Final Reflections for Project 1

I already had made a post of the issues we didn't discuss during Critique, so those should be paired with the rest of this reflection. The main points brought up during critique were the volunteer and wether they should be forced in one spot/condition/situation, the visual, and then our explanation of our project and concept behind it.

One of the last issues Julia and I ran into was our explanations of the project contradicting one another. Before we started critique, we discussed the project and had a detailed explanation to give when we presented. We went over what to say and what not to say during critique because we seemed to confuse a lot of class members during the mid-process crit. I'm not sure if the critique got to us and interfered with our plans to explain our concept because throughout the critique it seemed like we started explaining two different projects, so I want to outline what I thought we had agreed on pre-critique:

This project has to do with the false image of self-esteem and security people put on in front of others and in the presence of more stressful situations. Individuals (specifically more timid or introverted individuals) will attempt to look calm and collected and sure about themselves in front of others. Example: someone may look like they are calm, collected, and completely comfortable giving a speech in front of a large audience when in reality they're palms are sweaty, their heart is racing, and they need to reminded themselves constantly to breath every few seconds because of anxiety or fear. The pulse monitor takes away this false image and was intended to really show how calm or anxious someone was based on their heart rate. The camera captures the person's image because the project is about them. The visual is not an ambiguous visual with an unknown person's heart rate, its the volunteer's image with the volunteer's heart rate. To show real (in lack of a better term) "strength" in the situation, the slower the heart rate, the calmer the person is in reality, and the more bright and solidified their image is on the projection; the more anxious/nervous/uncomfortable a person is, the faster their heart rate, and the more broken, faint, and unsteady their image is in turn. This was done by having a reductive process in the drawing of the "visual" in the projection. By this I mean processing is constantly drawing the visual, but every time a "beat" is detected, the visual is erased so that the faster a heart is beating, the less time processing has to draw the visual before its wiped clean again, creating a fainter and unsteady image for a fast heart rate and a more solid image for a slower, calmer heart rate.