Blogging Vortex of Unspeakable Evil

end of this blog

2008-12-13T05:08:00.000-08:00

This blog ended a fair while ago now, but head on over to pronouncedpurvis.com/ where you'll find all my illustration work (old and new)

dissertation summary

2008-05-14T02:56:00.000-07:00

just updating my blog here with a summary about my dissertation:

- What did you discover that was new?

When i started the dissertation i began with a vague idea about what i wanted to look at: grotesque characters, kind of thinking it would be more of an analytical approach. As my research went on and expanded I branched out into looking at the more psychological side of grotesque characters, why the audience respond in a more positive way than initially expected and the identities represented.

- What was enjoyable about this?

At the start i knew i would have to look at british politics in the 80's due to my subject matter of grotesque characters in The Young Ones. I prepared for a lot of bias concerning Thatcher and had to sift through this to find more objective views of this era. It was one of the more interesting aspects of my research, especially when it came to tying politics into alternative comedy and grotesque characters. Also interesting to note that certain grotesque characters only really worked as grotesques depending on the era in which they were shown. The 80's was a time of sitcoms that generally represented traditional family views so The Young Ones was seen as politically incorrect, much more so than it would be now.

- What was difficult?

The only really difficult thing was what was enjoyable about it; tying all my notes and research into a piece of coherent text. Also quite difficult was editing my essay to avoid repeating myself or rambling too much, quite a hard task having to delete 500 words because they've been said before or i could get my point across in a more concise way.

Also experienced the normal difficulties everyone had of citing and referencing. Especially hard as i have a horrible habit of not writing down where i got my info or quotes from. But i just took about a week to concentrate on just referencing and the more i did it, the easier it got.

- Summary:

The Design of The Grotesque: Explorations of Grotesque Characters in a Televised and Online World.

- Theme:

An analytical and psychological look at grotesque characters, what makes them popular, what is appealing about them when what they represent is unappealing.

- Main Points:

1) Grotesques in Television

looking at The Young Ones mainly, the context in which the show was made and broadcast, the representations and the comments it made on society

2) Avatars and their Representations

pyschology of cyberspace, what makes people design unnattractive avatars, what avatars represent

3) Absurdism and the Grotesque

more of a historical look at the grotesque from the Theatre of the Absurd and absurdist plays such as Waiting For Godot, tying this play in with Bottom and the Bottom Live shows.

Conclusion

Television and comedy in particular use grotesques as something that malign the government, other topical news items and also other television shows. Grotesques seemed to become political alibis and a inherent rejection of mainstream which paradoxically became additionally mainstream and if the current trend of comedy is anything to go by, will continue to rise in popularity becoming more conventional.

Despite The Young Ones not originally being a rebellion as such, that is what it became. It was a rebellion in the way that rock ’n’ roll and punk music was. As eras, music and deviancy changes it is expected that television could do the same or vice versa, TV being a reflection of modern life or modern life being a reflection of television. Current TV show Shameless is an example of this, taking the current situation of working class, yob-ism and political circumstances and satirising them then mirrors it back to the audience.

Design of the grotesque was a comment on society of the different eras and also a comment on the identities commonly associated with the era in which they were made. This device harks back to the time of the Theatre of the Absurd and Commedia Dell’arte.

As far as user designed avatars go, it is true that the computer is becoming less of a tool and more of a mirror. Avatars are reflective of personalities and of negative features that are prevalent due to the confidence the anonymity the internet gives. As technology increases in popularity in terms of what it can do, we may not be surprised to see not just grotesque avatars designed, but the possibility of grotesque virtual worlds as a whole.

Grotesque comedy and plays seemed to provide an alternative to the more generic forms of entertainment but in current times it seems that it takes preference over the more light-hearted, ‘family’ entertainment. Even online communities and web spaces such as flickr thrive on the pessimistic and sometimes brutal honesty, with many users becoming despondent with pithy and non-specific comments and threads. Perhaps the simplest answer is the correct one and that the reason why grotesqueness, and sometimes aggressiveness, is popular is that it is just more interesting.

Freud claimed that humans are intrinsically aggressive. It's one of the two basic drives that make us tick. We can control or over-ride it, but it's got to go somewhere.

off to offf

2008-05-07T02:13:00.001-07:00

see you next week!

some cool vids

2008-04-25T07:53:00.001-07:00

just looking around on youtube and found some pretty cool animations that use typography.

This one is the whole "what does Marsellus Wallace look like" bit from pulp fiction. I just think its really good how emotion and language difference were captured with different movements and different fonts.

This vid is the Abbott and Costello skit "Who's on First".. like this vid because it follows the conversation well and has the whole language games that i'm quite a fan of.

This animation is a bit from Dumb and Dumber, tis just great.. littered with deliberate spelling mistakes as well. The mistakes add to the humour whereas hopefully my animation the mistakes will add to the frustration and disorientation

more to come

dyslexia as an excuse

2008-04-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

It seems that now dyslexia is the new ‘bad back’ of excuses. Far too many people are becoming lazy or are looking for ways of getting out of a bit of hard work, so they blame or fake dyslexia. For the genuinely dyslexic this is infuriating. It makes a mockery out of how hard we have to work just to keep up with our peers and tars us all with the same brush. It’s a common understanding that dyslexic people struggle with reading and writing, but it is a lot deeper than that. Above all else it is a feeling of strong disorientation. Imagine yourself trying to commute in a foreign country. All the signs are in a different language and most of your time is spent in a haze of confusion merely looking around you. That is how we feel everyday and for those who blame dyslexia when really a lack of common sense or basic intelligence would have sufficed.

Not too long ago a man tried to sue a bank for letting him go overdrawn and become debt ridden just because he could not understand the bank charges. Guess what was blamed? Not just dyslexia, but the bank not understanding enough about dyslexia. Dyslexic people aren’t stupid, we know when to swallow our pride and ask for help. Usually we will prefer to work out solutions ourselves, and as someone who spent 18 years of her life going through education without dyslexia being recognised, I should know. Many dyslexics have their own coping strategies, be it learning the words they struggle with or re-reading texts multiple times, sometimes we just have to admit defeat and that we can’t do it all alone all the time.

This man who attempted to sue the bank states that he got a bad credit rating after becoming ‘inadvertently overdrawn’. It is this statement that puts a good spin doctor to shame that bothers me. I find it quite astounding that anyone can become ‘inadvertently overdrawn’. Number dyslexia aside, you know when you’ve spent a bit too much money even without checking your balance or statements, its called common sense.

The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) says that banks should do more to help the six million people in the UK who have dyslexia. Why should it be up to the banks to ensure their dyslexic customers do not go overdrawn? This smacks of Britain becoming even more of a nanny state than it already is. Dyslexic people are perfectly capable and just because one man blames his inability to manage his money on a learning disability, it doesn’t mean that all dyslexics are the same. The simplest solution would have been for him to ask someone ‘hey am I skint yet’ and this whole sorry mess would have been avoided.

A date for the hearing has yet to be fixed, my guess is it’s going to stay that way.

exam project proposal

2008-04-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

'Hell is other people talking webspeak on mobile phones.' John Humphreys (2000)

The rising popularity and dependence of mobile phones has given lead to the obvious imperfections of technology. When mobile technology was first available, few thought how popular and used the text message feature would become. Initial growth of text messaging was slow, as it was originally designed for deaf and hard of hearing people, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month. Today text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service on the planet, with 72% of all mobile phone users worldwide or 1.9 Billion out of 2.7 Billion phone subscribers at end of 2006 being active users of texting.

