This challenge’s purpose is to express our experience of living through this historic time through a work of art. Our piece of artwork demonstrates how the pandemic has affected the world in various expressions of hope and grief and in demonstrations of bravery and resilience. In order to view the entire larger image (woman wearing a mask representative of what we often associate with the pandemic) the viewers must notice that it is made up of smaller images that each play a part in the larger picture. If a single piece were to be missing, the fuller picture would remain unseen. However, one should note that we interpreted this challenge through our perspective as American university level students. We understand that there are experiences and viewpoints which we weren’t able to capture in our mosaic in the given time frame. This project is purely for educational, historical, artistic purposes, and we tried to keep our bias to a minimum.
What inspired your team to choose this challenge?
Our team chose this challenge because of how different it was from the other challenges. During quarantine, many of us were displaced from our friends and professors found solace in personal arts and crafts. This challenge called to us not only because of its unique nature, but because we found it as a means to comfort instead of to solve.
What was your approach to developing this project?
Initially, our approach was to create a “Choose your own story” game where once you reach the end of the game it presents you with a mosaic similar to what we currently have. However, during the beginning of the challenge, 2 of our 5 person team members dropped out of the competition. We reevaluated our goals and ideas, and we decided to focus on creating a mosaic image.
How did you use space agency data in your project?
Initially, we browsed the NASA image and video library (https://images.nasa.gov). There, we found several old photos of Saturn V astronauts quarantining in a makeshift trailer. We also discovered pictures of current employees at JPL working on a ventilator to help coronavirus patients. We considered how NASA has dealt with the toll isolation takes on human health, whether it’s through astronauts quarantining before a mission or spending extended periods of time in space. Additionally, we attempted to use some satellite image databases showcasing a world view of the environmental impact that covid-19 has had. However, we did not have enough experience and were concerned with time so left this part out. We came up with our main goal: to create an interactive mosaic that represents the variety of experiences throughout COVID-19.
What tools, coding languages, hardware, software did you use to develop your project?
To generate our mosaic, we used Adobe Photoshop. In order to submit our mosaic, we also created a webpage using CSS and HTML code. We were able to work collaboratively (live) using the source code editor, Atom. We faced a few difficulties with working live on Atom. We experienced difficulties loading files, previewing files, and opening portals to work together. This was difficult, because we were not in the same room, and could not easily troubleshoot what was wrong with another person’s computer. To work through these issues, we worked on the voice channel on Discord, so we could talk to each other, and we would share our screens if someone was running into trouble.
What problems and achievements did your team have?
After searching for photos on the NASA image gallery, we brainstormed other ways we could find new images. Using our newly-made Twitter and Instagram accounts, we sent out posts to outside parties requesting their own quarantine photos and/or artwork. We also sent out requests to the challenges chat. From there we received multiple submissions which are featured in our larger image. In such a short timeframe, it was a little difficult to accumulate a large number of photos. That’s why, in addition to our submissions, we also used photos from our personal collections and the open source images website Unsplash.com. Despite these additional photos we still were a few short. This is why our final mosaic may seem a little repetitive.
During the midst of this process, we took some breaks. One of these breaks was to watch the SpaceX launch! It was very exciting. On Saturday night, one of our team members discovered that SpaceX was creating a similar mosaic for 2020 graduates (https://www.spacex.com/classof2020/index.html)! We found this inspiring, and enjoyed looking at the image they had created.
We wanted to create an interactive mosaic photo, but we did not think we would be able to zoom into every smaller photo within 48 hours. Instead, we focused on creating parts of the image that would reveal different aspects of COVID-19 when a user hovers over them. To research these sections, we read a variety of articles on the internet.
We ran into more troubles with this task. To start, we took our overall mosaic image, and split it up in Photoshop into 5 smaller images. We hoped this would allow us to zoom into text for each image, and place all of the images next to one another. This meant we had to figure out how to slice an image in Photoshop, and how to save that image into 5 separate jpegs. We eventually figured out how to create a hover effect for different parts of the photo, but the different pieces lie far apart from one another. It seemed like they were social distancing themselves! When all seemed lost one of our team members had the idea to make the smaller photos clear with the hover, and to put the overall photo as a background behind them. We did this, and it worked! But, we struggled to center the background photo. After more time trying to get the image centered, it finally worked! We were so excited, because now our web page looked the way we were hoping.
On Sunday night, we had a meeting with one of the Space Apps ambassadors, Katelyn Hertel. She gave us some great ideas about how we could continue to improve our project. As we continued working into the night, we started putting the finishing touches on our webpage, project development, and demo. With her advice in mind, we added some of the smaller images to our text blurbs below the main picture, so that we could share some of the personal stories behind these images. We decided to only choose a few of the smaller photos, since we did not have a lot of time left before the submission was due. If given more time, we would have found a way to hover over the main larger image and expand the smaller ones or make the background of the “hover” quotes to consist of the smaller images. Alas, we did not have enough time.
This project was not just for a hackathon. It was also a way for us to reflect on what the pandemic has meant for us, and what we have learned throughout this time. This experience pushed us to make our project the best it could be, even when we ran into difficulties. It also allowed us to connect with new people and work together on something even from far apart.
What did this project mean to us?
[Sam]: This project was important to me because it is an experience that I thought I should document. Perhaps in the future the details that come along with a pandemic at least could be prevented by finding solutions to the challenges we documented. The website could serve as a knowledge base to show the impact of COVID-19 on our society. Through the problems that our world is currently facing, this website is a sort of reflection of it all showing the different experiences everyone had. Creating this website helped me also realize how different our experiences are around the globe, but how similar at times as well.
[Enakshi]: Being able to contribute to this project means a lot to me, especially in a time where I’m at home by myself far away from my friends who I left on campus. It was a very wholesome and enjoyable experience because it made me feel alive in a time where everything feels bleak. This is my first “hackathon”, so I came into it expecting a lot of programming, but I was pleasantly surprised to find this particular challenge. Something that enabled me to express my feelings artistically. I, myself, am pictured in this mosaic where I’m sitting in front of some banana bread I baked during quarantine. Similarly, little tidbits from other people’s quarantine experiences as well as global experiences are pictured to generate a much larger image: a woman staring into the viewer’s eye wearing a face shield and a mask. An image everyone, both young and old as well as locally and globally, has come to know very intimately. Although, living through this pandemic has had both its ups and downs, I’m proud to be “a part” of history.
[Hannah]: To me, this project helped me take a look at how this situation has developed over the past few months, for myself and the world. Though COVID-19 is always on my mind to some extent, before this project, I had not taken the time to reflect on how this situation has evolved from when I first learned about the virus to now. This project was also important to me, because it was a way to connect with other people in a meaningful way. This is something which I have missed since being at home, because at times the world can feel so far away. Learning about the experiences of my teammates and others as we connected them into one mosaic reminded me that other people are out there, and that we are going through this time together.
Here is the link to our active website! https://alphaartbeat.github.io/nasa/nasa/AlphaArtbeat.html
One last challenge we faced but could not resolve due to our limited time and knowledge of HTML/CSS was how the active website appears to each individual user. Even amongst our group, sometimes the webpage appears different on our different web browsers. However, the webpage that appears in our demo below is the one we would like for everyone to view.