Thesis Prototype

ELIZABETH KIMInstructor: Junko Sassa

ELECTRONICMUSIC

STARTING FROM SCRATCH, WITH:

MOSTCURRENT

PROTOTYPE

UPDATED IDEA

“This is what happened:

“I went to Barnes the other day and looked through a few music magazines as well as app magazines.

I was hoping to find some sort of inspirational app or article that could help me differentiate my idea from the one that I mentioned previously(the other stu-

dent).

IT WORKED!

I have decided to focus on electronic music events as opposed to giving you insight on to specific genres.

Previously my target audience would be anyone and everyone who was interested in electronic music,

Now, my audience will consist solely of those who love electronic music already! No Explanations Needed.

I will still be incorporating an interactive map that will show events by artist, location, and date.

here is my first iteration of the idea.”

15 November 2011[BLOG ENTRY]

SEARCH BY LOCATION

RESULT:

SEARCH BY ARTIST

RESULT:

SEARCH BY DATE

RESULT:

STAGE 1:

STARTING OVER

STARTING OVER....

“This is what happened:

I started working on my idea of the financial demographics of the Parsons student body. I ended

up running straight into a wall when I found out that I could not get information for income brackets, or major forms of financing in relation to Parsons stu-

dents.

I could find information on New School as a whole, but NSU is a very diverse student body, and many of

the school focus on graduate programs only. I immedi-ately was turned off by this idea.

So, I went back to the New School datasets, and fact books and began looking at what information was

available to me: ethnicity, gender, most popular majors, most popular schools, participation in online classes, students accepted, students graduated... the usual.

But what could I do with this information? Just redraw it? Design it to look more appealing? Is that enough?

I have a feeling that, NO, this is probably not enough. Therefore, I began thinking about other ideas.”


idea 1: comparison of the parsons population to the world population ( if in the 2008 freshman class, there was a surge in the number of Asian American’s, was

there a surge in the number of Asian’s born in America in 1990? ) ... this idea intrigued me at first, but then I

quickly scrapped it because the possibility of doing an enormous amount of research and finding no corre-lation between Parsons and the World, was just too high. I did not want to risk wasting that much time.

idea 2: use an exhisting theory. Find a theory, or a set of data that I find very interesting and basically create a interactive design piece to aid it. Still considering this one. It’s definitely not as emotionally deep as some of my ideas before, however, there is a ton of great in-

formation out there, and so I do not want to rule this one out. Also, if I found an interesting theory, I could test this theory against a small test group and visually

show my findings.

idea 3: put out a survey. Sure, it sounds simple, and it is. The idea behind this one is very vague though. Put out a survey about what? What am I trying to find out? Jun says maybe I need a survey just to find out what ques-

tions I want to ask even.

Class Feedback:

- survey could be about fears / confidence amongst student body.

- maybe stick to this idea of finance, but more in the lines of was/is parsons worth it?

- the problem with all of my ideas is that I keep want-ing to just display information as opposed to doing something with it. I need to create something that people could actually integrate into their lives, that

they can actually use.

- GO BROADER

WHAT IS MY POINT??

WHAT DO I WANT TO PROVE??

it is week 10, and I now start back at square one. Thesis. ugh.

THINKING OUT LOUD

questions i am asking people:

-top 3 things you think about throughout the day?

-food, boyfriend, and homework were among the top 3 answers

what are you listening to?

I got a very mixed variety to this question. However, it got me thinking about current mainstream music. “ra-dio music”. The current trend in music seems to lean towards songs with fast paced high energy electronic beats and melodies in the background. For this reason, I hate pop music. It is a fake, shallow version of what

electronic music can be.


1) THESIS CONCEPT STATEMENT

“I would like to create a project that dives deep into the world of electronic music. This project would be created as a website where users can gain an under-standing of the variety within this type of music in

terms of not only the many different genres and sub-genres that are classified as electronic music, but also learn of the geographic origins of these genres, differ-ent sub cultures that came about through the music,

and understand the progression and evolution of elec-tronic music beginning with it’s origins, synth.”

06 November 2011[WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 2]

2) TARGET AUDIENCE

“My target audience will be anybody interested in learning more about electronic music.”

3) GOAL / INTENT

“The goal of the project is to educate on how vast electronic music really is...Many people have this mis-conception that electronic music has no meaning and

that it’s thoughtless...but many genres of electronic music have deep histories and have influenced many

mainstream genres of music as well. Ultimately, I would like for the visitors of this site to leave with an under-standing that electronic music is far more serious than it is made out to be and is just as much an art form as

any other form of music.”

4) FORMAT / MEDIA

“The format of the project will be an online interactive website. I plan to use mostly html5, css, and perhaps flash. It really depends on what I am able to learn in these next few months. Interactive elements will in-

clude a timeline that will show peaks from year to year in popularity of one genre to another. As well as an

interactive map that will place each genre geographi-cally in terms of their origin.”

5) AESTHETIC / STYLISTIC DIRECTION

pretty, vibrant lights/colorsgeometric shapes

darkness

http://www.ohlandmusic.com/http://federal.li/

http://www.dabosslogic.com/#http://www.lormindo.com/

6) CONCERNS

“Coding the site so that it runs smoothly. I do not want it to have to load forever. I must code it in a way to prevent it from ending up too heavy. Also, time. “

7) EXISTING PRECEDENTS

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/http://3bits.net/synclost/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N4BDNbKhkA&feature=player_embedded

STAGE 2:

EARLY PROTOTYPES

The following are screen shots of my first prototype. A link is available as well... I decided to code a

simplified version of what I imagined in my head. A site that explains each genre of electronic music,

that also places these genres geographically, and within a time frame.

I guess I wanted to give the music more of a context.

06 November 2011[EXPLANATION]

06 November 2011[PROTOTYPE 1]

http://el-kim.com/emsite/index.html

Encyclopedia like list of all genres

Top: “Timeline” ( organized by parent genre or decade )Bottom: the interactive map, stating the origins of the genres.

Any time you see a genre on the website, it is able to be clicked and will bring you to a genre detail page that will link

back to the timeline / map.

PROTOTYPE 1 FEED BACK

Allow a social aspect, more interactive, where users can connect different genres... categorize them.

On the map, you should organize by genre as well or show all the genres that came from a specific country at once, because the way it is shown currently might

get too cluttered.

Check out Turntable.fm

Make sure that a) all the information is absolutely cor-rect, or b) just say that you are the authority, or that

this is just your opinion.


VIEW FULL PROJECT DETAILS ONLINE:

kime034.posterous.com

Thesis Prototype

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Transcript of Thesis Prototype