concept outline
background development
exhibition history

Vicky Isley & Paul Smith
Research Fellows in Computer Animation & Computer Art
NCCA, Bournemouth University
t: +44 (0) 1202 966699
e: info at boredomresearch dot net

boredomresearch is represented by [DAM] Berlin

"Folly are really excited about boredomresearch's success as we are committed to supporting and raising the profile of artists who work with technology and exploring ways in which to address the gap in archiving of new media art work." Folly's Creative Director Kathryn Lambert

"Media artists are utilising an increasingly complex set of digital tools and devices and much of this work has very considerable implications for the way in which we experience art." Digital Aesthetics II

Forest of Imagined Beginnings, 2007

One of our primary interests is in software driven environments that change in a positive direction over time. An online forum is a good illustration of this process with threads developing over time. However our interactions and experience of them are experientially impoverished; focused entirely around efficiency and functionality. Despite this focus they soon become overblown and difficult to manage and navigate.

Our societies seem obsessed with finding the quickest and most efficient route to navigate our way to our destination and the internet is the ultimate expression of this. The extent to which we rely on abstract navigational input like road numbers and exit numbers, to describe our routes from A to B seems bizarre when we consider the dramatic and memorable quality of our landscapes and landmarks. It is revealing also that the second time we make a journey we rely much more heavily on our natural ability to remember such landmarks. This mechanism also often kicks in when we are trying to find an article on a Blog that we saw a couple of months ago. We remember that it was at the bottom of the page just above a red image of something. The shifting sands of the digital universe do not appear to value this inherent ability to record the location of things in terms of there spatial relationship to others, avoiding landmarks and rearranging material automatically.

In Forest of Imagined Beginnings we are interested in how we access information and the potential to manipulate this process to encourage a more contemplative and rewarding experience. Users can explore a landscape approach to managing and navigating the changing space of an online forum for its potential to enhance and engage the user to a degree that exceeds that of a standard data management system. The online environment creates a spatially oriented approach to allow alternatives to our established data navigation that respond more intimately to our inherent ability to return to and navigate a remembered space.

An example of a real world experience that has inspired the way we are considering these possibilities is the eastern practice of Omikuji which are random fortunes written on strips of paper or ribbon found around shrines often on trees. And the perhaps similar custom of writing a prayer on a specially-prepared wooden block called an ema which is then tied to an ad hoc scaffold. In addition to leaving your wish or prayer at the shrine your approach to Shinto shrine is carefully arranged in an attempt to be conducive to losing yourself in thought and contemplation.

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background development
A development instance of FOIB was exhibited at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston (16th March - 2nd June 2007) in the Digital Aesthetic II group exhibition.


First instance of FOIB, March 2007
http://www.boredomresearch.net/foib

The forest evolved over the spring where users created their own trees to add to the forest using online generative software. The software enabled each tree to be unique but share a similar aesthetic. Over 900 unique trees were created by visitors to the Digital Aesthetics Exhibition.

a selection of trees created by users in the first instance of FOIB @ Digital Aesthetics II,
Harris Museum & Art Gallery Preston

Another instance of FOIB was exhibited at Enter_Unknown Territories, International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK (25 – 29 April 2007).
http://www.boredomresearch.net/enterforest

In this FOIB you can navigate through the forest and users can embed their own messages on selected trees which get permanently stored within a MySQL database.Visitors have used the environment in a variety of different ways - to express ideas, thoughts, to open up questions, to communicate to other users, write accounts of experiences and even to publicise their own work. Trees have been annexed by one user to write short stories.

The trees within the forest have been inspired by the decrepit appearance of fruit trees seen in Japanese Edo Period Paintings (1600-1868). Initially we searched for existing software that would create these aesthetics. We eventually developed our own tree generative software and a 2D renderer that displayed a stylized graphic representation of these tree structures.

a tree generated using our software


We originally created an online sketch for this project entitled Wish (2006) commissioned by Folly, Lancaster. We developed a few trees using the tree generative software and chose one to form the composition of our online wishing tree http://www.folly.co.uk/wish The second edition of Wish has been acquired by Doron Golan, NY Computer Fine Arts Collection (2007) http://www.computerfinearts.com and presented at the CAe2007, International Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization, and Imaging Banff, Canada (20-22 June 2007).


Wish, 2006
http://www.folly.co.uk/wish

FOIB has been co-commissioned by Folly, Digital Arts Organisation, Lancaster & Enter_Unknown Territories, International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK.

We are keen to continue developing FOIB and have released another version for digi-club an online forum for young people aged 12-16yrs.
http://www.digi.org.uk

Updates in the digi-club release include: 1. longtitute & latitute so users can reference trees & Folly can always post out specific locations of interest 2. teleporting, you can click anywhere in the overview & go straight there, so will speed up travelling to specific locations 3. first message marking, the first message submitted to a tree becomes the theme for that tree and is indentified by a big star. This will enable Folly & users to set themes for trees 4. improved rollover, more accurate & user friendly 5. added a timestamp to the message

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exhibition history


FOIB tree covered with messages in the Enter_Festival, Cambridge 2007

exhibitions 2007


2007
Digi Club Online Forum for young people aged 12 – 16yrs (11th Oct – ongoing)
Velocity Festival, Folly Lancaster (11th October – 3rd Nov 2007)
Digital Aesthetic II Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston (16th March - 2nd June 2007)
Enter_Unknown Territories International Festival & Conference for New Technology Art, Cambridge UK (25 – 29 April 2007)

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