Project Review

This project has been interesting with new challenges and new knowledge that I can take forward with me for the future. When I was given the opportunity to look at the two different briefs I had to choose from, I had to make a decision based upon my creative ideas and what I believed I could produce within the two sets of possible guidelines. The ID (IDENTIFICATION) brief immediately leapt out at me, as it provided me with more questions and I believed those questions could be explored and turned into possibilities, so this was the brief I chose to follow. I realised that my lack of understanding regarding the field of portraiture and art in general may be one of the reasons that I choose not to visit art galleries and this could also apply to a percentage of the general public. Some people may consider this lack of understanding to be ignorance but I do not believe that is a fair point of view. Knowledge empowers people and a sharing of knowledge can help individuals and bring groups of individuals together. In this case I decided that I wanted to create an application that would inform people about portraiture, provide them with knowledge that they can take forward to create their own opinions about works of art, in order to break down any potential barriers that may currently be preventing people from gaining enjoyment through art.

In order for me to do this, I had to research information about portraiture and I also had to look at ways of passing this information on to others. I looked at lesson plans for teachers, and current portraiture teaching initiatives, including one from the Smithsonian, thus helping me to gain an understanding of the field myself and helping me to see how to break it down into smaller chunks that can be used to teach potential users.

Through this project I have learnt a lot about portraiture and I think I have learnt about the delivery of information in some ways. In my project I have tried to inform users and I have tried to get users to ask questions themselves, in order to help them to continue learning. I hope that my application does inform potential users and I hope it will make a difference to at least one person, if it does then all of the work will have been worth it and I can consider my application to be a success.

I have not only had to learn about portraiture during this project but I have also had learn a new scripting language, this will be my first complete project using action script3. This has been a challenge in itself but I seem to have everything I wanted working, so I am pleased to say it is a challenge I feel I have conquered.

I have also had to put into practice the knowledge I gained in the past two years regarding kiosk application design, remembering the best practices in order to produce a user friendly design.

The interactive portrait part of the application was my attempt at showing how technology can now influence portraiture, although some artists may not consider it to be a portrait, I believe it fits the definitions of portraiture in my application very well:

• It is a likeness of a group of people created by an artist
• It will record the a point in history(The exhibition)
• It will show different people engaging with art at the gallery

Although I am not picking up a paintbrush or a camera, It is still a considered, structured piece of interactive portraiture, that’s quality and merits will be open to the same debate as any other portrait but that is what art does, it creates emotional responses that are interoperated by different people, in differing ways. To various extents that why an application such as mine is so important, if it can inform, engage, entertain and record, it is fulfilling many of the potential facets of art as a medium.

I feel that I am not the strongest artistically and although I am happy with my design, I feel a stronger visual designer could have produced a better visual appearance for the application.

As with my client project last year I have been producing this piece on my own, as I am the only Interactive Multimedia student, so I have had to be researcher, designer, developer and project manger but the experience of last year has proven invaluable to me. Although I have worked on this project on my own, I have had great support from my lecturer James Field and I have been able to draw on the artistic knowledge of my client Adele Howitt, I would like take this opportunity to say thank you to them both for their support throughout this project.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this project but I must admit I am glad it is over as looking at my screen sideways on was getting irritating but I am happy with the application I have produced and hopefully the client will also be happy. Please see some screen shots from the finished application below: