The City Walls – Matt Olsen

Inspiration for this project came, in part, awhile before this semester’s paper had begun, both David (my partner in the project) and myself having had an interest in presenting our design work in a way that brought it ‘off the paper’. We’d toyed with using some old horror movie style 3d glasses and two cameras running at once to film models and other materials, and had considered bringing this idea into the rendered/digital environment before, but had experienced certain limitations in the way of it being rather uncomfortable for the viewer, not an advantage in a public gallery setting. In came Johnny Cheung’s ‘wiimote’ tracking technology: David discovered this on the internet someway through the beginning of the semester, and it had everything we needed- An immersive and changeable environment for the viewer, coupled with minimal discomfort due to the nature of simulating the 3d world on screen in relation to the viewer’s position rather than tricking the eyes with cellophane or polarized lenses.

Now, the mapping part: Using Johnny’s technology as a shell, we devised a way in which the immersive and changeable nature of the viewing experience therein could be of use in presenting some kind of useful/interesting information. Both our initial ideas for the paper were tied up in the movement (or prevention of movement) of a city’s inhabitants- presenting movement vectorially seemed like an avenue containing the key components we were after using the technology: a high volume of content filterable by the user, intuitively using their input to change the world in front of them (the wiimote tracking technology and their relative position to the screen in this case).

Data for the presentation was obtained by surveys (and lollies) at points around the CBD area, and was gathered in two scales (micro and macro). Each participant plotted their immediate paths around the CBD and areas just outside of its bounds such as Grey Lynn and Grafton- this was the micro scale, and their path to and from the CBD from areas in greater Auckland, if commuting- the macro scale. What we ended up with was interestingly not so strictly divided in terms of ‘very small’ and ‘very big’ paths as expected, despite the large scale difference between the maps used for the survey, we ended up with a spectrum of journey sizes and directions, from participants walking to lunch on Queen St from the university to travelling home to Waiheke from the ferry building.

How we presented and altered these scales using the wiimote technology was a decision made based on intuitive operation for the observer in the gallery, to zoom in to the small scale journeys the observer moves closer to the screen, to zoom out to the Auckland isthmus scale the observer moves back. As the scale is gradually altered the appropriate vectors for that scale show appear on the screen. To preserve the 3d quality of the environment and prevent misalignment of vector to map as the observer moves round the sides of the screen (in the process panning through the same scale slightly), the vectors were tied down at either end, this allowed the most accurate representation of our original data, while still allowing a ‘depth’ to the field of vectors, and a more interesting experience for the observer.