Despite being an extremely popular tool, predictive text has its downfall. Users perhaps over estimate its capabilities, relying on it to fix their mistakes for them and it can be argued that this over reliance on technology is making users lazy and more careless

The Aim: To communicate the idea of miscommunication using the theory of parody and pastiche illustrate the imperfections and unreliability of this specific digital media, as if it were a dyslexic machine.

Pastiche and parody involve the imitation or, better still, the mimicry of other styles and particularly of the mannerisms and stylistic twitches of other styles… Pastiche is blank parody, parody that has lost its sense of humour…
Frederic Jameson (1988)

The Brief: Hand drawn images, animated within After Effects to demonstrate the frustration and miscommunication of predictive text. The images are in the style of an old alphabet poster, but with the words as they would appear garbled in predictive text. For example the letter ‘C’ could be ‘cat’ but the word would appear as ‘act’

The text would appear under each respective letter and be animated as if they are being written and constantly changes. Music would accompany this piece well and in particular, relaxing, royalty free music will be used, working as a good contrast to the frustration, disorientation and annoyance of a ‘dyslexic machine’. The style of the aesthetics will be ornate and old fashioned, another contrast, this time with the modernity of technology.

To avoid repetition, the animation will also contain other elements of text messages such as switching to manual enter a word, or entering a word into the phone’s dictionary.

wow, i've done something educational outside of college

2008-04-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

me and beth went to the Brighton Children's Book Festival today, something we are both interested in, and i'm really glad i went. We mainly stayed for the 2 talks about how to get published and getting yourself noticed and some really useful stuff was said. I took a lot of notes, and this post is just putting them into some sort of legible format

A woman representing Tiger Press publishing was there to give her thoughts and tips when not only sending work off, but also when creating stories and illustrations.

- understand children, what will be important to them and what will engage them.
she noted how so many stories and images she gets sent that don't do any of the above things, which seems like a really obvious thing to do. Apparently a lot of authors assume just because they have children/grand children/slaves that makes them qualified in story telling.

- research - find out what is already on the market. Go to book shops and see what genres and styles are the biggest sellers. Read reviews of books to get other people's opinions. Research publishers to ensure you're sending your work to the right place.

- be adaptable and flexible with illustrations and look at the classics like "Not Now Bernard" and see why they succeed and the secret to their longevity.

- polite perserverance is also key i.e a follow up phone call perhaps 3 months after you've sent in your work is a good thing

Author and illustrator Liz Pichon was also there. She's written books such as 'Bored Bill' and 'The Ugly Bug'. She seems to write about animals more because apparently she's not great at drawing children... lulz. Regardless of that i've always liked her style of illustration and i looked a lot at her work last year for my exam project.

She studied graphic design and said this was more helpful than purely studying illustration as she was more aware of the layout of books, typography and the like.

Liz recommended getting an agent but when initially sending in work to publishers just send them a rought outline rather than finished artefacts of a new book as a lot tends to change.

Representing the agents was Penny Holroyde who works for the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.

The thing she kept coming back to was how important it was to read, revise and research. They were the key things in succeeding in getting published and getting work. She mentioned that the common trends of the moment were series fiction and the industry were lacking in more books for boys aged 7-9, like 'Dirty Bertie'

A book by Martin Salisbury was also recommended called
Illustrating Children's Books which i have ordered from
everyone's favourite shopping site as we speak.

Penny also said to think about transitional books. Many
children go from reading the wonderfully colourful picture
books, into books containing much denser text.

More research into publishers would include looking at the publishers catalogue to see what books they've done, again
making sure you're sending your work to the right place.

Another helpful hint was when to send your work out to
publishers. Apparently not after christmas and not in the March/April months, as this is just after the Bologna Children's Book Fair happens, the best time to send work out is the July period.

Penny also said that if you are just looking for illustration work, pick a scene from a story or fairy tale and illustrate it in your own style. All helpful for building up a portfolio. With the portfolio make sure there are drawings of children in there too, which seems like a pretty silly thing not to do, but apparently many illustrators dont or can't draw kids!

Other brief notes include:

- make sure everything is mounted and presented well

- cover letter is of the utmost importance, and to give it some character and personality

- stick to what you are good at rather than what you think you should do

- stick to one style of illustration rather than varying as it gives you a stronger brand and makes you more memorable.

The second talk was more about marketing yourself, which was stuff we already know, or are supposed to anyway, but still nice to have it reiterated. Online presence is so important and actually having a blog is sometimes better than a website if you're an illustrator. Readers and viewers like to interact and comment, leading to the lovely word "intercreativity"

Was also pointed out to get involved with stuff like festivals and fairs, send stuff to local papers, get publicity material and get involved with libraries.

All in all, a really good day with some excellent points raised. I felt very reassured from the whole thing, even tho it is a difficult and competitive industry, its not an impossible one.

linkages and such

2008-04-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

really interesting and helpful stuff from karen today. Talking about self promotion and some cheeky little hints as well. It made the real world seem much less scary which is always a good thing. Her presentation is on the shared space for all of you who missed it. Really recommend having a look at it.

Had a conversation with her about my idea too, which is going more in the animation direction. I'm liking the style of an old alphabet poster, but with the words as they would appear garbled in predictive text. I'm thinking of animating the text to appear as they're being written, and constantly changing. If all goes well and i have time it also allows space for any other smaller animations. Karen also suggested music as well so thinking about that i reckon that calming, relaxing sort of music would work well in contrasting against the frustration and disorientation of the text.

firefox appears to be randomly deleting my bookmarks, but i found a couple that are pertinent to my essay. It's about the psychology of cyberspace and although i haven't read it all, its very interesting and i know a few of you are looking at identity and what not online.

Deviance in Online Communities

Psychology of Cyberspace

Have also been getting into Second Life more, purely for research purposes because i still hate it. As my essay is looking at the grotesque i wondered what sort of reaction i'd get with 2 completely different avatars,

one that was aesthetically attractive, more clichéd; the perfect. The second was an avatar that combined the main features of what is considered unattractive: the grotesque. It was interesting to note the different responses each avatar received. The grotesque avatar seemed to generate more chat and get more attention, and perhaps this is where the secret lies, in that its an easy way to get attention with very little effort. It is indeed strange to think that in a virtual world of easy beauty that many users design themselves as 'ugly'

on a side note, programming lesson from mike. yeah... i'm not gonna be doing that.

'Hell is other people talking webspeak on mobile phones.'

2008-04-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

According to cultural critic Umberto Eco (2002), we live in an age where the diminutive, the brief and the simple are highly prized in communication; if this is the case, then there's little doubt that text-messaging embodies this zeitgeist.

Like many earlier communication technologies, however, the mobile phone has come to evoke and/or embody a range of projected fears and hopes (cf. Turkle, 1995).

[Text-]messages often bear more resemblance to code than to standard language. A text filled with code language expressions is not necessarily accessible to an outsider. The unique writing style provides opportunities for creativity. (Kasesniemi & Rautiainen, 2002: 183 - emphasis ours).

we believe that humour helps to fulfil the generally phatic (cf. Malinowski, 1923) function of text-messaging by which an almost steady flow of banter is used in order to maintain an atmosphere of intimacy and perpetual social contact. In this sense, text-messaging is small-talk par excellence - none of which is to say that it is either peripheral or unimportant (see Coupland, 2000).

and yes, since my last post i did get a text joke about mark speight's suicide.. and i laughed, im a bad person;

"Police are investigating the bigger picture of Mark Speight's death. It was sent in by 11 year old Susie from Reading."

more research for exam project

2008-04-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

funny video from Armstrong and Miller about predictive text swearing, quite good, very similar to the history of the F word though.

