Week-3

Exploring Augmented Reality

On Thursday 29th August, we had to make and bring an object that is related to our research, something that is important for our goal, something to get us started. And I wanted to start learning a software that helps me use AR for my project. For starters, when I started looking for softwares, I actually found two softwares: Apple’s Xcode and Unity Hub. At that point Xcode seemed a bit too complex than Unity hub so I started with a simple tutorial: link here.

I just made two cubes to get myself started. However I faced a lot of technical challenges, like first of all setting up the software itself was a lengthy process, then the mobile settings which I realised that was not a good thing if I wanted it to be friendly to anyone else viewing my project.

Weekly Consultations

After a consultation with Andreas, I had realised that I maybe have gotten it wrong? I think I repeated something from what I did in Level -2. Setting my ambitions too high without considering the time that I have and my current skill set. I had gotten way too confused with what my goals were for the graduation project. Also before getting into technical processes it was vital to first get a direction on what I want to do.

I was struggling to recognise what I was really interested in. I guess because I kept watching so many things on social media, google that I got confused. A lot of things appeared interesting however I was struggling to find inspiration, something whose process is more interesting to me.

Starting Over

I first started just building a concept and maybe then think about how it can be executed. Often while brainstorming I tend to have a lot of ideas that may or may not prove to be relevant or viable to my concept. So I was already imagining experiments where I code a sketch who's algorithm would detect the person in front of the camera and animate a cartoon of that person. However there is no concept to develop yet, so I carried on with brainstorming.

I was still a bit blank but I thought that maybe I would ask myself a few questions that would help me define the three pillars for my concept.

1. What?- The core interest - Storytelling

2. How?- The techniqures I will be using - If I want it to be immersive, this pillar would be about what techniques I could use.

3. For What?- What is this project for? Immersive storytelling for what? The intent of the research. I am a bit confused about advertising as the third pillar right now, so I thought it may be best to first maybe look around a bit, look for different examples of existing projects within this range.

As for purposeful it felt like an umbrella term so I didn't use it as one of my pillars. I do remember Andreas mentioning ‘Purposeful storytelling for advertisement’ which does sound interesting however I was still confused about ‘advertising’.