How involved should your PhD adviser be in your project?
1) Email your advisors short (few sentences) progress reports every week or less. This forces you to move at a quicker rate than 2-3 weeks, and keeps them more invested in your progress.

2) As a junior student I suggest that for now you trust your advisors and peers and grind through this project. Researchers tend to always be critical of their own work, no matter how good it is.

3) It would be ideal to work side by side with a more experienced graduate student or advisor.

4) Part of a PhD is intellectual independence. You should not be afraid about pursuing an area if no one else is pursuing it, so long as you can see its merits. Why work on something that everyone else is working on?