The more i think about the 'dyslexic machine' the more i like the idea... no more jokes like a dyslexic pimp bought a warehouse, and the dyslexic sold his soul to santa. Not that they bother me, mainly because i don't get them at first, but they're so overused. I get the same text jokes practically every month, only changing when a celebrity dies. No text jokes on kids presenter Mark Speight as yet, though the day is young. But i digress, i think my point is that so many people are reliant on these machines and see them as perfect. Many write a text message and send it, relying on predictive text without checking it properly first. Only today i got a text from a good friend, who is very bright and normally very good at spelling. It said "i'm really bored, i foot want to be here".. i think it was supposed to say 'don't'... so perhaps these machines are making us dumber, or careless. I'm quite pedantic with text messages, and i will use punctuation and don't get me started on the subject of text talk. It seems i'm not alone with the hatred for text speak. So many forum rules are "no flaming, no text speak" it confuses people, they want the message instantly without having to decode or work out what is being said.

example text from my 13 year old neice "hiya, wot u up 2 u cmin ova l8r :D tk sn, tb bri xxx" i still have no idea what that says, so i rang her. A few extra letters in that and it would have saved me the effort.

anyway, i'm trying to be clever with no real point. Just posting my thoughts and research as and when i find them, helping me hone my idea more. Anyway, here's some links that i found.

- Predictive text creating secret teen language

- Misspellings on eBay can pay

- Predictive, yet unpredictable

oh there was also a fairly interesting article in a sunday paper supplement which i may scan and post at some point. It was just a filler really on the evils of online social networks, but useful for my essay.

exam project

2008-04-13T07:42:00.001-07:00

ok have an idea, just getting it a bit more structured and finalised now. The basic concept behind this is a dyslexic machine. Taking something that seems reliable but isn't really, like spell check or predictive text that just one mistake can completely change the context of the message. Like now a lot of kids, or 'yoof' (chavs) are saying "book" instead of "cool" because when they type the word cool in a text the first word that comes up is book and they're too lazy or drunk on cider (not generalising at all here) to change it.

I've always been interested in the theory of parody and pastiche so i'm thinking of combining that with the above idea. A big inspiration to me has been the Comic Strip films, short films that are almost complete pastiches. If you can check out the films "5 go mad in dorset" or "5 go mad on mescaline" which are piss takes of the enid blyton books where everything are jolly good wheezes what ho. plus they're really funny. watch them if you can.

so yeah, kind of torn between doing an animation or illustration (or be ambitious and do both)

for animation i've had ideas about chain emails and text messages. Those really annoying jokes that aren't funny but you have to pass on to 15 people in 2 minutes or your eyes will fall out and your buttocks will explode. Its strange to think that years and years ago, chain letters from your postie would freak people out and technology has made things faster and easier, but chain emails have become all the more popular and annoying. Its hard to put what i'm thinking into articulate words, but i know what i mean.

As for the illustration idea, you know those alphabet posters? Think of one of those, but put into predictive text the words have changed. So a B for bed would be the image, but the word would be bee, or something similar.

Pretty pleased with this idea (thanks to a certain tutor) but am going to go through our old manovich essays and fine tune my idea to write the brief.

dissertation stuff

2008-04-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

was just sitting here reading everyone's blogs, and skim reading those that ramble too much, and wishing that someone would challenge us all to post more. cheers sita! its a valid point that we dont have long left here, as scary as that sounds, and its our last chance to talk to other like-minded people and share ideas and have a general moan.

anyway, so i'll talk first about my dissertation. It been based around the design of the grotesque for a while now, with main referencing to The Young Ones

Not really that grotesque in terms of appearance but my essay was looking more at their personalities, interaction and their context within an 80's Thatcherite society. After a long and at first confusing talk with Micheál he pointed out that its not enough just to talk about television, especially something thats over 20 years old. He suggested that i look at online socialising and the avatars as well. I hate it when he's right.

so i had a think and did some research and the essay is still sticking with the theme of the grotesque but looking at online avatars as well. Its interesting to look at how users either make perfect versions of themselves, or become exaggerated grotesques. You just have to stroll a while in Second Life to either see 6 foot blonde babes or monsterous creations.

What's even more confusing is that some people combine both.. sexy monsters? That's something i haven't even started thinking about yet!

According to Sherry Turkle the computer has become less of a tool and more of a mirror in that we are ‘able to step through the looking glass’. We can live in virtual worlds, play and socialise. However the mirror analogy though relevant, is slightly redundant, in that now due to the age of the avatar and increasing popularity of sims, second life and world of warcraft to name but a few, we can change our appearance and change how others see us. The anonymity of the internet has huge allowances for escapism in that the user can be whatever and whoever they want.

easter break update

2008-03-31T02:45:00.000-07:00

Start with the good news first. D&AD is done, handed in and on time, which is nice. Other good news is dissertation is coming along, its a bit of an uphill struggle but managed to churn out a good 2000 words in one sitting thanks to a few cans of John Smiths... those widgets really work

bad news is, i forgot about the client proposal... completely. So going to have to work really hard on that, but hopefully shouldn't take as long as what i think its going to.

As for the stuff we were supposed to talk about today:

Accidental discoveries were:
- America's Next Top Model - yes i know it is a completely superficial pile of tripe, but its easy watching. The main thing i got from it was the end photos of each episode in how a narrative is told and how characters are formed in just one still image. Not really directly relating to my dissertation, as i'm looking at alternative comedy and the design of the grotesque, but a good point was made in that a joke being told within just one image. I suppose the best example is the funnies in the papers, but also Jerry Lewis movies do a lot of this, namely the Bellboy, because it is based on silent movies it uses a lot of visual gags.

will probably have to re-look at my dissertation and narrow things down a bit more. I hate writing so much, so not a happy bunny at the moment.

Something that directly relates to my dissertation is Samuel Beckett's play Waiting For Godot. The tv show Bottom was heavily influenced by this in that the 2 characters have a symbiosis, and the banality of their lives. Also how the show, and the live tours, nothing really happens. The language and word games also have similarities.

other similarities are:
- pantomime - use of facial expressions to convey meaning
- tableau - presents audience with moment of frozen action
- dialogue - starts with assertion, develops into uncertainty

- little sense of time or day
- one physical character one cerebral
- references to god and the bible - lost absolutism as they can't stand up to scrutiny and trying to establish certainty in an uncertain world
- brought together by solitude only to find themselves imprisoned in a mutual dependency they'd like to break
- scene/setting backs up characters bleak lives and outlooks
- aware of audience

it's only bloody done - part III

2008-03-15T19:50:00.000-07:00

d&ad project finally put to bed after blood, sweat and, on one occassion, tears went into it.

pretty chuffed with the images, think i let myself down with the binding which pisses me off no end but not much i can do about it now. I really need to stop getting bored with things and stop losing my focus/concentration/temper half way through which is always going to be my downfall.

Probably my favourite project thus far, despite the 5am bedtimes upon finding out about how i completely screwed up with the resolution (i'm still going to be moaning about the resolution cock up for years to come yet)

i probably should have thought more about the look of the actual book, but that went completely out of my head when i saw how incredibly complicated the binding looked (it wasn't in the end), but at that point i'd given up on perfecting it and got a little craft-knife happy

there's not really a lot more to say about it, so onwards with the dissertation.

have put all my images up on flickr if anyone fancies a nosey

2008-02-29T19:19:00.000-08:00

sooooo, thought i'd better edit my last post. It was just a petulant, childish outburst that was made in the wee small hours of the morning when i had been staring at vector images for hours upon end. Considering I can't come into uni today because a bit of wind and rain has public transport grinding to a halt.

