1 / Data Double
2 / Visual Study
3 / Entropy–Visual Inspiration
4 / Trying Out 3D Design with Blender
DIGITAL DOUBLE
For project week, I mainly took the time to search for new inspiration and ideas. Was bouncing around ideas with a friend from the previous cohort one day, and she mentioned this Twitter trend that happened in the past where this tool was able to analyse the digital data from the user’s searches on Twitter, to formulate a digital self for the user.
Images: Feltron. 2010/2011 Biennial Report. 2012
The site called Digital Double (which is currently inactive) was an implementation to promote the book which focuses on finding ourselves in the digital world. It covers themes related to the authenticity of selves, notions of realness, and what it means to be us in the digital realm.
↘IRL: Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital WorldUsers who tried out the Digital Double tool posted their digital identity results on Twitter, and shared their thoughts on the accuracy of the tool–if the keywords relating to their identity were correct representations of their real selves. The Twitter thread was filled with discussions and conversations between users, getting to know each other by reading the categories associated with the user and finding common interests with one another after spotting similar keywords with others.
The book engages the audience by allowing them to find out what exactly defines their selves in the digital world, and in this context, Twitter users were able to discover what categories and keywords were assigned to their identities. In this way, users also became curious as to what their digital footprint/identity entails and if the analysis was correct, comparing the generated information to their actual selves–resulting in this act of self-evaluation and reflection upon ourselves.
VISUAL STUDY
Following feedback from Week 7 on how I can proceed with my experiments, I can venture out of the current visual style and try out different methods and approaches to visualise identities. To do so, I started with a visual study to map out what inspires and interests me, and what concepts or styles am I interested to experiment with.
This visual study consists of projects, case studies and references from various platforms and collections such as my digital repository, are.na, references from readings and saved images from behance/pinterest etc.
Through this visual study, I definitely have a better idea of which visual styles I would like to try, for instance, I can instantly define three mediums of visual tools that I can use to visualise identities– through systematic patterns, evolving/fluid forms and textures.
A few things I noted down while building on these three areas of visual study, for systematic patterns, the selected projects feature a lot of basic symbols/shapes that make up the system, while for the evolving/fluid forms, it focuses more on the use of colour and gradients to show this transition or illusion of movement in a way, and lastly, for textures, the downselected projects mainly consist of 3D objects/characters, which I thought fulfilled this sense of realness and physicality which was what I was looking for in my project–a way to connect physical and digital worlds.
ENTROPY-VISUAL INSPIRATION
Image: Studio Dumbar. Entropy. 2022.
Stumbled upon this post by morrre.design who shared this post about Studio Dumber's recent project for Entropy
I liked this project specifically as it expresses concept of fluid and evolving digital forms really well through this project. As seen in their digital tool interface, whereby the user can alter the nature and movement of the visual that is constantly growing and moving to spread across the entire screen.
Also the mix between typography and generative art was interesting as the choice of typeface seemed rather ordinary, but with the graphics overlapping onto the type, in the context of Entropy–this creates a sort of symbolism where the visual resembles a glitch within the type, disrupting the normalcy and security of users.
TRYING OUT 3D DESIGN WITH BLENDER
In my visual study, I found a few case studies and inspiration images that use 3D design as its medium, hence I wanted to try to learn how to use some basic 3D rendering softwares and see what I can do from there. From the sharing by Joe Chung on Week 5, I remembered the 3D model of the castle from Adventure Time that he showed during the presentation. He mentioned that he did that 3D render through the software called Blender, hence that was the first software that came to mind when I wanted to try learning this skill.
Image: Studio Dumbar. Entropy. 2022.
To start off, I searched up Youtube tutorials to learn how to use blender. I found this cute tutorial on how to make a frog, which I thought might be a suitable tutorial to learn from as I was looking into making characters/avatars Blender Tutorial by MAR →
Instead of the frog character, I tried to create my own design, while following the same techniques and use of functions in the tutorial. On the left, is a project by Verizon Fios , which I used as a refernce image for the tutorial. I thought the little characters in this project resembled the case studies in my digital repository.
Using mirror function to manipulate the symmetry of points
In the texture paint mode,using UV mapped areas of the 3D model to fill in the colours and manually paint on detailed features of the design.
Used the camera to position and frame the render in the right angle and perspective for this shot, and still learning how to create lighting and texture, which is a tutorial for next time!
First 3D experiment with Blender
All in all, learning the fundamentals of Blender was super fun and I can’t wait to try and create new stuff with this software. Although there were many obstacles and pain while trying to get the mesh, texture paint, UV maps, and camera to work properly, I think it was still manageable! Thanks to the tutorial, I was finally able to create my very first 3D object, although it's not as cute as I imagined it to be hahah, I think this is a great start to 3D design.
Moving forward, I want to try adding textures and playing with lighting to make the render look more realistic and aesthetic. Also, in the future, I’d also like to experiment with 3D motion and animation as I think that really takes the idea of moving forms to a new level.