Planning

In the professional world it is vital to organise your time and money in order to satisfy clients as well as turn a profit. In order to get a job completed by a deadline, we must first plan how we will spend our time based on the requirements of the brief. Provided that you have been in the industry long enough, it should be possible to easily allot time for certain tasks based on past experience. At this point it is also important to take the client’s budget into consideration with how much time you can afford to spend on each stage of the project and whether or not one stage costs more than another.

In terms of visually organising your time, charts are a great means to do it! There are programs available which are dedicated to producing time organisation charts such as Gantt charts that help to address how certain parts of the project are linked and whether or not one part needs to be completed for another to begin. While you are working through your planned project it helps to have some idea how much progress you have made compared to how much is left to do and how little time is left. Perhaps the best means of doing this is setting goals or milestones which give you a shorter time frame to work in and help to break up tasks. It is also easy to forget what is still left to do so regular audits assist you in deciding when to well and truly panic.

Unfortunately our group has not been planning our work within a long term time frame and instead, have been going on a week by week basis. On one hand this method doesn’t warrant any disappointment since there have been no set milestones. However with the lack of milestones we also have little idea of how much we have done compared to how much is still left to do. This week our group performed an audit off the top of our heads of what we still need to work on for the following weeks. We managed to come up with a decent sized list which seemed to shock us all but gave us direction and renewed vigour! I do believe that when we put our model together in week 13 that we will have a lot of unpleasant surprises in things which are yet to be completed.

Context

Context is generally used to describe the circumstances under which an object, notion or text was created[1]. It can also be described as the background information as it can explain the reasoning behind certain things. There are several types of context which we tend to use when we analyse context:

• Social – trends and the like.
• Political – Who was in power and where? What values did they promote?
• Historical – What was happening around the world?
• Personal – General upbringing and experiences.
• Geographical, especially when dealing with buildings.

While most texts, buildings and the like can be taken for their face value, we obtain a far clearer understanding from looking at the contexts under which it was created. A great example of context is the Lord of The Rings trilogy which seems like any other fantasy story. However when you look at what was going on in the world when it was written, new concepts emerge! These books were written during a time of global upheaval, around the same period as the Second World War. After seeing this it is possible to draw parallels between Hitler’s advances across Europe and Sauron and the orc hordes ravaging middle earth. Also when looking at Tolkien’s personal context we see further links as he fought in the First World War and knew the horror of the trenches.[2]

Our group is modelling an unbuilt design which has a very real site and a real architect. In order to accurately follow the architect’s intentions and give a realistic feel to the map, we need to study the site to give the right sort of feel. The Dam Theatre itself relies heavily on its context as it connects to the dam wall itself and not to the ground in any way. However the drawings and images we are working off do not resolve how the building and supporting trusses are actually attached to the wall. In order to fabricate a footing system which at least appears to work as well as similar in style to the theatre, I will be looking at the architect’s previous works to see if he has a particular method or material he uses in all or some of his designs.

Since the site is in a different continent, we will be primarily looking to the internet for images of the dam and surrounds on sites such as flickr.com as well as Google Maps to see the overall forms of the terrain.

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[1] Macquarie Concise Dictionary, The Macquarie Library, 1998

[2] http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/influences.html

Conflict

Conflict occurs when there is a collision of contradictory or incompatible notions which cannot co-exist. When a conflict does rear its ugly head, a resolution should be sought in a manner which retains as much of the opposing ideas without creating issues. This usually means both entities making concessions in order to achieve a solution. In an extreme case, this can mean one of the ideas being discarded in order for any resolution to occur.

In a real practicing environment, conflict can be very expensive and possibly bankrupting. Conflict from inadequate remuneration is a frequent situation. Depending on how much money is at stake and how large the companies are will determine how long the conflict will last!

As anticipated, our group has had quite a few conflicts ranging from reading the drawings we used to construct the model to more personal matters such as agendas and time tables.

Our first conflict was simply finding a suitable time and day to meet which we argued over for about a week when we came to the realisation that we would all have to make concessions of coming in on a day off, staying later or coming in earlier.

The drawings which we found for our unbuilt building were limited which meant that we were unable to clearly interpret the details of the design. The 2 sections which we found had discrepancies which conflicted with our understanding of the space. After talking about the design as a group, our combined architectural knowledge thrashed out our idea of how the space might work and justified it with the fact that this is also a fabrication exercise.

Our group has also had some personal conflicts involving differing priorities between student classes as well as difference in intents. The difference in class priorities has served in creating frustrations in some members of the group since those who prioritised our group over another engagement made key decisions in splitting up the tasks for the next couple of weeks.

There is also a conflict of attitude in the group with some members volunteering for more work whilst others doing the minimal efforts being made by others. This is frustrating for those of us who want to do the best we can for this visualisation. In order to have resolution, a full effort must be seen by all!

Remuneration

Remuneration is the general idea of receiving proper payment for the amount of work completed based on factors such as skill, time constraints and other costs. Remuneration can create problems in a teamwork environment because more often than not at least one member of the team will feel that their work has not been properly rewarded. Often this is justified through the logging of worked hours and the use of pay guidelines put in place by the Federal Government.

