Nanyi Jiang

Projects

About

Photogenic LA

TYPE OF WORK
Coursework at ArtCenter
Teamed up with Sizhe Stella Huang

YEAR2019

OVERVIEW
Photogenic LA is a participatory public installation prototype that engages with Los Angeles’s strong photo generating culture. Through interactions with a set of robots: the police and the shouter, participants will g through a surprising and fun journey of collective discovery. At the end, background stories and hidden value of places will be revealed .

The Prototypes

The Shouter
Internal Mechanical Structure of Shouter
The Police
Internal Mechanical Structure of Police

Materials

The Shouter: ESP32, Paper board, Button, Servo, Needle, Balloon
The Police: ESP32, LED light, Button, Servo, 3D-printed enclosure, Laser-cut gears

Code

My code can be found here.

Process

Sketch of the prototypes
Testing Code and Rotating Mechanism of Police
Initial Prototype of The Shouter
System

Context of Testing Location and Story

Context

We imagine our installation to put into places around LA where the true value of the space is wrongly replaced by photographic value. To better illustrate our idea and put Police and Shouter into real context, our team decided to use an orange glass door in ArtCenter’s South Campus as an assumed popular, photogenic spot in Pasadena.

Popular Hashtags

Our team researched on popular instagram hashtags on formulated the following for our Orange Door:

object-description related: #orangedoor #orange #door #artcenterdoor
Location related: #artcenter #accd #accdlife #california #cali #californialife #losangeles #calidreaming #lalaland #laliving #artcenterlife #pasadena #pasadenalife
Time related: #weekend #orangechristmas #sundayafternoon
Other topics: #design #art #life #ootd #fashionblogger #fashion #blogger #streetfashion #streetphotography #streetfashion #portrait #selfie #friends

Background Story

We also composed a fake story for Orange Door that was printed on the dispersed paper strips:

The Orange Door is a popular, photogenic wall in ArtCenter’s South Campus in Pasadena, California. It is a instagram destination for anyone who tours Pasadena. As more and more students and visitors come to visit this spot, the department needs to clean the door more often as there are more and more scratches and dirt on the glass door. Also, the school has to spend more every year to maintain its perfect external Orange finish. The school needs to hire additional security to monitor the traffic and photo takers’ behaviors to ensure the smooth running of school work. However, the Orange door was designed by the school to provide welcoming entrance experience for its students and faculties. The orange was carefully chosen to reflect ArtCenter’s orange and ensure the best experience for people enter the space.

Reflection

Though we did not realize our initial plan with audio output, the limitations led us surprising and fun discovery of using visual representations of our original thought. This change actually sparkles many new ideas and we found this process valuable. The visual representations actually in a better satisfies our initial intention of giving people ridiculous and funny experience when they finish their experience.

If we have more time, we will :

Design better mechanical structures for police for more smooth rotation and more possible poses.
Design ways to automatically replace balloons for long-term operation of the installation and make it more convenient for people to apply our installation to different spaces.