New Media, Visual Communication
In collaboration with the Max-Planck-Institute of Animal Behaviour (MPI-AB) and the Centre for Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz, students worked on individual art and design projects around the Herd Hover Project, led by scientist Dr. Blair Costelloe, who gave us access to all the resources of the project and who supported us during the whole design process with profound knowledge and refreshing creativity and critique.
The first part of the animation is designed to look like a small exhibition, with a diorama of the Kenyan landscape. It shows how the drone captures the footage from the herd and then transfer it to the pc, for further processing. The colors of the first part are supposed to resemble the colors of the reddish Kenyan soil. The atmosphere is as calming as being in nature is, where the scientists spend a lot of their time.
The second part illustrates, in an abstract way, how the computer handles the data given to him. He splits the data up, coming from the images. Then he compiles them and analyzes them individually. Out of the GPS, landscape and individual animal data, the scientists can reconstruct how an individual of the herd moved through the terrain and interacts with its group. The recontruction is symboliced by the abstract landscape you see at the end.
A Thomson Gazelles most important task in life is probably not becoming dinner. This project deals with the topic “Predator-Prey Interactions: Anti-Predator Behavior”.
Isabel wants to playfully educate our little ones and entertain adults with a “Puzzle Card Game” where they have to place illustrated cards in the right order to get the whole story. The game contains three main stories about a Gazelle encountering different predators like Cheetahs, Jackals and Wild Dogs. When placed in a different order the story may end sooner with a lucky outcome or you play through a whole chase which has two potential endings.
In the pictures Niclas illustrated different groups of zebras moving. He extracted movement from a project called Satellite stories where you can follow different groups of Zebras over a timespan of a week in Kenya. After he tracked these groups he pictured them in an animation that you can see above. If you take a look at the poster you can see these eight groups in the right lower corner. Every dot of the group symbolizes a Zebra that follows the one in front. Where did they start and where did they end up?
Collectice Memory – Animal Trail Font & Turning Movements into Chrome by Tim Fritzsche
For this project, Tim extracted the trails animals leave in nature from drone footage and turned them into a font whose form is significantly influenced by nature. The initial idea were the traces that animals leave in the wild, that act as a collective memory, i.e.communicate, for example, where the nearest water source can be found. He’s relating this thought to the role that typography plays for humans.
The second part of the project is a brief digression through the different realities that data can take on the course of a design process. Starting with the recording of a movement in nature, through a virtual environment, to an abstract 3D model in printed form.