It is also important for the client to feel like they’re getting value for money which is also helped through the use of the aforementioned methods. Even with work logs, the end result can still appear to be worth greatly less than the amount of money paid for the services as was the case in a recent set of graphical work commissioned by the university which left people wondering where the money actually went in the final product.

As a group we have discussed the potential value of our model in its present state and have determined it to be worth a couple of thousand dollars in terms of selling it to a client. However it could be said that the model is more of an investment which grows in value during the approval process as well as a potential tool during construction. The end value of the model could be as high as $20,000 based on our average hours per week so far as well as the increasing work hours as the deadline draws closer. However this project could also be seen as an investment in ourselves since most of us are facing a steep learning curve in how we create the forms and work with the Unreal engine. Consequently we are faced with the possibility of charging less for the work since our skills are not yet honed to a professional level and a large amount of our weekly hours have gone into learning new skills.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy in computers is necessary in order for us to have easier access to what we want and also for the programs to find files. It could be said that there are 2 primary types of hierarchy in the general computing world; Mac and PC organisation. This is primarily to do with how the data is arranged on first glance of the operating system. Initially windows has shortcuts on the desktop with folders existing in a file system accessed by explorer, however it appears to be a trend in Mac OS that data and shortcuts and everything is stored whereby there appears to be a greater sense of order on the PC system. In viewing a set of files in either Finder (mac) or explorer (PC) the sense of order is more obvious but represented in 2 different manners. Finder tends to display a greater horizontal hierarchy where decisions are displayed across the window. On the other hand explorer shows folders in a vertical hierarchy which expand downwards and gives a better sense of where a file sits in the system; how deep into the rabbit hole it lies!

Our group’s hierarchy is similar to a planer or parallel approach with one defined organisational head. We seem to work on our own disciplines and make key decisions whilst also communicating with other group members on what they need done in order to progress their work. There is also a figurehead of the group who helps to co-ordinate what needs to be done and how these jobs are divided up. Unfortunately there are sometimes cases when the leader has to chase up unfinished work. On top of the leader, there is our tutor who makes sure that the leader and everyone else is doing their part and ensuring effective communication is taking place. Generally it feels that our group is function reasonably well as we are making adequate progress, albeit a little bogged in some places due to a limited understanding of what is required or how to complete the task.

Intent

From the beginning of this project intent has played a huge role in our work since it affects every part of the project. For instance as a group we have the combined intent to pass the subject and others intend to do much better, consequently we already have the drive and the need to work however we do not know the effort which other members intend to put into the project.

If a person’s intentions are not directly verbally communicated, they can still be perceived through their actions and body language. In our group’s case we can get a rough idea of each other’s effort intentions through message board posts and attendance.

Design is a key area involving intent as clear communication is often required in order to accurately the purpose of specific features. Our group discovered the hard way that an architect does not always communicate well as the program of our Dam Theatre was quite heavily debated amongst us due to a lack of drawings and textual information. Through our debate, we were also able to determine the intent of some members of the group as the inclusion of part of the building came into question.

A person’s intent, especially in the corporate environment is particularly influenced by their chosen discipline. Perhaps the best example of differing intents exists on a movie set whereby a sound engineer’s intent differs to the cameraman which potentially differs to the intent of the director, producer and movie studio! This is where hierarchy also comes into play as the success of the film is dependent on the disciplines coexisting and someone taking charge and using their knowledge and authority to move the project forwards.

In the fabrication of the Dam Theatre, we have determined our intentions to be utilising the amazing graphics produced by the Unreal Engine, especially in the creation of environments. This intention was not immediately revealed but can be interpreted by the majority of the group focussing on the environment and surroundings of the building with three out of five working on the terrain and associated variables. Akin to a movie set, we have had conflict in regards to aspects of the map creation process which have been frequently resolved through the compromising and combining of intentions.

Knowledge

All humans have some form of knowledge, that is, we have the ability to recognise and process information on a particular subject or situation.[1] However, just by going through our day and talking to people, it is possible to see that not everyone has the same level of knowledge in every discipline or even everyday tasks. In order to share and spread humanity’s acquired knowledge from thousands of years, we have created records and resources of what we know and communicated in four primary methods:

• Textual
• Imagery
• Demonstration
• Aural.

Perhaps the earliest methods of knowledge sharing are through demonstration and verbal communication which is also experienced at a childhood level where we learn basic things. In regards to the storage of knowledge, while books and online resources may appear to provide reliable knowledge, we must look at how likely the information provided is true!

As a group we have already encountered limits of our knowledge as well as times of situated knowledge. Since we have various technical backgrounds we are used to different shortcut hotkeys as well as different modelling techniques, consequently our application of some knowledge has produced unexpected results, leaving us searching for greater knowledge. Working together on a single project with various learning curves has meant that we’ve also had to share our knowledge on particular areas. In collaborating, we have imparted knowledge through the demonstration of certain skills such as manipulating a terrain and animating a pdf so that it performs like a power point presentation.

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge