Gridlocked

British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2009

2009-04-22T10:44:00.006+01:00

We gave our research its first public airing in the form of a Poster at the recent Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association on Friday 17th April. The conference took place conveniently in Cardiff at City Hall. Despite the heavy rain the poster was delivered dry and was lovingly attached to the boards. The content and design of the poster compared favorably with others on display. Revealing the poster in public has given us confidence in our research activity and direction.
Ashley and I attended one day of the three day event and were treated to a range of interesting presentations. There were several themes, I focused on Culture, Media and Society. Reflecting on the quality of presentations has given us ideas about how to present our paper at next weeks WIRAD Emerging researchers conference in Newport.
Exciting times for Gridlocked!

WIRAD Paper

2009-02-26T11:30:00.002Z

Ian and I are making great progress on the paper for the WIRAD Conference, which we need to be, as the deadline is the 13th of March.

I am addressing a number of areas for the WIRAD paper which are as follows: exploring surveillance, visibility and observation, locating panopticonism, increased technology, from the exteriority of cctv's to the interiority of webcams, where power comes from, and a synopsis of the game Gridlocked.

I am trying to order my reading and writing in a linear way, I've looked at texts and theories on surveillance, and now I am exploring texts about games and gaming about which I know very little, and I am finding it really interesting to engage with a whole new area. I am particularly enjoying a book called The Video Game Theory Reader, choc full of diverse research and ideas, from psychoanalysis and Avatars to sexuality in videogames - its fascinating stuff.
Its also giving me ideas about further research I'd like to do about Geeks.

I've just found this which is the most succinct way of defining Panopticons:
'all embracing in a single view' (Ainley, 2001)

Ethics and video capture

2009-02-05T12:38:00.004Z

UWIC Application for Ethics Approval
I have recently submitted an Ethics Approval Form to the Schools Ethics Committee to obtain permission to approach the public to capture video as well as observe and record users emotional response to the 'wall of video'. We are awaiting the Committees decision.

PHOTOGRAPHIC and/or VIDEO RELEASE FORM for research purposes
I have also written a video release form which asks subjects to sign the following statement... "I hereby grant permission to use any and all photographic imagery and video footage taken and any audio recorded of me on the date entered below, without payment or any other consideration. I understand that such materials may be published electronically or in print, or used in presentations or exhibitions. We will have to create something similar when we observe users experiencing the game."

Video Capture
The game needs 32 video clips to build the grid. They need to be captured in varying lighting conditions and with a range of gender, ages and race. This variety is essential to convince the participant of the game that they have been randomly captured by the game.
I have developed a method of creating short seamlessly looped video clips in order that they appear to be live.

1. Capture
Subject to remain still with minimum movement of body and arms but with a focus on recording breathing and blinking together with small head movements in order to convince the user of live feed video. 30 seconds are recorded whilst the subject watches a digital clock in the center of the screen. I have been using the iSight camera built into an Apple MacBook Pro laptop running iMovie software.

2. Edit
Select 6 or 7 seconds of video and repeat it in the timeline, reversing so that it becomes a seamless loop.

3. Export
Quicktime files are created at 160x120 pixels. No audio is included. Matt Leighfield compresses the file with Visual Hub and inserts them into the grid.

Synopsis of the game

2009-02-05T12:34:00.001Z

I wanted to state clearly what the Gridlocked game is in around 200 words. 240 words actually. Here is my first draft...

The visual structure of the game simulates a panopticon substituting prison cells for a revolving wall of video showing computer users captured by webcams. The computer user becomes the observer/guard/game player. Each video clip is seamlessly looped, appearing to the player as continuous live video feed. Once the player gives permission for their webcam to become active, their video image, in real time, will also be included in the wall of video. The player will appear to be locked into the grid, gridlocked. The player will discover their entrapment serendipitously. Therefore the player is not only the observer/guard but also appears to be the observed.

Entrapment
Timecode will be included in each video clip (with randomly allocated starting points between 30 and 10 minutes) counting down to zero. Some video clips will be set at zero and will show a distressed static image of a trapped subject. The game will last up to 30 minutes and as the video clips reach zero they will change from moving image to static distressed image.

Escape
The aim of the game is to escape from the grid before the timecode reaches zero. The player will be able to discover oral clues within video clips by rollover. The clues will lead to a small number of simple challenges in order that the participant may stop the timecode from reaching zero, avoiding becoming trapped in the game forever.

Exciting Instalments

2009-02-05T09:56:00.004Z

Following on from the post yesterday, Ian and I are making great progress. In a meeting yesterday, we've decided that we need to have a methodical stratagem to approach these two conferences.

I have been collating information, and have developed an outline of the paper, I need Ian to write a synopsis of the game so that we have a point of discussion. We have decided that we are still in the preliminary stages of the research, so we may not get round to actually conducting qualitative research before we give our presentations.

