Okidokes! New blog people

Hi to anyone who is actually looking at this blog. I’m afraid to say that this is the last post I will ever be doing on this blog!!! SHOCK! But for good reason. As you may or may not know I’ve started a new blog for my second year's work in AV production. Which can be found:



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Thanks for looking at this blog, and hope to see you soon on my new one ^_^. Laters

Long time no see

I thought I would post upon what I've been doing recently as I haven't actually posted for quite a few months. Shocking I know.

Basically, like every other student, I've been working for my keep. Earning enough money working a full time job for the next year of university (can't wait). So as usual I haven't had a great deal of time to find some work experience. I have however been reading up on, and practicing my subject (multimedia ofc).

I recently read a book by Walter Murch called `In the blink of an eye`. This book is spectacular. He gives views that I could not have understood through sheer wisdom and experience, something someone like me cannot gain quite so early on in this type of career. The book is based upon his thoughts about film editing and how it has changed from analogue to digital and linear to random access. The book gave me valuable knowledge on the area, and I doubt I will look at films in quite the same way again. Great stuff and I recommend it to anyone interested in films.




Ive also been practicing my "tool set" as my tutor likes to say. The online tutorials and playing around with different ideas has added to my knowledge. Recently Ive been using photoshop more and more. Il put up this example of my eye. I took this photo ages ago because I couldn't work out what colour my eye was (yeah I know silly really). My eye colour is a dull grey / green. So I thought I would play around with different techniques to boost the colour. To make this, I created multiple layers of the same image and choose overlay. This gave it a more colourful look. I then created a new layer and started subtly painting the eye with blues, greens, reds and yellows. Then by adding a Gaussian blur, it allowed me to meld those colours into the eye. So although the eye colour is changed, it doesn't look horrendously overdone. Click the image to get a bigger image and More detail.

Anywho, Soon I'l be starting my second year and I'l be moving into audio visual production, can't wait. I think I might create a fresh blog, bigger / better / bolder, to compliment my new work. It will come soon. Later.

Finished Identities Interactive

I almost forgot to talk about my finished identities project. I had been so caught up in it's creation and getting it completed for the deadline, I completely forgot about writing up a finished post.

Overall I'll say firstly that I'm very happy with the outcome of this project. I took previous techniques that I had already used in other multimedia work and Incorporated them into this project. Techniques such as stop motion and a go-to-and-stop type of storyline for the flash. I was able to create an interface based on the guitar hero fret board. The 5 buttons each represented a different part of my identity that collectively makes up a picture about myself. These included: my avatar, multimedia / stopmotion, Music, Games and Juggling.

Being able to pick up software quickly, I was able to use flash to my liking. Not to say that it was easy at all, many times just one piece of code out of place took me ages to fix! Flash worked well for the task at hand.

By choosing to make my interactive more like stopmotion, flash could run the pictures smoothly in a coherent fashion to give what seems like animation. Although animation was not required for this part of the project, I did include previous work such as my avatar and its environment to prove I could used 3D studio max. That said, i didn't feel it neccecary to create animation for the movement of the fingers. By animation fingers it would have taken much longer and the finished effect wouldn't have been as good, personaly. This would have been due to me having to create the whole hand and fret board. Not a simple task.

On the downside, the only major problem I had was choosing where I should put the logo. It just didn't seem to fit in anywhere, user testing also confirmed this. So I decided to put it at the end. This seemed to work best.

I will try upload the complete intereactive, however I did not embed the video (instead a progressive download) because if I did the framerate would have been all wrong. But enough about excuses, the screenshots should give an idea for now. The upload will come soon, when I can work out where my server space is at the uni. It's really hard to find arg! But it will be up soon enough ^_^

More machinima css source

OK well, its not strictly machinima. Ive been making another counter strike source vid, to help along with my editing skills. I learnt a few things from this one which I didn't know before, so I would say the effort has been worthwhile.

