New Media Reader: Ch. 31-35

Chronology:

• 1982: Bill Viola publishes "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?"
• 1983: Ben Bagdikian publishes "The Endless Chain" and Ben Shneiderman publishes "Direct Manipulation: A Step Beyond Programming Languages"
  
• 1984: Sherry Turkle publishes "Video Games and Computer Holding Power"
• 1985: Donna Haraway publishes "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century"

Summary:

• Media artists rely upon the accessibility of the mediums around them. When film was cheap and more freely available in the 1960s, that became the new medium and once new add-ons to the film were used (projectors, editing systems etc.) these artists would incorporate them into their work. Bill Viola was an example of this process.
• The lines between old media and new media are blurring. Since the old media titans are realizing the importance and prevalence of new media, they are beginning to integrate into the new media sphere. The most recent example is Comcast (a gigantic ISP) acquiring NBC (a media empire). Here is the NYTimes articles. Is it dangerous to have the people providing access to the internet also providing the content?
• As with the previous ideas within the technological realm, the idea of making the computing processes more udnerstandable and relatable is continued by Shneiderman and the idea of direct manipulation. Instead of relying on programming languges to instruct the computer, the idea of direct manipulation is to have a graphical input for each step of the process instead of coded computer language.
• Using psychological analysis, Turkle explored the popularity of video games through the question "why do people enjoy them?" She figured that people enjoy utilizing video games because the interface is catered to their usage which allows the layman to enjoy computing. In addition, players are able to act out personas that they usually don't utilize in their daily lives.
• Haraway's essay revolves around the idea of seeing what we have now, and how we can progress from here. Instead of dwelling on the past, and any romaticised ideas of purity the past should contain, Haraway focuses upon how we can constantly manipulate the present to make a brighter future.
  

New Media Reader: Ch. 26-30

Chronology:

• 1977: Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg publish "Personal Dynamic Media"
• 1980: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari publish "A Thousand Plateus", Seymour Papert publish "From Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas" and Richard Bolt publishes "Put That There"
• 1981: Theodor Nelson publishes "Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive"

Summary:

• Kay championed the idea that computers should be accessible and used by everyone and not just the business and engineering elite.
  
• Kay and his partner Goldberg helped create the first generation of notebook through their jobs at Xerox PARC.
• Deleuze and Guattari's text is "rhizomatic" in that it challenges the ideas of dichotomy and paradoxes and asks the reader to reconsider the idea of multiplicities.
  
• Papert views computers as tools for educational purposes. Instead of seeing the machines of purveyors of information, he sees them as something that the student manipulates to learn from. Instead of the computer directly instructing the student, the student learns through active manipulation.
• Bolt believed in the idea of multi modal computing wherein the interface for the usee would require not just simply 2d, touch based interaction but 3d visuals combined with speech recognition.
• Nelson's revolutionary Xanadu platform contains his vision of having everyone connected in the same sphere where photos, text, movies and everything else can be seemlessly connected and colloborated upon. While the platform is meant to be as open as possible, it is still far more structured than the web. It is supposed to be guided towards media sharing.
  

Postmasters/bitforms/Eyebeam

Even though I was born and raised in NYC, I rarely go to art museums (I went to the MoMA for the first time a year ago) so going to these three cutting-edge Chelsea galleries was a new experience for me. While I've experienced modern art before (Tate Modern and MoMA) I've never been a huge fan. It seems to rely more on concept than on actual intrinsic artistic value. While it's not to say a Picasso piece doesn't require context, at least it can impress without it. Most modern art requires some background information and context to even be appreciated. Now without further ado:

Postmasters
I wholeheartedly disliked the entire gallery except the shadow train (Paper Moon) and the can from the ceiling (The Shield of Achilles). The candles on the floor were actually devoid of intrinsic meaning. They were there to represent Dickinson's impressive feat of writing 366 poems in 365 days. While the colors of the candles were appealing, I didn't see anything past that. However, the can hanging from the ceiling were intrinsically appealing. Lying on the floor look upwards, the cans with pinholes of light emanating from them actually gave me the sense of looking at a night sky. Pure awesome:



Bitforms:
The layout of bitforms was very conducive to the art on display. It all seamlessly fitted together with a beautifully present introduction at the beginning. It seemed to take us on a tour of Yael's artwork. Besides the gigantic vagina made out of various languages, the most striking piece there was the art display that reconfigured itself based upon the sound around.



