April 3, 2011 0

Mini-Thesis Progress 1

By Tami in Major Studio: Interactivity, Spring 2011

A (long) summary of what I’ve been working on in the past week for my mini-thesis project, (tentatively called) Earthquake.

Concept

Please see my project proposal for initial concepts.
At Katherine’s suggestion, I read The Spectacle of Seismicity: Making Art from Earthquakes.
Reading thoughts

I also read this article from the Sci Arts Sci blog. This section stood out:

Perhaps because so much of what an earthquake is about is the physical sensation—yes, there is the aftermath of the fallen down buildings, buckled roads, etc, but event of the earthquake is exciting. As Natalie Jerimijenko shows, there’s a slight perversity to it all. A spectacle. It’s why we love disaster movies– to experience it, but to return home safe and sound at the end of it all.

This got me thinking about how I want users to experience this piece. Can I simulate the physical shaking of an earthquake? Is there another way to represent that shaking, but in such a way that users are experiencing something?

Another big inspiration/precedent is Paul May’s From Over Here. In this project, May represents New York Times (NYT) data physically. The graphics and physical pieces are simple on their own, but together they show a great breadth of information that connects viewers to the data. I hope to create a similar experience in my work.

Another totally awesome precedent.

Strategy

What if you could feel the social movement?
Can I make a big shaking something that simulates an earthquake from the data?

3 possible feeds

NYT article search (media movement)- searching keyword “earthquake” to show the prevalence of news stories related to major world earthquakes
Twitter keywords search (social movement)- “social richter scale” to show how real people are talking about these events via social networking tools
Seismographic info feed (physical movement) – to show real movement of the earth