Museum of Yesterday

Technical Documentation

2007-05-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

For this project the initial technical issue was how to collect the photos for display. The new website served this purpose perfectly, and uses PHP, CSS, and simple HTML. The files for the website are hosted here for documentation purposes.

The next issue was how to display the photographs for the midnight showing. For this purpose we used Flash to design a movie, and had the photos fade to black one at a time. The movie was made by using the window outline as a background and then laying the images on top of the location of the panes. Each of the photos was then copied and one copy was turned into a transform that faded to black at the same time that the first copy disappeared. The window pane template was then replaced by a solid black layer, so that all that is seen upon projection are the images slowly fading to black.
This method, while it does work, is incredibly time consuming and prone to human error. In the future it would be better to utilize Actionscript to automate the process.
The corrected version of the Flash movie and the .fla file are hosted for display purposes.

Midnight Screening of Museum of Yesterday

2007-05-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of our final midnight screening for the Museum of Yesterday projected on the front of the Union. The paper sheets in the window proved to be a great projection surface and the frame design Mike made fit well on to the window. The actual visualization however was very uneventful and had some technical problems.

Here are some more images of set up on site.

Shadow Play

2007-05-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

Above are images of Kang, Monarch and Mike setting up the paper on the windows of the Union for the projection. This took about an hour, but looked really nice once they were all set in place. The video below shows Kang, Alejandro and Mike improvising with shadow play while Kyle finishes up the visualization which was supposed to be ready that day, but was not.

Final Frame Design 1

2007-05-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

Based on what I was able to sketch out on site I combined my drawing with the photo I took and this is the frame design that came out. The top and middle parts should fit almost perfect if we can line up the projector right, but the bottom might still need tweeking.

Projection Frame Design

2007-05-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

In order to have the projected images fit neatly into the window frames we discovered that taking a photo of the space and formating a frame out of that would not be enough because it didn't factor in the curve of the window or the distortion that would have on a projected image. So Mike went out and tried to make a frame that would fit by projecting the computer screen on the Union and drawing with Photoshop. This only partially worked because since we are using the whole frame now, the projector needed to be moved back and placed higher. Thus the view was obstructed by the lower part of the fence and 2 tables or a taller pedestal will be needed for final display. Here are proposal images as well as the partial drawing made by Mike on the physical surface of the Union

Refined Projection Proposal 1

2007-04-24T08:46:00.000-07:00

Due to the lack of specificity of the last trial we have decided to create individual paper sheets to place in each frame of the window in front of the Union instead of pulling paper sheets all the way across or having a screen to project on to. There are 90 frames in that central window, each one is the same size, roughly 11 X 18 3/4 inches. We plan to cut out the sheets and place them in the window frames. This way the projection will still be visible, but it will also reveal the structure of the window frames. It also relates better to our original idea of multiple tiny moments coming together to make a bigger picture of something more meaningful. In the frames we will project individual pictures instead of one big picture. Each image will fade to black until the whole projection is black, this will happen randomly and one at a time so the viewer must choose which images to give their time to. We feel that this method of display and visualization will comment better on the concept of a community contributing bringing their individual perceptions together, tiny memories combining to create a message about ephemerality and enjoying tiny moments. We also feel that the dissappearing aspect comments on the time element and acts as a metaphor about the passing nature of moments. This display will also be visible enough to attract attention from anywhere on the quad, but it since the images are in frames it will force people to come up close to look there by creating a specific viewing area/community on the veranda. Thes pictures are quick proposals of how it might look, the first is the old projection (1 image on the paper sheets) the second is how we want to do it with tiles of images in the frames.

Dry Run 2

2007-04-20T06:17:00.000-07:00

Dry Run Midnight Screening

2007-04-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Gmail account

2007-04-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

In case of the website not working out for automated uploading we have registered a gmail account: museumofyesterday@gmail.com to send images to and we can then download them.

On Site Projection Trials 2

2007-04-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

Mike's Room Projections

2007-04-14T07:48:00.000-07:00

On Site Projection Trials

2007-04-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

Slide demo

2007-04-06T10:09:00.000-07:00

A demo slideshow of photos we took as a sample run.

Blending the images (memories)

2007-04-06T09:27:00.002-07:00

Here i came across an experiment done by developing a computer program which blend Flickr images which share the same tags. No human is involved in choosing, positioning, or blending the images.

