Group members: Jason Martakis, Angel Rivera, Brian Larson Clark
Objective: To provide a forum for the project participants to have a heightened subject awareness of their surrounding environment through a deríve.
Our project took the form of a deríve. The participants were provided with a series of images and given little direction on how to interpret these images and the rules of the project. The images that were presented came from a path which we took earlier this week. We took photographs of objects of interest as we were walking on our path. These images were presented in the order in which we took them.
The rules for our project were implicit. How these rules transduced into explicit rules was dependent on the subjective discretion of the individual participants. In other words, we gave the participants a pre-determined set of photographs taken from our previous deríve. What the participants did with these photographs did not matter. The purpose of the photographs was to provide a secondary psychogeographic layer for the deríve. It enabled the participants to achieve a heightened state of awareness of their environment through the process of identifying the photographs. Because this was a deríve based on subjective rules, it is difficult to break the rules of such a project.
In participants during the deríve split off into 3 groups. This was unexpected. One group interpreted a scavenger hunt set of rules from the photographs and stayed close to the intended path of the deríve. The second group wandered off with less concern for the linearity of the photographs. Third group was apathetic to the project and made a b-line to the Commons for food.
Our objective was generally achieved by inducing a heightened state of observation in the participants. We achieved this without providing explicit rules to follow. Because of this, we avoided altering the subjectivity of the experience.
Perhaps we could offer more direction to those who desired it, but this would corrupt the basic premise of our project by explicitly stating a direction.
A genetic algorithmic process emerged as the participants worked as a swarm to complete their individual purpose. Each individual was influenced to some extent by the group in general, but they embarked on their own individual solutions to the project.
1.Participants: Anne Muntges, Dave Mauzy, and Mike Teneyck
2.The Objective: The objective of our derive was to create a new way of seeing the experiencing of traveling “on foot” through campus by injecting fun, spontaneity and reward into it. To achieve this we created a ten-foot long race in the pathway between the Lockwood Library and the Student Union. The space is a somewhat unavoidable path that students and faculty commute through. With the help of spectators holding signs like “You’re Almost There” and “GO”, a finish line and an air horn we were able to entice people walking by to “race” through the course and cross our finish line to win.
3.Did we break any rules? In order to help some of the participants understand the purpose of the disruption we had to “inspire” a few races by using some of our volunteers to start a race or two. We also had to communicate verbally to a few people the purpose of the race so that they would understand the concept a little better and feel more comfortable with the race. Otherwise we stuck pretty much to the agenda we had set forth.
4.Things Unexpected: Some of the things we ran across that were unexpected were in dealing with our space. In the original design the race space was not clearly defined. Some of the participants were weaving through it and avoiding the course. In order to control the space more we had to mark off the area better so that it was easier for people to read and completely unavoidable. If someone needed to enter that space they were going to have to race.
5.The Successes: The fulfilling aspect of this project was that in the end the original objective was obtained. We were able to inject a sense of spontaneity and fun into a space that is otherwise left alone. Everyone who participated in it left the space with a smile or sense of accomplishment that was reinforced by the rewarding of a trophy if they had crossed the finish line first. There was even a spectator crowd that viewed the derive with cheerful faces. And since the participants had fun we the creators were also allowed to enjoy ourselves.
6.Improvements: The thing that was most difficult about this derive is that the time we did this at was a bit of a slow time. The amount of people traveling through the space was little, making it somewhat difficult at times to get the race going. If we were to enact this again it would have to be performed at a time of day that had more people in the space. In addition to this it might also be helpful to have more spectators with a wider gender spread. For our purposes it was predominately male, which may or may not have scared away some potential racers. If there had been a better balance the space might have been a bit more inviting.
7.New Behaviors: For the creators and volunteers, it was interesting to watch the progressive comfort zone that occurred with us in the space. As the races happened we all became more comfortable with the dynamic of the project and it projected itself onto how we dealt with the participants and the action of the race. As for the people walking by it went as expected for the most part. The only new behavior that was observed is that some people were so uncomfortable with this disruption that they actually walked around the buildings to avoid our roadblock. It was interesting to see the concerned faces of people as they realized that there was a strange block in their usually path.