The WIRAD paper might just explore where are how Ian and I started working together and propose some areas that we will explore in future. For the BSA conference, we need to produce a beautiful poster outlining our research questions and again, we will propose areas to be explored in future.

Another opportunity has presented itself, there is a call for papers from the online journal Surveillance and Society - http://www.surveillance-and-society.org for an October Issue of the journal called: Performance, New Media, and Surveillance. The deadline is 31st of March, so I am also working towards submitting for that, too. In for a penny, in for a pound, eh?

Ian is doing sterling work with consent forms, and has sent an outline of our research to the School's Ethics Committee. He has also been busy collecting images for the game, so its going to look really cool.

So there we are, all up and running, keep reading for another exciting instalment!

Latest Gridlocked News

2009-02-04T17:40:00.003Z

I've been having some thoughts about our research, as deadlines for three different, yet related things seem to be appearing very rapidly on the horizon.

Ian and I are presenting our paper at the WIRAD conference, the deadline for the full paper deadline is the 13th of March, which now I think about it, is more time than I thought, but still, no point procrastinating.

I have decided that for this paper, we will write an account of what we wish to do, i.e. the direction in which our research will be going. I have asked Ian to write a short account of what the game 'Gridlocked' actually entails, this will give us more substance to get our teeth into and both give focus to and inform structure of the discussion in the paper.

Research Assistant Update

2009-01-08T15:23:00.004Z

Starting to look at the Panopticon idea Ian has described elsewhere on the blog, this is the start of the Flash based experiments stemming from this research:

We are doing research, honest!

2008-12-16T16:42:00.006Z

OK. So quite a few things have happened since I last posted on here.

I persuaded Ian to through caution to the wind and get some stuff written, so we began working on an Abstract at the beginning of term. We needed to consolidate our knowledge and decided what it was that we had to say about his game, and also, what we were going to do with the information. I did some peripheral reading of Lyons (2001) Surveillance Society and also found out that there is a Journal of Surveillance, which could yield some useful information. I also think there is more mileage to be gained from Foucault on this subject.

Sooooo, we looked for an upcoming conference, wrote an abstract and now.... we are going to give a poster presentation of our ideas at next years annual British Sociological Association Conference which, handily enough, is being held in Cardiff.

Arrgh though!! Neither of us has given a poster presentation before, so it's a bit daunting. I've been told it's nicer than giving a customary paper - in that it is less stressful - which will be good. Excited as we were by the news, the 'oh, so what do we do now?' kicked in quite quickly, so we managed to clear the decks for a couple of hours, met up for coffee last week and came up with a cunning plan. We went to have a look at some poster presentations that are already up in UWIC and now we have a much better idea of what it is that we need to do.

We also realise that we need to test some of our ideas. As the paper is about autonomy of users in a computer game, we need to be able to define autonomy and measure it among users. Therefore, we need to do a few key things:
1. develop the game more fully
2. conduct a pilot study of users of the game from which to draw data to inform this presentation
3. look into the ethics of researching users of this game

I am going to do some reading around the subjects of surveillance and autonomy, and Ian and I are going to meet up on the 6th of February 2009, to discuss setting up the pilot as the conference is the 17th of April - arrgh!

Research Assistant Update

2008-10-08T12:11:00.002+01:00

This is the perspective movie from the previous post, this time using the webcam (if you have one)

Research Assistant Update

2008-10-08T09:01:00.004+01:00

Getting further along in my trig experiments. This one will be useful because it adds the z axis and interactivity, especially useful for Ian's current research. You need to click on it once to get it going. There are problems when the ball moves behind the viewer on the z-axis, but I think that can be fixed quite easily.

Research Assistant Update

2008-10-03T14:30:00.002+01:00

Continuing to develop my understanding of trigonometry so I can better tackle this project, here are a couple of Flash movies using trig generated animations:

Research Assistant Update

2008-09-17T16:51:00.004+01:00

first foray into 3D - I've started to look at the 3D techniques that could be of benefit to this project, and this is my first attempt. I'm not entirely sure how it works, so I need to do some more research into trigonometry to fully understand it.

Panopticon

2008-07-18T13:27:00.003+01:00

The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience."[1]
Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."[2]

"a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind"

Jeremy Bentham, 1785.

1. Lang, Silke Berit. "The Impact of Video Systems on Architecture", dissertion, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 2004.

2. Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon (Preface). In Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon Writings, London: Verso, 1995, 29-95.

Missenden Centre

2008-07-15T12:10:00.002+01:00

Following a very useful Research & Publishing Seminar at the Missenden Centre in Buckinghamshire, I have invited Ashley Morgan to collaborate with Matt and I in the Gridlocked project and blog. Ashley will complement our digital media skills with a more thorough approach to the underpinning theory and questions that the research reveals. Following our discussions on main themes of surveillance, gaming and timecode, I will explore the relationship between the webcam and prison, in particular the panopticon, as designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785.