These are few examples which will be kick off point for retrieval part of our project where we can make the whole project more exiting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brevity/sets/164195/

Memory recollection - Jim Campbell

2007-04-06T09:27:00.001-07:00

Memory/Recollection, 1990Black and white video camera, five CRT's, 286 computer, custom electronicsMemory/Recollection is an interactive video installation in which a series of captured live frozen images are displayed on a series of monitors. The images fade from the first monitor to the last monitor so that the last monitor has the oldest image on it. The piece stores images for up to 2 years and at times displays these older images from 10 minutes, a week or six months ago. i.e. The piece keeps track of and is defined by its own history.

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/

Memory Works installation - Jim Campbell

2007-04-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

Memory Works installationThe Memory Works (1994-1998) are a series in which each work is based upon a digitally recorded memory of an event. Some of these electronic records represent a personal memory and others represent a collective memory. These electronic memories are manipulated and then used to transform an associated object mounted on the wall. Avoiding the usual notions of what a memory is, none of the original memories is an image or a sound. These works explore the characteristic of hiddenness common to both human and computer memory. Memories are hidden and have to be transformed to be represented.

Photo of My Mother,

1996Portrait of My Father,

1994-95I Have Never Read the Bible,

1995Typing Paper,

1995Cyclical Counter base:time,

1996Cyclical Meter base:time, 1996 Sand,

1995Anonymous Photograph of an Electrocution,

1994Night Light, 1995/98 Reaching, 1998

Pancinema - Project by Kinecity

2007-04-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Pancimena is a cylindrical diffuse glass screen on which is projected the daily life of the city. A series of panoramic cameras are located throughout milan, pointed at the sky, at people in front of the train station, at trees and from the tallest building. The life of the city, at various scales and timelines, is continuously streamed to the server which then stores the images chronologically.

These panoramic image feeds are collaged and shown on a giant glass cylinder in front of Milan train station, so forming a memory of the city that starts at the inauguration of the sculpture.

The archived images are played as continuous time-lapse movies on the glass cylinder. The circular balustrade acts as in interface, each section of which marks a period of time past.
Pancinema was a competition entry for the Milan Station Art Competition 2000Collaboration: Luke Lowings, Richard Kress and Marek Walczak

This is an example which i find interesting and can be related to our project to some extend.

run up 1

2007-04-06T09:21:00.002-07:00

Example of images which are ephemeral that i find meaningful...........

Schematic design proposal

2007-04-06T09:21:00.001-07:00

These are few images for the schematic design for the museum of yesterday.

Point 1: Research Questions

2007-04-05T21:40:00.001-07:00

Point 1: Research Quetsions

What aspects of collective memory are you addressing?What powers control what gets forgotten – the people. Is this sort of inscribing practice worth it – is there any function or purpose? Should we take time out of our day to reflect and enjoy the “memories” of the town? To what extent should we incorporate the act of storage into our daily and present lives? What (sort of) power structures are guiding this storage and retention process? Will this idea of taking time out for reflection on the ephemeral moments be useful on the personal level? Can this act then become a sort of incorporative practice?

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 9

2007-04-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

Point 9: DiscussionBroader implications?

The museum as an intimate storyteller.To “outsiders” as well as townies. If one wanted to “get the pulse” of the community a visit to the museum may give more intimate details than can be obtained through personal interactions.The museum as communication post for the community.People can leave messages for their friends and loved ones. Members of the community may find this to be of some use while outsiders may garner little from theses posts.People will come to this space and take time to enjoy the memories of their community together. Friends may come as a group to enjoy a particular memory that they submitted the day before. Strangers may find themselves observing each other’s memories and being able to learn something about one another with the possibility of meeting that person in this physical space. Bickering lovers may be able to confide in the anonymity of the museum space’s submission process what they were not able to tell their partner directly. Townsfolk in general may make it a habit to pass through the museum on Monday nights when a certain theme of memories are displayed.

