Author: Christos Vassos

We are currently deciding on how the animations will be portrayed in the space. We have already decided that we want the spaces to achieve a degree of realism in our attempt to position our project as a model for real life installations. Therefore we cannot simply paste the animations onto the walls but we have to convey the medium through which the are being shown. In the first example the animations are made to look as a projection whereas in the second as screens. The projections method has the disadvantage of distorting the original animation but adds another layer of realism as in the real world in would be less likely to construct a rooms with giant led screens for walls.

Bellow are a few concepts for the interiors created in Maya. The core design principle in all of these is creating a uniform, encircling and monochromatic seating area that aims at comfort and relaxation and an open ceiling that muddies the boundaries of the outside world and the world of the animations. The apertures are just big enough to not reveal too much of the outside world to render it as a completely separate space in the mind of the observer but instead suggest that they are an extension of the animations. The same principle is behind the tree in image 5 and the moon-shaped lamp in image 6.

These are some initial mockups of the space that I have created as a starting point for us to start discussing more about design ideas.

Creating separate ‘screens’ (1st image) for the animations has the advantage of allowing us to create a more fleshed out space but at the same time a fractured space does not lend itself to great immersion. On the other hand enveloping the whole space in the animations (2nd image) while immersive does not allow us to exhibit the interior and therefore would make it hard to communicate the purpose of our project.

We decided that the next iterations of the interior designs would confine the animations only to the walls and will be broken up by physical object in order to simultaneously maintain a sense of immersion and make the function of the rooms clearer.

For the creation of the spaces I will be using Maya as I have now gained a degree of fluency in modelling and texturing. It is worth exploring using Unreal Engine to composite the animations as the real time rendering would make for an easier workflow between myself and the rest of the group however it is the piece of software I have the least experience on and I might end up relying on after effects and nuke for compositing purposes. It is also worth exploring whether or not the animations should be added in post or ‘in camera’ using Maya or Unreal, what the most efficient workflow is and what workflow produces the better results.

I have started to learn how to use the nDisplay plugin of Unreal which lets us render multiple different displays onto our project and can be used for physical installations.

It would be possible that this technique allows us to create a virtual workspace where the animators can project their drafts from their own machines and see how they look. We could also experiment with the idea of an evolving shared installation space where anyone can project their work to a selected space.

For now I do not see any merit in projecting the animations as a material in Unreal as I have a better understanding of how to use Maya for the same purpose and I am not sure if there would be any advantages to overcomplicating this process but I will test it further.

When reading on interior design practices, partitioning space is done with the purpose of achieving the most harmonious/aesthetic environment out of an inherently utilitarian construction (e.g. a home, an office, etc.). In our case we our not bound by those rules and although we want to give the impression of realism in order to use our project as a model of how such spaces can be constructed, the prototype can be represent a more idealized form.

The idea of an open versus closed space presents a more interesting challenge. Above the apertures refer to things such as windows or doors and therefore the space is open to the ‘outside’. In our case we want to create the illusion that the space becomes open to a different world represented by the animations. At the same time we do not want to create a hard division between interior and animations in a way that would disrupt the immersion and communicate that the two spaces are separate or different in nature. Therefore our design decisions would have to navigate that balance.

Another concept which would be useful for our project is contrast. I’m mostly interested in the contrasts of materials and textures and how they will affect our composition. For example we can create a uniform or flowing space without much spatial contrast but simultaneously achieve the open effect discussed above by making our animations somewhat transparent in contrast to the opaque interior. Also, we could use this transparency as a ‘counterpoint’: our animations projected over the rough material of a wall could signal our purpose of ‘softening’ the everyday environment.