2. The objective was to capture secrets from students on the subject of anything to do with campus life. By posting these secrets online and making them available to students, our objective was for students to take a second look at the people on campus and draw some kind of connection to a place that is normally used only for class/learning.
3. The project was initially meant to be carried out as a kiosk at the Student Union with a poster, a box for secrets, index cards and plenty of colorful pens. Because of another major event going on, we had to stand by a railing; we tried to get attention of students passing by but didn’t manage to attract any. So we took the project to CFA and began to approach people sitting around the tables in the cafe area individually. We contexualized the event as a class-project that put in a position of helping out more than them coming to us on their desire to post their secret.
That worked a lot better. As UB students, we, the group members, also contributed our secrets.Some of the participants also broke the rule in the sense they wrote secrets that didn’t explicitly relate to school as that was the underlying goal of the project.
4. One thing happened unexpectedly. We cold not get any volunteers in the student union. We thought this was based on a hassel issue (when someone stops you to ask you a question in the SU, it’s usually about nothing you care about). So we moved to a closer nit of people in the CFA where it was a more relaxed area.
5. What was most successful in fulfilling the objective?~ that we found a way to get people to listen to us, to participate in the project and contribute their secrets~ that we chose to scan the index cards into the blogsite and not type them up — this lent to “customized” looks and thus were of visually appeal and interest. ~ creating titles highlighting parts of what they said worked a lot in grabbing people’s attention. Though the blog site was kept basic, this and the hand-written look of the secret-cards became major attention grabbers for the blog site.
6. The project could have been improved by a longer span of time to work in. If we had better solidified our idea in the very beginning we could have spent more time gathering secrets and promoting the project. We could have gotten more secrets and responses this way. Part of the problem gathering secrets initially (in the Student Union) was that people didn’t understand the project. If we had more time to expose it to people and spread the word, people might have been more willing to participate. The responses to the website itself were generally good, and we got quite a few responses for having so little time to promote the site, so with more time we likely could have had a larger quantity of responses as well as a wider variety of them. The technical aspects of the project (the signs, the box itself, the website) were all fairly successful, it just seemed to be the “outsider” element that held us back, but only by a bit.
7. It is difficult to say exactly what kinds of new behaviors emerged, since the project is fairly personal on some level. We didn’t necessarily change physical behavior in a specific place, but we may have changed some peoples’ thoughts or feelings about campus or UB life in general. Some of the comments on the website were sympathetic, some of them were slightly more aggressive. The project brought about a more internal change in those who participated, rather than an external one.
Comment by jakeposluszny on November 19, 2007 7:06 pm
(Documentation is on my blog)
1. Participants: Jake, Katerina, Scott
2. The objective of the project was to study the effect of signs on daily routines like opening doors and moving around campus. We wanted to see if people actually pay attention to these signs and whether or not these signs control students behaviors. Also we intended to mess with the students by changing the mappings of certain signs (changing a door’s push sign to pull, for example).
3. We didn’t break any of our own rules but we had trouble posting the signs at the Student Union because apparently we were breaking a rule by doing that there.
4. My personal hypotheses for this project was that some people would pay attention to the signs and some wouldn’t. This was the result, but we really needed a place with more traffic flow to obtain a better observation.
5. The success of the project is the fact that we were able to change some students paths and that confirms our initial idea.
6. There are many improvements that could have been made. The signs could have been more realistic. They could have had more interesting directions on them. We could have posted them in a area with more traffic flow (even though this was not up to us). We had the basic idea right but we really didn’t put the time into the project to get a better result.
7. The new behaviors of the student were not very drastic. However, you can see some get distracted and confused by the signs. With the signs, we influenced the student to go into a door they normally wouldn’t have. Naturally, as Americans, we want to go into a building using the doors on the right. This is cultural and I think it has something to do with the fact that we drive on the right side of the road. You can see a few students avoid the doors on the right, the ones they would naturally go in, and enter the door on the left (the one without a sign on it).
