Other Attempts at Animal Translation

There have been a couple of other attempts at animal translation. Probably the most notable one is the 'Meowlingual' by Takara Tomy. There is also a counterpart for dogs called the 'Bowlingual'.

The Bowlingual has a slightly different setup, with a hand held LCD display and a wireless microphone which attaches to the dogs collar. The microphone records and transmits the sound of the dog barking to the hand held LCD display, which analyses the bark against a database of barks. The bark is placed into a category such as assertive, happy, and needy, and then the emotion is displayed on the screen as an image.

Google set up an April Fools joke which produced an animal translation application for Android smartphones. The video they produced shows the app working to translate what a pig and a donkey are saying. Google made the video very convincing and in the theme of their other videos.

A link to Google's project can be found here: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/

Deciding on a Background

In part of my video I have the desktop of my laptop visible - so I decided to make a background which shows that I'm not a student but a scientist working on a big project. I spent a bit of time in Photoshop trying to come up with something original. Here are some of the designs I came up with...

The design at the bottom is the one I chose in the end. You can't really see it in the video but I thought it would add a nice touch. My favorite part is the little rat I drew. It seems to make the text seem a bit more 'logo' like. The swirly shapes in the corners are meant to tie in with the Victorian theme of the poster I made a while back.

Hannah sent me some interesting links which are related to my work.

Art for Non Humans - http://vimeo.com/8969881

Interspecies - Can artists work with animals as equals? - http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/detail/interspeciescornerhouse/

In this project, four artists were asked to create projects working with animals. Kira O'Reilly's piece seems to look into human and animal relationships / interactions. In this exhibit O'Reilly spent time with a pig called Deliah to "explore shared animal / human intimacies". I

Webpage

I've completed my webpage for The Animal Translation Project. It can be found at: http://christabriggs.co.uk/animaltranslator/animaltranslator.html

I have placed a video as a placeholder while I plan and make my own video.

I hope it is convincing - I decided to go for minimal information to let the video do the talking. My URL would give it away if people continued to investigate but I hope that initially people will be convinced by it, I guess that will depend on how good my video is.

Viral Marketing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/09/digitalmedia.television
 
The American TV show Dexter launched an interesting viral marketing campaign advertising the show in the UK. People recieved text messages on their mobile phones which stated: "Hello (name). I'm heading to the UK sooner than you might think. Dexter.", and then receive an email which linked to a video, made to look like a news report, about a recent chain of murders. The video would then use on-the-fly manipulation to add the recepients name in blood on a wall. After complaints, FX, the company behind Dexter in the UK, stated that they did not send the messages, but they were sent by a friend of the recepient, and suggested they asked their friends to find out who sent it. The site used to send the messages and emails can be seen at the following link. www.icetruck.tv

An article from The Guardian about the campaign: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/09/digitalmedia.television

I plan to set up a small viral marketing campaign in the form of a webpage. The page would have a video with a brief description of the technology, leading the reader to believe it is not a fictional project but leaving them wondering if the animal translator is real or not.

Research

With Augmented Reality, the lines between what is art, what is a commercial application, and what is an academic application are blurred - the technology is new, so the exploration of the topic is rather undefined. For example, all industrial applications could be perceived as somewhat arty and academic - it's hard to split the applications into distinct categories, as they are mostly interlinked. I'm going to be looking at a few various ways AR is used.

One commercial application of AR is the game for the PSP console, Invizimals. The objective of the game is to catch, level up, and battle creatures. The creatures are 'hunted' down by using a camera designed to be used with the PSP. The creatures are captured in the 'real world', with the camera taking the image in front of it (for example, your desk) and relaying it to the PSP's screen. Varying creatures are spawned, determined by the colour of surfaces and the time of day.
The creatures are 'captured' by placing a marker in front of the camera, on the creature.

Pixel Art

Here are some more images I made, they didn't end up being used in the game.

The images are buttons for the game, particles for picking up items / transformations, a version of the bombed out church in Plymouth, a 'good' cat version, a 'bad' cat version, a poison bottle, and a cupcake.