Althought not strictly machinima, since it doesn't really have a story line, it still falls into this category. An extract from Wikipedia :

machine cinema, is a collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software. Engines from first-person shooter and role-playing simulation video games are typically used

Im just sorting out its compression right now so it will fit on youtube in a recognisable clip (because youtube resolution quite frankly is pants)

I have uploaded the high quality file here for anyone who wants to see it in its glory: http://files.filefront.com/testforcssidentitiesavi/;10446330;/fileinfo.html

As a matter of fact, filefront now has streaming capability, (personaly much better then youtube (one better then both of them was divix stage 6 until it got closed down because it wasn't popular enough, that one was AMAZING!)anywho...) So I will embed it below.

testforcssidentities.avi

Website research / the FWA / part 2

Heres another website that caught my attention. http://bravia.sony.eu/bravia.html
. If you've seen the sony bravia adverts for thier tvs you'll know what im talking about. These are the people who have created some amazing adverts such as bouncing thousands of bouncy balls down the streets and making clay coloured bunnies come to life.

soz will finish this off soon.

Logo / Brand research

Since I will be adding a logo / brand to my interactive identity piece of work, I thought it necessary to look up a little on the subject before designing one myself.

The term "brand" actually comes from a Norse word "brandr" which means "to burn". This method was used by farmers who would brand and animal by burning a mark onto the skin. Therefore making identification easier.

"Today, branding is the process by which a company, a product name or an image becomes synonymous with a set of values and aspirations such as youthfulness, independence, quality or performance." quote from one of my lectures.

As brands progress they seem to get simplified:





I think this is ultimately a good thing. However, I think this progression is not always necessary, yes it must reflect on modern times and the modern world. But I think these have only been simplified because of the duration of time these logos have been around. As people make the association of the logo with the company, it’s then possible to edit the original to something more clean. For example shell, at first was represented by a shell. But overtime this shell has been simplified to something easy to remember. I think this is the key.

Website research / the FWA / part 1

The FWA (www.thefwa.com (duh)) is a great website. It gives weekly and monthly awards to inovative websites that push the boundries of internet content and interactivity. So where better to look for website research then here. I will give an overview of soem websites that I personaly like (and one that I don't like) to give me an understanding of what works well online.


"Pieces" Matt Titone online portfolio

This website is an online portfolio of the work produced by Matt Titone, a graphic designer and art director.



First impressions:

First impressions give a view of a simplistic website. Neat and compact with not to much cluter on screen. It is all very organised and well spaced out, perfect to me, as a user, to like.

Ease of use:

A menu system allows for the user to navigate differnt areas of the portfolio. All labeled and easy to gain access to. At anytime you wish to go to a different area, just mouse over the menu icon and submenus come out. Very hand, instead of having to keep going back and forward all the time.
Music sounds can become frustrating after a while with thier inevitable quirky beeping sounds when you click for the next page will start to get on your nerves. Luckly the creator has thought of this and allows the option to turn this off.

Realevnt:

A clean simplistic online portfolio means that the content itself must be good. This persons work is very good. As a graphics designer the art work that he produces is very professional and works well with a white background. This makes it stand out more.

Content organisation/Layout:


As I've said before, the layout is mostly simple with a well structured menu. Extra features that have been included to the design of the website have been that of a keyboard. You can scroll through the content of his portfolio quickly with keyboard shortcuts. I think this works well as the user has less to think about when it comes to where you have to click.

Design in regards to the brand/identity of company:

Portfolio works well as there is not much litter about the screen. However there is little to suggest an identity connection between the website and the portfolio creator. Only a picture at the begining of the person.

Ident Project 2 / Part 3

Here’s the next update on my project so far.

Over the last few days I’ve been battling it out with flash to try and get my videos and music to work fluidly. Took me a while, (and a few trips to the vlp software tutorials) but I managed to get it working really well ^_^. I’m very happy at how it’s looking right now. I managed to get 4 tracks playing when you press the red button. Well, not all at once (duh, would sound terrible). By pressing the red button another menu will come up giving the user a choice of 4 of my selected tracks. Here you can stop the tracks or alternatively go back to the main interface menu and keeps the track playing. YAY:



Unfortunately I've only managed to do two of the five buttons. I’ll be working on the third & fourth tomorrow. I will be trying to get another video and a logo for my identity project.

That said, I have actually been doing a lot of work for this. My layers are starting to really add up, and with my computer having a good old 15 inch screen, I’m starting to find it hard to see it all in front of me:



That’s basically what I’ve been up to over the last few days. Hehe.

Laters

Ident Project 2 / Part 2

So now that we are well underway into our last term here at Trent, I thought I should really be getting on with some more work. So far I’ve not posted much on my blog about my current project so I thought I'd give an update on how it's going.