Eyebeam:

I've been to one of their parties before where I was encased in a huge trashbag with holes in it and all you could see where random pinholes of light. Cool, but mostly disconcerting. The project we saw that involved a YouTube video battle was pretty cool. The imaging software behind the project was even cooler. When I held up a physical card with some sort of pattern on it, in place of the pattern, a YouTube video would appear on screen. The software would be able to track the video regardless if I moved the card around in all directions.

Highline

I think the highline is beautiful. The layout is well-done, the numerous types of flora are pretty and actually mesh with NYC's aesthetic and the cute coffee stands and benches make the highline a joy to walk on. However, the fact that NYC plunged 50 million dollars into it is kind of disconcerting. I'm not sure how much business it generates, especially being around the highly gentrified meat packing district.

Being a sourpuss aside, I really enjoyed the highline. I think it's a great way of transforming old NYC to new NYC. Instead of tearing something down, they remade the old into something available to the present. The before and after is also stunning:

Gehry Building

I've seen a few of his buildings and I usually enjoy them a lot. While I was studying abroad in Prague, I would pass by the Dancing House all the time. It looked completely anachronistic surrounded by the perfectly preserved, thousand year old buildings that Prague is famous for. And in New York, I found it funny that Gehry's talents were used to spruce up AIC's headquarters. A lot of the tallest, weirdest buildings in the world are financed by monolithic corporations. There is something funny that the blandest of vocations can sponsor the most creative.

DATA VISUALIZATION

After reading this article I began to appreciate human limitations. We have massive amounts of data swirling around us at all times, yet it's impossible to internalize. The only way we can appreciate this data, and the connections it has to itself, is by taking snippets, reworking them and turning them into elegantly created visualizations. These visual snippets allow us to appreciate the interconnected nature of the universe around us without having to sift through massive amounts of seemingly uncorrelated data. One of the most interesting links was this that talked about how the government is using cloud-computing to store their data. It also talked about how they are relying upon private companies to store their data. What does that mean? What's the implications of Google storing the government's data? Will they eventually store sensitive, private data because it's cheaper?

John Cage

People like Arnold Shoenberg, who rose to prominence with his atonal works, always impress me. These classically trained musicians (Schoenberg and Cage) use their talents to create something completely against the grain. Instead of creating typical music within the Western music canon, they break convention and create something that requires real awareness and thinking. Just like the classically trained Picasso, Cage uses his talents to test his listeners. While I would never have Cage blasting on my iPod, I do enjoy to watch and listen to his stuff from time to time.

William Burroughs cut ups

I was totally surprised with myself. I usually hate random, avantgarde, self-righteous art, but this cut up method of art was really engaging. The words and phrases that emerged from creating unintended combination of words was actually meaningful. But I thought it was more interesting that I thought the random words were meaningful than the actual meaning itself. The fact that I could find power from these random words shows how much sway words have over me. They souned ominious and profound yet they had no intention of doing so. Weird.

Microcosmos

Since Planet Earth is my favorite documentary series, I'm a huge sucker for Microcosmos. I love the humor and drama depicted. Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou painstakingly use proper music and editing to create a real narrative for a world of bugs that don't know they're being watched. We feel their pain as a huge water droplet crashes down upon them or happiness when they found a tasty morsel in the dirt. The close-up and personal nature of the documentary allows the viewer a portal into a world that usually goes under our feet. Very illuminating.

