The apps future

I was very happy with how the app turned out especially the positive responses I've seen when people have been playing with it. The app is not in its ideal final state and I do want to make some adjustments/additions to it before I role it out to the public. The first most important step is making it work for the web using Unity webgl. As part of my essay I talk a lot about accessibility and that art should be made as accessible as possible, I stand by this so I want my app to be on a very easy to use platform. This would be in the form of a web page so it won't require any downloads. To do this I will need to optimise the app so it can run with a lower memory consumption, if this is fixed the app should work for the web. One thing I know that will help is using sprite rending instead of png sequences for the character and using some more web friendly image formats instead of PNG. If I can not resolve this issue myself I hope to speak to some developers at leeds game toast to ask for advice on making the app run better.

The app also is missing a set of sound the original plan was to have 5 sounds split into 4 however there are only 4 sounds at the moment, due to time constraints for myself and the musician involved the last set has not been created yet. The apps design currently showed 5 sounds so this will be amended for the final version as this will give more for users to play with.

The sound in the app also needs a bit more mastering some of the audio level are not quite right especially the effect row (keys: ASDFG). This I will leave to the musician to do in the future before publication.

App updates

After testing a windows version of the app I realised that it was difficult to quit the app. I decided to add the option of quiting the app using the escape key. This took longer than it should have but each time I use monodevelop I feel like I learn something new. In the emd I just had to input an if keycode function that equated to the function: application.quit. Once again I faced lots of grammatical errors with c#

Another problem after some user testing was the UI was not obvious enough. A lot of participants thought that you can only press the E key. I added the keys not used in the app to the
new UI but made sure they were't highlighted. Hopefully this will draw more attention to they keys available.

Exploration of visual sound in all medias

Sound and art have been two media that have been linked for a long time,  a good early example is the work of Russian abstract painter Kandinsky who painted a few interpretations of symphonies or at least let the music influence his work. Since then there have been a few examples of the two being linked. A more modern day example is the video game panoramical. The game features controllable sounds which have corresponding visuals that are altered at the sae time. The visuals are not reactive to sound they have been created directly to fit the audio.

These are important things to take into account as I am working in the same way. Although I am using a different media type and the final outcome will be very different, I will still be designing visual imagery around preexisting audio.

brian eno app perpective

A key practitioner for this essay has been musician Brian Eno. He is a very important practitioner in the audio visual realm as he has pioneered a lot of content, theory and literature.

One great quote was one talking about how one of his apps scape was successful because it allows users to craft there own experience with the app. He made a distinction of the fact that the users were composing within the artists preconceived parameters so they were actually just curating their experience.

‘Scape is more of an act of curation rather than composition’  

I read a few of Eno's texts which were insightful reads especially those talking about his previous apps.He has done a lot of work with generative material this was an excellent quote describing the feeling of using a generative experience. 

‘I suppose my feeling about gardening, and I suppose most people’s feeling about garden- ing now, is that what one is doing is working in collaboration with the complex and unpredictable processes of nature’ 

Another really insightful article was a conversation between Brian Eno and artist Grayson perry titled: Brian Eno and Grayson Perry on how the internet taught us we are all perverts

In the article they talk about art, technology and general public opinions about art. They talk a lot about the value of art and how it was changing, which was a particularly interesting part for my writing. I highly recommend reading the article.

here were some particularly good quotes from the text.

"If you think of sex, drugs, art, religion, they all actually offer you the chance to be taken over, or to let go."

"creativity is mistakes and if you can’t accept that, don’t get involved."

they both say a lot about the art community and how it affects the world/culture.