I decided to have an interface compromising of a Guitar Hero guitar fret board, with the 5 different colours. I decided to go with this since, well firstly, it’s one of my favourite games, and secondly it fits the bill perfectly. The 5 coloured buttons can be used as the 5 interactive objects. Great!

I have been playing around with flash recently to get to grips with it, before taking this course I had never used flash as such so already I’m quite impressed with what you can do with it.

The interface is now working nicely, when you hover over the buttons and animation occurs which moves one of the fingers to the button being hovered over. It then pauses while hovering over the button to see if the user would like to actually click this button with the mouse (and thus continue onto something else i.e. One of the identity boxes). Then if the user clicks the button It will open up the next part. If you move the mouse off the button then it will go back to the main scene where the hand is simply holding the fret board.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea:

Ident Project 2 / Part 1

Ok so I’ve been sooooo slow to start this one. I have had a few ideas popping round my head for a while but never bothered to write them down or formulate them into anything good. But now I think I've got it!

Well I guess I should start with explaining project 2. Basically we have to create an interactive flash piece that will represent our identity. So how best to do this! Time to upload some pictures.

Here are some sketches and ideas:

A new term a new post / Careers

So I've been back for about a week and a half now for my last term. I had a review which went well, putting me in the right direction for my next year, which I hope to be doing AV production as my pathway. So I'm happy.

I've not posted for a while (nice peaceful Easter break) but now its down to business. I thought I would post about a future career pathway in AV production.

So I started as I usually do: with the Internet. I looked around a few various sites seeing whats what, and what kind of jobs there are in the industry where I'm hoping to work.

One that caught my eye was that of an editor. Basically they work with the director of the film/documentary/tvshow etc in order to create a piece of work that flows with the narrative. I think wikipedia is probably better explaining it then me:

"Film editing is an art of storytelling practiced by connecting two or more shots together to form a sequence, and the subsequent connecting of sequences to form an entire movie. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema and which separates film making from all other art forms that preceded it (such as photography, theater, dance, writing, and directing). However there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms such as poetry or novel writing. It is often referred to as the "invisible art," since when it is well-practiced, the viewer becomes so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the work of the editor.

Because almost every motion picture, television show, and TV commercial is shot with one camera per take, every single shot is separated from every other single shot by time and space. On its most fundamental level, film editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling these shots into a coherent whole. However, the job of an editor isn’t merely to mechanically put pieces of a film together, nor is it to just cut off the film slates, nor is it merely to edit dialogue scenes. A film editor works with the layers of images, the story, the music, the rhythm, the pace, shapes the actors' performances, "re-directing" and often re-writing the film during the editing process, honing the infinite possibilities of the juxtaposition of small snippets of film into a creative, coherent, cohesive whole.

Film editing is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages. It can be a laboratory for experimental cinema. It can bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance. It can create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events. It can guide the telling and pace of a story. It can create the illusion of danger where there is none, surprise when we least expect it, and a vital subconscious emotional connection to viewer..."

Looking further into this, I read that work experience as a runner is of great value. It shows you all aspects of av production. Although often only doing meaningless tasks for the production crew, you get a great insight into this type of work and it is seen as essential work experience for anyone wanting to get into AV. So looks like this is where il start ^_^.

Finished Avatar

Ok so here is what I shall be showing in my presentation. This work took FOREVER to render. Mainly because I used a skylight with shadows enabled. Anywho, here it is:



The fly over of the environment took 20 hours to render for just 10 seconds worth of clip, crazy.

I’m quite pleased with how it’s turned out. There is only one thing I’m disappointed about, when I came to animate him to make him move like in my storyboard, I had realised that I collapsed all the entities that make him up. This meant he was just one big blob instead of the carefully built super blob that I had hoped him to be. It also meant I couldn't finish making the morphers for him! Grrr. I made an additional copy from a while back (for safety so I didn’t mess up or lose my work) But that one had been collapsed as well. So I’m quite angry with myself. I didn’t have the time to go back and re-do him again. Oh well...sigh

Anywho, time to go finish of my presentation which is due soon. I’m feeling quite ill and weak which sucks as I don’t want it to affect my performance in my presentation. ARG!

