Today was the day I tested my installation in the space. While everything worked at home and I was hopeful it would work in the space I was very nervous in case the code fell over itself at the biggest hurdle. Thankfully though it didn’t and it ran smoothly.
The only issue I had was that while I anticipated the screen resolution to be 1080p they were actually 720p meaning I had to do some quick fixes to the size of the image and the positioning/size of the eyes. This was no problem though and only took 5 or so minutes to sort out and thankfully I had pre-anticipated this by making it in 1080p and I didn’t suffer any quality loss because of this.
The project didn’t look out of place in the space and many people came up to try it out or glanced at it as they went past it. Many were seen moving and swaying as the Mona Lisa followed them around and smiled/laughed at the sight of the comical eyes placed upon the famous painting. The feedback and positivity around my installation in the space meant that I feel it did its job. When asked to give a review of the painting people said it “looked cool” and was “very fun”. With feedback like this I feel I have done my job with the project and I am happy with the outcome.
However looking back upon the videos and pictures I had taken I realised the camera positioning was too high as the eyes looked down a lot like they weren’t looking at the people or looking down upon them in a condescending manner; in which is pretty funny to think about but not what I was after. I feel picking the other screen above it would have made this more believable and would have looked/worked better. Yet I won’t let this take away from what was achieved here today and I am thrilled with the reception it got and how it looked when displayed live in the environment.
A user interacting with my installation:
Declan Barry Design 