Project Development Studio Fall 2010
- Personal introductions - Try to give the class a good sense of who you are and what are your strengths that you can contribute to the *class and your “weaknesses” or areas in which you would like to get assistance from others.
- Project Introductions – In groups. We will break up to groups of 4-5 for about 45 minutes. Everyone will explain their project to everyone else in their group and nominate a person to present to the whole class the project you intend to develop in the studio.
Assignment for first class:
- Create a website (blog?)for your project and add a link to it on the class wiki : 
- Define your project in a cascading level of detail as follows - Dream, Vision, Goal, Plan:
- Dream - The ultimate conceptual motivation you have to embark on this project, this can be totally imaginary and vague, and can be not feasable, and try to avoid any reference to technology or specific means of implementation. Try to make it as wide as you can and as non compromised as possible, this can be an umbrella to a number of projects.
- Vision - This is a single project, you may envision the technologies it would employ, and the feasibility has to be realistic at least in terms of technologies that will be available soon, but do not scale it back in terms of scope/ scale/ budget. This is your optimal implementation if anything is possible.
- Goal - Down to earth. This is the actual project you want to develop at ITP in 10 weeks, It is probably some subset of the vision which is a watered down version of the dream... Describe in terms of interaction, technology , design in as great detail as you can.
- Plan - What is your game plan to achieve the goal in 10 weeks, what is the research required, what are the milestones. Try to come up with about 5 milestone dates towards a completion Mid December.
- Dream - My dream is to create a theatrical experience that completely dissolves the boundary between audience and performers, I imagine a great space where any number of people congregate, and their actions and presence is rolled in into the performance itself, in effect becoming the content. Spatially I imagine the performers will be mixed with the audience and not bound by gravity or space, merely hovering in the space, They would have ever changing costumes, and the feel would be a combination of dance and theater.
- Vision -my vision is an auditorium that has no stage, the audience is sitting in concentric circles with no space in the middle, the performers are part of the audience and hover within the audience armed with the ability to capture images and sound from the audience and present it simultaneously.
- Goal - I want ti develop a performance platform in the form of blimps shaped like swans. The blimp will be radio controlled and include a camera to capture and transmit video. It will be projected from afar with video from other blimps in the performance and controlled by the audience:
- Plan -
- Oct 5 - Research blimps and achieve computer radio control of blimps.
- Oct 21 - Capture and transmit video from blimp.
- Nov 5 - Computer tracking of blimps
- Nov 21 - Targeted projection on moving blimp.
- Dec 10 - Content development for system.
- In the first few weeks we will be dealing more with the dream and vision, so you can postpone the detailed plan till we narrow down the projects
- Send me an email summarizing your strengths and weaknesses (ie. Programming. design, building stuff, user testing, animation, illustration, web stuff, business plans, getting funding, making phone calls, anything) this will help me divide the class to groups later in the semester.
A few guidelines for studio.
- The idea for the studio class is to provide a good environment for students to develop their projects during session and between sessions. During the semester we will engage in a few group/individual exercises that will help you make the most out of your project and get the most assistance from your fellow students.
- You are expected to attend all class meetings and arrive on time.
- Most weeks we will meet as a class at 9:30 and then breakup for group and individual work. You may work in the classroom or anywhere else at ITP, make sure that the instructor and fellow students know where you are.
- Cell phones – Off. Even when you are working in groups or individually .