Vainty Lair

Ok, since its taking a lifetime to render anything from 3D studio max, I thought I’d watch a bit of 4OD (channel 4's online on-demand TV). I’ve started to watch a program called "Vanity Lair". (This is related weirdly to identity)

In this program, 10 people reside in a house and fight it out to win and become the most beautiful person. Each one of the individuals thinks they are highly attractive.

So how is this relevant to identity?

Well, I noticed that when they had to rate people on attractiveness, it wasn't always based upon physical appearance. It was how they acted; their personality and how they came across that really affect people’s decision. So although you may be the most attractive person in the world, which admittedly might get your foot in the door for some things, it really isn’t that important.

This is partly why I’ve made my avatar the way he is. He clearly doesn't represent me at all, not physical at least, but on the other hand, I’ve tried to animate him to give him a personality.

I read another book recently by Edward De Bono which also supports this. His book is called "How to have a beautiful mind". I will give the synopsis since it pretty much sums it up:

"We spend a fortune on clothes, cosmetics, diets and workouts - even surgery - to make our bodies more attractive. Yet we hardly consider the one thing that enhances everyone's appeal. It costs nothing, takes very little time, and without it even the most physically beautiful person will be unattractive: it is a beautiful mind. No matter how stunning you are, if your mind is full you have no hope of impressing people in any situation"

Your identity is how you are perceived by other people,if we did not have speech and a way of expressing ourselves then looks would mean everything! But since this isn’t the case, Identity is what people are able to see.

Since I can animate my avatar, I’ve decided to give him a little bit of personality (however little it may be) because what you can perceive is just that. One example where looks mean everything is graphic design. Here there is nothing but imagery to portrait identity, so all emphasis is put into the design and look of it instead.

Anywho, hope that made some sort of sense ^_^. Read it again if not hehe.

The Environment

I liked the idea of having a non-realistic environment. Since my character is very unlike me in physical appearance, I thought the environment needed a bit of a touch up.

I decided to have it in the style of a game: Cartoony, bright and most of all unrealistic, but at the same time visually pleasing. I’ve therefore tried to incorporate these aspects into my environment. I’ve chosen to do this as I personally really do enjoy games!

One example are the trees. I based these on the game from Paper Mario:


Here is what my environment actually looks like:



Yesterday, and well, until today, I rendered a fly over of this environment with a sky light put in with shadows enabled and it took 20 HOURS!!!! This was for about 10 seconds worth of clip, not good! I was planning to animate him in this lighting but looks like that’s not going to happen since my presentation is on Tuesday! There just physically isn’t enough time to do it then render. I may have to change the lighting unfortunately... sigh but it looks so cool.

Storyboard

I decided to make a storyboard for my avatar, since he doesn’t represent me in any way shape or form (since that is the point I’m trying to get across!) he should at least have a bit of my personality, so I wrote up a storyboard to capture a little essence of me ^_^:





Hopefully il be able to implement this fully in 3D studio max, but that’s always easier said than done.

It's too bright!

Today we had a lecture with David Downes who specialises in interactives. While I was sitting in lecture Rob had his laptop open and Kane showed us some cool lighting effects such as a "sky light". Now, this light is absolutly amazing. Especially if you have to shadows turned on. There is one problem with it however, which is that it takes a lifetime to render just one frame! I think I will use this in my final piece but il have to leave at least a day or two to fully render everything. Here is what it looks like, click on the pic itself to enlarge:

Avatar - the morphers have arrived!

Today I started to implement morphers into my avatar. A morpher is a copy of the original that has been edited to look different. The original can then reference itself back to the morpher. This allows me to easily change the appearance of my avatar without moving every little tiny bit. We learnt how to do this in a seminar a while back with the bbc3 worm ident, and I must say a big thank you to Andy Love for that. It’s SUCH a time saver, and it looks better too! I’m excited now as to how my little dude will turn out.

Here are some of the morphers below the original:



One problem I’ve come across with morphers is that they can’t seem to do multiple morphers with one button; well at least I haven’t found it yet. So as I move the mouth and face, the blobs that are attached to his body don’t move! I can tell you I am not going to move every little one individually, not after I’ve learnt morphers ^_^. I got around this by actually attaching them to the body itself. By doing this, I could move my morphers around and it wouldn't just be affecting the blobby body but also the extra bits on him too, making him more realistic, well, a more realistic living blob then before ha. Now I just have to work out how to attach the eyes and still keep the move ability of the eye-lids. hmmmm

Avatar mapping / altering

Still playing around with my avatar, I made some texture and bump maps in photoshop for the body and the warty lump like things that cover him. This is what he looks like now:



I think hes coming along nicely. I've still yet to add the morphers so I can easily animate him. Soon though!

