece I felt as though it still had its down points. My main concern was that people wouldn’t understand clearly what I was trying to do or they wouldn’t be able to interoperate it easily. I managed to solve this problem though my making the audio clips much clearer and arranging them in such a way that it almost added a slight narrative to the piece.

Technical Constraints

Another problem that had to be tackled throughout the life of the project is that of technical constraints. Using things such as professional equipment and updated and newer versions of software were not accessible during the project so I just used my own equipment and a mixture of free and updated software to create my final piece.

Another technical difficulty I encountered when recording the interviews was that I didn’t have a dedicated microphone to record the audio so a resorted to using the cameras in built microphone. This resulted in some unbalance and interference with the audio but all in all it wasn’t too much of a problem.

Research

Research was a key player in the development in my project, especially for my developments for the installation ideas I had for the final piece. Majority research of the square and its history it has given me a much greater insight to how the square was and what it was like back in the times of the crash. Research in terms of multimedia projects and mixed media developments have also helped to shape my final outcome.

Resources

During the process of the project I’ve used a variety of different resources to produce my final outcome. I could have used more but I found myself more involved in the interviewing and designing of the web that I neglected my sketchbook some what. Still, the process and development within the sketchbook has been the most important part to my project. With this I could process and develop my ideas further allowing me to find, what I felt, would be the best solution to the brief.

My development board that accompanied my final outcome board shows a combination of images and developments from the start of the project right through to some final developments.

Timescale

The timescale for my project was slightly unrealistic as it was written and thought up before the main bulk of my work was started. During certain processes (such as the interviewing process) problems occurred such as not being able to interview as many people as I originally wished causing me to delay that section much more and throwing off all events after that. At the same time though certain parts like the web designing took far less than originally intended helping to balance out the time line more.

Looking back at the project and its progress as a whole, it never really lined up too well with the original outlined plan but still managed to work successfully. This will be something I will want to narrow in on and develop further to allow my future projects to stick more uniformly to the set timelines created.