Yesterday, I had an interesting and fruitful conversation with Aristotle about the online rendering. A final decision as to what goes in as textures (images, videos, sound, etc) could not be made until the camera movements and controls were sorted out. We explored a variety of scenarios bearing in mind that people will be using mobiles, tablets, laptops, and desktops, each kind of device bringing with it its own limitations. I had considered a maze of boxes but this would end up far too complicated for many to navigate. Lateral movements plus rotations would be hard to engineer and make clear for people, particularly those using mobile phones requiring a keyboard or ugly joystick thing on screen. It was essential to see how the whole works to be able to move forward. In the end, we settled for the simplest solution.
Seeing photographs as textures on the box surfaces made it clear that these were very effective seen in perspective as well as parallel to the picture plane. We talked about the disposition of the boxes. Considering the complexity of navigation with the maze-like formation, the best thing seems to be either a row or a column where each box can be rotated to view the different faces. I feel that it would be more interesting with vertical movement with simple arrows for navigation, more dynamic and unusual. I think it may give more of a sense of sequence rather than narrative and imply deep time rather than a shallower chronological time. Also very important is the fact that, once a simple solution is established, it gives me more freedom to work on the textures between now and the end of June because it is a simple and relatively quick process for Aristotle to wrap the textures. One added advantage of simplicity is that I can easily pick up on this after the show to create more presentations and explore the medium productively.
This considerations were also helped by knowing that Aristotle and Jonathan were coming to the conclusion of having the Cables presentations as part of a webpage for each artist where they can put in text, etc.
The next thing to do is to sketch the idea and send it in preparation for next week’s meeting.