Which is very annoying because some last minute tutor input would have been marvellous

Progress so far:

- not bad at all. All images are finished, with the exception of the contents page which i need to just add some text to. It's also part of my 16 page quota so need to put my illustration in there.. pretty basic should take me all of 10 minutes, touch wood, fingers crossed, salt over shoulder etc etc

- need to get it printed, which i should be able to do today from my local printers (which makes where i live sound a bit royston vasey)

- need to bind it - figured out how i'm going to do this, what its going to look like and how many cigarettes i'm going to bribe my sister with to do it for me

- write up a little blurb about my book as to what its actually for

- figure out what my book is actually for, without saying 'its for the d&ad comp'

- sketchbook stuff - just need to write in it because i've printed and stuck in everything as i've gone along which has saved me so much time in the long run.

i think thats everything. No doubt something will crop up on thursday that will throw my whole project into complete disarray

P.S note the non-sweary blog post as well

(re) touching myself

2008-02-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

ok, my idea as it stands so far is still to have Kelly Doll's (all of which could kick Barbie's arse) but instead of having a brochure or catalogue like layout to have the book more like an instruction manual.

The style i want to use is kind of a mixture of illustration and photos, think monty python style and also the Rik Mayall 'Me and My Goldfish" animation

So far I've written all the text that I want to include and have started making all the me's. I've also learnt the art of retouching photo's, so goodbye hangover eyes and my harry potter style lightning scar. I've only been working on the different heads so far but this is quite quick to do so i can draw the different bodies and accessories (maybe) once the faces have been done.

Above: First Thing In The Morning Kelly Doll

The plan is to have the layout so it looks like an instruction manual, i've been experimenting with different layouts on paper but its difficult to get something that looks like its a manual but also looks interesting. I think this is the part of my project that is going to take the longest. Theres a couple of ideas that I've got at the moment but while they look alright in sketch form i'm not sure yet how its going to translate onto the computer and into book form, its kinda hard to imagine how the finished thing will look.

3 responses

2008-02-11T03:07:00.000-08:00

Illustrated Book:

Response 1:

Clichés of what makes people interesting.

Think about what makes a person interesting with life experiences and perhaps apply to self. The brief doesn’t state that the book has to be true to life but perhaps this is a way of subverting the project. Concept could relate to online avatars and communities and how much of this is true and what is fantasy. A way of visualising ideals.

Response 2:

Major events vs. different choices.

Think about the events that have happened in my own life and how much control I had over them. How could my life have changed if I made different choices. Think of the movie Sliding Doors. This project would have more of a narrative to it.

Response 3:

Brochure.

Taking brochures of toys and using a similar layout but make myself as different sorts of dolls, like Barbie. All the individual aspects of myself given separate identity and as a doll. Could be a mixture of humour and serious traits. Each page would be a different character (different personality and looks) with price details, accessories and extras like speech or movement. Has degrees of truth and ambiguity, like having a different person on every page.

Prefer third response but will partially look into the first one as well

2008-02-06T13:08:00.001-08:00

I was going to update this thing with more about transmediale but without copying and pasting from the website, there’s not a great deal more to say on it. I kind of wished I’d taken more notes, but conveniently forgetting a pen and more conveniently not being able to buy one anywhere, this wasn’t to be.

Touching down in Germany me and Colin decided to do what any other British person in Germany would do (if they were fans of the Izzard that is) and stand at the top of the steps, pride in our voices and sewage smells in our nose, and say “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”.. which means “I am a doughnut”

Hotel Transit was actually very awesome, but I’m cheap and easy and they won me over with there 24 hour bar that you can smoke in. They had me at “hallo, ashtray?” Given that I have been smoking since I was 13 (16 if my dad asks) I couldn’t smell the wonderful smog of nicotine and chemicals. Upon lugging my suitcase (mostly empty for extra fags) I was greeted by everyone else excitedly telling me we were allowed to smoke there. That was giddy knickers moment one.

That night also taught me, when drinking huge beers with the lads to always, always lace your stomach with food. I was one of those great people that decided to inform everyone else how completely fucked I was. But the main thing was, I wasn’t sick. I also earned the respect from the boys for downing what was practically a pint. I say practically a pint because the quantity increases every time I tell this story.

The rest of the night’s sort of blur into one of beer, fags and early morning bed times. I earned extra cool points for staying up till 7.30am and waking up at 9.30am strolling into breakfast looking as fresh as a daisy or a crazy Romanian bear.

Other noteworthy points were walking for hours before finding anything of interest, esp. the trip for the magical panorama bar. Stoneman’s look of terror and not being able to go will haunt my dreams forever. We did find it, but I buggered off home, deeming it to look shit. Glad I did because I got the early and restful night of 3.30 am that I needed.

Last noteworthy point was our film. I can’t put down all the details here due to legal reasons and I don’t want to really upset people, but let me say it was MY idea. It started with ME saying to other people equally as drunk as ME… “if we were all in a horror film, who would die and who would survive?” No one survives. Looking back this was at best an in joke that passed a few hours of boredom, although Me, Chris K, nice Pete and Zach were thoroughly convinced it was going to be a masterpiece and a new generation of wiki-movie making. Really all it is is being able to pin point the exact moment I got completely and utterly pissed just based on my handwriting.

As for the rest of the trip.. what happens in Berlin, stays in Berlin.

berlin and transmediale

2008-02-04T04:16:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to note down all my thoughts and experiences in berlin before i forget most of them.

overall i found transmediale a bit hit and miss, there were some aspects of it i really enjoyed and came away with a lot, the things i didn't really like were probably just the ones that didn't apply to what i want to do or am interested in.

Embedding Fear. The Internet And The Spectacle Of Hightened Alert:

4 speakers about the internet's 'open system' and terrorism. From the program it says that the open system makes it not only the worlds most powerful tool of conspiratorial narrative generation but also creates the broadest 'extranational' platform for the creation and dissemination of political, military and corporate propagand. Sounds interesting, but you'd be wrong. Only one of the speakers engaged the audience through storytelling and animations. The others just really talked at the audience, and while some people liked this conference i found it incredibly dull and disagreed with a lot of it. This was probably the only thing i really didn't like out of the whole event.

Constraint City - The Pain Of Everyday Life:

'Constraint City' is a critical performance in urban space, which stands as a scarcastic contribution to the discussion of 'locative' and 'wearable media' linking into a tradition of psychogeography, the philosophising of pleasure and pain.

I really enjoyed this talk. To sum it up very quickly, Gordan Savicic has designed what looks like a corset and tightens when there is a lot of wifi signals being sent in an area. Interesting use of something wearable interacting with newer and increasingly popular technologies and the elements of control the wearer has. At first i thought that the wearer had little or no control but thinking about it more, the wearer can change route, walk away or towards strong wifi signals and therefore controlling the amount of pain they are in. I thought of this film and talk as being representational of the pain and pleasure technology can give. I suppose just relating it to mundane pc use, the pleasure comes from playing games or chatting and the pain elements from slow connections, crashing and losing work?

When You're Strange:

A group of different films

Stranger Comes To Town:

Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the us. Each then designes a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Jacqueline Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one's own sense of self and view of the world.

Really enjoyed this film, and interesting how we can relate to avatars and sympathise with them and get a feel for their identity and story even though they are animations and computer graphics. What i liked about this film was that we would hear the persons voice before we saw their avatar which may have helped more in creating identity. Humourous in places too and reminded me a lot of the creature comforts adverts Nick Park did.

Arameans:

Video questions the mobility of the Arameans in the Lebanese social context. The film tells the story of an Assyrian Woman who experienced bombings. I'm not sure this film got its point across that well and felt a bit forgettable to me. Not really applicable to what i'm doing or interested in.

Bilder aus dem Tagebuch eines Wartenden:

This is a search for the lost, or to be more exact wasted time spent during obligatory military service on the edge of Schengen country, which is embodied by the absurd micro-performances of the young showoffs and in banal, everyday monologs about the sense (or lack thereof) of their presence, enlarged to almost Becket-like dimensions.

Probably my favourite film i saw over there and very memorable. Like a video diary and reminded me very much of a blog with the mundane activities of people you don't know. Clever how it was made to be very funny and made you care about what happened to the people in the film, which has given me more to think about for my own work.

Beach

A personal account in the form of an out of tune TV broadcast; an accelerating stream of images, depicting a family on the beach in Tel Aviv, is juxtaposed with a video of a girl running frantically on a bombed beach in Gaza, only about 100 kilometers away.

mmmm.. scotch eggs

2008-01-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

DJ Scotch Egg visit:

Found the concept of limitations in the work an interesting concept, and how you can make something quite complex from something so minimal. Comparisons with modernism design and theory that it is about the materials used.

Sentimentality also an interesting point, how he uses a gameboy to create music but not other consoles. Could also link in with nostalgia, as the sounds used were mainly from our own childhoods.

Overall and interesting visit, and some things i could think about for my own dissertation, especially the cartoon like energy and changes which directly references to what i want to write about.

it's only bloody done - part II

2008-01-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

ok animation done.. could be better but i quite like the design of it. Thats the project done and never to be looked at ever again.

change of idea

2008-01-17T04:19:00.001-08:00

Since the last time I updated this blog I've changed a fair bit of my original idea.

Before the idea was centered around:
- narrative of children's nightmares
- user control and maximum freedom
- different interfaces
- mass collaboration
- more sophisticated or different ways of interacting i.e making the solution to the puzzle instead of finding it

but since tutor discussions it appeared that not only do i have too much going on but also some of the ideas contradicted themselves. For example the idea of nightmares and user freedom were contradictory as when you think about nightmares you tend to think of feelings of being trapped and loss of control.

So i had to edit my idea and take out some points that I really wanted to include. However, the new idea just focuses on one of the above points. It is now a variation on the online point and click games that involve escaping from a room. The difference is that instead of searching the room the interactivity comes with creating the solution on the screen by drawing something.

To give the game a bit more validity there is no real narrative but as I am comfortable designing for a younger audience I thought of the theme of escaping from a school. So one of the levels could involve having to distract a teacher whilst the player sneaks out of the room, and because the user has to create the solution the game gives them more freedom of choice.

There is a brief animation i've made of this which i will post sometime tomorrow.

character design and other thoughts

2008-01-07T04:53:00.000-08:00

Bit of a serious post this one

Found some research that's quite interesting and made me think about my own design in a different way. Cartoonist and visual theorist Scott McCloud wrote about the abstract nature of cartoon characters and how the "lack of details in characters allow viewers to identify with them (more than they would with more detailed, photo-realistic characters) because it encourages the viewer to see or position "himself" in or as the character."

This makes sense to me because i've also looked at Chris Crawford's word where he states that "graphic realism stimulates the imagination, but it must leave room for the imagination to run free." I took this to mean that the imagination is stilted when films, tv, games etc are presented as ultra realistic, where as if the elements or characters lack detail and realism the viewer and user has to piece things together and use their imagination more and this could also relate to ellipses in Manovich's "Myth of Interactivity"

"ellipses in literary narration, missing details of objects in visual art and other representational "shortcuts" require the user to fill in missing information"

The argument is from a guy called Steve Poole who believes that "players are more attracted to recent, almost lifelike characters such as 'Lara Croft' ... over the abstractions of Pac-Man, but because these characters aren't "too real" either, the player comes to care for them and feel badly if they die"

I can't agree with the above statement as i found an online game called Interactive Buddy, which although it has little to no detail I think it still produces an emotive response from the player due to the character being anthropomorphised by cowering or shaking when hurt or showing a smiley face when happy.

Hosted by Daily Free Games

SLightly more intense online games usually involve the player maintaining that characters and advancing them causing a greater deal of identification (Gary Fine). He also found that players would cheat to prevent the deeath of a favourite character or refuse to play with other gamers that would not help protect the group, World of Warcraft springs to mind.

This has given me a lot to think about, especially the thoughts on realism vs less detail, when designing my game. I personally agree more with the identification and ellipse process of less realistic and detailed design as it seems more plausible, i think that imagination is more powerful than merely taking something that someone else has created and immersing yourself in it, with little thought on your own part, as well that also links back to the navigational systems and mistaking someone elses thought process for your own, as i mentioned in a previous post.

I think that's all for now, need to just carry on with what i'm doing which is adding colour and neatening up my sketches in photoshop then animating it to show how the game would work.

Also need to do that rationale thing or before I do, note down the specifics of the game, how it works and what i want it to acheive, and then post it here.

what's that coming over the hill..

2008-01-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

..is it a monster

hurrah, i'm at the drawing stage. I've really got bogged down with a lot of theory work, which has been really helpful especially with fine tuning my idea. There's been a lot of umming and aahing about the more precise elements of the game and how much control to give to the user and what, if any, limitations to set. During my research i've looked more into the control the user has and the control the designer has and certain navigational methods that the user has to follow to get through the game, even though there seems to be a lot of choice the way the game is played and the conclusion is still the same.

"... we are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations. Put differently, in what can be read as an updated version of French philosopher Louis Althusser's concepts of "interpellation," we are asked to mistake the structure of somebody else's mind for our own".

From what i'm thinking at the moment, my game will possibly challenge the way it is navigated so the creator has little control over it. As users can create and upload challenges it seems likely this will probably be quite endless, but there will still be a narrative set to the game to still rein in some degree of control, otherwise the project would seem pretty pointless if my idea was that gamers can do whatever they want.

Explained the narrative in a previous blog, so i'm not sure there's much to add. I'm gonna post some brief sketches of some monsters (yay monsters) which are works in progress, so hopefully i can take them into photoshop and have a muck around with colour, shading at that bloody pen tool.

weird zombie type thing that was inspired by some halloween mask or other

everyone loves clowns

ooh, also found something that has a similar element of game play to what i want to achieve, design isn't fantastic but it doesn't pretend to be, guess the clue is in the name "crayon physics" but the whole drawing on the screen, using a pen/touch screen is relevant to my project

idea updates etc

2007-12-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

Haven't been posting much as much research has been needed before i could really advance. Have also been busy tying my ideas to theory work that's been looked at mainly in class.

The fully formed idea at the moment is a game for kids that allows them to update levels and design it as they play. I decided to design it for kids (again) after talking to Rona Innes about my concerns of pigeon holing myself. She said if that's what i want to specialise in then its fine to revolve most of my projects around that.

Anyway, the game will be an online flash game where players draw on the screen to solve problems and pass on to the next level.

The narrative has the theme of children's nightmares. Playing a lot of 'escape from the room' gave me this idea, as well as talking to Sarah Strickett who advised me to look into old stories for children by the likes of the brothers grimm who wrote very creepy stories.

Using this theme players can design their own characters, perhaps things they've had nightmares of witches, vampires etc and upload them to the website where they can then be designed into a character the player can battle.

I like the idea of having players draw on the screen mainly using a wacom tablet as this incorporates the idea of having a replica of an old media (pen and paper) to interact with something contemporary.

Many of the theories in "the myth of interactivity" (manovich) relate back to my idea for the game. "New media is interactive. In contrast to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus generating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work"

The above quote links back to the idea of designing the game as its played, therefore making it completely unique when it is updated and also allowing the user to become the co-creator of the work rather than just a consumer, combining the idea of wikinomics

The whole idea needs some fine tuning, like how exactly it will work and the limitations of it, rather than going too far and having too many elements. Also need to look at more examples of games (preferably online) that allow users to design and upload levels for others to play.