My avatar progression

I have decided to use the blob guy as my avatar! I can’t wait to start animating the little guy. This is how I’ve been getting on so far:



As with the BBC ident worm, I decided to start with a cylinder. From there I "tapered" it and gave him a slight curve. I converted it to an editable poly which then meant I could make the eye holes and most of all his lumpy body. I Inset and bevelled the teeth and coloured them white. That was.... well the easy part.

Then I moved onto the eyes. This is where I started to have some problems, I thought I could just whack a sphere in the hole, map it with a simple texture, and be done with it. Nooo. It just didn't want to work. Well it did work but it was really quite rubbish, so I decided to model it around a real eye:


I made each of the parts separately and joined them together to make a complete eye. The cornea is quite cool as it reflects light, it’s not just a flat eye like my other one, to make it I put the opacity of a map down and then put up the secular and glossiness up. It worked out much better giving a more realistic eye. I’m pleased

So far so good, the environment will come soon, I've already learnt how to make terrain using certain tools so that should cut out sometime. Anywho, that’s him for now, he’s a bit gob smacked by the looks of things, but soon il start using morphers to make him move about. Can't wait

Slugsy

I forgot to put this up. We made this a week or two back in one of our seminars. Our task was to create an animated cartoon worm much like the one from the BBC3 idents.
Here is what the BBC3 worms look like, funny little guys:



So this is what I came up with. I tried to animate him a bit, but unfortunately I just couldn't resist killing him at the end :( oh well. I gave him a good run:



I did this using 3D studio max again, I’m starting to become more and more familiar with it the more I use it. I started off with a cylinder and worked from there adding and carving his shape.
I then added a modifier called "turbosmooth" which makes him look all nice and round. I then had to use a modifier called "morpher" which I messed up at first but eventually got the hang of. What you can't see in the below picture is the several copies of the worm which contributed towards the movement. I hid them all for when I rendered the piece. Each one was altered so I could change the original and animate him with greater speed and accuracy. It basically meant that I didn’t have to move every little vertex point! So I was very happy to have learnt that from the seminar.


Anywho, must be getting on with my actual avatar. Laters.

The visual story

I’ve been reading this book called "the visual story: seeing the structure of film, TV and new media". It’s written by Bruce Block. This book is great and very relevant to what I’m doing; it was also on the reading list (duh!). But I thought I would give a little detail about it.

Ok, so this book is about film and TV production. We produce film and TV by editing
video clips and joining them together to create a seamless visual story. The editing is affected by 7 basic visual components. These must be taken into consideration to create the perfect show. These are Space, Line, Shape, Tone, Colour, Movement and Rhythm.

After being introduced to the 7 visual components, Bruce goes on to explain how each of these used together can create clear visual grammar, thus producing a better finished piece.

This book has really cleared things up about films and other visual media. I highly recommend reading it if you're into AV as it gives a really good in depth perspective of visual media. Top marks.

Morph concept

Well, after having the usual glance at youtube, I came across this. It's quite amazing:



"Morph is a concept demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. Morph can sense its environment, is energy harvesting and self cleaning .
Morph is a flexible two-piece device that can adapt its shape to different use modes. Nanotechnology enables to have adaptive materials yet rigid forms on demand.
It is also featured in the MoMA online exhibition "Design and the Elastic Mind". It has been a collaboration project of Nokia Research Center and Cambridge Nanoscience Center."


Whether or not it will be implemented for certain in the future, this looks so damn cool! Just thought id mention it ^_^.

The walker!