Group members: Jason Martakis, Angel Rivera, Brian Larson Clark
Objective: To provide a forum for the project participants to have a heightened subject awareness of their surrounding environment through a deríve.
Our project took the form of a deríve. The participants were provided with a series of images and given little direction on how to interpret these images and the rules of the project. The images that were presented came from a path which we took earlier this week. We took photographs of objects of interest as we were walking on our path. These images were presented in the order in which we took them.
The rules for our project were implicit. How these rules transduced into explicit rules was dependent on the subjective discretion of the individual participants. In other words, we gave the participants a pre-determined set of photographs taken from our previous deríve. What the participants did with these photographs did not matter. The purpose of the photographs was to provide a secondary psychogeographic layer for the deríve. It enabled the participants to achieve a heightened state of awareness of their environment through the process of identifying the photographs. Because this was a deríve based on subjective rules, it is difficult to break the rules of such a project.
In participants during the deríve split off into 3 groups. This was unexpected. One group interpreted a scavenger hunt set of rules from the photographs and stayed close to the intended path of the deríve. The second group wandered off with less concern for the linearity of the photographs. Third group was apathetic to the project and made a b-line to the Commons for food.
Our objective was generally achieved by inducing a heightened state of observation in the participants. We achieved this without providing explicit rules to follow. Because of this, we avoided altering the subjectivity of the experience.
Perhaps we could offer more direction to those who desired it, but this would corrupt the basic premise of our project by explicitly stating a direction.
A genetic algorithmic process emerged as the participants worked as a swarm to complete their individual purpose. Each individual was influenced to some extent by the group in general, but they embarked on their own individual solutions to the project.
Group: Jason Martakis, Angel Rivera, Brian Larson Clark
Derive documentation
1.Participants: Anne Muntges, Dave Mauzy, and Mike Teneyck
2.The Objective: The objective of our derive was to create a new way of seeing the experiencing of traveling “on foot” through campus by injecting fun, spontaneity and reward into it. To achieve this we created a ten-foot long race in the pathway between the Lockwood Library and the Student Union. The space is a somewhat unavoidable path that students and faculty commute through. With the help of spectators holding signs like “You’re Almost There” and “GO”, a finish line and an air horn we were able to entice people walking by to “race” through the course and cross our finish line to win.
3.Did we break any rules? In order to help some of the participants understand the purpose of the disruption we had to “inspire” a few races by using some of our volunteers to start a race or two. We also had to communicate verbally to a few people the purpose of the race so that they would understand the concept a little better and feel more comfortable with the race. Otherwise we stuck pretty much to the agenda we had set forth.
4.Things Unexpected: Some of the things we ran across that were unexpected were in dealing with our space. In the original design the race space was not clearly defined. Some of the participants were weaving through it and avoiding the course. In order to control the space more we had to mark off the area better so that it was easier for people to read and completely unavoidable. If someone needed to enter that space they were going to have to race.
5.The Successes: The fulfilling aspect of this project was that in the end the original objective was obtained. We were able to inject a sense of spontaneity and fun into a space that is otherwise left alone. Everyone who participated in it left the space with a smile or sense of accomplishment that was reinforced by the rewarding of a trophy if they had crossed the finish line first. There was even a spectator crowd that viewed the derive with cheerful faces. And since the participants had fun we the creators were also allowed to enjoy ourselves.
6.Improvements: The thing that was most difficult about this derive is that the time we did this at was a bit of a slow time. The amount of people traveling through the space was little, making it somewhat difficult at times to get the race going. If we were to enact this again it would have to be performed at a time of day that had more people in the space. In addition to this it might also be helpful to have more spectators with a wider gender spread. For our purposes it was predominately male, which may or may not have scared away some potential racers. If there had been a better balance the space might have been a bit more inviting.
7.New Behaviors: For the creators and volunteers, it was interesting to watch the progressive comfort zone that occurred with us in the space. As the races happened we all became more comfortable with the dynamic of the project and it projected itself onto how we dealt with the participants and the action of the race. As for the people walking by it went as expected for the most part. The only new behavior that was observed is that some people were so uncomfortable with this disruption that they actually walked around the buildings to avoid our roadblock. It was interesting to see the concerned faces of people as they realized that there was a strange block in their usually path.