New Media Reader: Ch. 21-25

Chronology:

• 1974: Theodor Nelson publishes "Computer Lib" and Augusto Boal publishes "Teatro do Oprimido"
  
• 1975: Nicholas Negroponte publishes "From Soft Architecture Machines"
• 1976: Joseph Weizenbaum publishes "From Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgment to Calculation"
• 1977: Myron Krueger publishes "Responsive Environments"

Summary:

• Nelson envisioned the creative future of computing. Instead of being in awe of their computational power, he saw computers as new media hotspots.
• He also, controversially, believed that these new interfaces and designs for computers should be accessible to the public and should even be placed in a publicly open publishing domain.
• Boal used new media techniques to create a new artform. He wanted to dissolve the line between viewer and participant by having the two interact and become one inter meshed performance piece.
• Negroponte was instrumental in moving physical space into virtual space. By using computers to simulate the physical world, he was able to generate structures in virtual environments to see how they would hold up.
• Weizenbaum created the program ELIZA that would respond to human queries. The program could take on different personalities and would respond accordingly.
• He also created a program called DOCTOR that could act as a surrogate psychotherapist.
• Krueger lived by the maxim "response is the medium" which meant that that user interaction and the interplay between machine and user should be the focus of software development.
  

Marshall McCluhan DVD

Oh boy do I love cheesy special effects! The McCluhan DVD had its fair share of hilarious cross fades and ridiculous reenactments but the content of the movie was great. It told a comprehensive and understandable portrait of McCluhan's media vision. It portrayed his likes, dislikes and opponents. It also displayed him as a god among men (which maybe he was). I thoroughly enjoyed the movie because I knew far too little about McCluhan. His unconventional teaching style and grandiose predictions ostracised him from the rest of the academic community. However, his accuracy eventually showed his critics his potency.

Scott McCloud

While I have never delved too deeply into the wildly intricate world of animated superheroes, I have always appreciated their ascetic. The idea that words and images are usually represented lineally has always baffled me. Isn't it amazing that a single picture can immediately and dynamically capture an entire story while a story has to tell you word by word? While the examples he gave of "non linear" story telling looked a bit wonky, I still see human creativity trumping linear time.

Life-logging

No more! I can't take anymore glances into peoples' personal lives. First we got pictures of intermittent moments, then we got tweets of intimate moments now we have a streaming pipeline directly into peoples' lives! While the social aspect of this confounds me, even irks me, I think recording your day to day activities, for research purposes, is a great idea. You could see where and how you waste time, what you do inefficiently and even discover quirks and other things you never knew about yourself. Who knew I spent 8 hours a day on the interwebs?

Scots Take Laser Aim

I think the idea of completely cataloging our most important sites is a great idea. Being able to remake, edit or simply envision any of the world's constructed or naturally formed wonders is a great step forwards in the accurate preservation of history. Instead of relying on anecdotes, incomplete photo sets and 2d, impersonal diagrams, this company allows us to accurately and completely store our important sites. I wonder if these representations can be our downfall. If we totally scan the entire planet, down to the most minute detail, I think we have the beginnings of the Matrix.

New Media Reader: Ch. 16-20

Chronology:

• 1968: Douglas Engelbart and William English publish "A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"
• 1970: Les Levine displays his experimental technical art piece at the Jewish Museum and Hans Enzensberger publish "Constituents of a Theory of the Media"
• 1972: Jean Baudrillard publishes "Requiem for the Media" and Raymond Williams publishes "The Technology and the Society"

Summary:

• 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference occurs in San Francisco with a risky public presentation of new media technologies
  
• The Augmentation Research Center attempts to create technologies that facilitate ease-of-use between user and machine
• ARC developed basic concepts of simple interaction with a digital universe for the layman
• The 1970 exhibition "Software" enabled patrons to freely operate computers in an experimental setting that was completely unique for the time
• Enzensberger envisions a world where everyone is a mobile media mogul and that communities can form around subjects instead of having them dictated by media conglomerates
• Baudrillard expands this idea by saying that refusal of mass accepted forms of dissemination paves the way for technology users to create an equilibrium for society, devoid of producers and consumers
• Winner beleives in the importance of the technology themselves. Within each new piece of important technology, lie the cultural and societal desires that created it. The technology makes itself important simply by existing. It is incorporated into our lives even if it turned off.
• Constant user input and manipulation of new technology makes a better, more usable product. Socialising technology is the future.
  

