evsc
commented
10 years ago Amazing, thanks so much for the detailed feedback. Very constructive and helpful. I'll get into editing over the next couple of days.
One follow-up question: You say you want to hear more about the tracking results. Which i'll add when i refine the part about the tracking challenges. But, did you mind this focus on the tracking software, even though it is not build with openFrameworks?
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 9:01 PM, Michael Hadley notifications@github.comwrote:
@evsc https://github.com/evsc - just got a chance to look over the chapter. It's a very cool (and massive) project that you've covered in a compelling way so far.
First suggestion:
I believe the email thread suggested that more project images be added to the end of the chapter, but I would suggest spending a little bit more time on the description of the finished project early on in the chapter. The project overview gives a nice high level description, but as I started to get into the details of the project - both the descriptions of the idea generation and the technical solutions - I realized I didn't have a clear picture of what "Choreographies for Humans and Stars" was, especially from the perspective of a participant. That first picture was great, but I didn't pick up on all the pieces, like that the led steles defining the "dance stage" and that instructions were being projected on the building. The chronological approach you take is great, but it is also important for the reader to have an idea of where the chapter is heading (so that they have an easy way to make sense of the chronological approach).
The videos on the daily tous les jours vimeo channel do a really nice job of giving the viewer a glimpse into both the myriad of working parts that came together for the final piece and what the experience was for a participant. So I would definitely link to that.
I'd also suggest adding some more explanation using words and pictures (for those reading a print version) - describing the types of instructions the participants are given, mentioning exactly what you are tracking with the cameras, showing what types of images are being projected, mentioning that the imagery is generated from the local community, etc. If you have some more schematic diagrams like the one showing the projector setup, that would definitely be worth including.
Second suggestion:
I think the most interesting parts of these breakout chapters is showing how you go about tackling "real life" art: talking about things like the iterative process of idea generation->prototyping->testing, controlling the environment to make the coding easier, dealing with unexpected challenges you encounter, workarounds to keep the project on schedule, etc.
You already have a ton of really great things that address these topics. The comments, directed at specific sections, below might help hone the focus towards "real life" art:
"Call, Competition and Commission": Interesting and relevant (at least to me) to see process around getting funding
"Timeline, wished-for and realistic": The description of how you all blew past your estimated timeline was important. The specific timeline, though, could be abbreviated or excluded (or turned into a horizontal image.)
"Ideation, Narrative and Content": This is mostly a word choice thing, but it sounds like most of your "ideation" was prototyping. If I'm not misunderstanding your process, then this is an important point. When working on a project like this, it sounds like it is invaluable to build cheap (both in time and money) mockups and then critically thinking about why they work/fail. So maybe you cut this section down a little and frame it in terms of the iterative process. By the way - I like how you directly mentioned what the challenges were with the interaction design.
"Finding the Technical Solutions" This section seems particularly important because it is all about technology in the real world. The hardware choices are less interesting to me - maybe it could be a footnote?
The ideas around tracking would be pretty valuable to the reader (assuming Golan's chapter isn't already covering them). I'd be personally interested in hear a little more on how the system ended up performing (like how you got snowy/rainy/sunny/etc. conditions into your database).
"Developing the Visualization Software" I some of the specific code segments - like the transitions based on time
- could be omitted and the ideas could just be tackled conceptually. This is pretty dependent on what is already covered in other chapters.
"Fail-safes and dirty fixes" Definitely like the tip about keeping the app running with daemontools
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openframeworks/ofBook/issues/41 .
mikewesthad
@evsc - just got a chance to look over the chapter. It's a very cool (and massive) project that you’ve covered in a compelling way so far.
First suggestion:
I believe the email thread suggested that more project images be added to the end of the chapter, but I would suggest spending a little bit more time on the description of the finished project early on in the chapter. The project overview gives a nice high level description, but as I started to get into the details of the project - both the descriptions of the idea generation and the technical solutions - I realized I didn't have a clear picture of what "Choreographies for Humans and Stars" was, especially from the perspective of a participant. That first picture was great, but I didn’t pick up on all the pieces, like that the led steles defining the “dance stage” and that instructions were being projected on the building. The chronological approach you take is great, but it is also important for the reader to have an idea of where the chapter is heading (so that they have an easy way to make sense of the chronological approach).
The videos on the daily tous les jours vimeo channel do a really nice job of giving the viewer a glimpse into both the myriad of working parts that came together for the final piece and what the experience was for a participant. So I would definitely link to that.
I'd also suggest adding some more explanation using words and pictures (for those reading a print version) - describing the types of instructions the participants are given, mentioning exactly what you are tracking with the cameras, showing what types of images are being projected, mentioning that the imagery is generated from the local community, etc. If you have some more schematic diagrams like the one showing the projector setup, that would definitely be worth including.
Second suggestion:
I think the most interesting parts of these breakout chapters is showing how you go about tackling “real life” art: talking about things like the iterative process of idea generation->prototyping->testing, controlling the environment to make the coding easier, dealing with unexpected challenges you encounter, workarounds to keep the project on schedule, etc.
You already have a ton of really great things that address these topics. The comments, directed at specific sections, below might help hone the focus towards “real life” art:
“Call, Competition and Commission”: Interesting and relevant (at least to me) to see process around getting funding
“Timeline, wished-for and realistic”: The description of how you all blew past your estimated timeline was important. The specific timeline, though, could be abbreviated or excluded (or turned into a horizontal image.)
“Ideation, Narrative and Content”: This is mostly a word choice thing, but it sounds like most of your “ideation” was prototyping. If I’m not misunderstanding your process, then this is an important point. When working on a project like this, it sounds like it is invaluable to build cheap (both in time and money) mockups and then critically thinking about why they work/fail. So maybe you cut this section down a little and frame it in terms of the iterative process. By the way - I like how you directly mentioned what the challenges were with the interaction design.
“Finding the Technical Solutions” This section seems particularly important because it is all about technology in the real world. The hardware choices are less interesting to me – maybe it could be a footnote?
The ideas around tracking would be pretty valuable to the reader (assuming Golan’s chapter isn’t already covering them). I’d be personally interested in hear a little more on how the system ended up performing (like how you got snowy/rainy/sunny/etc. conditions into your database).
“Developing the Visualization Software” I some of the specific code segments - like the transitions based on time - could be omitted and the ideas could just be tackled conceptually. This is pretty dependent on what is already covered in other chapters.
“Fail-safes and dirty fixes” Definitely like the tip about keeping the app running with daemontools