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Data Submission
To outline what we have been doing over the last few weeks, it has mostly been a case of bringing the quiz website to fruition, along with thinking up an attractive representative model and a way of storing the data.

Now with two days to go we realise we may have overcooked it, the reason for this is that there are simply too many separate parts to design and implement in the timeframe available. Perhaps I should break this down and explain exactly what has happened and what we will have to achieve in the next under 48 hours to finish in time.

The Quiz (Data Collection)
In the past two weeks we have come up with an idea, collected open copyright pictures, created code that collects links from Digg and other sources based on the users selections, created questions, tagged the images in an XML file, created the interface and created code that saves the data to a database. Our current problems are accessing the database from within AUT, and the mac screwed up the XML file. Once the site is up and running we plan to improve it outside AUT's jurisdiction if at all possible. If we can create a slick and viable service we can continue to improve it into a valid business model (possibly). The output from the quiz should with any luck be moderately accurate and can be a model in itself, albeit less abstract and interesting than the one we came up with.

The Model (Structure and Presentation)
The model was thought up with inspiration from the Semi-Permanent design conference last friday and saturday. A number of international artists and designers are exploring the possibilities of printing on a transparent format, and using various techniques to hide and reveal information in dynamic ways for various purposes. Along with this we saw the idea of laser tagging and using UV materials for light painting. Between the three of us we decided to create a rather unique little book. This book would compress the entirety of a song and a movie onto each individual page. The book would be formed from the 20 most recommended songs and movies from our Quiz. Today I started working on some code that would play a movie and overlay each frame at a very low opacity over the last one, theoretically I would like the final product to be a mash of the entire movie in a single image. There are a couple of problems with the code as it stands, first of all the movie played in openGL appears to have a limited colour palatte (256 or thereabouts), secondly the alpha generally creates a white smear which does not fade, although the original code made a promising attempt not using OpenGL GLfunc commands. Thirdly the code does not work with movies that do not open in quicktime on a mac. that would be almost all of them. The sound would be made in more or less the same way, but my current state of thinking is to work with the visualisation to make an average 'waveform' rather than trying to process the sound itself. The final image on each page should be the blurred movie image displayed inside the generated wave form. Ideally I would like to make a UV print on each page that took the link from the quiz results and overlayed the entire text over itself at low opacity to create a complex symbol, but this is at the bottom of my list right now due to costs and having to write the software to do it. The reason I like this concept so much is that the information is all there, technically each page contains a movie and a song if you had certain information and a piece of software to do it. At the same time it should appear almost completely intelligible and defying explanation to those that do not know what is going on (an introduction printed in UV ink that would explain this would be another interesting thought.)

The fact remains though that these grand plans have to be completed in the next two days in order to be ready, and given our rate of progress I severely doubt this is achievable. However in saying this I believe that the project has gone from rather a bland and uninteresting idea to something with actual substance, and I am actually quite proud of the progress we have made on an ambitious idea.

Next post: Either discussing the presentations or reviewing a few art galleries. Stay posted!