Erin McKean and WORDNIK

I'll admit, she's super cute (in a funny, platonic way). However, I don't think her 20 minute TED talk really said much besides that fact that she hated linear dictionaries, and that she has a penchant for big words. The idea of a user submitted dictionary (urbandictionary and wikipedia) isn't new, I think her passion and her vast knowledge of the English language could give her creation the advantage. I did think it was interesting how words are not static. They are dynamic, constantly created entities that anyone can make up. This post was samiplastoic!

Piano Stairs

Street interactivity is the bomb! Anything that can make my daily commute more interesting, I highly encourage. Even better, the piano stairs encouraged people to avoid the lethargy inducing escalator and made people enjoy exerting themselves. In a society that favors ordering pizza from their phone, I think this is a great innovation.

ERIC ROSENTHAL

I love media storage as much as the next guy, but damn! Eric brought a new fervor to the conception of capturing images and storing data. He has held numerous respectable positions in a variety of imaging companies (like Kodak). His main passion, using HVS (no it's not a disease, but the Human Vision System) to make correct digital images is impressive. I never truly appreciated the compression and synthesis that current cameras use to capture their images. Computers then meddle with the process more so. There are many consequences to having images so life like that they are life.

New Media Reader: Ch. 14

Chronology:

• 1966: E.A.T. was founded by Billy Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and Fred Waldhauer as a medium for experimental art
• 1967: E.A.T. press release
• 1972: Billy Kluver publishes "The Pavilion"

Summary:

• Art experiments cannot fail
• Kluver helps engineer art that can destroy itself
• John Cage's project involved only capturing naturally occurring sounds at the time of the recording
• Lucinda Childs uses "Vehicle" to show her love of dynamic objects
• Rauschenberg uses tennis and the motions associated with tennis to create a visual piece
• Kluver uses the Pavilion as a new art space for artists interested in dabbling in experimental and unusual mediums and pieces

New Media Reader: Ch. 13

Chronology:

• 1962: Marshall McLuhan publishes "The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass Man in an Individualist Society."
• 1964: Marshall McLuhan publishes "The Medium is the Message"

Summary: "Galaxy Reconfigured"

• The pervasiveness of new media is altering the way we perceive
• Joyce, Ruskin and others believe that media can be all-inclusive and not simply linear
• Instead of focusing on a single instance by a single person, people must become aware of the collective conscious; the intertwined nature of the world
  
• Adam Smith even believes that all work is somehow intertwined with everyone
• There exists a schism within literature: vision is community orientated while the actual writing is individualistic and segmented
• Market society transforms art from vision to product
• McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" directly relates to Whitehead stating that the method of delivery is of utmost importance.

Summary: "Medium is the Message"

• The simply existence of a new medium has significant societal importance.
• Mediums are potentiality. Seeing what they can do is more important than what they actually are used for (like spelling our a brand in lights)
• Technological media are natural resources on par with wood and gold
• (McLuhan lists many people [Arnold Toynbee, General David Sarnoff] and their ideas to simply disagree with them)

KP Where the Wild Things Are

People like Ken are amazing. They have to create their own tools to create. It's not immediately available like pen and paper where the only impediment is your imagination and skill. Using computer means that not only do you have skill and imagination as stumbling blocks, but also algorithms, processors, memory and proprietary software. It seems so much more difficult to start from scratch from a computer perspective.

