Chosen Generator idea
I’m planning on using random numbers to generate data that will allow me to find a single spoken word in a film as the basis for my experiments.
I selected film as a medium because, although I enjoy film, my enjoyment of it is definitely more recreational in nature. I wanted to pick a medium, beginning with my generator, that was already on the peripheries of my comfort zone, so I decided to draw on my partner’s library as it has a few hundred films that vary in style and content.
To find the single word, I will make 10 small polymer clay beads labelled 0 to 9. I will draw three numbers to select which film from the list (533, sorted in order of most recent download, to further randomise the list). Once the film is selected, numbers will be drawn to correspond with a timestamp of the film (in 1 second increments). One number will be drawn to select the hour of the film (beads will be removed from the pool as required), then two numbers for minutes, and then a following two for seconds. This second batch of numbers will correspond with a timestamp in the film.
Should the selected timestamp not include dialogue, the full batch (film number included) will be redrawn.
The resulting randomised numbers will follow the below format:
Film number: ###
Timestamp: #:##:##
I did consider generating a number to find a specific frame, however, I felt that it would be overcomplicating the process. By finding a timestamp of one second, I am going to generate more data options (sound, language, tone, etc) than from a single frame.
I will also take a screenshot of the frame where the word is spoken, and will make a short video sample to demonstrate the spoken word in context (tone, volume, etc). I think that this will provide me with a rich selection of data to work from.
Update 1
I opened my recent files on my computer to add screenshots, and I realised that the number of files in that folder was 533, the same number of movies that I was going to use as a data library. I added the digits together, and they add up to 11, which is my favourite number and a Master Number is numerology. This felt serendipitous, so I’m going to go ahead with my proposed plan for my random data generator – it feels like I’m a step closer to the word finding me!
Update 2
During class discussions on Tuesday, a classmate, Saniya, mentioned that she woke up at 3:35am. Second mention of that number (reversed this time) in a few hours.
First idea – location response through randomisation of public transport data.
I’ve moved on from my initial idea of public transport and the body/space because I found that I wasn’t moving out of my comfort zone, and was allowing myself to fall back on concepts that I’m comfortable with or have explored recently.
Extrapolating on my research interests of giving the ephemeral a form, and of the relationships between body and place, I began with investigating ideas of recording physical activity (ephemeral) with a tangible artefact, such as collecting condensation from the number of breaths counted during an activity like running.
As I continued to think more broadly about the relationship between body and space, and quantifiable measures of such, I began to wonder how I could collect authentically random data about a site or place. I also became interested in the role of journey and its importance in terms of the ‘identity’ of any particular individual destination point.
This drew my attention to how people travel or move, particularly in everyday life, and how the act of moving between points can sometimes be regarded as somehow less important than the final destination, or a chore. Public transport, rather than individual-occupancy vehicles, was really interesting to me, as it functions as mass transit yet is equally insular in terms of individual experience (headphones, quiet carriages, etc). In addition to this, the ability to find and visit potentially very different locations was appealing both in terms of data collection and creative potential.
I settled on buses, rather than trains because they have route numbers. I want to generate a random number to pick a bus route, and the amount of stops to stay on the bus, which will lead me to a random location. I would use a 5 digit number for this, the initial 3 for the bus number and the following 2 for the amount of stops, i.e 44939 would leave me at stop 39 of route 449. If the numbers do not yield a specific bus stop on a specific bus route, the number will be redrawn.