We need video content....

2008-02-13T16:23:00.004Z

We had an idea that current students and graduates of the Graphic Communication programme in Cardiff would be willing to contribute to our research by sending short video clips of themselves working at their computers. As a year tutor on the programme, I had access to many email addresses. Production values were unimportant and a varying quality welcome to add authenticity to the videos within the grid. As a year tutor on the programme, I have access to many of their email addresses. I sent the email included below and waited for the avalanche of responses.

-----------------------------------------

Hi Graphics students

Do you have a computer?
Do you have a webcam?
Would you like to contribute to a research project exploring webcam narrative?

Matt Leighfield and Ian Weir are exploring how a webcam can be used to place a computer user inside the narrative of an on-line experience. Our ideas and prototypes can be seen at the following url:

http://webcamnarrative.blogspot.com/

What we need:
30 seconds of video shot from a webcam of you working at your computer
We are not over concerned about production values – use auto settings
If it is under 5MB it can be emailed as an attachment to Matt [mleighfield@uwic.ac.uk]
If it is too big to email give it to Matt on CD

When we need it
Provide Matt with an emailed attachment or file on CD by Friday 15th February

What you should do:
Sit in front of the camera
Be as natural as possible - do some work , surf the web for example
Look at the screen- it is ok to glance at the webcam however
Save the video as Quicktime

What you should not do:
Have lots of people in the picture – work on your own
Avoid over expressive movements (like standing up or hysterical laughter – we will be looping the video)

If you take part we will keep you informed of developments and your contribution will be much appreciated.

Ian/Matt

Research Assistant Update

2008-01-10T14:33:00.000Z

This week I have been getting started using Actionscript 3, learning about the structure of OOP coding, which so far seems very different to Actionscript 2. We now have Flash CS3, and as the Research becomes more complex, using Actionscript 3 seems to be a more appropriate programming method.

Research Assistant Update

2007-12-12T16:36:00.001Z

Today has been spent ironing out a problem with the sound fading up and down. The problem is now resolved. I have also conducted a little research into the use of IP addresses, which I understand requires the use of the server sided application PHP to obtain this data. This can then be incorporated into the Flash application. Whether PHP is available on the University server is not known.

Research Assistant Update

2007-12-05T16:58:00.000Z

Today has been spent working with sound, which is intended to guide the user through the 'Gridlocked' experience. Ian and I also discussed his intentions for moving the project forward, planning our workload over the Christmas period, and the finer details of the narrative.

Research Assistant update

2007-11-29T14:05:00.000Z

This week I have been bringing together the last couple of weeks experiments, making a Flash movie that dynamically places a range of webcam movies, giving each webcam its own counter. Also randomly placed is the computers own webcam. When each counter reaches zero, the webcam freezes. There are a few outstanding technical quirks which I will iron out.

Research Assistant update

2007-11-21T16:36:00.001Z

Today I have been working on the timecode element, randomly generating a time within limits imposed using actionscript. This is then added to each movieclip, counting down to zero.

IP address and Timecode

2007-11-21T11:11:00.000Z

The grid will include details under each video element. Individual IP (Internet Protocol) addresses will be featured alongside a time code. Initial visual ideas suggest a dark grey grid and a slightly lighter grey treatment of the numerical data. Perhaps slightly differing between IP address and timecode. We will further experiment with colour and type direction.

IP addresses

Each clip will have an IP address e.g. 192.168.5.354. These can be fictitious but must all differ. They will be positioned under each video clip. The live video (the user) will have their actual IP address listed under their video. This will suggest a differing internet location, complementing the differing visual location shown by video.

Timecode

Each clip will also have a timecode that behaves in differing ways depending on the state of the video character. The timecode will count down to zero.

a) the users video (the player) will have a timecode which starts at 30 minutes (00.30.00) which will relate to the timescale of the 'game'. If the timecode reaches 0 (zero) the video is 'locked-down' and the game ends.

b) most active characters will each have a differing timecode that counts down from greater than 30 minutes.

c) one character will show a starting timecode of of 00.04.00 (four minutes) and will introduce the user to the consequences of the timecode reaching zero, the locking-down of the video - a still, monochrome image.

d) a further four characters will be randomly selected and timed so that they count down, locking-down at differing times during the 30 minute limit. This feature will hopefully suggest a level of urgency to the user in reaching a conclusion before the 3o minutes is up.

Camera settings

2007-11-16T12:24:00.000Z

On testing prototypes on various computers, it is clear that appropriate camera configuration will be an important factor. If the camera is not correctly configured it will not display the live feed from the webcam. As our intention is to allow the user to discover that they are inside the narrative serendipitously we may need to build an initial configuation test which loads before the narrative.