Anyways, the techniques Ken describes in his posts are illuminating. I never really appreciate the animations that I see done by the film industry. Since the characters are so cute and ridiculous, I assumed all they had to do was throw marshmallows and good intentions together to make them. It's amazing the techniques they had to specially design to get physical representation (sketches etc.) into a usable, manipulative 3d realm. Sweet

Ken's Lecture

Awesome! Even though his soft voice was lulling me to sleep, the content of his presentation was stellar. He takes all the stuff in his imagination and makes it a digital reality. The best part is that his tinkering has unknown benefits. For example, his face program, that represented different emotions, was able to help autistic kids identify emotional facial fluctuations. Technology has the unique ability to constantly evolve in every direction. Things that people thought were staples of technology (initial touch screens) can be re-imagined in so many ways (multi-touch, pressure sensitive displays). I would love to have his technical know-how. He also seems to be educated and concerned with things outside his discipline which makes him seem very worldly.

Google WAAAAAAAaaaavveeee

Remember when in almost all my other blog posts I said I loved integration? Well, Google has made me rethink that. Maybe I totally missed something in the presentation, but Google Wave looks like it sucks. Why would I possibly need real time email? Is ELECTRONIC mail not fast enough, I need people responding in REAL TIME? Also, this is what Gmail does anyways. I can have a Gchat box open talking with someone in real time while also emailing.

Digital Dirt! OOoOoOoOoOOo Spooky

I have always been wary of the internet and the fact that whatever you put there will be there forever. Ever since I saw my first set of embarrassing photos (even before they called FAIL photos) I knew the internet was dangerous. I have my facebook on crazy lockdown; it's not in google search, I install no programs and anyone I'm only acquaintance/employee with/of is on my limited profile. The only thing that comes up when you google my name are my online articles I wrote for CMJ and some random photo my friend put up of me on istheshit.com. I think the best way to avoid being embarassed is to vett yourself. Search yourself and find out what's there.

New Media Reader: Ch. 10-12

Chronology:

• 1964: Roy Ascott publishes "The Construction of Change"
• 1965: Theodor Nelson publishes "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate"
• 1973: Raymond Queneau publishes "Yours for the Telling", Claude Berge publishes "For a Potential Analysis of Combinatory Literature", and Jean Lescure publishes "A Brief History of Oulipo"
• 1981: Italo Calvino publishes "Prose and Anticombinatorics" and Paul Fournel publishes "Computer and Writer: The Centre Pompidou Experiment"
• 1983: Raymond Queneau publishes "100,000,000,000,000"
  

Summary:
10. The Construction of Change

Conneting cybernetics and art. This led to fields such as digital design and digital media art.

11. A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate

The term hypertext is created. The idea of hypertext is supposed to imply a reconfigurable structure of information with no limit.

12. Six Selections by the Oulipo

A compilation of sonnets that were generated using complex algorithmic techniques. The point of these sonnets are to blur the lines between author, reader and text.

KP Whatchu got for me

Ken Perlin is impressive. He does programming problems for fun which automatically makes him more useful than myself. The video demonstrations of PAD were incredible. The original pad compare with Seadragon, even in today's standards, still seemed more impressive. Infinitely expanding into and out of any image with super high resolution. It's totally great. And he made it decades ago. If I were KP, I would totally want some Seadragon money.

His most notable innovation was his academy award winning visual technology noise-turbulence. Even though his "space vase" looks incredibly dated with today's special effects, its still good to appreciate the amount of work it takes to even create marble. I love that his inspiration was late night coffee.

Favorite Condiment Results!

