Network Brief and Concept-ing

With our websites live we were given our first large scale studio brief of 2012.  This project is to take the entirety of Semester One.

We were tasked with coming up with a project that involved networks in some way, shape or form.

"The brief is to develop a group project (in groups of 3-5 people) that explores the concepts, theories and technologies of networks. Rather than take up obvious or litteral responses to the topic explore the ideas and generate projects that extend our understanding of the issues. This is not necessarily an internet project! You are free to utilise any technologies or media that support your ideas."

• Our initial idea off the bat was to create a series of webisode's or a stand alone short film, which demonstrated the use of networks within the construction of the content, and using networks as a source of inspiration for the content -both as a format and a theme.  

We came into difficulty with this initial idea, we came to the realization that we were grasping at ideas to fit the media we had chosen to build, as opposed to organically coming up with a concept and developing a project idea around this theme.


Also, we realized that we may not have the network required to pull off the level of scope we wanted to harness with the project.  Which led us to our next idea:

• With this in mind we looked at creating an online community network which would essentially join people with creative project ideas, with talented creative individuals who would potentially be looking to help.

We would avoid the stigma of a 'social networking' site by promoting exhibition and collaboration instead of creating a platform for people to waste time on.  Hopefully if all went to plan we would have created a tool that would allow people to contact students and emerging creative individuals with the people they need to see their projects come to fruition, and reach their full potential.

Unfortunately this idea did not really touch upon any conceptual backing but rather developed an existing concept, or adapted it to fit a potential hole in local networking services.  This project idea has not been fully abandoned at this stage though.  If the idea is not tampered with or adopted by another party then it is something i fully intend to come back to at a a later date.

• After going back to the drawing board for a period of time we settled on researching networking in nature.  We looked at 'Neural Networks', at 'Ecological Networks', and 'Food Webs'.

We were all interested in the environmental issues we were uncovering, and all enjoyed the ecological lecture we were part of in our theories paper.  It sparked debate amongst everyone, and stirred the class.

With this in mind we decided to produce an interactive installation themed on the ecological networks we were unearthing, specifically we are looking to map out Biological Interaction in marine environments, and allow users (players? Interactee's?) the ability to remove or add to/from particular elements, observing in real time the consequences on the other nodes in the network.