Ashley Mili Megan
(Megan will be posting 6+7 later on so 1-5 are here)
http://www.UBSecrets.wordpress.com
2. The objective was to capture secrets from students on the subject of anything to do with campus life. By posting these secrets online and making them available to students, our objective was for students to take a second look at the people on campus and draw some kind of connection to a place that is normally used only for class/learning.
3. The project was initially meant to be carried out as a kiosk at the Student Union with a poster, a box for secrets, index cards and plenty of colorful pens. Because of another major event going on, we had to stand by a railing; we tried to get attention of students passing by but didn’t manage to attract any. So we took the project to CFA and began to approach people sitting around the tables in the cafe area individually. We contexualized the event as a class-project that put in a position of helping out more than them coming to us on their desire to post their secret.
That worked a lot better. As UB students, we, the group members, also contributed our secrets.Some of the participants also broke the rule in the sense they wrote secrets that didn’t explicitly relate to school as that was the underlying goal of the project.
4. One thing happened unexpectedly. We cold not get any volunteers in the student union. We thought this was based on a hassel issue (when someone stops you to ask you a question in the SU, it’s usually about nothing you care about). So we moved to a closer nit of people in the CFA where it was a more relaxed area.
5. What was most successful in fulfilling the objective?~ that we found a way to get people to listen to us, to participate in the project and contribute their secrets~ that we chose to scan the index cards into the blogsite and not type them up — this lent to “customized” looks and thus were of visually appeal and interest. ~ creating titles highlighting parts of what they said worked a lot in grabbing people’s attention. Though the blog site was kept basic, this and the hand-written look of the secret-cards became major attention grabbers for the blog site.
6. The project could have been improved by a longer span of time to work in. If we had better solidified our idea in the very beginning we could have spent more time gathering secrets and promoting the project. We could have gotten more secrets and responses this way. Part of the problem gathering secrets initially (in the Student Union) was that people didn’t understand the project. If we had more time to expose it to people and spread the word, people might have been more willing to participate. The responses to the website itself were generally good, and we got quite a few responses for having so little time to promote the site, so with more time we likely could have had a larger quantity of responses as well as a wider variety of them. The technical aspects of the project (the signs, the box itself, the website) were all fairly successful, it just seemed to be the “outsider” element that held us back, but only by a bit.
7. It is difficult to say exactly what kinds of new behaviors emerged, since the project is fairly personal on some level. We didn’t necessarily change physical behavior in a specific place, but we may have changed some peoples’ thoughts or feelings about campus or UB life in general. Some of the comments on the website were sympathetic, some of them were slightly more aggressive. The project brought about a more internal change in those who participated, rather than an external one.
(Documentation is on my blog)
1. Participants: Jake, Katerina, Scott
2. The objective of the project was to study the effect of signs on daily routines like opening doors and moving around campus. We wanted to see if people actually pay attention to these signs and whether or not these signs control students behaviors. Also we intended to mess with the students by changing the mappings of certain signs (changing a door’s push sign to pull, for example).
3. We didn’t break any of our own rules but we had trouble posting the signs at the Student Union because apparently we were breaking a rule by doing that there.
4. My personal hypotheses for this project was that some people would pay attention to the signs and some wouldn’t. This was the result, but we really needed a place with more traffic flow to obtain a better observation.
5. The success of the project is the fact that we were able to change some students paths and that confirms our initial idea.
6. There are many improvements that could have been made. The signs could have been more realistic. They could have had more interesting directions on them. We could have posted them in a area with more traffic flow (even though this was not up to us). We had the basic idea right but we really didn’t put the time into the project to get a better result.
7. The new behaviors of the student were not very drastic. However, you can see some get distracted and confused by the signs. With the signs, we influenced the student to go into a door they normally wouldn’t have. Naturally, as Americans, we want to go into a building using the doors on the right. This is cultural and I think it has something to do with the fact that we drive on the right side of the road. You can see a few students avoid the doors on the right, the ones they would naturally go in, and enter the door on the left (the one without a sign on it).