hastings: an interactive history

8/18/2019 Hastings: An Interactive History

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H A S T I N G S : A N I N E R A C T I V E H I S T O R Y

Sandy Fang | Marina Khvan | Nancy Lee | Madison Sim


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D e s c r i p t i o n :

Hastings: an Interactive History is sculpture and video basedinteractive artwork. A laser cut wooden board displays a 3D map ofHastings, Vancouver upon which six model buildings sit, each withtheir own significance to the cities history and accompanying video

story that plays when they individual buildings are picked up.


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I n s p i r a t i o n :

Hastings Street in Vancouver hasbeen a vibrant and dynamicarea since its founding. Theintersection of Hastings &Hamilton is the spot where theVancouver’s first roads were laidand were the city was official lyfounded in 1886. We wereinspired by the idea of intercitytranslocation and how themovement of city insti tutions andwealth changed Hastings Streetfrom the glamorous city centre ofthe past to what it is today.


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I d e a t i o n P r o c e s s :Our first i teration of the design involved using a large map of Hastings hanging from a wall with photos ofbuildings attached to the map. These photos of buildings would each cover a sensor (either pressure or l ightsensor) and when picked up, they would trigger the Arduino to set off a p rojector display about that particularbuilding. If a user picked up the picture of f the Dominion Building from its place on the map, a projection onthe wall nearby would project an image of that building, starting with the oldest picture possible.

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I d e a t i o n P r o c e s s :

The photo morphs and changes l ike atimelapse of the building going from past topresent. The speakers in the lab wil l play a

synchronized audio track that plays soundsand music/noises that match the time of thepictures being shown. The projection of thebuilding wil l stay in the same position, butthe people and environment around themwil l change, as wil l the audio.

The buildings we considered focusing on atthe time were the Dominion Building, Marine

Building, Carnegie Community Centre,Harbour Centre, Oppenheimer Park (Li t t leTokyo), Victory Square.

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More I dea t i on P ro ces s :

As we continued to ideate based onfeedback from our presentation we realisedthat a three dimensional map would be

more engaging and less l inear for users tointeract with, and decided to experimentwith using models of buildings, as opposedto photographs on a map. Our choice ofbuilding also changed as we researchedmore thoroughly the history of Hastings. Inthe end, we decided to model our buildingsbased on the Dominion Bank Building, TheFlack Block, The Carter Cotton Building,

Victory Square, The Harbour Centre, andThe Woodwards Building due to theirhistorical significance to Vancouver andtheir proximity within Hastings Street.

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P r o t o t y p e P r o c e s s :

For our prototype presentation, we small buil tpaper models buil t of cardstock and used apainted canvas to represent the map. We had not ye t de cided at th e f inal ma ter ia l we would us e,but decided to experiment with card and thenacrylic as modeling materials. At this point, wehad also researched the buildings enough to writehistorically accurate stories based around them.

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A teammates 89 year old grandmother,Marion Carruthers, who has l ived inVancouver since the 1930’s, wasenlisted as our narrator and helped editthe stories she narrated.

We also decided to include narratedstories about these buildings within theaudio tracks of the video morphs to adddeeper meaning and context to thedisplay. It was also realised that aprojector was unnecessary for thepresentation of our project when wecould use a television instead.

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By our next presentation, we decided to try modeling withacrylic to create a sturdier model of the Carter CottonBuilding with a more modern look. We had also finished anumber of the building video morphs using images primarilyfrom the Vancouver City Archive’s website. A software called

MorphAge was used to create the morphs before beingedited and having a soundtrack added in Final Cut Pro.


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F I N A L A R T I F A C T

https://vimeo.com/135985048


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F i n a l D e s i g n :

The final design of our installation wascreated using pressed layers of clearacrylic for the buildings, and a large

wooden board, lasers cut with topicaldetails in order to look like a map ofHastings Street. A large screen tv wasplaced behind the board and invitedusers in by playing a video ofVancouver shot in 1907 on loop.Instructions on the board ask users toplease pick up one building at a time.


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F i n a l D e s i g n :

When the user picks up one of these buildings,such as the Harbour Centre, the Vancouver1907 video stops playing and a video morphof the Harbour Centre transforming over timewith its accompanying story plays instead.When that video is put down, the 1907 videoresumes until another building is picked up. Thisinteraction is designed for one user at a time toparticipate, while others observe. The usershave freedom to choose whichever building in

whichever order they like and can watch asmuch or as little of the video as they chose.


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hastings: an interactive history

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