HOLY CRAP EVERYONE LOVES KETCHUP

The New Media Reader: Ch. 5-9

Chronology:

• 1960: Joseph Licklider publishes "Man-Computer Symbiosis"
• 1961: Allan Kaprow publishes "Happenings", and William Burroughs publishes "The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin"
  
• 1962: Joseph Licklider becomes the head of ARPA and Douglas Engelbart publishes "Augmenting Human Intellect"
• 1963: Ivan Sutherland publishes "Sketchpad A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System"

Summary:

• Licklider helped change the thinking of ARPA by redirecting funding from private companies to universities, helping to create the military industrial complex
• He attempted to display the importance of human/machine interaction
• A large number of interactive, new-age art displays were created by Kaprow in the 50s and 60s under the name "Happenings"
  
• The "cut-up method" was a form of a textual collage. It allowed the creator the ability to make poignant things of unrelated things.
• Engelbert invented the defining features of computers what would later become a mouse, a window and a word processor.
• Engelbert saw the rapid progress of technology, and how it could shift at any moment, he wanted, and saw the importance in, to create tools that made it easier for humans to interact with their digital counterparts.
• Sketchpad began the digital vision. It hinted at the ability for computer to simulate reality so humans could experiment in the digital sphere instead of the physical one.
  

Internet Documentary

Yay the history of the thing I'm using. Corny 90s visual effects aside, the documentary was awesome. I absolutely love hearing about the advent of technology and the people that inspired its inception. Since the internet is ridiculously useful, and ubiquitous, I think it's supremely important to see how this technology was created. I wonder how it would've been different if ARPA didn't sponsor anything. Would someone else have sponsored the initiaitive or would we just be behind technologically and I'd be using AOL 2.0 right now?

Steampunk stuff

Again, I can't understand the fascination with this modern derivation of victorian stuff combined with steam power. It's kinda cool and anything done well (like the steampunk art we saw) is worth viewing. I would definitely check out the steampunk indie festival if I was around I just hope I'm not picked up by some goon with a steam powered rifle and forced to work in his mechanical spider factory all day.

new world of music

Not to sound really awesome or anything but I've been using these sites forever. To be honest, I mostly use pandora to find new music then just download the music I like. Songza, imeem, seeqpod, grooveshark etc. are all amazing pieces of software that allow users to instantly stream any song. I most interested in spotify thats like these free streaming services but also has a desktop application that allows you to actually download the music for free. However, it's not in the US yet. Nuts.

Augmented Earth

Yay more integration! All the technology was there (google earth, publicly available video footage) they were just smart enough to combine the two. I'm having a hard time finding a non-invasive use of this technology (more like why is video camera footage publicly available?) besides for tracking a person's children. Also, how recent is the video footage data? I would only use it to see the lines at my favorite restaurants like the Shake Shack cam.

Photosketch

Crazy concept. I wonder who thought that making composite photos needed to be given to the masses. It's super cool I just want to try it before I praise it. All promo videos show technology at its best in the ideal setting. What if I want a phoenix fighting Hercules in a minefield? Ya, I didn't think it could do that.

FontCapture

Since I have ridiculously terrible handwriting (it's like reading the scribbles of a baby with a pencil in its mouth) this program wouldn't do anything for me. However, the concept is incredible. Using your own handwriting as a font is genius. While I'm sure it's easy to tell that it is computer generated, having something so personal digitized is super convenient. It's ironic in a way to digitize handwriting since the whole point of word processing is to avoid handwriting. Yay meta culture.

Augmented Reality

I love integration. Combine my desk, refrigerator and iPhone please? It's awesome to see people taking existing hardware and transforming devices into something completely new. Having an augmented reality overlay would make sightseeing a pleasure. No ripoff tour guides and you could do it at your leisure. While the idea is great, I'm sure its real-world execution has numerous technological hurdles it has to overcome. Once it's easily viable, I would love to see this technology everywhere.

Natal

I know Natal is going to be bad. It's going to suffer from "Wii Syndrome" which is having the company promise everything and delivering around 20%. I can't imagine the interface being so precise and being able to tell where exactly each movement of your body is relative to the digital characters on screen. In addition, if they can't make the promotional video look fun, I don't think they have a chance. Refastening wheels to race cars? Really?