The museum as a memorial to the “felt” history of UIUC.As opposed to a traditional history where dates, moments of fanfare or disaster articulate the history of a location, this museum would celebrate the reactions or the emotions of the location. This “felt” history is not something outsiders may necessarily be able to relate to. The reactions or emotions may also be in response to nothing traumatic at all, in fact, an idea we are trying to tap into is that everyday is a moment of fanfare or disaster. Everyday is a cause for celebration as people all over town are able to share the discovery of something beautiful they have come across or have created. Everyday we as a community face traumatic situations, random acts of kindness, long lasting love, anger, despair and hope.

The museum as a facilitator.Going along with the idea that we, as a community, have all these inspirations, cries for help and comic situations; an avenue of expression empowers the basic desire to voice these ideas. This in effect draws attention to the person as one who interacts with the beauty in our social and even spiritual environment; encouraging more people to tap into what makes art so compelling.How did specific choices lead to impact or tension?

We started off with the idea of having recording stations where members of the community would come and record moments either through video or by typing them out. The recordings would then be up for display at a certain public space somewhere like the Student Union. We liked the idea of having that shared space to share and talk about memories, but the station idea felt a bit stagnant and could not capture the ephemeral and intimate moments – important parts of our memories.We wanted to retrieve these collected memories (video, audio, written, etc.) in a manner that would be efficient with our desires and so the idea of a “wiki” stayed with us. However, we decided to shed the search function for a more directed approach. The curator for the museum would choose photos that pertain to the prompt and display them in the museum.

The idea of forgetting was incomplete in our discussions. We wanted some sort of filter to keep out the lewd and inappropriate – some filtered by the curator and possibly more so by the community members visiting the museum.

Do you feel your approach is more like “grounded theory” or “hypothesis testing”?I feel as if our approach is more like hypothesis testing only it is without a solid hypothesis. Through further experimentation completely unanticipated consequences may emerge with which we may have to alter certain facets of our museum. We are dedicating a physical space to the “memories” of a town in the hopes that people may come, learn, talk, cherish, empower, reflect and bond with one another. Whether making a space to daily display new video, audio, and other works submitted by the town will accomplish this may be the hypothesis. We are leaving much of the directing of this project in the hands of the censor (if we are to have one), the creativity of UIUC, and the current social dynamic of the campus. Whether this museum can be accurately described as a store house of the ephemeral memories or “felt” history of UIUC is also up for question.

Descriptive Prompt

2007-04-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Yesterday

"The Museum of Yesterday" is a collaborative project that provides a physical space to publicly display the ephemeral moments of UIUC. The collection of these moments of significance is an attempt to embody the collective memory of our community. In providing this display we hope to cultivate a social space to share and experience the tiny moments of each other's day. In doing this we also hope to build relationships between people and allow reflection on the small, precious moments that would otherwise be lost in the routine of everyday.

Narrowing our focus

2007-04-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

To tackle the tough questions we ran into and try to focus our project from what it was at the last presentation we had a long meeting discussing our project. Here are the criteria and focal points we have come up with which we think reflect all our collective interests and focus our project so it can be effective.

1.The project is called "The Museum of Yesterday". It will be a physical space, tunnel/tent like structure in front of the union. We have picked the union because it is a symbolic home base for campus and it has high traffic flow of the campus population. We chose this specific site out in front because it is public, not a room you must go to, and is highly visible to anyone who passes by.

2. The users who engage with this project will take video and photo based on this criteria "If you would like to submit to The Museum of Yesterday then follow these instructions: Take a 1 minute video or 1 photograph of something ephemeral that you find meaningful. The context of these visual artifacts should be from your experiences on campus. Then upload your video to the museum website."

We decided AGAINST the mission themes for each week. There will only be this one constraint criteria. We felt that choosing the words ephemeral and meaningful were important aspects of what information we wanted to collect. "Meaningfulness" is very subjective and we are interested in the users' interpretation of what they find meaningful. We feel that this notion of cataloguing a community's idea of tiny things that are meaningful gets at the issue of meaning in memory. What memories do we find meaningful? Why do stupid things that might seem insignificant stick in our heads, but others don't? This question to the user also brings up value systems and subjective selection in memory. Ephemera is a criteria we are interested in because of its relationship to the museum and all the artifacts being not lasting, but displayed for a short while.

3. The display of artifacts will be anonymous, but the submission will be based on your net ID.

4. We will have either a voting system for the community to vote out "bad" or "innaporpriate" videos at a computer station in the museum OR we will have a jury that reviews all the material the night before and eliminates irrelevant or lude material. We have not chosen which of these we will do at the moment.

5. The videos and photos will be collected by uploading to a website with a cut off of a certain time (9pm?) or there will be a drop slot. I think the uploading makes more sense because who will want to burn a disc with one photo or mini movie on it? its a waste. Then those visual artifacts will be loaded to the display screens for the next day. They can only be viewed at the museum! Then at the end of the day all the artifacts will be deleted. Nothing will be saved.

6. Although the museum structure is the only thing we may physically realize for our final project it will be accompanied by a future proposal to have kiosks with uploading computer screens and cameras that you can rent out by swiping your icard. You can have the camera for a set amount of time, 15 minutes, half hour, no longer than 1 hour. This idea adds to the notion of equality, ubiquity and access to the entire community.

Visual Proposal for Physical Museum

2007-04-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

Locational proposal for how The Museum of Yesterday might look in front of the Illini Union between the two entrances. This location was chosen because it is a high traffic area as well as a symbolic home base for the campus community. We wanted something that was accessable, but didn't obstruct anyone's way if they didn't want to engage with it.

Mike's Points: 2, 6, 7

2007-04-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 2
2. Related Work: Museums and Youtube/Flickr

The idea for our project to be a "museum" of ephemeral bits of yesterday is a twist on what people normally think of when they think museum. Our project is using the framework of a museum for our model, but the content of our museum is very different than traditional museums. In traditional museums you have an expensive collection of historical artifacts which reach far back in time. Our museum is a collection of historical artifacts which reach back only as far as yesterday. Museum collections are expensive, conserved and important whereas our collections will be everyday, minuscule and ephemeral. So our museum has a historical context in traditional museums because it will have a collection up for display to the public, yet it contrasts because the display is changing each day and the artifacts will be destroyed at the end of the day.

This project also references online communities for uploading and display of recordings such as Youtube or Flickr. We hope our project differs from these because of the specificity of what we are asking people to record and also the site specificity of the museum being a place you must actually visit to experience. Filtering of "bad" recordings (which the community deams inapporpriate or not fitting) will be voted on and deleted by those who come to the museum, which is a similar method to the voting used to filter videos on Youtube.

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 6
Point 6: Experimental Design

For the design of our final project we plan on doing a series of test runs and prototypes. We will ask a sample group of students on campus to take video, image, audio, or text recording of something ephemeral that they find significant to see what kind of information people gather. We also plan on trying out different methods of presentation, using video screens, DVDs, web pages and ultimately doing experiments in The Cube or Cave if we can have access. Variables which we will use in our test runs will most likely be different questions to find one which best suites our idea and gets people to engage our concept as well as different modes of presentation in the museum. The beginning stages of these test runs can even start with simple questionnaires concerning what people find significant yet ephemeral throughout their daily lives. Hopefully from these various tests we can gain a better understanding of the project and make it as effective and meaningful as possible.

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 7
Point 7: Procedures

The methodologies we will be using to develop our project will begin with a mix between focus group questionnares and paper prototyping. Then from those studies we will develop the projecte further through bodystorming, roleplay and physical walkthroughs. Doing participatory action tests to gage whether or not people would realisticly engage with the project will be crucial. With the prevelance of already existing communities such as Youtube and Flickr our group feels like this would be an accepted idea to people on campus and a more meaningful alternative to those internet communities which can tend to lack specificity and reflection.

Archiving will occur on a website that we will build to upload data to. This can be tested by making DVDs and using netfiles as a test for uploading material. The choice of the medium of video display speaks to the ephemeral nature of the material we want people to collect as well as the immediacy of video. This will also make the information collected viewable by all audiences regardless of their access to recording equipment or internet, unlike something like Youtube. The site specificity also separates our project from Youtube. The recording would be done by anyone from the UIUC community. We can make the website for uploading only accessible to UIUC students if we really wanted to control the input or we could just leave it open with the belief that mostly UIUC community members would submit because the viewing can only occur on campus.

Our group is interested in the intentional storage of ephemeral things that a given community find meaningful. Whether this be the sight of flower on a sunny day or hearing your favorite song on the radio, we are interested in cataloging a communal sense of ephemeral moments of beauty or significance. We are interested in short term memory of these moments put on display in public for anyone to experience. Ideally the accumulation of these tiny ephemeral moments in one space would create an experiential moment of collective short term memory which would show the signifigance of all the things we take for granted everyday.