In our latest seminar we got to make a 3d walking thing. This was at first rather complicated. But as usual, became easier after playing around with it. The main point of the seminar was to get a better understanding of hierarchies. Not only that but we learnt about IK solvers. This is where the computer works out which end of your joints you want to move and how the joined components should act accordingly. It makes life so much easier when animating, you don’t have to move every individual part that would take a lifetime. So here it is:



I looped it a few times because to walk cycle is about 16 frames. Not very long I know, but once you have one cycle you can loop it as many times as you like. Unfortunately I think this little dude has a limp. Oh well. ^_^

Online avatar diary - part 3

This week in my adventures of seal online, I’ve had a grand old time. Met some new people, discovered some new towns/environments and even found a hairdresser! I actually need to get my hair cut in real life, oh well. Instead of posting a ton of pictures I decided to have an embedded slideshow. Much cleaner ^_^

So I start my journey looking for other areas and environments, firstly because I’m a little bored of the town I’m in (Elim) and secondly for a little research for my own environment I will need to make. I came across a wagon driver who tells me I can travel to any of the other main towns for a fee, so why not. I found two new towns which are Zaid; a nice icy mining town, and Madeli; just a big circus really. Neither of which had much of a civilization. Two more ghost towns to add to the list. It seems the main place where people congregate is Elim, the largest of all the towns and the one with the best facilities.

While travelling from town to town, I bumped into someone of very similar qualities, avatar wise. This guy was, like me, a warrior. We were wearing almost identical clothes and armour and were about the same level. So I started up a chat with him. He was in America and the time for him was 3 in the morning! I think he needed some sleep. But I was just asking why he chose to make his avatar the way he did. He said he personally liked the cutesy anime like avatars of this game, the way you could have outrageous hair was “great”. He made the avatar look how his alter ego would look, in real life he had black hair, but in game it was the total opposite, a bright white. He added me as a friend so I could talk another time, but said he had to go since he was levelling with a friend in real life.

After that I wandered round and came across a barber. For a fee I would be able to change how my avatar looked. The rarer hairstyle cost more money from prices ranging of 100,000 to 1 mil. I’d rather not pay that much ^_^.

Well thats this weeks up date. One more to come. The next one will blow your mind!

More 3D studio max

I’ve been playing around with 3DSM some more recently. I decided to have a little go at a space scene. This is what I came up with:



Saturn's ring looks a little funky but at least it looks like Saturn.

Ideas for my avatar

Ive done some mind mapping and sketches towards my avatar. Im still trying to figure out what hes going to look like and why, so here are 3 pages that ive done so far:

My colourful little tree

The 3rd thing we made in 3D studio max (3DSM) was a tree. This was made a while ago, and have no idea why it hasn’t been posted before! anywho its here now.

It was good practice for 3DSM, as i had to play around with mapping and modelling. I also added a camera and started to learn the basics of rendering for a camera's view point. Sorry if you think the camera is a bit dodgy, it was my first go and will become much much smoother in time. But yea i found it a little hard at first to fiddle with the camera, but after a while it became a little easier.

Little things you can notice are the bump map; the yellow bits of the bark are raised slightly. And also the little island my tree is perched upon was made using contours and the terrain tool, which i thought was quite cool.

This kind of tree could be used in my environment for my avatar. Our avatar doesn’t have to be life like in anyway, Hence why my tree is not life like at all ^_^.

Here it is:

Squidy!

I finally got around to re-making my squid. I unfortunately lost him before due to a broken hard drive. Oh well. But now he lives again so it’s all ok!

It was rather handy that I lost him, as I went over the stuff I have previously done, it meant that I had to re-remember and re-learn it again. Which was good. Just means when I come to finish off my 3D avatar it will all become easier for me ^_^.

Anywho heres the little guy:

Being connected

Wow I swear this is harder then writing an essay! Ok, so our last lecture was about being connected as an interstitial node. Il try and explain what it all means and what I think about it.

We looked at becoming an interstitial node. What this means is how do we know each other, how do we link ourselves to one another in a way we can relate. Well, to give some help explaining Il delve into a bit of history. Modernism and Post Modernism.


From what I understood in the lecture, Modernism is an ordered, linear way of understanding things. It’s a way of thinking in which everything is correct and in the right place if thought about when using one method. Up until the renaissance, modernism was the primary way of how we saw things. At that time, from the late 1800's to the mid 1900's, Christianity and classical science were the most domineering ways of seeing things. These things were art, literature, architecture and music.
Post modernism on the other hand is different. Simply put, it means there are a lot of different ways in which we can observe and understand something. Instead of having just one way of thinking, such as religion, it has multiple ideas coming from different areas, for example, modern science.


