We’ve been busy of late, putting the finishes touches to a wildly ambitious self-initiated project. What does that mean? ‘Self-initiated’ in that it’s a project borne out of invention and curiosity – distinctly lacking in any discernable client brief.
So is this is a design project per se? Not really actually. Digital Sculptures, or ‘Contested Spaces’ as we’ve renamed it, is an investigation or experiment in motion graphics with a social backdrop. It that asks a simple question: How can we represent the history of a contested civic space digitally? Or, what might these flashpoints look like if realised virtually?
No better time that July to discuss tension arising from cicvic spaces in Belfast. On reflection, perhaps the question isn’t quite as simple as we initially thought. Nevertheless, Frank has created (almost there…) a series of five sculptures using a variety of digital technologies and composited them into filmed scenes around our home city of Belfast.
More to follow very soon with a dedicated website showcasing all 5 films and an exhibition hosted by our friends at PLACE. You can view a preview at the Digital Sculptures blog here.
Reflections on Contested Spaces
On 5th of August, we opened “Contested Spaces” at the PLACE gallery on Fountain Street in Belfast, an exhibition of five digital, or virtual, sculptures set into video footage of locations around Belfast city. The sculptures were all created by designers working at Frank, with the overarching purpose of the project to inspire creative thinking, experimentation and research into new techniques in motion graphics. The project had its roots in ISEA09 (The International Symposium of Electronic Arts), where I was asked to take part in a panel discussion about ownership of digital versus real-world spaces, and was supported by the Creative Industries Innovation Fund. From start to finish, we spent just under a year creating Contested Spaces. You can read more detail about the process and background on the project blog http://www.frankideaworks.com/digitalsculptures …and the finished sculptures can be viewed at http://www.contestedspaces.net
This was the first time we’d formalised and focused the studio’s creative experiments into a single, major project and a lot of ideas, discoveries, challenges and surprises fell out of it. These could be considered the edited highlights…
Hold it together with a blog
We didn’t initially propose to plot the course of the project with a blog, but someone suggested it and it turned out to be a great idea. As well as giving the Arts Council a reassuring update on how CIIF money was being spent, it helped bring all of our ideas together and, seeing them side by side, challenge how they related to each other – how they worked as a series. It was a tangible reference point in a project that was often complex and abstract.
Get back to the idea
We wrote our own brief, we commissioned ourselves, we had no client to answer to or message to carry. We could interpret the brief in so many possible ways, with no arbiter to call it right or wrong so it wasn’t surprising that at times things drifted and decisions weren’t really being made. Every time one of us went off track, the comment that steered us back onto the road was something to do with focusing on the idea or the essence of the story behind each of the sculptures.
Slow can be good
Most design projects are in and out of the studio in 6-8 weeks, with some happening much faster. Running the Contested Spaces project alongside this allowed for a kind of creative decompression which benefitted both. As it was essentially a research and development exercise snap decisions tended to feel wrong, they usually led into the comfort zone.
Good can be slow
We commissioned Steven Quinn, Belfast’s most louche camera man, to shoot the five sculpture locations. We asked him to try and capture each of the scenes as though he had just stumbled upon it. The camera work should be shaky, rushed and maybe a bit frantic. This was great for the feel and tense atmosphere of the sculptures, but turned out to be a real headache for the software we were using to ‘track’ the sculptures into the footage – the motion blur and focus shift dazing the software every few seconds. So we had to learn how to help the technology. It slowed us down and made brains hurt, but we learned a lot more – after the style of Mr Miyagi.
Harness the power of shame
We let the project mature at its own rate, we didn’t rush it. But it still needed a conclusion, and to help reach it nothing is more motivating than the prospect of public humiliation. Organising and committing to the exhibition made a genuine difference to the successful completion of the work on time, and also to the standards we set ourselves.