Brain Scan Tech

Finally! A new technology with immediate practical ramifications! I really loved watching these new technologies, brain-to-text and brain-to-mouse, work their magic. They enabled these people to regain something they had lost. We constantly take for granted the ability to easily communicate and ambulate. Hopefully these technologies will get sleeker and faster as time goes on.

To be obsessed with anything is probably a waste of time. To be obsessed with Steampunk is definitely a waste of time. I don't really understand the fascination with steam-powered retro-futuristic things. They look moderately cool, but to have a subculture? I'm not saying it's ugly, I just don't get the obsession. In fact, I really liked the steampunk guitar that guy in the video made. However, if he spent the time learning guitar that he speant going to steampunk conventions, he'd be a virtusso by now.

New Media Reader: Ch. 2-3

Chronology:

• 1945: Vannevar Bush publishes "As we May Think"
• 1950: Alan Turing publishes "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"

Summary:

• The new power of the military-industrial complex is staggering. However, what will all those academics and scientists devoted to the cause of war do once peace arrives?
• The future holds the minimizing of the size of all technology while at the same time upping the ease of use and quality.
• Bush predicted many of the machines and contraptions of the future that were supposed to make our lives easier.
• Turing sets out to define what is "intelligence" and how a computer can acquire what humans would define as "intelligence"
• Turing predicted many of the problems and inventions that computing would develop 50 years down the road. (processing power, storage)
  
• He then tackles his opponents of his own question of "could machines think" answering retorts like the dreadful consequences of thinking machines or the mathematical impossibility of a thinking machine.
  

(I'm happy the British government finally issued an apology for their abuse of Turing)

Rich Rodriguez’s Computer

Rich is the man. He hardcore represents video game culture without hesitation. It's cool. It's powerful. It's more profitable than the movie industry. It's also incredibly dorky. The game Little Big Planet is not the first game to introduce user content. The Tony Hawk series has allowed users to create their own skate parks, decade before Little Big Planet. I don't even know what the first game was that introduced user content, but Tony Hawk was surely mine. Also, the introduction of games like Scribblenauts is astounding. Developers used to have complete linear control of a game. Now they are letting their users go all free-form. Awesome.

While

I'm going to stop beginning my posts with the word "while".

Forking Paths

While being thrown into the middle of story in the way "Forking Paths" did was a bit disorienting; the story slowly centered itself. I really enjoyed the fact that the story began with a simple tale of an Asian German spy and morphed into a complex commentary on reality. The idea that every possibility exists simultaneously is incredibly intriguing since we perceive a single set of events. The Many World Hypothesis disputes the idea of wave function collapse and postulates that their is an objective world where everything exists regardless of individual subjective observers. This Mario interpretation attempts to convey the idea of multiple simultaneous universes. Distressing.

Dr. Horrible

While I appreciate that their budget was far higher than “The Guild”, I thought it was beautifully crafted. It had good editing, writing and music which combined to make a super entertaining show. It also utilized the medium well. It is a fake super villain’s vlog turned into a show on a medium usually used for blogging/vlogging. It feels really well-suited for the internet and all the characters are great. I love the emphasis on a musical style of representation. It makes the whole thing more jovial and entertaining.

The Guild

While it was entertaining, I thought a lot of the scenes were really awkward. Too many silences/awkward characters that kind of drag the webisode from scene to scene. However, I did think the material they used was funny and topical. It caters to a small subset of internet users that play RPG religiously. I thought it was amazing that the budget was $50 and used user input to create each episode.

Intro 2

"these technologies themselves have become the greatest art works of today." This line illuminates the guiding principle to what Manovich is expressing in "New Media from Borges to HTML". The digital media age affords the visual artist a luxury unknown to other artists. The power to disseminate their work immediately and for free. Anything interactive, involving user-input, that's on the web today, is a constantly evolving organism designed by the preferences of 1.6 billion people.(1)

However, Manovich describes this medium can have its downsides. It allows the artist unprecedented power over their art, but the work also becomes infinitely manipulated. The designs take on a life of their own simply because once something sets foot into the digital realm, it instantly obtains infinite potential. There is a huge divide between static, physical object and a dynamic, digital object.