Since we now live in a Post Modernist world (well, Modernism is still around but not as much) everyone has their own voice, their own way of thinking. So how can we link all these ideas up? How do we each become an interstitial node?


A quote that will make this clearer:

"Cultural codes rather than individual voices"

It is basically saying that to become connected and to be able to understand each other we must speak a cultural code. If everyone has an individual voice, then no one will understand or link together what has been said, this is where my next quote comes in:



"There is one common language, the language of the hypertext [the culture of real virtuality]. Cultural expressions left out of the hypertext are purely individual experiences. The hypertext is the vehicle of communication, thus the provider of shared cultural codes" (Manuel Castells)

In our modern society this hypertext is a way of linking our ideas together from person to person. If you are able to speak it, use it and manipulate it, then you will be able to get your "individual voice" and your ideas across using this common language (also referred to as culture code in the first quote). You can therefore become and interstitial node. However is also says "Cultural expressions left out of the hypertext are purely individual experiences". So how do you get these cultural expressions and ideas into the hypertext and onto the cultural code highway.

To explain how you can link ideas from one to another I will use a basic story. Let’s say your name is A and you’ve met someone called C. C can talk to you and respond to you. However, there is an idea you have, a new way of thinking; you’ve come to this new thing by the influences and experiences you have had. C has not had these influences and experiences and can therefore not understand your new idea. You are both using cultural codes so can understand each other and you are using this common language as a tool for getting C to understand A. However there is a piece missing, a link in between the two which will bridge the gap. This is where B comes in. B has had the influences and experiences of both A and C. He can therefore link the two together by describing A's new idea to C in a way that he will understand.

That’s what I think is meant by becoming an interstitial node. By networking and growing these networks, making more and more links between the different nodes is how you project your ideas across. One example of a network/node like system is a rhizome. This plant has no beginning or end, instead it grows by sending out roots/shoots from its nodes in any direction, linking them up for more strength.




Another quote from the lecture:


"According to Armin Medosch, in an interconnected environment, individuality or expression are neither important. What's important are the new forms of sharing, spreading and planning the digital work. With collective actions this cultural domain progresses in its entirety, because sharing and collaborating mean learning from each other."

This is trying to explain the finer points of progression and development in digital work. It is saying that by combining and sharing ideas, we are able to make new and better things. Evermore reason for having lots of interstitial nodes. By sharing with other people in these networks of nodes you are able to bring your own "cultural expressions" (from the second quote) and mix them with the current nodes to make something new.

Here is one last bit to add to all this reflection about being connected. I’ve taken this from the lecture itself.


“Weblogs: Content Is King
Weblogs have shifted the focus away from personal presentations of content to personal collections of shared meaning.”

This is an example of how our sharing and combining of ideas has created something new. Our weblogs could be total tosh and completely irrelevant to anything. However fortunately we’ve come to understand that by picking and choosing parts of a network (which for us is the internet) that they will link our personal ideas to the rest of the network.

Anywho, that was fun, but it also took about 2 hours to get my head around. At least it’s much much clearer in my mind now. Happy days!

Online avatar diary - part 2

I’ve still been persevering with seal online for my avatar research. All I can say is so far so good. It’s much better then second life in many ways, but mainly because it doesn't crash and is dead easy to gain access to. Another thing to mention is that I re-downloaded fraps again, and its working like a charm. Fraps is a program which allows you to record in-game footage. This allowed me to take a few clips of my adventures!


This week I have been travelling around the bigger towns of the online world. The two main towns are Elim and Lime. I first travelled to Lime after reaching level 11 to see what was what. Turns out its kind of a ghost town there, very few people to talk to. That was a shame, it was a quaint little town ^_^.
After trying to have a civil chat with anyone, I gave up hope with Lime and travelled to Elim. Upon reaching Elim, I was shocked at its cartoony beauty. A nice big ol stony town with tons to do and people to see. I ventured round and started trying to talk to people. Now, this is a fairly hard thing to do it seems since people don’t want to sit still for very long.


Luckily I started talking to a knight about 20 or so levels higher than me in nice shiny armour. We talked about ourselves, where we were from, how old we were, what we did for a living etc. Turns out this guy was older than me at the ripe old age of 32! He lived in United Arab Emirates! wow. I asked if he tried to make his avatar to resemble himself. He replied laughing, obviously since the customisability in this game isn’t exactly fantastic, but you can style your hair and choose a class that could possibly resemble the type of person you are. For example a mage is cleaver and intelligent, a warrior is strong and brave; people could choose these classes and have neither of these traits in real life.
But no he said he didn't. He was a nice guy though, even though hiding behind some random made avatar, he seemed genuinely nice. That being said, trying to talk to some high level characters was impossible, they just push you aside as if your scum!

After having a wee talk to the locals I found a huge mass of people. They had setup their character to act like a store. Over their names would be a description of what they were selling. They were all AFK (away from keyboard) as they had just left their characters on to show items they had for sale. All of which sold items at extortionate prices!

So yeah, that’s basically what I did this week on seal online. Update coming next week. Oh I also found some random pigs...

Moveable Projected Displays

In a recent lecture, Deborah one of our lecturers, showed us a clip of a moveable projected dislay:


We were asked to think of ways this new technology could be used in the modern world. As it has not been fully implemented into any product yet, there are numerouse areas which this application can be used.
Firstly it provides a cheap way of doing this actual thing of tracking & projection, all that is needed is a projector, software and of course tracking sensors with a tablet board. Some modern laptops today are tablet based, this provides much more flexibilty in the way you can use your laptop:

You can use this type of tablet laptop to do many things which a normal computer can't, such as write or sketch. This new projected display could be a cheap way of producing a tablet laptop which would still keep the computing power but have much more flexibility and control.

It could also be used as an educational tool. For example, a room could be fitted with multiple projectors. These projectors could be used with multiple display boards for each of the students. Or alternatively, the board at the front could be interactively active. This meaning the board while already being interactive and touch sensitive, could also be moved around to demonstrate concepts. One example could be physics such as gravity. By moving the board around, you could simulate different types of physics.

Other ideas could include simulation and 3d holograms. A way of creating a 3d image which could interactivly be used to train upon, or used. Such as flying a plane or operating on an organ.

Online avatar diary - part 1

As you may have seen what was written yesterday, we were asked to explore an online environment with a 3D avatar, to interact and communicate with its residents and so on.


Now the primary choice given to us was second life. All I can say is that this program is visually displeasing, hard to get onto, and crashes endlessly! So I looked around for an alternative that didn’t require me to make some sort of a blocky human form. Looking round other student’s blogs on my course, I have come across seal online. Now, this game is quite animeish and cartoony, perfect for creating a wee little avatar.


I have to say it was so much easier to download and create an account, something that second life couldn’t get the hang of. But once online, I joined one of the 2 servers (yeah only 2, world of warcraft had something like 200+) and started to create my little me for the first time.



I chose from the multiple jobs that my character could have, to take the one called WARRIOR. I know, it sounds childish, haha but I couldn't not choose it when it came with a big sword the size of the avatar itself ^_^. So this guy has lots of strength, dodge and agility to help him battle evil. Something I am not in real life, but since this is an alter ego I can do whatever I wish, how fun. I named him spunky because that was the first thing that came to my head, not only that but people might have a little giggle over the name and possibly laugh with me and not at me.


On entering the world, I am confronted with a cartoony environment and funky style of shading on everything. I first find out I need to level my avatar in order to become stronger, learn new skills and to gain better armour & clothing. I talked to a few people with difficultly since the interface was all very new to me. But once I worked it out I was chatting to other avatars with glee. Many were new like me and we all ended up asking each other how stuff worked in the game. Contributing to each other’s knowledge until we all had a brief picture on how to do things.

Travelling through this new world, I discovered that I was named as a beginner, and it's not until lvl 10 that I’m allowed to be free in the world. So I travelled around my new beginner’s zone. Discovering that I can alter my avatar with new items from the store, or if I’m lucky items can drop off creatures I have defeated. I started to lvl up to my goal of 10! I did many things, I fished, I fought, I found. However no luck in actually catching any fish (I was using tree sap as bait. Didn't go too well :S). Gathering quest items and random gems to sell to the store vendor for hard earned cash. I then could buy some of the more interesting items. ^_^ oo exciting.










Once I had levelled to my new found glory of the level that is 10! I was starting to get some new items to customise my avatar and have a choice in what he looked like. So I put some earmuffs on him, gave him some nice new armour and also gave him some nice mean metal gloves that makes him look like a real warrior ^_^.