1. Key Discussion Points:

• The team debated whether to use “Greyfiars Bobby” as the main character or switch to a generic dog for more creative flexibility. Ultimately, they leaned toward using a normal dog to simplify the narrative and allow for abstract storytelling.

• Three locations were confirmed for the project: the National Museum of Scotland, Carlton Hill, and the Royal Botanic Garden. These landmarks will serve as settings to explore both human and dog perspectives.

• The group discussed transitioning between realism and abstraction to depict different sensory experiences.

2. Technical and Conceptual Decisions:

• Agreed to use normal cameras instead of panoramic ones to keep the process simple and cost-effective.

• Decided on creating immersive soundscapes combining real and abstract sounds for each location.

• Confirmed that the final output will be in video format, potentially presented with installation elements like screens and speakers.

3. Next Steps:

• Develop a clear narrative structure addressing key questions:

  • What is the story we want to tell?

  • What do we want the audience to feel?

  • Why are we using these specific locations and perspectives?

• Create a mood board and storyboard to visualize ideas.

• Research permissions for filming in selected locations.

• Scheduled a follow-up meeting with Jules on Thursday afternoon after class to seek further guidance on narrative development and technical execution.

Individual Contributions:

Yiting:

In this week’s meeting, we changed our thinking and started a new travel experience from the puppy’s perspective. We were no longer limited to the fixed human perspective of the project, but explored things in life that we don’t usually discover. The experience includes the National Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens and Calton Hill. The project is derived from the perspective of a puppy, and you can experience the world and hearing through the eyes of a puppy. The project interweaves abstraction and reality, combining the two to enhance the audience’s sensory experience. This week we also met with Jules, who gave us some suggestions on our proposal, such as the possibility of layering sounds to record distant and nearby sounds. And conduct relevant research on the puppy’s vision, hearing, smell, etc. This Friday, Li Chao, Wu Ruotong and I went to Calton Hill to do some environmental recording. We recorded the ambient sounds from three different directions of Calton Hill in preparation for simulating the puppy’s hearing later. 

 

Zixuan:

In this week’s meeting, we renew our project. In this weeks tutorial, Andrews suggested us to simplify our project, and foucouse on one specific thing. So we decided to simplify the entire project, focusing on two perspectives: one from a human and the other from a dog. We aim to highlight the differences between these perspectives through contrasting and switching between them. We plan to use three landmarks of Edinburgh to facilitate these perspective shifts: the Botanic Garden, the Museum, and Calton Hill. The story will follow a person and a dog as they explore these locations, showcasing the contrasting experiences of each. 

We plan to utilize both abstract and realistic approaches in this project. We believe that things possess multiple layers, and it’s crucial not to focus solely on what we see with our eyes. We also need to pay attention to the inside core of things. We aim to employ an abstract style to express the essence of things as we perceive it as accurately as possible. 

Finally, we discussed several issues related to the project and further clarified our goals and ideas. 

Project Goal: To showcase the differences between human and dog perspectives and encourage people to rethink their understanding of Edinburgh. 

Design Concept: Combining abstraction and realism to explore the essence beyond the surface, offering a multi-layered experience. 

Choice of Cultural Landmarks: Connecting with Edinburgh’s culture and citizens through its iconic landmarks. 

Expected Outcome: Encouraging people to recognize the multi-layered nature of the world and fostering an open mindset for exploration and discovery. 

This time, we presented our current ideas to Professor Jules for discussion. Through our conversation with the professor, we decided to further simplify our project. We will focus solely on the dog’s perspective and reduce the number of locations to just one. This will allow us to concentrate better on showcasing the dog’s point of view. Additionally, the meeting provided us with many interesting new ideas and creative suggestions, such as exhibiting the project on Calton Hill. This would enable us not only to present the dog’s perspective but also highlight its unique qualities. Moreover, the professor’s idea of simulating the dog’s hearing and vision through camera movement is particularly intriguing. 

Chao:

This meeting mainly focused on how to quickly advance the project rather than getting stuck in tedious documentation work. I summarized Andrew’s advice from Tuesday morning and shared it with the team members. On Wednesday, we started discussing the story, and the final outcome was to focus the project on switching perspectives between dogs and humans. We also selected three locations in Edinburgh as material collection points for the project. Meanwhile, team members worked together to complete some documentation tasks.

After speaking with Jules on Thursday, I realized that we must take action as soon as possible and create some prototypes. Therefore, on Friday, Yiting, Ruotong, and I formed a mobile team, borrowed recording equipment, and went to Carlton Hill. We recorded approximately 40 minutes of sound material (Carlton Hill soundscape, Princes Street soundscape, street movement soundscape) and captured some videos mimicking human and dog perspectives. The materials were uploaded to the group’s shared space for discussion with other team members to see if these materials could be used for experiments, helping us continue pushing the project forward.

 

Ruiqi:

Dear dear diary, 

We’ve changed our story to focus only on a dog’s perspective instead of a variety of species and cut off the narrative of the piper boy. And we’ve pulled down the old narrative arc and tried to make a new one, happening in Calton Hill. Thanks to Chao, we now have some ambient sound happening in Calton Hill and Princes Street, and we sort of have a profile of what’s happening in such environments, but the only concern is I now don’t know what to do with such recordings so far since we don’t have a clear narrative, but we’ll figure it out. Also, I’ve made a sound piece of my version of a dog that represents how they perceive, which is set in the range of 40-20kHz and made in far-away-like, mimicking that dogs can perceive sound from far away. Also, I added a distortion plug-in to mimic the deaf-aid. 

Carly:

In this meeting, we discussed trashing the previous idea and creating a new one that could take a simpler approach but still work and make the audience feel what we intend to.

After a long conversation, we decided on Edinburgh through landmarks, meaning we would use the perspective of a dog and a human to portray different types of vision, keeping in mind that dogs see in a scale of yellow and blue, contrary to humans. We also decided on mixing abstract and realism concepts and chose 3 landmarks:

• Royal Botanic Gardens (show a different scenery within the city)
• National Museum of Scotland (shows a specific location of the Old Town)
• Calton Hill (show a general view of Old Town)

Another thing worth noting is that when the idea of using the story of Greyfriars Bobby first came up, I communicated to the group that I didn’t see the need for it. It would go against the pejorative of simplifying the project, as it would mean adding a new layer and also would limit us more than it would expand. The group wanted to use Bobby’s story to represent that the dog is from Edinburgh, but as I explained, there are a lot of dogs in Edinburgh, and as we are setting the story in Edinburgh, it would be redundant, and it wasn’t a need, after explaining my point of view regarding this idea, we decided as a group that it would be best to discard it and just use a normal dog.

We crafted a mood board that can be seen in this diary entry. We discussed what this would entail. The next day, we met with Jules, and keeping in mind his opinions, we focused on just one location and the dog’s perception.

During the meeting with Jules, we also discussed some problems that appeared in the group work, such as communication and proactivity. Since the meeting, it seems that they have changed.

Ruotong:

This week we made a big change to our project, in our initial project, we wanted to express so many things that the theme was less clear and hard to realize. Therefore, we dropped the piper boy and global events parts of the project, leaving only the animal perspective. We chose Edinburgh’s landmark, Calton Hill, as the location for our project, hoping to show the difference between a dog’s perspective and a human’s perspective and to discover the world that cannot be seen or heard due to the limitations of a human’s perspective. On Friday we went to Carlton Hill to see what it looks like from a dog’s perspective, and it was very rewarding. 

 

Mar 1, 2025