Will now start the design process for the aesthetics of the game and upload some images of this soon.

mulings

2007-12-13T08:12:00.000-08:00

started to think more about my dissertation and am interested in the idea of sound used in movies, as mentioned in a previous post i think. Was guided to a term called "text painting" meaning the musical technique of having the music mimic the literal meaning of a song. In film however i believe this means more having the action sync the music.

One of the main examples that springs to mind is a scene in an old movie (1961 i think) called "The Errand Boy".

This scene perfectly captures what i like in films and i think there is quite a lot to write about and have also found that the term "text painting" or "mickey mousing" can have some negative connotations, particularly with film makers and critics and although I haven't found a lot of theory on this as yet I have found a few blogs that talk about these terms, the impications and examples which could prove to be useful.

Mickey Mousing

Sound as Vision

Now I have my starting point i need to find a few more examples of films and perhaps get quite specific. E.g films based in New York particularly Scorsese's work have music and sound that specifically relate to the time period and setting.

and now for something completely different

2007-12-10T04:12:00.000-08:00

now that hellish essay is out of the way, never ever to be looked at again ever, i can start thinking about something useful, like computer games.

loads of games have been suggested to me and one of my favourites is "Attack of the Funky Disco Zombies" which looks really pretty.

Not highly intuative which does give me something to think about for hints and tips in games, whether they're truly needed or take away some of the challenge. Also with constant hints does that make the game bad? should they be intuative without any sort of help. Same with instructions, maybe we should just know how to play something without being told if arrow keys or mouse movement is required.

Just been told about a game that has no instructions and is completely intuative. Fl0w reminds me of that old school snake game found on horrible brick like mobiles but much prettier.

Maybe within the narrative pieces at the beginning of games and the cut sequences helps in someway without actually telling the player all the whats, whys and hows. Like in playstation games, specifically the platform games so many cut scenes act as tutorials.

Also really need to think about the audience for my prospective game, if i make it for kids would it then be too boring or simple for older people to play? Do i need to make the narrative appropriate for a wide range of people? Or do i really need a narrative at all? Maybe the narrative could be built as it is played. Although i like the idea of a narrative.

i generally tend to think that what makes a game a success or more enjoyable is a clear cut goal, a good narrative and intuative but slightly challenging. I think more research is needed into this aspect and Chris Crawford seems to be my man.

I have a bit of an idea for a narrative, but seems quite focused on being for kids, which all my work seems to be about. I don't know if i want to get bogged down with the same sort of stuff or just go with it and make it what i specialise in.

Too many thoughts - bloody essay

specicicicicficity

2007-12-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

horrible, evil essay. long words. long unnecessary words. long unnecessary boring words. little understanding and few points. not all doom and gloom, i did discover the word 'ghetto-isation' which is lovely and i will find a way to fit it into my dissertation somehow, and the word 'youtube-isation' which probably doesnt exist but can be coined for the sake of academia.

this blog is really just me regurgitating my notes into something that is readable:

- new media age dematerialised - not tangible whereas a sculpture for example is physically there.

- systems theory - cybernetics and shit. systems that exist in sociology, technology and culture etc and transfer them into other things e.g. group of people and how they systematically interact can be transferred to computers
re: system art - Simon Morse

"Todays 'new' media quickly becomes defunct, and the object of nostalgia and aestheticisation"

prioritising of non-visual aspects of the work e.g. Ellie Rees cake film was not about the visuals of cake (cake or death)
modernist priority was pure function and staying true to materials etc and in opposition it is now subordinate

what a load of old cack

theory stuff

2007-12-06T02:54:00.000-08:00

Brief lecture about the text we had to read came up with some interesting points. Most of which i either can't understand or can't remember. But there were a few things that i thought i'd better write down. My notes may not make much sense here, but in my mind.. they do.

- Audience becoming actors - Big Brother stylee something about audience particpation integral to the show.

- comparison of a book with a computer game, a seemingly redundant comparison as players immerse themselves in a game and help write it as they play it, with books you just get to read someone elses words.

does playing games count as research?

2007-12-03T02:22:00.000-08:00

the good thing about developing an interactive game is that i get to play games. Have actually been looking at games that are relevant to my idea, not just playing random games (much). Have found quite a few that requires the user to escape from a room by collecting things and solving puzzles. I realise this type of interactivity isn't new and won't be earth shattering but its just nice to look at different types of gameplay.

Gamershood has many games like the aforementioned so screen grabs a plenty are going in my sketchbook.

ideas and shit

2007-11-29T02:07:00.000-08:00

Had a few ideas, only one that i'm really convinced could work and won't make me a mardy cow in the process.

1: Liked the idea of having something interactive in a retail space, mainly cuz i've worked in the hellish arse of retail all my working life. This could either benefit or disadvantage me in this project. I know retail, how it works and what customers need, but i hate people and shopping, so perhaps not such a good idea.

Retail Space: Interactive screens in changing rooms. Where people can have full body scans taken of them, clothes superimposed on them and they can see what it looks like at all angles and can go through a catalogue of other items. Could also have the option of being referred items that suit there particular body shape. It's an ok idea, but not something i will go with cuz i don't think i could work on this for 6 weeks without killing myself or someone else.

I'm quite hungry at the moment, so this has given me the idea for interactive menus in cafes and stuff. People can order food from a touch screen menu and pay for it there. Just something interactive where you wouldn't normally expect it. The pedantic among us may argue that it is interactive to speak to the people that work there, which is true but it doesn't matter cuz i'm not overly keen on this idea just because it reminds me too much of the last futures project.

I like the option of designing an art installation, but despite my background being in fine art, i quite dislike modern art or installations. I have liked a few installations i've seen so i will probably research this some more with an open mind and not dismissing it all as bollocks. Would have to put my theory hat on.

My final idea, and the one i'm most into is some sort of flash online game that allows users to help build the game as they play. For example the game could start where the character is in a room with no windows or doors. To get out they could draw a door that then opens up the next level. Colin also suggested that people can play other people's games that they've worked through and see how they've problem solved. so props to you colin.

I like this idea cuz i've got the theory of wikinomics backing it up and its just a slightly different way of interacting with something that doesn't just involve clicking or moving arrows.

The only problem with this is that i couldn't make it. I'm humble enough to admit that this stretches my somewhat limited abilities in flash. Tho from what i've heard i could just make an animation to show how it would work, so hurrah for that.

To Do:
- major research in art installations, just in case i change my mind (as i so often do)
- research into online and casual gaming (and not just an excuse to play on neopets)
- more research into wikinomics and the idea of mass collaboration
- look at basic games that allow user to draw on the screen

doesn't actually seem that much to do at the moment, famous last words and all that, but i'm sure the above will open up a whole can of worms and i'll be busy right up to the deadline. Again.

2007-11-26T06:22:00.001-08:00

Three media artists, Martin Bonadeo, Michael Chu, and D. Scott Hessels, drove Los Angeles' famous Mulholland Drive with five types of sensors--measuring the car's tilt, direction, altitude, speed, and engine sound. The captured data of the mountain road was loaded into a computer and a 3-dimensional model was created. This model was used computationally to control two robotic lights in a room filled with fog. Two 100-foot beams of light and the processed sound of the engine recreated the topology of the road as a new form of visual experience and sculpture-cinema without image.

Thought this vid was appropriate as it uses a lot of the tech stuff Mike talked about this morning.

Ubiquitous Computing:

Ubiquitous computing integrates computation into the environment, rather than having computers which are distinct objects. Another term for ubiquitous computing is pervasive computing. Promoters of this idea hope that embedding computation into the environment would enable people to move around and interact with computers more naturally than they currently do.

links and shit

2007-11-26T05:49:00.000-08:00

its always hard to start new projects and i have a few ideas, but mainly need to do shit loads of research before i can even begin designing or thinking about the aesthetics. In the meantime there are loads of links and vids for some cool stuff.

