Week 5 - Enia - The key from Rosetta Stone

The project during this week is to giving some response to something. It means that we need to think about what can we read from these objects and how to use these elements in another way. So we went to the British Museum to find something which we are inretest in. During the short visit, Rosetta Stone left me a deep impression.

The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact which was instrumental in advancing modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The stone is a Ptolemaic era stele with carved text made up of three translations of a single passage: two in Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and one in classical Greek. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta and contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text on the stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repeal of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples. Two Egyptian-Greek multilingual steles predated Ptolemy V's Rosetta Stone: Ptolemy III's Decree of Canopus, 239 BC, and Ptolemy IV's Decree of Memphis, ca 218 BC.

Through the discussion with Simon, I decided to focus on the Rosetta stone. As we know, this stone contributed a lot to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing. However, what I want to know is whether there are still some secrets which have not been found yet. In other words, if we consider this stone as a treasure, how many wealth are left.

Firstly I tried to collect some general information.

1. It is incomplete and broken due to the long time and war.

2. There are three main languages on this stone.

3. It is added some words by another people in different time. This is important because they are the evidence of the time and the history.

4. The role of the word

Then I tried to figure out the meanings that I can obtain from the stone.

1. It’s just like a book, or a treasure. Some information of it has been found,however, maybe there are aslo something else are left.

2. It represents the power and wealth. As a result, it was tributed as a gift.

3. I want to know the key to decipher the secret.

So I need to find the key. Maybe It sounds simple but I wondered whether I could create a device which can be used to decipher the secret in this stone.

Week 4 - Aesthetical - Moving eyesight

This week I tried to do some further research on the tracking perspective. Through the analysis on the video that took last week, I got a track which can be used to describe the movement of people and the general direction of eyesight. So I went to the site, trying to get the eyesight in first perspective, in order to gain the feelings of person in that position. Then I took some pictures in the same position, following the person’s track. I use these pictures as the tracking which can be used to express the movement and perspective when people walking across this street.

And I found that if I want to track the perspective exactly, I need to know how the eyesight changed every moment between these pictures of perspective. So the key point is how to get the pictures when the eyesight is changing. I did some analysis about the time that people changing eyesight. I found that when people changing the eyesight, not only the direction changes, but also the position of the body. To begin with, this process can be divided into two sections. One is imaging the object is static, the people is moving. The other one is trying to describe the process of changing eyesight, when people are static. After that I joined the two processes together, getting a general diagram that can express the process of changing eyesight.

Next week I will try to use some device which can get the moment when people are changing their direction of eyesight. As we know people use two eyes to judge the distance between the objects and eyes. In that case using camera cannot gain the image due to the single lens of camera. So I wonder whether I can make some advice, for instance, using two cameras and join them together to gain some photos when the eyesight is changing.

Week 3 - Notational - 20s in front of the shop

The tracking

This project aims to express some invisible relationships in the system. At first, the method was trying to catch people’s eyesight in Air Street, followed by an analysis about the tracking. However, the difficulty is how to catch people’s eyesight due to the quick change of the eyesight, even less than one second. I wondered whether I could set up a light on the people's head or use another elements to express the movement of the eyesight and in that case, I could adjust the direction of the eyesight. I took a movie by two cameras that were hold in a different position, making sure the information is correct.

I chose 10 seconds as my research object, trying to analysis these movement. But during the process of drawing, I found a special thing that happened in front of a restaurant where a girl met with her friends. During that time, at least six people were in a small space, and a lot of action was happened. I thought I could analysis these things, and analysis the affection between each other, finding some thing that can change the tracking of eyesight, and so on. It can express the relationships in this system because that these elements could make up a complex system.

Week 2 - Ecological - The Eyesight

Through the tutorial at last week, I decided to pay more attention on the depth of relationships in the ecological system for the purpose of catching the most important relationship. Finally, I chose the eyesight as my research element. As we know, the movement of human’s eyesight are different every time. For instance, as people working on, they have to look around the environment to make themselves safe or meet their curious. So, is there any relationship between the eyes and the objects? This is the direction that I want to research on.

To begin with ,I took a video at the air street. After analyzing the movement of people’s focuses, I got a track and I want to use this track to describe the movement of eyesight’s in order to make these invisible elements appeared. However, there is not only one element that I should take in consider. At this stage, I only focus on the single track of eyesight’s movement and I need to find out another couple of relationships. For example, is there any link between the buildings and the eyesight's? Whether different buildings could cause different track?