Findings
UV coloration is a captivating natural phenomenon that unveils hidden patterns in the floral world. This enchanting exploration into UV-reflective properties of flowers reveals a mesmerizing spectacle that often goes unnoticed by the human eye.
The UV light unveils distinct patterns and intensities in various flowers, shedding light on the intricate interplay between flora and their environment. In our journey through this floral UV revelation, we've encountered a diverse array of responses—some flowers exhibit remarkable differences in pattern and glowiness under UV illumination, whereas others primarily exhibit differences in coloration.
This exploration into UV coloration not only enhances our understanding of floral adaptations but also reveals the intricate beauty hidden in the interplay between organisms and their environments.
Insights we gained
In this project, we would like to humanize the process of pollination and allow the viewers to percieve what it's like to view of a pollinator. As we all know that under UV light settings, there are details that can't be seen with our naked eyes and our intention is bring a visual and audiotry experience to the audience in the process of pollination with our own interpretation.
Through this project perhaps it allows us to appreciate the importance and beauty of pollination as the 1,400 crop plants grown around the world, i.e., those that produce all of our food and plant-based industrial products, almost 80% require pollination by animals.
Design decisions
The overall aesthetics that we were going for was towards modern futuristic style. Black will be the main choice for background as the concept of the project revolves around the idea of under UV light settings. On top of that, it helps to accentuate the details and patterns we want the viewers to see.
The rationale behind the format and layout we decided for the physical artefact was so that the viewers can view the posters at once without having the hassle to flip the pages. It also allows the viewers to pick what they like to see in motion without actually watching the full animations.
There was intention to bring the visuals into the AR platform for better interaction but due to the group's skillsets and timeline, it will be tough to incorporate it into the design and perhaps in future it can be done. Hence we decided on the mp4 format where we display it on the web publication.
For the physical artefact, it is layout in such a way that it display the direct scale to flower data we have collected on the app.
Challenges
The project encountered significant challenges in both the photography and audio aspects. In the photography realm, capturing the intricate patterns of flowers under UV light proved technically demanding. Initially, the patterns appeared indistinguishable from the naked eye, with only a color shift to blue-purple. To surmount this hurdle, we implemented a tripod setup and introduced two additional UV torches to intensify the illumination on the flower. The key breakthrough, however, came with the utilization of a slow shutter speed, which played a pivotal role in revealing the elusive patterns that remained hidden to the naked eye.
On the audio front, our team delved into experimentation with various software tools to translate the visual patterns into auditory experiences. Despite employing both the Phonopaper app and Coagula, we encountered a recurring challenge: the generated sounds were largely uniform across different flowers. While Coagula presented superior visual graphics, the auditory output lacked diversity. To address this, we turned to Phonopaper to tailor the sounds based on the flower size data we had meticulously collected.
As we intended to use the physical flowers that we have picked for the photography on the artefact, we found that the flowers turn out brownish after drying them. The purpose for the dried flowers was have tangible comparison to digital visuals for the viewers to see when they look the artefact.
Therefore in consideration to the feedback given to us on our initial proposal format for the physical artefact, we hence decided not to use the dried flowers in our physical artefact. On top of that, the new format we have will be not feasible for the dried flowers to be placed on.
Feedback
The feedback that we have gotten, was of how the project can brought across all audience who does not have context of the project. The format of the publication could be branched into the area of education purpose where it provides a better understanding to the pollination process and showcasing the process we went through to acheive the outcomes.
Achievements
The biggest achievement we had was to successfully generate the audios with the images we took for the flowers. That being said, with the all the existing softwares to aid us in the process, it helped to smoothen the process without actually creating the code from scratch. The very first idea was to generate visuals with sound but with the reverse technique, it has brought us a much more interesting journey and outcome.
The physical artefact was also an important piece that helped tie in the purpose for our project to perhaps provide some form knowledge for the viewers on the pollination and the flowers. It was carefully curated with the actual scale in mind for the viewers to relate directly to the real flowers.
Technicality, it has broadened our knowledge on the existing software that could help us to generate sound using imagery. On top of that, we were pushed to experiment with TouchDesigner which we were unfamiliar with and it has provided an opportunity for us to try and getting our hands on learning a new software.