Ambient Knowledge & Boundary Work 1

The following blogentry is splitted in two topics.
First I want to introduce Alan Meany's project Ambiant Knowledge and then, in the second chapter write about the current exebition Boundary Work 1 in the Wandersford Gallery in Cork, where the Ambiant Knowledge project is presented.

Ambiant Knowledge

Ambiant Knowledge in the Boundary Work 1 exebition

This week Alan Meany presented his master project called ambiant knowledge. The project is ambiant display, in this case a colorchanging LED lamp, which shows the current use of electricity in a house or flat.
This allows the user to recognize, how much energy he uses right now without reading a display, but just have a nice looking accessior in the flat.
Much more interesting then the project as such was the way to get to the project. Alan told in a very interesting speech, without using any powerpoint or other tools, how he went to the project, how he managed the different steps which we still have in front of us.  One of the useful tips was to use versioning of our project proposal, that means write a very rough first version to have a basis and improve this then step by step.
Another useful tool is is workflow Design-Build-Evalute, which goes in a similar direction. It's very important to leave the own thinking and ask others, what the think about the product/paper/project.
He showed us in all details, how he went to which decisions and that you have to proof everything. This report was really useful in regard of the coming month.But he also encouraged us to build something physical, which people can see, and not only writing a paper which maybe 10 lectures read.
His project didn't end with his master degree, still he is exebititing in different European countries including Ireland, Cork with the Boundary Work 1 exebition.


Boundary Work 1

Wandersford Gallery in Cork

The exebition boundary work 1, located in the Wandersford Gallery in Cork shows current works of students from different universities and institute of technology.The mixture between art, research and science makes the exebition kind of special.

Most of the works are presented in form of pictures. On the first view the look like normal prints, paintings or landscape fotographs. But in most cases the are build out of new research or science way to lead normal people into the research topics of the certain areas.

Beside different kind of pictures there where two installations. One is, as already mentioned, Alan Meany's "Ambiant Knowledge". 
The other one makes terrible sound, which is ok for a visitor, but if I would be staff there I would go crazy... The installation is recording micro organizms per webcam. If they move, a sound is played, the tone is depending from where the organizm is right now. The more different sounds you here, the better the water quality is. 

Installation to measure the water quality in watching micro organizms moving

Summerized I think this kind of exebition is interesting, but especially at many pictures I wasn't motivated to read all the texts for every single picture to get an idea of the background. A better presentation of the background of the artwork (e.g. pictures, grafics, video) could help to catch the neseccary information in a more lifely way. 
In terms of industry context I can hardly image that this is my way of working or creating something later. I'm really more into economy and media management than in media design and art.
But it's interessting to get and overview and see the different possibilities for later profession.