On conclusion of the narrative ...

2007-11-16T12:12:00.001Z

Story update
Once the user has successfully completed their tasks, the programme 'locks down' the live video, trapping rather than releasing the user. The interface animates to reveal the extent of the 'grid' before closing down. Storyboard below shows an incremental scaling of the grid.

research assistant update

2007-11-14T14:04:00.000Z

Today I've been looking more closely at the potential of the webcam in Flash, taking stills from the webcam, and randomly positioning the webcam feed in the Flash window

research assistant update

2007-11-07T16:53:00.000Z

I've spent today's research time developing my actionscript programming skills by looking at dynamically generated movieclips and their potential for this project. I have also started to learn about OOP programming and its capabilities.

Initial ideas for Narrative

2007-11-01T10:44:00.000Z

STORYLINE - initial concept
On loading the application/webpage, the computer user is confronted by a grid containing several video clips of similar users at their own computers, captured by webcam.

Video
One of the video clips is actually live captured by webcam which places the user within the narrative as a visual live element. It is expected that the user will discover this by themselves without prompting. The other video clips will use subtle rather than over-animated movement to enable action to occur at differing moments and differing positions across the screen. (See www.hillmancurtis.com/ to view subtle body movement in video.) As we have little control over the quality of webcam capture or lighting conditions on users machines, the quality of our video clips should vary in colour saturation and lighting conditions to avoid the users live video to stand out and be therefore too easily identifiable on loading.

Most video clips are in colour and playing in subtle loops but there are some that are monochrome and static. These are captured users who are no longer able to save themselves - or interact.

Other graphic elements may be introduced to lead the eye and to create a visual digital environment. e.g. The Matrix movies utilise greendigital rain which suggests a starting point for visual style and motion experiments appropriate for content.

The Narrator
A character in one of the video clips is more focussed than the others - focussed by looking directly at webcam and speaking to the user. The character makes a desperate plea to help them to not become captured by the camera into the machine/grid. The character is, however, an agent of the grid whose aim is to assist the grid to capture the user's image/soul?. Audio of the narrator will be heard by the user on rollover. The narrator will give the user tasks/challenges (to be devised) which will seemingly lead to freeing the narrator but which will, in fact, lead to the user's image becoming static and locked down within the grid with no further interaction possible (the end of the story).

Audio
Initial thoughts on audio suggest a single track as background ambient noise suggestive of a combination of audio from all playing clips. Any speech should be sufficiently distorted to avoid clarity. The narrator will become clearly audible on rollover as stated above.

Prototype 1.31.10.07
See the first online prototype at the following URL:

www.uwic.ac.uk/staff/mleighfield/gridlocked/grid.html

Proposed Research Activity Statement

2007-11-01T10:40:00.000Z

Proposed Research activity
Ian Weir / Matt Leighfield

Department of Creative Communication
Cardiff School of Art & Design

First person immersive narrative
incorporating Webcam motion detection
Webcams have been around for some time as an external plug-in device. Many PC’s now have a built-in camera in their screen casing suggesting a developing universal familiarity and level of user comfort with this technology. This research aims to take a fresh look at these conventional tools in unconventional, original ways.

Questions
How can the ubiquitous webcam be used to allow the user, in the form of live video, to be included in the narrative of an interactive experience?
What are the characteristics of this experience?
Is the technique a gimmick or can a similar approach be repeated in differing narrative contexts to successfully immerse the user?

Methodology
We propose to explore the potential of the BitmapData API feature of Flash incorporating live video images within a narrative context. The BitmapData API allows developers to create and modify bitmaps captured by webcam feed at runtime using ActionScript. The API (application programming interface)—enables straightforward communication between Flash and external programs and devices such as webcams.

Website deliverable prototypes will be built to test initial reactions and to allow us to become established in an appropriate area of the research community. It is our intention to create experiences that can be viewed on standard equipment (accessed by many) – avoiding managed experiences which utilise expensive and technically demanding computer resources (and therefore more exclusive). The results of these initial reactions and our responses to them will be taken to a relevant conference in the summer of 2008.

A review of the literature relating to first person immersive (digital) narrative, human computer interaction and psychology will be undertaken to underpin the practical activity.

The research is outcome focussed and exploratory in nature and relates to the School and Departments strategic plan for both academic and support staff to be research active. The activity will directly relate to our specialist area of teaching. Interests and digital experiments developed during an MA in Interactive Communication completed by Ian Weir provide a stimulus for initial discussion.

Ian Weir
Matt Leighfield
October 2007

In the beginning ...

2007-10-31T14:27:00.000Z

Welcome to the Blog relating to research activity carried out by Matt Leighfield and Ian Weir at the Department of Creative Communication, Cardiff School of Art & Design, UWIC.