(Old Version) Final Project Description

2007-04-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Yesterday: Final Project Description

For the proposal of our final group project we have come up with the idea of "The Museum of Yesterday". Essentially what this would be is a "museum" (either we use The Cube or The Cave or install video screens in a room) where we would display a collection of videos, audio, pictures, or text from the previous day recorded by people from around campus. We would like the recorded information to be everyday, beautiful, ephemeral things that people find significant that they wish to record. We would advertise that we want this specific type of information through fliers, info sheets at the actual museum and a website explaining the concept. The website would be purely for explaining the project and uploading data, not viewing the data. This would force people to actually visit the museum and it would be free to everyone even people without access to computers or Internet. Ideally we would like it to be a community of people (in this case UIUC community) who can view this museum and add information to it by uploading their tiny moments of the day which they find significant and then the information would be loaded on to a database and displayed on screens at the museum the next day (hence the name "Museum of Yesterday"). At the end of each day all the recordings will be deleted so it will only ever be displaying recordings from the previous day, nothing before that. In this way the museum will similar to the recordings which are a collection of ephemeral experiences.

Participation Prompt

2007-04-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

Ephemeral

Lasting a very short time, short-lived, transitory.

Meaning

Significant quality, especially: implication of a hidden or special significance.

Please submit a photograph to The Museum of Yesterday. Just follow these simple instructions: Go out and take a photograph of something ephemeral that you find meaningful.

The context of this visual artifact should be from your experiences on campus. Your submission should be uploaded to The Museum of Yesterday website the same day it was taken and will be publicly displayed for view the following day.

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 4

2007-04-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Point 4: Materials

The ideal site for deployment of the museum would be in the Cube in Beckman, as we could display the memories on each of the individual walls, or possibly even multiple memories per wall.
In a less than ideal situation we could construct a museum environment in a room using multiple large screen monitors or televisions to allow the viewing of many different memories at once.

A web server with a site set up to allow for submission of videos and photographs would be required to collect the memories on a daily basis.
This same server could be used in the museum to display the submitted memories onto the walls of the cube.
The server would likely require some sort of database software running on it, most likely some SQL implementation, to store and catalog all the memories and their associated tags.

The storage medium for the memories would be individual video and image files in the database with a number of tags associated with them as determined by the users.
The method of retrieval would be through audience members physically entering the museum and viewing the memories as they are displayed throughout the installation, based either on time of day, or tags, or completely randomly from the entire day.

The data-set of memories will be any videos or images that users find to be particularly relevant or interesting. This could range from a video of a speech or just a picture of a flower.
All of these memories would be tagged by what type of content they contain. For example the flower could be tagged with flower, plant, happiness, yellow, color, and spring.

We expect the users-group to be either large enough or involved enough to submit a sufficient amount of content, and to tag that content appropriately.
The only expectation we have of the audience is that they would have a willingness to view the museum as with any other museum. It is helpful if they have specific tags for memories they want to view, but it is not a necessary expectation.

The Museum of Yesterday: Point 8

2007-04-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

Point 8: Results

Obviously we cannot post any results until at least a test run has been conducted, but a number of questions can at least be addressed in a speculative manner.

Experts:
Ideally our expert will be someone who has experience in designing and running programs on the Cube. I have already briefly talked with Professor Karahalios about the idea and she informed me that they are often looking for student projects to run in the Cube, and that I should simply contact the appropriate people in charge of the program and have a professor’s endorsement to be allowed access to work in the Cube. She also informed me that the work on the Cube is traditionally done in OpenGL, so someone who can help with that would be a major plus.

Analysis:
We cannot reasonably hope to do any kind of meaningful analysis until at least some level of testing is conducted.

Goals:
While we cannot say how well our goals will be achieved in the long term, our short term ideas that we have set forward, such as everyone taking notes, and roundtable discussions, have thus far proved to make our meetings more productive and allowed for everyone to get their ideas heard and then taken into account in the final project.

Longevity of installation:
We would like the installation to be in place for at least a week in order for people to be able to submit memories and come back and view them for multiple days, and for news of the project to spread by word of mouth.