Manovich’s 8 categories to define new media attempt to create a fence around something that thrives in its limitless freedom. Digital representation, a relatable interface coated with a GUI, was initially supported mostly by digital artists. It didn’t become a utilitarian, public project until much later into its life. The digital landscape is sea of possibilities, but our tools of exploration are still in their infancy.

Sites like Stumbleupon take the internet user on a meta-cultural journey through the constant updating of the internet. Using the internet’s own content and keep it alive through a constant churning of human interaction.


1: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

RYAN

This piece was about artist Ryan Larkin, a famous Canadian animator. The representation of Larkin was disturbing because it depicted him as a broken, crumbling man with only a little hope left. Larkin seemed to be the future version of the interviewer, who was also decomposing. The visual story was striking in that it brought the viewer into this destitute world filled with hopeless people and lives in shambles. I really enjoyed this animation because it illuminated me to Larkin's life and told a story through visuals. More engrossing than Bingo.

Bingo

I remember this video being nominated for weirdest web video award somewhere. While it's not the strangest thing in the world, it is certainly disconcerting. The animation looks dated, but the concept behind it is intersting. Based on a short play called something like, ignore this play, the protaganist becomes the antagonist by becoming the clown he fights against. I thought the whole piece was truly shocking.

Sand Beasts!

I thought the sand beasts idea was great. Making simple mechincal contraptions come to life by ingenuity. By using the natural fluctuations of the wind, the sand beasts truly look like the have the life of their own since they are tapping into a real life natural occurence. Some of the beasts were actually terrifying. Huge mechanical wooden monsters.

Water Printer

I wish I got to see the underpinnings of this technology because it looked pretty cool. While the designs that were displayed were cool, they were only cool because they were made of water. Very simple. It was also interesting that its use was for commerical purposes in a Japanese mall. I wonder what practical implications it could have.

New Media Reader Introduction

There are a lot of hefty, heavy concepts laid out in the intro to the book detailing the intricacies of digital new media. The intro laid out the elements of which the book was going to cover which is everything from the earliest forms of communication to the most recent. The intro also talked about multiple perspectives that the book will cover about new media from its context to the media itself. I found it interesting that the artists working with new media were the real innovators and explorers of the medium. They had the "stones" to actually manipulate the new within their own context. It took much longer for the general public to accept and utilize the new media. I was also curious to why the American philosophers of new media were late on the uptake. What does europe have that we don't?

Jeff Hann and Jon Stewart's Magic Wall

I've seen Hann's wall on numerous websites and also his presentation at TED and it's always amazing. Having tactile manipulation of digital artifacts is important in having user integration. It's amazing that his technology was picked up by such an image and user-experience conscious company as Apple. The parody over at JS was pretty funny. While it was kind of overdone, I thought the candid interview with Hann was hilarious.

Beatboxing viral video

I'm a total sucker for any non-traditionally made beat. While the guy's flute playing was simple, it was definitely something special watching him multi-task flute playing with his nimble mouth drum. However, the real star of the video was Beardyman with his eclectic set of sounds. He combined humor, drum kit and techno into one musical set. Pretty good.

Danyl Johnson X-Factor YouTube viral video

Now, maybe I'm jaded to good voices because of youtube (as well as my talented friends) or maybe I just hate Simon Cowell, but this clip didn't impress me too much. I've heard lots of great singers and I don't see his performance as so stunning. If anything, it made me want to watch the Joe Cocker version real bad. However, I'm not a complete curmudgeon, his voice was pretty good and he seemed to really enjoy himself. I doubt I'd ever place in Xfactor.

First Post

Hey! This is my first post to the internet! Wassup