Immersive Installation

Inclusive design checklist

Marking checklist:
-Language selection

-Adjustable text size

-Good colour contrast levels + lighting

-Subtitles + volume (hard without headphones)

-Adjustable heights

-Hand-held controls for wheelchairs

-Glossary of Maori/kiwi

-Basic info by default, deeper on demand (grab attention, allowing others who are interested in the subject to read more-option)

-Simple language (e.g. dyslexic)

-Wheelchair access/ramps/handrails (include chairs maybe to let people take it in?)

Things to consider:

Navigation: middle space or right hand side (preferably) 

On a large touch screen it is more comfortable to touch the middle and right side of the screen. 

Scrolling is a pain.

A hand drawn visual leaves a nice amount of the feeling of a concept to your drawings to further allow refinements.

Sketch your idea on tracing paper over a photo of a space/model.

Sketch up different angles of your space.

Sketchup
www.sketchup.com

www.lynda.com/sketchup-tutorials

Moa Story

-Extinction of Moa birds

-Different sounds Moa makes

-Environment it lives in

-Texture of the skin, feathers

-Movement and behaviour 

Moa sounds:
The eastern moa was common in the eastern South Island. It was sufficiently distinct from other moa to be placed in its own genus. This species and the larger stout-legged moa were remarkable in having a very long elongated windpipe, which probably enabled them to make louder, more resonant calls than those of other moa. The windpipe included a loop up to one metre long that ran downwards inside the left side of the body, and across to the other side before it doubled back on itself to the breast and into the lungs. Modern day swan, crane and some spoonbill species also have elongated windpipes, and this explains their resonant, bugling calls. Only male eastern moa appear to have had an elongated windpipe, and so their calls may have had a role in sexual selection and competition for mates.

Source: http://www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/eastern-moa

Other traits:

Wingless

Flightless moa were the only birds in the world to lack any vestige of a wing. They had a small bone called the scapulocoracoid, formed from the fused scapula and coracoid. The junction of these two bones is where the humerus of the wing would have been at an earlier stage in evolution.

Feathers

Moa had rough, furry feathers like a kiwi. The feathers lacked the barbules that usually link the filaments. Little is known about the colour, as feathers have been found only for upland moa. These are dark at the base, lightening to greyish-white at the tip.

Feet

Moa had three front-facing toes on each foot, and a small rear toe, often just a spur on the leg. This differs from all other large ratites, who lack a rear toe, and from ostriches, who have just two toes. The moa foot is also distinctive because the tarsus (the scaly part of the leg to which the toes are attached) was very short. In the heavy-footed moa, the breast feathers were barely off the ground.

Head and bill

Moa had small skulls. This is a trait of all ratites, but a 250-kilogram bird would have looked particularly odd with a skull just 23 centimetres long and 12.5 centimetres wide. Their skulls reveal relatively poor eyesight , a good sense of smell (enlarged olfactory region), and a very short bill. The bills of different species vary from robust, sharp and pointed to snip branches and flax, to weaker, rounded ones more suited to plucking soft leaves and fruit.

Sound Installations

DAYDREAM V.02 Audiovisual installation by NONOTAK STUDIO (Noemi Schipfer and Takami Nakamoto). Sound recorded at Insanitus Festival.

Interactive Sound-installation, Russian Museum

-I found it interesting how it gives an illusion of sound without having to physically touch the display. The sounds link to the object and when you put your hands close to it, it starts playing sounds that you would expect to hear.

Shark Attack Interactive Installation-Not specifically dealing with sounds, however I like how they incorporate the narrative of the shark with the stairs. Turning something you would usually never notice into a space where the people interacts with it.

Amazing Art Installation Turns You Into A Bird | Chris Milk "The Treachery of Sanctuary"
Losing yourself. Taking shape of something else. Showing movements of birds.

Hermès 8 Ties
I like how shapes and forms changes when the person walks past the detectors. Possibly something interesting to look at if I want to look build a narrative through shapes and forms? Using sound?

Apparition – Klaus Obermaier & Ars Electronica Futurelab

Possibly can tell a narrative through the background, showing different environments where the moa had lived at? 

Possibly can show textures of the Moa? Feathers?

Seventh Sense (Excerpt) / 第七感官 (五分鐘版)
Showing a moving environment? Being involved in the narrative.

Ideation & Space

Space given: 2.8m by 2.8m.

Moodboards

Moa

Interactive Installation ideas

Object: Moa

Moa were large, flightless birds that lived in New Zealand until about 500 years ago. There were nine species of these extinct birds. They belong to the ratite group of birds, which also includes ostriches, emus and kiwi. Genetic comparisons suggest that the closest relatives of moa are the flighted tinamous of South America.

