Our initial idea

The initial idea of our project was to give the viewer a clear understanding of the current water situation in South-East Queensland. The idea was to display the three major dams (that provide water to South-East Queensland) current water levels and to also allow the viewer to interact with the water levels by forecasting population and amount of rain – this interaction would occur though a series of sliders. The team name became; D.A.M.S. (Drought Awareness Management System).

Existing works chosen for Compare and Contrast

There are several works that have been chosen for comparison within this weblog entry. The main project that I will be focusing on is called The Water Games and it was “especially thought for the Universal Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004″. Other projects that I will make mention of during the entry will include The Data Fountain, The Water Wall and The Fountaineers.

How our project is different from existing work?

In relation to The Water Games there are significant differences between the works. The first difference is most obviously is the physical size of the project, The Water Games covers an area of 1200 meters squared where there are 9 smaller fountains and 1 large fountain (10 in total). Secondly, the difference is the amount of people that are able to view the exhibit at one time, The Water Games states that it “provides a proven flux of 2000 users per hour, making it an attraction with a massive flux of visitors”. A feat that we can’t possibly duplicate because of the size of the museum and our type of interaction. And thirdly is the type of interaction. The aim of the The Water Games is for four (minimum) people to hold hands and rotate around the fountain thereby activating it, sending water upto 2.5 meters into the air.

Here are a couple of images (taken for the website) that show the user interaction with the installation.

I feel it necessary to also add into this section The Data Fountain, which the use of water fountains to display information was adapted for our work. Although The Data Fountain’s use of water fountains was a clear source of inspiration there are several significant differences between the works that make our work original and unique. the key differences include; the information being displayed and the intended audience, the audiences interaction with the work.

How our project relates to existing work?

Our project relates to all of the above mentioned works in various ways, therefore each of the projects will be related to our own in this section.

Conceptual Focus

The concept behind the The Water Games installation is primarily for the community to “collaborate in favor of peace and agreement”. It does this by making the viewers join hands in a circle around one of the fountains and rotate around it thus promoting a “symbol of work for peace” which activates the fountain.

This concept of interaction and reward I believe is very similar to our own concept. Although not obvious on the surface our project teaches its viewers to watch water wisely or else it will be all gone. The current water levels are shown for the viewer to see, but if they are to interact with the sliders and ‘predict’ a future where there is no rain and everyone keeps using the same water amount they are now the dam levels (the fountains) change height to reflect the ‘prediction’. As you can see through a users interaction with our project they are learning to become more water wise and that itself is the reward.

Audience Experience

Our work relates extremely well to the The Water Games in the category of Audience Experience – because both projects aim to bring awareness and education to the community. The Water Games aim is to develop more of an understand and respect towards diversity in the community and abroad.

The visitors must form a ring around a fountain as a symbol of understanding among people and respect towards diversity, they must collaborate in turning around the fountain as a symbol of work for peace, and they will share in the experience of activating the fountain.

Whereas our work aims to develop a sense of current water levels and water usage in our immediate community, South-East Queensland. And our work aims to educate the viewers visually by showing how much longer the water will last (interacting with the sliders).

Our work also closely relates to The Data Fountain in terms of audience experience in that it aims to show information that is ordinarily boring in a visually appealing manor. The Data Fountain shows the current dollar (“connected to money currency rates on the internet”) value in the Yen, the Euro, and the United States Dollar via three water fountains on a 5 x 4 x 3 meter stage. It was their use of water fountains that has inspired us to diverge from their idea of currency and use the fountains to display dam water levels.

Underlying Technology

Unfortunately most of the existing works do not have detailed instructions on how they went about creating their exhibits – I suppose that that is stop people recreating their work exactly and flogging it off as their own. Although The Data Fountain have provided blueprints of how the fountains know when to turn on. The images are blueprints and there is not much information that can be gained from it but I feel it is necessary to show.

From what I understand of fountains (and this diagram), the team that designed this exhibit would have had to implement pumps to control the water flow to the fountains and pressure switches to figure out when enough weight was on a fountain to turn on. Apart from that, not much more information is available.

More information is available on the design process for The Data Fountain but still not much information on the technologies used. Here is a series of pictures (taken from their website where there are more available) that show some of the technologies used during the design process (and I can only assume for the final installation). Images from right to left: “The embedded hardware and frequency modulators”, “Looking inside the Data Fountain” and “UV Filter”.

The use of pumps and controlling them though a computer interface is going to be a technological aspect that we will have to deal with at one stage. We have the option of somehow wiring up a frequency modulator similar to that of The Data Fountain’s or controlling via a live computer. Also something none of the existing teams explained is how the water flows from point A to point B, we hope to use a series of pumps and a reservoir to store the water not currently in use.

Did the existing work inspire our own work?

As has been previously mentioned all of the existing works that have been mentioned in the entry have, I believe, inspired our own work. The inspiration has come in many different forms, firstly the idea of displaying information using water fountains first used by The Data Fountain, secondly the group interactiveness of The Water Games, both works have paved the way and given our project a stable base to work with, also the ideas generated from this two works alone has given us great knowledge into audience experience and team work.

There were two other works mentioned in the second paragraph, The Water Wall and The Fountaineers that have not had a mention during the report. Both of these projects are currently in development so it was not appropriate to use either of them as the main focus, but I do feel that they have a place here in the inspiration section because it is the lighting in The Water Wall project that has inspired our project to somehow work lighting in. And The Fountaineers project relates visually to what we are doing and it just looks cool, it had to have a mention.

Summary

In summary I feel that our work fits in well with the work that currently exists. It builds on work done with The Data Fountain and parallels the audience experience levels The Water Games has. Conceptually it relates to both of the mentioned projects in that it is relaying information (The Data Fountain) to a community (The Water Games). And our project also draws inspiration from existing works both conceptually and technically, which has lead to where it currently is today.