FYP 1 - Quick Links

Part 1. Research Material: What is Digital Preservation?
Part 1. Research Material: 13 Ways To Look At Digital Preservation
Part 1. Problem Identification
Part 1. Chosen Issue
Part 1. Research Material: Challenges of Digital Preservation bringing forward into a Digital Dark Ages
Reference for Part 1

Part 2. Interview
Part 2. Interviewees Information and Findings
Part 2. Interview Results Analysis

Part 3. Overall Ideation, Aim & Objectives
Part 3. Possible Execution
Part 3. Final Execution Idea

 Part 4. Poster & Artist Statement
Part 4. Teaser & Screenshot
Part 4. Paper Prototype and Storyboard Screen
Precedence Studies: Lormalized by Reza Ali

Precedence Studies: Lormalized by Reza Ali

Below is one of the generative art application which I found similar to what I would like to create.

Video:

LORMALIZED = Lorenz + nOrmalization + Real-tiMe + interActive + visuaLize + partIcles + reZa + procEssing.org + 4D
This visual piece was made using algorithmic composition.
It runs in real-time and has interactive controls.

See more at: http://www.syedrezaali.com/blog/?p=1258

Part 4. Paper Prototype and Storyboard Screen

Paper Prototype

Below is the storyboard screen that will be displaying at the paper prototype:

Part 4. Teaser & Screenshot

Below is the screenshot of the teaser

Part 4. Poster & Artist Statement

Artist Statement

“Di.Preserve” is a generative art interactive installation which expressing on the topic regarding digital preservation.  It is mainly focus on the issue of the challenges faced by digital preservation. “Di.Preserve” the name came from the words “digital preservation”; it is also a mixture of Malay language and English language which carried the meaning of being preserve. Digital preservation is a series of managed activities necessary to ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary.  It involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods and technologies to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable regardless of the challenges of media failure and technological change. People, businesses, institutions and governments are investing time and effort to create digital information for instantaneous access to everyone. Therefore, preserving digital materials is being neglected and we cannot guarantee the continued preservation and accessibility of digital information generated in this context of rapid technological advances. “Di.Preserve” will express this message through visual metaphor. The outcome of the generative art will be determined by the parameters which control by the user. Each parameters represent different type of challenges faced by digital preservation. The generative art generated are a symbol of the condition of digital preservation which followed the algorithm that involving the parameters. It means that the parameters (challenges) will affect the algorithm of the generative art, hence change the output of the generative art (condition of digital preservation). At the end of interacting with the installation, users are able to generate their very own generative art which respond to digital preservation and have it upload to their facebook. By somehow “preserving” the image of the generative art they created, users might question themselves critically regarding digital preservation. Question such as how long will this image being store in the facebook? Will this image gone forever if facebook is close down? Should I save a back up of this image in my pc beside have it upload to facebook? Should I save this image to my digital storage media other than just my pc? Should the facebook preserve it for me, or should I?

Part 3. Final Execution Idea

Among the rough idea for possible execution, idea 7 had been chosen to proceed with developing the project. Below is the execution idea improvement and development:

The installation art will be focus in expressing all the challenges faced by digital preservation. The challenges which are point out in the installation are, being able to create contents easily, the increasing scale of digital content, technologies for mass storage of digital information lagging behind, digital obsolescence, rapid changes in technology and finally absence of established standards. A generative art will be created as a symbol of the condition or status of digital preservation. There will be a certain algorithm which decides the looks of the generative art. An equation between condition of preservation and all the challenges is created. This equation will be store as a data which will change the generative art algorithm thus it affects the generative art fractals. The condition of digital preservation and challenges and convert into number data as below: -          Condition of digital preservation: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the worst condition, 1.0 being the best condition. -          Digital contents created easily: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the least digital contents to preserve, 1.0 being the most digital contents to preserve. -          Scale of digital content: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the smallest scale, 1.0 being the biggest scale. -          Technologies for mass storage lagging: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the technologies lagging the least, 1.0 being the technologies lagging the most. -          Digital obsolescence: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the least obsolescence, 1.0 being the most obsolescence. -          Rapid changes of technology: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the least changes of technology, 1.0 being the most changes of technology. -          Absence of established standards: 0.0 – 1.0 0.0 being the least absence, 1.0 being the most absence. All these numbers data above will be using in order to create the algorithm of the generative art. To ensure that there is engagement and interactivity between the user and the installation. The user will be able to experiment with the number data of the challenges; they are able to either increase or decrease those “challenges”. In another words, it means that the users are controlling the “challenge” and affecting the condition of “digital preservation” while interacting with “Di.Preserve”. In order to increase the experience of interactivity, user will not be operating the application by using keyboard and mouse. There will be 6 potential meters setup at the installation, and each potential meter represents different challenges. And besides being able to control the potential meter, there will also have a gyro scope setup on the installation. The gyro scope will be installed inside a sphere. By rotating the sphere, the user can rotate the generative art in 360 degree. At the end of playing with the installation, user will have the chance to screen capture the genetic art they had created and upload it to the facebook. User can simply press the gyro scope sphere, and a window of login and upload will pop up at the monitor. The purpose of uploading it to social media is like letting the user able to “preserve” their artwork into their social media. To wrap up, “Di.Preserve” is an interactive generative art application which enables the user to generate their own generative art. What the user controlling is the challenges faced by digital preservation, what they see in the monitor is the condition of digital preservation. Through controlling the challenges, user will be able to know that what kind of challenges is facing and how fragile and unsustainable is digital preservation. By being able to upload the generative art to social media, it will make the user to question themselves critically regarding the issue of digital preservation. Question such as how long will this image being store in the facebook? Will this image gone forever if facebook is close down? Should I save a back up of this image in my pc beside have it upload to facebook? Should I save this image to my digital storage media other than just my pc? Should the facebook preserve it for me, or should I?

Part 3. Possible Execution

Below are a few rough ideas of possible execution which is still in the very first stage, one idea will be chosen and proceed to develop the execution idea further:

Idea 1 This idea is based on one of the challenges of digital preservation which is changes in technology. Rapidly changing technologies can hinder digital preservation technique due to outdated and antiquated machines or technology. For example, digital storage media is highly machined dependent. It needs an appropriate hardware or software to access the information. The installation will be using one of the old digital media storage which is floppy disk. More than 40 floppy disks will be placed at the installation with a specific digital message storing in it. The message is to tell the users to send an email to the artist to prove that they are able to access the digital data in it. Due to technology advance, there are hardly any people who own a floppy disk reader anymore. I can make an assumption that, there will be less than 5 users who able to access the message in it. This installation is to point out that technology changes could affect the digital preservation techniques as the retrieval and playback technology are often neglected.

Idea 2 This execution idea is based on the challenge of increasing scale of digital content. It would require a lot of procedures in order to handle the huge quantities of data generated which in return becoming a significant challenge. This installation consists of a photo booth for user to capture their face. The photo of their face will be transferring into a generative art. The generative art consist of all the faces that are being captured and appear in a specific algorithm. However, there will be a limit of the faces to store in the generative art, once the limit exceed. Random faces will be replaced by the latest faces captured. Which in return, the users will able to see their faces disappear in the generative art. This is to express that the increasing scale of digital content will results in challenge to digital preservation.

Idea 3 This execution idea is about expressing all different difficulties of digital preservation in a visual metaphor way. Different challenges will have different kind of generative art. For example, rapid change in technology will have a fractal spinning in a very fast pace. Each generative art will be stored inside a pendrive. User has to plug in the pendrive and view the generative art through the monitor. This installation is to let the user understand about the challenges of digital preservation through visual (generative art) rather than just text or verbal.

Idea 4 This execution idea is based on the concept of fragility of digital media storage. Digital data store in digital media storage are often get corrupted easily. In order to make sure it can be access for as long as necessary; the digital material has to be keep “refreshing”. The installation will have around 6-8 usb ports to allow user to plug in the pendrive. Each pendrive consist a certain part of a digital content. The user has to arrange the pendrive in the correct sequence in order to view the complete digital content. This is to show that how fragile is digital content being stored in a digital media storage and the digital content in it get corrupted easily.

Idea 5 This execution idea is also based on pendrive (digital media storage). It is also showing how insecure is the digital media storage as the data will get corrupted easily. The user has to plug in the pendrive to the installation; the installation will read the data. Each time the pendrive plug in, there will be a display showing the number of times pendrive being plug in. Users will have to plug in and out the pendrive, and see how many times it takes for the installation to fail to access the data. Once the data is fail to access, the installation will show the number of time of the pendrive being used before the digital content in it gets corrupted.