Art Installations:

i've never really thought about doing an interactive art installation, but now i've looked at them a bit more i really like the idea of it. Quite like the idea of a screen based installation but the reasons i'm not entirely convinced of this is that 1) i always do screen based stuff and 2) so does everyone else. There are some that work really well like fallings times which is:

"a real-time news "translation machine" representing appearing & disappearing information about our times. the news content is reduced to the most frequent headlines & their according keywords. the reduced news headlines are then visually translated in a dynamic pictogram language that is considered to be universal & instantly understandable. online users can add keywords to an icon to determine which news will be displayed.

"Falling Times refers to the heavy InfoPollution we live in. the InfoSociety has created a new kind of consumer – the InfoConsumer!"

Also really like this installation called The Dumpster.

It is an aesthetic portrait of romantic breakups from a group of 20,000 blog posts describing breakups in 2005. this 'social data browser' visualises inferred reasons for the break-up, who was involved, age & gender of the author, & emotional state, with similar breakups showing up with similar colours. It seems to be another screen based design, tho that may just be in the context of being displayed online. I liked this mainly for its interface in that it's intuative but still has a hell of a lot of info to it.

I think its intuative because it adheres to some of the psychology of design in that people will click on things that are moving. All the dots are moving, so its obvious what to click on, and when the mouse moves, the bottom and side bars move as well. Interesting design, but im not wowed by the idea, but then i'm cynical and laugh at american teenager's pain.

Also like something called "Emotional Traffic Display" which is a real-time visualisation & sonification that runs during an on-stage musical performance using data from the Internet about the emotions of the world. the size of the text reflects the emotion's presence on the web, while layers build up, making the display more detailed & complex. a 'meridian line' scans the visualisation, creating the rhythm of the music being played.

pov, pov and pov and the barge and the sausage

2007-11-22T07:57:00.000-08:00

cool links to remember from a good talk today from Alistair McDonald from Kerb

killerviral

memecounter

blog from kerb

nitrome

cove

osflash

really enjoyed the flash talk today, and have wanted to make a flash game since i started this course, mainly cuz i'm addicted to neopets but that's not the point. I'm hoping i can include gaming for this project and plus i get to draw more pretty pictures, one day there may be a project where i draw nothing. Really need to research into online/casual gaming and try and get some theory behind my designs. Most importantly i need to get the damn futures project out of my damn head. damn.

Design for Interaction

2007-11-22T07:06:00.000-08:00

Brief:

OK, new brief and just as terrifying as the last. It may just be overly complicated and may take a little while to get my head around it. Also having to start thinking about the dissertation, so bang goes my idea of starting it in April and handing it in, in April.

From what i can gather the brief is once again focusing on theories and concepts. So i think the idea is to get a good theory or concept and base the design around that.

- interactivity as personal and social
- the theory that interactivity separates new media from old

it can be: instructional/storytelling/entertainment in the forms of:
- a game
- experimental website
- interactive art piece
- non-linear story
- interactive environment - retail space/museum/learning zone/public arts commission

its nice to know that the brief is fairly open, but i guess until i start doing some proper research it all seems a bit hazy.

Dissertation:

My original question (for that proposal we had to do) was: With reference to online communities and interactive games such as ‘The Sims’, what are the relationships between technology and humans within today’s society?

I won't be doing that question cuz i figure that if i write about something I'm not personally that interested in i wont write much/well/anything (delete as appropriate). My past essays looked at horror movies and art, and the Simpson's and writing about that didn't seem like such a chore (the research part was great too)

- I'm still interested in the relationships between art and film (first year i wrote about the relationship between Munch's 'The Scream' and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre which was charming). I could expand on this idea perhaps, although it would be nice to write something completely new.

- I also like how music and effects are used in film, especially older films and Disney films which they use it really well. Even 'silent' films where they do have some music over it could work. How does the sound enhance what you are watching and how this has changed over the years.

- Again, sticking with the film bit, i am interested in the idea of film and originality, has new technology helped or hindered audiences experiences

Also need to make sure that whatever i write about has enough flesh to squeeze at least 5000 words out of it. Makes me feel a bit nostalgic for the days when i thought 1000 words was a lot.

it's only bloody done!

2007-11-21T12:32:00.000-08:00

probably a bit late for this post but oh well.

that's the final animation of how the cot works. I've slaved over that bloody thing so i'm quite chuffed with it, even though I'm sick of the sight of it. Plus i'm so pleased the presentation is over because when you've worked on something for so long and you know how it works its difficult to explain it to other people. Plus i've never 'pitched' anything before, but i think i did good.

Just gonna have a little read over the new brief and have a think about that, maybe post some links and thoughts later. want to get started early cuz i really need to work on my organisation and time management.

working towards final design

2007-11-05T04:11:00.000-08:00

Was stuck between 2 ideas. The first was having the cot as the robot where the elements were in the cot but would come out when needed. The design ideas for this seem less limited and there is room to have much more capabilities.

The 2nd idea was having the robotic device in a soft toy, for example if the design was going to be a teddy then the ears could be speakers, paws for lights, noce for scent devices, eyes for cameras etc. I was leaning to this idea more as it could be easily transferable to prams and pushchairs, bigger beds etc and would also be used as a toy for when the baby gets older. However when discussing this with Mike we found that a lot of toys and devices like this are already available.

They can already play music and lights and I want to steer away from things that are already on the market.

We also discussed the possibility of the cot being the complete environment for the baby, meaning that the cot is an intelligent immersive environment with the possibilities that it can control other aspects in the room like temperature and lights etc.

The only technical problem i was having with this design was how to power it so none of the elements would be lost but would still be safe, the solution was to have it powered by low voltage electricity.

also found quite an interesting yet aesthetically creepy video on and AI Female Android
Speech, Reading, Color, Face, Object recognition.
Ability to tell Weather.
Ability to have a conversation
Can understand 13,000+ sentences, and
has the ability to learn.
Ability to solve math
Ability to distinguish simple drinks and foods.

to do

2007-11-01T03:21:00.000-07:00

Not a lot has changed since i last updated this blog but the idea is becoming more refined now i just really need to get it down onto paper. This will probably help me work out all the elements i want to include. So far the robotic cot thing has elements like:

- robot system with memory and ability to learn

- change in lights: colours, brightness, movement etc

- soothing noises: music, heartbeat, soft white noise (this works as a distraction mechanism)

- voice/cry recognition: different sorts of cries can be measured by frequency, urgency and pitch. The robot can remember different cries and try and calm the child.. some of this may be trial and error but a certain amount of programming will be done so it wont be a completely new process that takes a long time for each different child.

- maybe have different levels of robot/human control: the parents can decide how much monitoring they will or will not do, the benefit of this is that it generates trust, but the disadvantage is that parents will not use the device or use all the elements, or be over monitoring or not monitoring enough. Need to think about this point a little more.

- robot response: some of my research states that adequate robot response to human users creates more trust. Could have robot practically reporting back or alerting parents as to what is going on, what happened and what action it took. Or alert the parents when they need to physically take over for feeds or changing as i don't think its practical or really possible for the robot to do this. Thats becoming a bit more sci-fi.

