For this assignment I learned more about the creative process about my three works. First of all, before creating things on MAX, I learned that inspiration is important to the creative process. When I am creating something, in addition to my own ideas, I am also likely to be inspired by the work of other people. For example, my major project is actually be inspired by the work called “shadow monsters” and the colourful painting in MoMA, then I combine the elements of them to create my own work. Moreover, the inspiration happens randomly, it’s very important to record them — For the study 4 and 5 we just come up with the idea while we are having a talk during the class, and we quickly record it and make it. Then for the creating part, I learned making more different techniques on MAX. For this time my skills on MAX has improves a lot and I become more comfortable and confident to show my ideas on MAX. I am happy that I learned new techniques almost every class and I also follow to explore more things by myself on the projects websites and also on the other students’ work during the creative process. The exploration always accompany with the excited feeling and I really enjoy it. Also I find that is not a “bad” idea to “steal” some good ideas of others to improve my own projects.
As this time’s requirement is expressing feeling in a non – tactile way, I start to consider how to create the work. Through the research during study 4, 5 and major project, I learned that the techniques of interactive art making is devised, and the feeling for users are intuitive and non-intuitive, and my ACMI and MoMA journey experience proves the idea. The “shadow monsters” is using the technique of projection and recognition, fusing the technology and fun to express the interesting and happy feeling for users. And another work is only using the recording sound of “help me” to get attention from users and makes users consider about what happened, it’s an another technique of interactive art making. Thus the interact art could not must be complicated, because the most important is about the feeling it expresses for users. Bring back to my three works, I mainly focusing on the users’ feeling but still try the new techniques. So far I’ve tried many new techniques(like controlling system with voice or face recognition) instead the most familiar techniques of camera and colourful effects, and all the techniques I use in my work are helping to express the feeling and the works are easy to participate. In study 4 and 5 users only need to raise their voices to see the change of emojis then get the emotion of awkward. For major project is much easier, users just show their faces to camera will see the background’s change(change to a colourful moving tangram) and feel the childish and fun.
This time I’ve been successfully create my three works with satisfaction. For my three works, I was satisfied with the combination of inspiration, thinking and technology. Although my level is still not high, but I can see my improvements on MAX. This time I explore many new techniques like face recognition or voice control by myself, and I am more skilled in operating max. Also, I believe I create works with the successful thinking and inspiration. As my major work was mainly inspired by the “shadow monsters”, this time I start to have a deeper think about the work’s theme, its techniques and what it wants to express but not just enjoying and feeling interesting with the work, thus I finally create my work. Moreover, I think I did a successful job in teamwork of study 4 and 5 as well. The aim of teamwork is to share different ideas and integrate ideas, thus in our team we positively share ideas and finally get the main idea to create the work. After that we separated the task into different parts and assigned to four people, as we all have improvements on MAX, we efficiently finish the work and get a good result in presenting the theme.
For the three works I believe I had some improvements, however there are still some parts I can improve. The performance on the theme of study4 and 5 is not very direct if without any explaining, and the major project’s idea of fusion is not obvious as well. Those problems are enough to prove my weakness on MAX skills. Also, all of my three works are mainly helped by Camille at the bases building stage(I only give the idea), and for the parts which I have to do by myself I always simplify my idea in order to avoid the difficult and complicated operation, thus those problems remind me that in the future I have to improve my skills on MAX and try to facing problems rather than simplifying problems, moreover I have to do more self research and exploration of how to create the work rather than only ask for help! As the problem of the weakness on expression, I do believe with my improvements, my work can bring more intuitive and beautiful effects on both visual and mind in the future.