Idea 6 This execution idea is to show that digital objects will be lost easily and need to be preserve. There will be around 5 monitors at the installation. The monitors will be arranged in a line from left to right. All the monitors will be displaying the same generative art, as the monitor moving to the right, the generative art algorithm get affected and thus affect the generative art pattern. The generative art is a metaphor of digital object, the algorithm data in it is getting lost as the metaphor of digital object getting corrupted. The changes of generative art on the monitor is a metaphor for digital object fail to preserve in its original state.

Idea 7 This execution idea will be expressing all the challenges of digital preservation based on my research. A generative art will be created based on an algorithm. The algorithm is the data or equation of those challenges. The generative art is a symbol of digital object and the algorithm in it is the challenge of digital preservation itself. User will be able to play with the algorithm data through the buttons and thus it will affect how the generative art looks like. This means that the user is actually controlling the “challenges” and affecting the “digital object” which is being “preserved”.

Part 3. Overall Ideation, Aim & Objectives

Overall Ideation

Digital preservation is actually not something new; it had been done by those libraries and archivists for years. But still it is not often exposed to the society and did not articulate well to the people. Hence, people who first heard of digital preservation will think that it is just simply saving some digital data into a digital storage media. In fact, it is a process which involves planning, resource allocation, and application of preservation methods to ensure that the digital information remain accessible and usable. The installation art is entitle “Di.Preserve”. The name came from removing a few alphabets from the words “Digital Preservation”. “Di.Preserve” also means being preserve in Malay language. “Di.Preserve” will be expressing the challenge of digital preservation to the user. The challenges that the user never thinks off that will face by digital preservation will be bringing into the art piece and voice out through it. User will able to look at the challenges and how those challenges affect the digital material in a visual metaphor approach. It is going to be an engaging interactive installation art, which at the end of using it, will able to let the user to actually “preserve” something and “bring” it back.

Aim:

To create an installation art piece that expressing the issue on the challenges of digital preservation.

Objectives:

-          To let user question themselves critically on the challenges of digital preservation. -          To let user know that how fragile and unsustainable is digital preservation. -          To engage the user and allow them to have fun throughout the process of interact with the art piece.

Part 2. Interview Results Analysis

Below is the results analysis of the interview:

My assumption saying that most of the people are not familiar with digital preservation is correct. During my interview, majority of my interviewees are not familiar or never heard of it before. However, most of them would still able to guess the meaning of it by looking at the term “digital” and “preservation”. Although their guess answer is not the real definition of digital preservation, but the answer is consider correct in part of it. This is because people nowadays are living in a world full with digital objects; they are frequently exposed to it and are familiar with it. Most of the interviewee thinks that digital preservation is just saving the digital material in any media storage. In fact it is not true. Digital preservation has to ensure that the digital material can be accessed for as long as necessary and its accessibility is the most important issue in digital preservation. It comes to a surprise that most of the interviewee think that digital preservation is harder compare to preserving analogue items; only a small minority gave the opposite answer. The main reason they are giving this answer is that they aware that digital data are fragile and could be corrupted easily. Most of them always make backup of their important digital data. Other reasons that they are saying digital preservation is a challenge are copyright issue and too much of digital data to be preserved. They able to give the correct answer despite they have not been told about digital preservation. This is also mostly because we are living in a world full with digital technology. Almost all of the interviewees do not know anything about digital dark ages. This is something very new to them. They did not notice that a lot of important digital objects are lost forever. This happened simply because people are often focusing on the latest and new technology and digital materials, they will neglect those old one since they are being replaced. This is one of the main problems for digital preservation as the society is taught to invest time and effort in creating the new thing rather than preserving the old school items. This is an obvious society phenomenon where people will focus on creating the new, forgetting the old. All interviewees have different expectations if digital preservation is a topic of an art project. But there are a few expectations which are interesting. One of the interviewee points out that it will be interesting if the preservation processes are being showed in the project. Another one said that music can be used as the concept. “Music” never comes across my mind when I was brainstorming for digital preservation idea, then I only realize that “sound” is an element which I had forgotten. Besides that, interviewee also expects to have interaction with the art project. Interactivity is very important as this will engage the users more.