OVERARCHING INTENT
To create an opportunity for users to revisit their daily lives, through continuous candid video recording, enabling them to view, save and reflect on past moments that they find value in
How many times do you wish you had a camera on standby to capture certain moments? How many times have you felt that you are inside a moment that is fleeting and un-capturable?
Time is continuous it does not stop for anybody. Human beings are animals that are living in or with this dimension of time. Everyday things happen, some of them special some, not so special. What demarcates these special moments from the rest of the day is dependant on the user experiencing these moments. Below I am going to try to talk about different moments by differentiating them according to the value that the user attaches to them.
INFORMATION VALUE
Lets say you are attending a conference or a lecture. The lecturer is talking about a certain topic of interest to you. You are really intrigued by the speech and spend rest of your time listening attentively to what is being said. A few days later you have a conversation with someone and you bring up what the lecturer was talking about, however you cant seem to remember all the points that he spoke about. It would be of value to have recorded that talk so that you can revisit it.
EMOTIONAL/PERSONAL VALUE.
You are sitting at a table across the person you love. It’s a beautiful evening and you both are having interesting conversation. Since you have been planning this evening for a long time and it a surprise for her, you are glad that she is so happy. You are thinking that you can’t stop thinking how beautiful she looks as the candlelight reflects in her eyes. It’s a feeling when you feel happy and overwhelmed at the same time, and wish you could hold on this forever.
RANDOM/AESTHETIC VALUE:
You are standing at a tea shop by the side of the road. It has been a taxing day and since you are quite tired taking the metro back home alone, you sit down, and are looking around aimlessly. You see people engrossed in conversation, waiters taking orders from new customers, the cashier yelling at somebody who accidently spilt tea while taking it out. Then suddenly you r eye goes to this spider suspended from nowhere trying to make his way to the ceiling. This is trivial yet so beautiful in the middle of all this chaos.
There are a zillion moments in our lives that we experience that are more special to us than the rest of the ordinary day. If only there was a way of capturing what you see and experience everyday, you would be able to save and share you thoughts.
THE NEED?
Photographic technology has given man the ability to capture his reality. With the invention of the phone camera
There are currently 296,080,000 cellular phones in India 1 . People make videos and photos everyday. This technology enables them to choose what part of their realities they want to capture through a process of doing. By doing I mean the actual act of taking the photograph.
This time that a photographic is taken at, has been spoken about by French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, who talks about the concept of the decisive moment. He talks about how an ideal photograph just happens and you need to be behind a camera to capture it.
Through a process of continuous capturing you will be able to capture those precious moments that we miss on a daily basis. This artifact creates an opportunity to capture through watching rather than doing.
This works rather well with our generation of watchers.
This artifact also in some sense addresses the notion of time travel or revisiting past moments. This is an idea that has been of great interest for sci-fi writers, filmmaker’s and science in general.
1 NATIONMASTER, 2008.
IN CONTEXT TO ART, DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT.
LIFECASTING OR LIFELOGGING
Video recording of a persons private space is not a new concept, it was first done by Steve Mann who is professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, in the early 1980`s. Starting in 1994 he transmitted his everyday life 24/7 to people via his website wearcam.org.
This process of transmitting your personal life has been given many names now. It is called life casting, lifelogging, lifeblogging or glogging. There are many other movements that started after this like We Live In Public, JenniCam and collegeboyslive.tv.
Another project in the area of personal surveillance done at Microsoft research was Gordon Bells –MyLifeBits (2004).
Since personal surveillance is relates back to the concept of surveillance in general. There are terms that have originated since then they are
Sousveillance – recording of an activity by a person involved in the activity
Equiveillance- A state of balance between surveillance and sousveillance.
WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
Wearable technology dates back to the invention of the pocket watch or spectacles. It extends from the watch to wearable computers and wireless webcams used for life casting. There is a lot of work being done in the field of techno textiles to integrate technology with fabric.
FORGET-ME-NOT
Intimate computing in support of human memory by Mik Lamming & Mike Flynn
The forget me not is a device that assists users track their belongings and important documents by keeping a record of their actions; archived by date.
MY BELIEFS
My education as an artist and designer has taught me to be aware/ beware of myself. To know strengths and weaknesses, my biases and beliefs. To unlearn to learn, by self-reflection and awareness.
Using the technology around us I wanted to create an artifact that is fun and creates personal value for the user by creating an opportunity to revisit his life. To watch, save, share, learn and change.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
PRIVACY/ VOYUERISM.
PERSONAL VALUE.
SELF-ACTUALISATION.
PSYCHOLOGY OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
APPROACH & PROCESS
Address research questions
Ideation
Creating architecture for the software.
Hardware tweaks for the phone camera.
Interface design.
Implementation - Working in collaboration with software engineers to create a prototype.
Testing.
