Gareth Foote - Imiant

Reflection on the planning:

Our initial difficulties in planning stages of the project were due to a number of factors; some of which I have mentioned in previous posts.

Firstly; the size of our group was a hurdle at the conceptual stage, but proved to be benefit at the later stages. We couldn’t nail down one idea (maybe because everyone was too polite to fully critique other peoples’ ideas) and ending up having 3 or 4 fuzzy ambling concepts none of which were inspiring or exciting any of us.

Secondly; the ideas we were developing were mainly conservative and unambitious. I think we were perhaps not that confident in our abilities at this stage of proceedings.

Thirdly; not really understanding the ‘why’ of the project. It was quite hard for me personally to get around the fact that I wasn’t sure what the end product or aim of the project was supposed to be.

-We overcame the first and second problem through pure frustration. After presenting some uninspired ideas to the group and having them, expectedly, heavily (and fairly) critiqued we went for crisis talks. I think this was our lowest point and we started discussing the idea which we took forward. We were actually excited by this concept and felt it was a suitable challenge considering the time constraints.

For me the third problem wasn’t resolved until the intervention was in place and people were taking part. Although we did change the media ecology of the environment, I’m still not sure to whether we had an end purpose. I believe in this case it was enough that people noticed a (drastic) change in their environment, took part in and enjoyed the event.

For future events I intend to follow the very brief guidelines I mentioned in my first post about the event planning. To reiterate; the statements from the foreword of Matthew Fuller’s book on Media Ecologies suggested that we should purposefully collide the complex structures that already exist in the space in order to get ’strange and interesting things to come out of the wrong end’. And that it’s what I shall do.

Reflection on the event:

Despite carful planning and setting up the equipment in a testing environment (in the lab), I was still unprepared for difficulties involved in setting up in a live environment around people who were just there to do their laundry. I felt particularly awkward that we were intruding where we were perhaps unwelcome. Also despite feeling reasonably confident that most of the project would technically work there was one social factor that I hadn’t considered; giving people an incentive to interact with our system. Before the event it seemed enough to simply put things in place and then assume that people would get involved of their own accord but the customers overall attitude towards us was completely ambivalent.

The only solution to this problem was to actively get people involved. This was made easier by some guerilla marketing from Brittany and some aggressive flyer-ing from Maria and Nico. Due to this activity we without planning turned the intervention into an event; although the two aren’t mutually exclusive. We showed / told people what we were doing and captured their response. Because of this I believe we inadvertently turned this into an exhibit which could have been held at a gallery but happened to be in a coin laundry. The only down side to this was that it less subverts the natural ecology of the space and more created an artificial environment for regular customers.

Despite this I was overall very happy with the event and particularly happy with the experience. After some initial floundering the group worked together incredibly well and working with them made the project for me.

A friend of mine who came along towards the end wrote a review of his unbiased experience of the event.

My role:
After ardently trying to stay away from any technical role within the group, it became clear when the final idea was decided upon that I might need to be at least partly involved in the technical side. However this was not a static role as Marco ended being the lead on most of the technical work including the majority of the arduino circuit building.
I was invovled in creating the Arduino patch in max msp and helped to build the circuit on the arduino board.
I believe (although I may be corrected by my group) that I partially edged into a project management role although this did not take much work because we quite quickly assumed a laissez faire approach and everyone mainly worked autonomously.
I also documented a lot of the processes involved including the circuit diagrams, technical architecture diagram (flow chart) and a plan of the logistical set-up of the event space.

Almost over!

My objectives:
Take advantage of (rather be overwhelmed by) the openness of the brief.
Understand the consequences of art methodologies and involving the public in my work. (for myself and  of the people who take part). i.e. the ‘why’ or reason that I have done this work.
Create a space where people are able to enjoy themselves in a usually mundane environment.
Create a physical computing environment which is not intrusive but utilizes the natural space.
Record a data set from the event for evidence.

The resources and strategies I will use are:
Examine the launderette space to assess where equipment can be set up.
Examine the launderette space to assess were best to distribute the points of interaction.
Identify / predict the potential technical problems we may encounter on the day.
Create some of the electronic components from cheap or free objects.
Decide whether to use subversive methods or make interactions obvious and therefore whether to invite people or just try to involve existing customer.
Research a the best time of the day or week to intervene, dependent on the previous point.

The proof of accomplishing this activity will be:
Video, photography and documentation from the event.
The free media tools which we will create as part of the physical computing environment.
Record the data from people’s interactions with the environment.
An overall satisfaction with the process.

Evaluation criteria and means of validation:
Group feedback about my contribution toward concept development and implementation.
That the documentation of the event shows that people took part and enjoyed the event.
If not successful then at least being able to reflect constructively on the process and project in general.

During the production of the project I was writing on my personal blog about the process myself and the group went through. There is also some video from the event itself.

The links are listed below by date:

Coin Laundry Ecology - November 18th, 2008

Crisis talks…….new ideas! - November 26th, 2008

Coin Laundry as database - December 2nd, 2008

…3 days to go. - December 4th, 2008

Today’s the day - December 7th, 2008

Posted after the event:

Video from the Coin Laundry Orchestra - December 8th, 2008

More video from the event - December 9th, 2008