Project #6 Experimental Camera: Consuming Our Energy

Description

For this project, I explored three ideas to represent the experimental camera. At a high level, I wanted to criticize social media and how people showcase curated photos of their life and themselves, creating this fantasy of a perfect life for the rest of the world. At the same time, I wanted to showcase how much time we spend curating this fantasy and forgetting the real life.

Losing us:

It’s a camera that overlays the image of the person in front of the camera with 4 different curated pose photos one over the other one creating a new distorted image. The final distorted image is the result of the constant curated reality that we try to show that ends on losing our identity on social media platforms. If we are dedicating our time creating a fake narrative of ourselves, when are we creating the real one?

Consuming our energy:

I was inspired by the Pomodoro time management method to breakdown the time that we spend in front of the camera with break intervals. This camera shows a blue overlay that when it is full blue represents full energy, and when it is zero transparency means that our energy is low. Once the overlay is transparent, the camera will let us know that is time to go for a walk. The camera shows a pixeled negative capture. The negative pixeled capture highlights the idea of the fantasy narratives that we create in front of a camera, action that distorted the real self, as well as how this activity consumes our energy and time. Different than the other two proposals for this project, this one presents a warning that we need to go for a walk, as a way to enjoy the real world. The energy levels can be reset by clicking the ‘reset’ button.

Design Process

After I created three different sketches and concepts about my camera, I decided to create on p5.js the third experimental camera “Consuming our energy” because I think this concept holds my statement about the loss of identity through the creation of curated fantasy narratives in social media, as well as the loss of quality time by spending too much time in front of a computer/camera. The most important characteristic is the time factor and a solution to the problem by creating a timer that lets us know when to stop. My goal with this project is not just to address my views about social media but bring a solution.

In p5.js I created the pseudocode to breakdown the steps to build the camera. First, I set variables to create the camera, the alert message, set timing, button, and pixel effect. Then, on function setUp I created capture video and define its size, as well as set the time, and the array that contains the alert message. Then, the text size and allign. Finally, I set the button function, its position, and I called the functionmousePressed to connected with the button and change the background to full color blue.

In function draw, I corrected the mirror effect on the capture, I created effects for the camera with blendMode overlay and filter invert which gives a photo negative effect on the camera. Then I set overlay color with map, and I used max so the blue transparency will stop once it gets to zero. I use console.log to confirm that max was helping my code. I set the time that is use for blue transparency and for Text sequence. Since I’m using blendMode overlay, I created an overlay overlay that has the same size than the canvas, additionally, I set the blue color for the overlay. I set the text with a for loop, creating time for each state of the string through the 30 seconds while color blue goes from solid to transparent. I createD the button to reset the blue overlay from full transparency back to blue. Finally, I wrote a foor loop for pixelation on capture image.

Reflection