keyword: collaboration

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briefs ideas

Layer tennis

Engage students in a tournament of “layer tennis” (also known as Photoshop ping-pong”. According to Wikipedia:

The players pick a starting image, or one is “served” by a player, then another player makes some sort of alteration to the image in any chosen image editor (matches are not exclusive to Adobe Photoshop). They then send the altered image to the other player or players, usually via e-mail or by posting the image to a Photoshop tennis forum, who then edits that image and sends it back to the first player. This process goes back and forth until a predetermined number of rounds have elapsed, or the players otherwise wish to end the game.

Ressources:

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briefs

Role playing panel sessions

Another experiment by John Maeda, carried it out in 1996 (his first year of teaching computational design at the MIT Media Lab). Described in his book Creative Code (2004, p. 217):

I always wonder what a session with a panel of experts at a conference achieves. Having been on many and hosted a faire share of them, I decided to put students on the spot by making them experts in an impromptu schedule of panels. This role-playing activity forced students to contribute their own perspectives.

Some of the session topics invented by Maeda:

  • Static, Physical, and Hyper-real
  • One shot performance vs. Continuum
  • Coding vs. Caching
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briefs

People as pixels

An experiment carried out by John Maeda at MIT (Computational Media Design Course) in 1996. Described in his book Creative Code (p.216):

As a continuation of the collaborative coding process, we attempted an experiment to better understand visual design on the computer. In the atrium of the Media Lab, we rigged up a camera on the fourth floor pointing downward; in the lower lobby, we projected the image seen from above so that the students (as pixels) could see themselves. The idea was that each student took charge and “programmed” the pixels, whether by script or direct commands.

Maeda mentions the source of this idea:

My inspiration for this experiment was a Bauhaus story of an old Master taking his students to the gymnasium to walk on the paths of large circles to graps the form’s essence.

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ideas

24-hour video time capsule

The participants will collectively create a continuous 24-hour video recording. This recording will be a “time capsule” documenting a day and night in their chosen surrounding (city). The video should ideally never cut. It should be a nearly continuous stream. The participants will have to:

  • Form small groups that are in charge of a certain time segment of the 24 hours.
  • Organise the logistics for transport, food, sleep, electricity, charging batteries.
  • Plan events, encounters, visits, discussions, micro-performances… for their segment.

Background: the idea for this brief comes from an audio project I did in 2002, when I produced a 24-hour audio recording, using two minidisk recorders. Nearly 20 years later, such a project can be done in video!

Equipment: the best currently available technology for immersive video recording should be used. In 2020, this is probably “360 degree video”. An interesting option would be the Insta360 One X, a standalone 360 camera, selling for $400 USD. The storage capacity needed, if filming at 4K@30fps resolution, according to camera specs, would be 615 GB – that’s 3 x 256GB SD cards, selling currently for ca $75 (for example SanDisk 256GB Extreme PRO).