Week 10 & 11/Final Project

By the end of the critique session for Assignment 3: Urban Fantasy, we were split into groups to work on our final project, where we had to create an interactive collage that brings out a message, concept or issue. The skills and techniques we have learnt so far have been preparing us for the final project, where the message, issue or concept of the collage is to be conveyed through its interactivity. Having little skills in even Photoshop, the idea of incorporating moving images, sound and text in a collage scared me. Fortunately, Jing had a lecture on using Flash Catalyst, a software we could use for incorporating interactivity to our collages. The videos shown during the lecture were comprehensive, and a class exercise was given out during the lecture to let us have some hands-on experience with the basics of Flash Catalyst. Buttons, adding interactions, as well as state transitions, were not so scary after all.

Brainstorming: In the meantime, my group spent some time brainstorming on the concept behind our final project. There wasn't a theme set for this project, so we could do anything we want. After throwing around some ideas and searching online for interactive art montages, we decided to have collage after collage present themselves to the user in a first-person perspective with a "zooming-in effect", as though the user is traveling into a world of collages. This idea was inspired by the fact that my group found an example of such interactivity in the module forum, as shown below:

Abandoning the idea of allowing the user to click anywhere in the picture to enable the zoom-in, we went decided on including a portal in every of our collages. A click at a specific area would transport the user through the portal and into the next collage scene.

Deciding on a theme for our project was the next step. We initially decided to opt for a surrealistic approach, rather than a realistic one, because we felt that with surrealism, the collages would be more intriguing and allow more surprising and unpredictable interactions. However, after much consideration, we agreed to merge realism and surrealism together, where fairytale and fantasy elements were to be incorporated within scenes of Singapore's history. The Singapore context was added because the sense of familiarity would heighten the experience of using this interactive collage, and so Kris, one of my groupmates, suggested using "nostalgia" as the main concept of this interactive collage. Through the navigation of our collage, users would feel nostalgic as they see images of past Singapore, including the kampongs and Samsui women. This can even result in users feeling a sense of emotional attachment to this piece of interactive collage piece.

For navigation through the collages, we felt that users needed a sort of "guide", and therefore a main character was suggested to be the one leading and walking users through all the collages. We decided on using Alice from Alice in Wonderland, because to us she was to most recognisable fairytale character. We also agreed to have interactions within each collages, so it wouldn't be just traveling through the different collages. For example, the mushrooms would glow with each mouse-over within a particular collage, and clicking on it would result in more mushrooms appearing:

At the end of our brainstorming session, we decided on ten collages, each depicting the following: a Jungle from the myth of Sang Nila Utama, Singapore Kampongs, Singapore's HDB flats, the Samsui Women, the Merlion, Sentosa, the Esplanade, the Singapore Flyer, as well as the Early Settlement period of Singapore. We purposely put them in a non-linear arrangement in terms of time period, so users wouldn't feel like this is an educational trial instead of an interactive collage piece.

Finally, because this interactive collage is some sort of a reminder of Singapore's past history, my group decided to name our project "Singapore Revisited".

Feedback: In the next tutorial session (28th October), my group presented our project concept to the class. We showed some basic collages we did, as well as the main character design that was done by Kris.

The class was fine with our idea of juxtaposing fantasy elements with historical and modern aspects of Singapore, but were concerned with the zooming-in effect we intend to include in our collage. They expressed that by zooming-in, the perspectives of each collage would have to change with the movement of Alice, or the zooming-in effect would just make the interactive collage flat. We took in their suggestions and feedback and arranged for another meeting the following week.