Progress

Much has occured since the last post. I haven't posted in awhile because I have been too busy reworking my initial concept, strengthening some of the ideas and also implementing it in J2ME.

The concept presentation made me realise that I really needed to strengthen the whole idea and make better use of the capabilities presented by a Mobile Device.

I started thinking about the features of the phone, and how these features could be used to make the concept more playful, fun, intriguing, and constantly new and engaging. Even though I still feel that the artform of Photography is one of the best options for the capturing of thought and for encouraging creativity, to simply create an application that shares pictures like a gallery was too simple.

I began thinking about a common theme that linked the children that would use this program: the street. These children spend their lives moving around the streets, and they view these place differently than others would. Moreso, I imagined that street educators using the program would approach children in a specific district - thus their geographic location and the "streets" was something they all shared. This led me into consideration of the use of "location" and hence GPRS as feature of the application in a way that allowed the children to explore where they lived through the artwork presented by other children like themselves.

I also started thinking about collaboration between the street children, as they often have each other as their only support network. My ideas lead to an application could somehow allow the children to openly collaborate with one another by creating a shared "artwork" or piece that told the story of a specific location. Following upon the GPRS idea, I decided what would be interesting is if, based on the current location of the child when using the application, an artwork based upon the work of others taken closest to that location was generated. The artwork would take on the form of a photo collage/mosaic.


Extending upon this idea, I thought about location, art and expression. It led me to think about Graffiti Tagging, whereby individuals mark their "area" through a unique "tag" or visual identity. In a similar process, I began to consider how I could push the idea of giving these children an identity. Individuality is often expressed through art and creativity. Thus I began thinking about giving these children a user image or "avatar" that was created by them to express who they are. Then, as the user explores each location, they are returned an artwork which incorporates the user images of the closest contributions of that location. In this way, the children are encouraged to contribute and thus "influence" the artwork of a specific location by creating a snapshot of how they view that location.

So far I have implemented the majority of the project in J2ME, with some Server Side PHP and MYSQL. I will post screenshots of the project so far shortly.