Definition

In general, the term installation art is used to describe works from the 1960s and onwards which share certain key characteristics, such as: the creation of an event, site-specificity, the focus on the theatrical, on process, spectatorship and temporality. Depending on the argument, various authors place the nature of installation art in its site-specific character (Onorato 1997), spectatorship (Reiss 1999; Bishop 2005) or the hybrid character of the installation as an art form (Suderburg 2000). Van Saaze adds that installation art has a long history and can be placed in the tradition of art movements such as action painting, dada, fluxus, minimalism, performance and conceptual art — movements which ’emphasise art as a process instead of the objet fini, and dethrone the autonomous and object-oriented character of art.’ Installation art, therefore, differentiates itself by making audience engagement a feature of the artform.

Van Saaze also notes that the ephemeral or temporal character of installation art lends itself to problems of conservation and reproduction. Our project can be viewed as an answer to that problem or an evolution to installation art. By transferring the exhibition from the material world to the virtual we break the barriers of temporal and spatial specificity by creating an artefact the is updated throughout and indefinite period of time.

Screens

X writes:

<sub>While the genre of installation art will be familiar to an art historical audience, it warrants a brief description here. Installation often overlaps with other post-1960 genres, such as fluxus, land art, minimalism, video art, performance, conceptual art, and process, all of which share an interest in issues such as site specificity, participation, institutional critique, temporality, and ephemerality. Installation artworks are participatory sculptural environments in which the viewer’s spatial and temporal experience with the exhibition space and the various objects within it forms part of the work itself. 8 These pieces are meant to be experienced as activated spaces rather than as discrete objects: they are designed to “unfold” during the spectator’s experience in time rather than to be known visually all at once. Installations made with media screens are especially evocative in that as environmental, experiential sculptures, they stage temporal and spatialized encounters between viewing subjects and technological objects, between bodies and screens. A potentially new mode of screen-reliant spectatorship emerges in the process. 9


Screens themselves have the curious status of functioning simultaneously as immaterial thresholds onto another space and time and as solid, material entities. The screen’s objecthood, however, is typically overlooked in daily life: the conventional propensity is to look through media screens and not at them. 9 Although the screen is a notoriously slippery and ambivalent object, one that seems to outrun its shadow of materiality at every turn, its physical form shapes both its immediate space and its relationship to viewing subjects. In environmental media artworks, the screen object and the viewer’s active, bodily experience with it can achieve a new centrality: the interface “matters” for media installation art. It matters in the sense that it constitutes an essential component of the artwork (the various dealings between spectators and the screen are structural to the work), but also because the body-screen interface is a phenomenal form in itself

In a 1974 manifesto, Sharits singled out four main imperatives for the development of the locational film works: (1) they must exist “in an open, free, public location”; (2) the form of presentation must not “prescribe a definite duration of respondent’s observation (i.e., the respondent may enter and leave at any time)”; (3) the very structure of the composition must be “non-developmental” and offer “an immediately apprehensible system of elements”; and, finally, (4) the content of the work must “not disguise itself but rather make . . . a specimen of itself.”

How might the terms of engaging media installations differ (or not) from observing other art objects? The moving images and illuminated surfaces of screen-reliant works provoke a different kind of attention from other art objects, both psychologically and physiologically. On the most basic level, moving and illuminated imagery insistently solicits the observer’s gaze and in so doing disciplines his or her body.</sub>

Discipline in our case means the calming effects we want to achieve with our animations and spaces. We can also reappropriate the ‘open, free, public location’ part of the definition above to mean the internet.

I will be collaborating with Rosa Sawyers, Aneta Janoudova and Sara Habib from MA Animation to create a virtual art installation with a focus on wellbeing.
We will create a number of virtual spaces where we will exhibit 2D animations. Rosa, Sara and Aneta will create the animations while I create the different spaces and put the final product together.

The project appealed to me as I have already worked in something similar in the past where I create a virtual installation centered around different film genres. Additionally, I am very interested in environment design, architecture and interior design, so this project would be a great opportunity in researching those subject and developing relevant skills.

We have tentatively decided to create three different spaces centered around the themes “nature”, “water” and “abstraction”. The original idea for the project describes the final product as simply a video where we tour the different spaces, however we will explore the possibility of creating a VR experience as it would be more in line with the purpose of the project.