2007-10-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

i don't usually like using wikipedia but there is some useful links and definitions and are probably all things i need to think about for this project.

laws of robotics

friendly a.i

blay whitby knows his stuff, plus there's a snazzy pic of him on his site

more ideas

2007-10-29T05:40:00.000-07:00

Need to think about the pros and cons of having robotic technology. If it is trustworthy and the benefits it will have to parents. Will they want to put their child in care of a robot? What effect will robot contact instead of a mother or father have on the child. Need to think about how far i can push the boundaries with this idea and think long term future and will the child become less human and more robot like?

also think about how to incorporate various elements into the design. What i need to include so there is a wide variety of options, perhaps using all 5 senses so it becomes more of a mood cot: Lighting: changing colour, brightness etc
Sound: soft music, heartbeat sound, white noise
smell and taste
touch: warmth

need to think more how i can include 5 senses into the design and more research needed into the possible psychological effects of this idea

uninspiration

2007-10-22T02:17:00.000-07:00

Am now thoroughly bored of my idea. It was going to be some sort of baby soother/babysitter thing, but i can't quite figure out how to develop it so it's not taking over from parenting and so people feel comfortable trusting something essentially non-human. Though speaking briefly in class today we could or should think more about tech in society rather than get bogged down with all the technological details. So if that's the case maybe i could imagine society in 10 years time and how tech has developed so we are less dependant on tech but work more together, which is plausible. Also am interested by the idea of autonomous robots and robots as carers. This pic shows a robot skeleton that is supposed to help nurses lift imobile patients.

so if i'm going to stick with this concept i should probably look into the theorys behind changing technology a bit more.

my other idea i felt inspired by last night (but not so this morning) was a gaming device that uses all 5 senses which sounds really cool but also a little disheartening cuz from what i've looked at it seems that this concept is already underway, and if thats the case then it might not be technology in 10 years time but something a bit sooner than that.

Maybe i just want to do the sensory gaming thing just because they've invented something called the ismell and this amuses me

i'll procrastinate later

2007-10-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

now i've decided my idea, looked briefly at some theories and doodled some designs i'm ready to pretty much design it properly and start thinking about my presentation. luckily my mind wanders a lot so i've given a lot of thought to my presentation and how i want it to look. For most projects i end up drawing everything, which seems to work ok for me, so i think i'm going to have hand drawn images on a moving storyboard background, and try and have a voice over so i can do less talking. If not i'll just have to have the balls to stand there and talk but i will be on valium, so either way it won't be as scary as usual.

In my head everything is planned perfectly but i've gotten to the procrastination stage of the project, which always seems to happen when i have the most work to do. So now the plan is to pull my finger out, scan and print things for my sketchbook (better get round to actually writing in it as well) and start designing the thing.

new scientist mag is cool

2007-10-15T02:37:00.000-07:00

found some online stuff for n.s mag, got to subscribe to read the whole article, but i can just do some photocopying cuz there is still no bloody student loan.

interesting article on robots making the same errors as babies from the 5th oct 2007 issue.

game that changes when brats get bored could also be fairly useful cuz it is similar to what i am trying to achieve with my idea

not really relevant but it involves robots and amuses me, plus there are some cool dancing robots (?) in japan, where else

haven't read it, just saw some relevant words, but this article on how humans respond to their environment could be useful

i've only just found out what algorithm means, so i'm still not sure if it fits in with what i'm doing

I like the ns site cuz it has articles from the crazy 80s as well.. it was interesting to take a look back 10 years to see what was being developed, what succeeded and what failed miserably. This is just crazy enough to work

on an aside note and mainly just a memo to myself, i need to look into why people would want this particular design/concept, and research into theories might help with this.

if angie taylor wanted to, she could rule the world

2007-10-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

in one way i'm pretty excited, but also slightly cynical, bitter and twisted. Met angie taylor, some sort of evil genius, and she explained expressions in after effects to us. If we had known that last year I would have a) got a better mark and b) not been so pissed off. But anyway, at least i know now and this might be a good start to thinking about my presentation.

i know i'd like to do some sort of animation in either flash or after effects. i quite like the idea of doing an animation using storyboards or what not, whatever it will be i know i'll end up making too much work for myself. Will start looking at nifty little animations soon to get some ideas. I do like the stuff that Rona Innes does at moshi machine

What makes this project much easier, is that i now know what my idea will be (unless i change my mind again). Right now i have settled on having a child's robot entertainment system. I use the word 'entertainment' quite loosely because the age range i will be looking at aren't really the entertained sort. The idea as it stands so far is that the robot system thing will have enough memory to know what soothes a crying brat best. Luckily i have 6 nieces, so my research there is pretty much done. I might look at the past ideas to what has worked or supposed to work. There's stuff that dates right back to the 50's with theories on parenting and luckily there was channel 4 to tell you how to do it. There's loads of books and tv shows that i can look into so this time there might actually be too much research.

Hopefully this week I'll be able to start the design for the babybot thing (its a name in progress, i just cant be bothered to keep typing out 'robot child entertainment thing')

then once thats designed i can start thinking about how to present it and then storyboard my ideas

train of thought has derailed

2007-10-10T02:30:00.000-07:00

links to remember:

site full of shitty designs which is surprisingly useful to look at to see what has succeeded and failed and why

interesting theory by ridley scott

if they won the nobel prize they must be good

violence in games.. interesting article that may be of use to some on my theory work

interesting article on whether technology affects users privacy

thinking out loud

2007-10-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

Finally figured out how to reset and log in to my blog.. did end up creating a different one but ah well.

Anyhoo, the brief requires us to think of a concept or product for the future, but nothing too trekkie. No transportation or anything too wizardy. It should be realistic and perhaps use current technology or tech that will be widely available in the foreseeable future. It feels like we have to invent something as well as design it which is what is tripping me up at the moment. MY ideas have wither been pretty generic or pretty far fetched.

my more generic ideas consists of something like an interactive newspaper, which is doable but i'm not sure how interested i am in it or if it is more convenient than the current papers and magazines. The benefits of an interactive newspaper would be the ability to update itself, perhaps for the headlines (local and national) and weather, and also give a weather report more specific to the area you are in. Train times and bus times could also be a feature. Thats the easy part to get certain features on it, if i take this idea a hell of a lot more research needs to be done and also need to consider the look of the product and how it will benefit consumers etc.

Another pretty generic idea is something that connects all household and personal technology together into one remote or even a feature on your mobile. My thinking is that when your out you can set your sky+ box to record stuff, check what food you need to stock up on or even check you've turned off the gas/straighteners/etc. I think this would be useful but as it is an idea that is completely off the top of my head i have no idea whether it exists or is plausible or if its something that just isn't needed. The upside of this idea is that I could have a lot of fun with it and it has seemingly endless possibilities. There is already something that can control multiple devices but is not portable but i haven't researched this a great deal.

I had wanted to develop something along the lines of a baby cry monitor, but this has been done by someone on this course last year and is a bit of a rip off of a simpsons ep. so this puts me off the idea a little. I'll probably still do some research and stick it in my sketchbook just for those sought after extra marks but I'm not overly enthusiastic about this idea. Also there's some similar technology and products out already.

The rest of my brainstorming session created more far-fetched ideas and stuff that either isn't plausible or wont be available to everyone who doesn't have a million pounds.

My sister came up with a good idea of a 3D TV where the stuff you watch is like holograms which i like but would probably be more of an unrealistic concept and hard to justify the point of it. Already in existence are those crappy little 3d movies that you need those glasses to watch, but its still something to think about.

I'm probably going to be researching all these ideas until i settle on something that i feel confident designing and presenting.

oh yeah, i also saw this great video from last year i think, really like the style of this

Lost my blog virginity

2007-10-01T06:32:00.000-07:00

I am writing this under force. I've never blogged and probably never will, but this is my attempt at being pooterish.

First day of BA multimedia and we've made paper planes (we won), blogged and got a terrifying brief that i still dont understand and probably won't until the week before the deadline. As is my understanding, we have to make something from the future. Oy vey. Which is confusing enough, see Bill Bailey's "future people rant" on youtube, its starts at 9 mins in.

That is all