Extinction

Moa were hunted to extinction by Māori, who found them easy targets. Their flesh was eaten, their feathers and skins were made into clothing. The bones were used for fish hooks and pendants.

Moa may have been hunted to extinction within a century of human arrival to New Zealand. Moa made such easy prey that by AD 1200 the hunting of Moa alone provided food surpluses sufficient to provide for the settling of large villages up to 3 hectares.

The first Polynesian settlers must have been amazed to find these giant birds throughout the country and moa soon became a key food - unfortunately moa were slow to reproduce and the numbers taken were unsustainable.  Extinction of all moa species followed soon after humans arrived - all were probably gone by about 1400 A.D.

Moa sound

How do you go about recreating the call of a bird that no one has seen or heard in hundreds of years? One of the first things to do is identify its closest living relative and how it sounds. In the case of the moa, this is the cassowary, an ostrich-sized bird that lives in northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. This bird has a breathy, low moan, and it’s reasonable to guess that the moa’s call may have sounded similar.

Because the cassowary’s forest habitat is also likely to be quite similar to what the moa’s was, reasonable assumptions about calling behaviour can also be made. Like the cassowary, the moa probably made lots of repetitions to ensure that its message was heard through dense vegetation.

Then the shape and length of the trachea (windpipe) of the moa was taken into account. How would this alter the bird’s ‘voice’? One trachea found in the skeleton of a moa measured a metre along the neck, with another metre looping through its body. This anatomical arrangement is similar to swans and some other groups of birds. The longer the windpipe, the deeper the call. Various sounds were played through long tubes to simulate this attribute of the moa.

Where they lived

Moa lived on mainland New Zealand, and Great Barrier, D’Urville and Stewart islands, where there were trees, shrubs and grasses to eat. Different species preferred different habitats, depending on the food that was available. For example, little bush moa and Mantell’s moa lived in dense forest, while the crested moa and upland moa occupied mountain zones in the South Island.

Distribution and habitat

South Island giant moa were found  in the South Island, Stewart Island and D'Urville Island, in wide range of vegetated habitats including coastal dunes, inland shrublands, forests, and subalpine herbfields and grasslands. Bones recovered from caves, dunes, swamps and middens show that it was widespread in the eastern South Island from coastal Marlborough south to Southland, and inland to the subalpine zone.

What they looked like

It is uncertain exactly how moa looked. It is thought they were similar to emus, with a domed back. They had three front-facing toes on each foot and a small toe at the back. Their feathers were rough and furry.

Female moa were usually larger than males. The largest were female giant moa, at about 2 metres tall and weighing over 250 kilograms. Some moa, such as Mantell’s moa, and males of northern populations of stout-legged moa, were smaller than a turkey.

Moaland

When moa bones were first announced by European scientists in 1840, it sparked international interest. Once the largest bird to have existed, moa briefly become a national symbol, and New Zealand was called ‘the land of the moa’.

Breeding

DNA evidence and egg shell and bone remains found at rock shelter sites in north and central Otago suggest South Island giant moa nested in rock shelters in this region. Plant remains found at nest sites strongly suggests they built nests in late spring-early summer. The plant remains found show they clipped twigs 20-60 mm long and up to 4.7 mm wide from a range of locally available trees and shrubs. These twigs were used to build a nest consisting of a shallow bed of clipped twigs, coarse vegetation and stripped bark. Nesting in rock shelters suggests they bred as isolated pairs, rather than in colonies. A large white giant moa egg (240 x 178 mm) thought to be of this species was found associated with a Maori burial site in Kaikoura. It is estimated the egg would have weighed 4 kg fresh and is the largest moa egg found so far. One or two eggs were probably laid per breeding season. The extremely large eggs suggest an incubation period longer than two months. The male is thought to have incubated the eggs, as is the case in most other ratites. Chicks were probably able to forage for their own food soon after hatching.

Behaviour and ecology

South Island giant moa may have been the tallest birds known, but the largest of the extinct elephantbird species of Madagascar was heavier, possibly up to 340 kg. Giant moa were the largest herbivore in prehistoric South Island terrestrial ecosystems. Finds of relatively large gizzard stones and their large robust bill suggest that giant moa were able to process a highly fibrous diet. The relatively large olfactory chamber suggests an acute sense of smell. 

Food

The diet of the South Island giant moa included twigs, leaves, flowers, berries and seeds from the smaller branches of trees and shrubs, and herbs and vines. DNA study shows that South Island giant moa in central Otago consumed a wide diversity of herbs and shrubs, reflecting local vegetation patterns and ground-level grazing of herbaceous plants.