ONE PIXEL TV

The End!?

2008-06-10T17:49:00.004+01:00

I've been asked to finish my Blog, so here it is:

The End

'It's been swell, but the swelling's gone.' Tank Girl

It is difficult to summarise the whole year in a short sentence. At times it has been tough, sometimes it's been fabulous and other times confusing. All in all it's been worth the hard work and dedication to complete the year.

All projects for this year have been challenging my skills and knowledge of multimedia. They made me realise, that I made the right choice to follow the multimedia path as a career. Time will only tell whether I’ll succeed and make good living doing so. I’m determined and positive that I will.

And so on...

2008-05-21T02:18:00.002+01:00

Further progress made - click link below, for latest update

http://www.flatproduct.co.uk/nwi/

Dissertation

2008-05-10T19:21:00.004+01:00

I can't believe that I actually finished it. Phew. Until last days of the project I really wasn't sure what to write, I did do a fair bit of research, and read a few books which sort of guided me along. However until the last few hours I didn't know what the final conclusion will be. It came to me a bit like 'EUREKA' moment.

All in all this project, because of the amount of research required and the fact that it was spread over a period of the whole course, was quite hard to accomplish, only time will tell if I was successful at the given task or not as case might be. Writing is not my forte, however once I got stuck in, it begun to flow.

Interaction for sake of communication within complex, digital media systems.

Communication using new media and its interface, does it progress or regress human one-to-one communication ability and skill?

Since new media devices use binary code which is a basic language system maybe just maybe in the future, people might end up talking in binary system, this is purely hypothetical and an extreme way of looking at the future of one-to-one communication. Is this progress or regress, it is hard to judge, hypothetically speaking this might be a way forward to fantastic notion of telepathy, just a next step in conditioning human language, where foreign languages do not exist, miscommunication is impossible and the interface is not required. Currently there are already some studies and research being made to support this theory.

Below is a list of some of the websites that discus this theory in more detail: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psychotronicweapons08.htm

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/technology/s/218/218311_computer_game_tests_for_telepathy.html

http://artificialtelepathy.blogspot.com/2007/01/artificial-telepathy-non-lethal-h-bomb.html

Final - Exam Project - So far

2008-04-18T01:47:00.003+01:00

While researching Interfaces that are meant for communication I thought of this notion "Miscommunicate to communicate", is this what we are doing when text messaging or blogging and posting on Social network sites?

Click this link to see latest updates: http://flatproduct.co.uk/nwi/

Food for thought

2008-04-15T02:28:00.001+01:00

Dialogue Goggles 1968

2008-04-12T14:39:00.012+01:00

Images taken from a book Open Systems:Rethinking Art c.1970

Artist: Lygia Clark

Dialogue Goggles 1968

Colecao Famila Clark ______________________________________________________

The device featured in above image is a great example of how important our senses are in order to successfully communicate with one another, especially the eye contact. Unfortunately I don't have first hand experience of using this device, however I can just imagine how frustrating communication would be. One would probably spend some significant amount of time adjusting field of view to catch the other persons eyesight. Other person would be attempting to do the same hence confusing matters even more, there would have to be an open verbal dialogue between the two and synchronisation would have to occur for them to achieve successful communication. Ironically for them to successfully achieve full sensory communication they need to communicate first using impaired or limited amount of senses.

Such behaviour occurs in video conferencing on line. Before two or more people begin the conference they often spend significant amount of time adjusting the web cam settings (especially manual focus devices), repositioning the camera and them selves, sometimes even the environment that they are in undergoes some changes to enable users to comfortably access and control the camera.

In video conferencing what becomes apparent is that full sensory communication is not possible. This is caused by technological limitations of hardware used (by hardware I mean, computer, camera and Internet connection), and in many cases users limited knowledge of hardware and software used. Also many people that are not familiar with the conferencing technology are standoffish, sometimes embarrassed to use such devices for communication, which makes them appear nervous, insecure and 'not them selves', all of which adds up to, not a best form of communication.

Arguably writing letters as it's been the case in the past to communicate over a long distance isn't the best form, It is slow, it takes long time to compile, post, and for it to be delivered. However one has plenty of time to rethink and adjust the words used hence making the piece that much more expressionate and personal. One thought comes to mind that for the letter to reflect persons feelings and or attitude and the like, writer might need to be fairly articulate and knowledgeable in the art of writing. And have the know how of reading and writing - a very complex media system to understand and be articulate in.

while looking for images for the above text I came across this page on perseption and web cam:

http://www.transparencynow.com/reform/webcams2.htm

Interesting.

Some ideas for my final project

2008-04-10T20:06:00.002+01:00

Follow the link below to view large images

http://flatproduct.co.uk/other_images/

9 lives or what is Second LIfe

2008-04-10T15:32:00.004+01:00

This idea explores notion of 2nd life (the online 3d environment)as part of our 1st (real life). Is second life really secondary or is it just an extension of our real life presented in digital form. Our Life's could be divided in to combination of sub existences, for example: 1st - Home Life 2nd - Work Life 3rd - School Life 4th - Romantic Life 5th - Resting Life 6th - Social Life 7th - Family Life 8th - Leisure Life 9th - Second Life Arguably all of above have a tendency to differ somewhat i.e.: One has a tendency to have slightly different attitude at home in front of their parents (one life), and behave differently when with friends (life number two), however all of these constitute as one life (don't they?)

Have you ever felt like this?

2008-04-09T12:46:00.004+01:00

Interactive Manual

2008-04-09T12:11:00.004+01:00

Manual that when used it has no beginning and no real end until the project is finished, a bit like PDF document with hyperlinks to different sections available at all times, non linear. One chooses where to begin - clicks a particular link to activate an instructional video, which begins at the point that user is at with their project. So if one begins at point 'C', and chooses to do point 'G' the instructions will contain only parts 'C' and 'G', next the user chooses point 'A' so the instructions will only contain information on points 'C', 'G' and 'A', and so on until the project is finalised. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, logistics of creating such a project could be phenomenal, however a LEGO instruction booklet could be adopted to such concept.

Blogger me!?

2008-04-08T14:34:00.007+01:00

I have done it !!! (finished the D&AD project that is)

Below are the final (submitted) images.

Just as a reminder for those of you who don't know what this is about. The four images below are my submissions for D&AD Student Awards 2008 competition http://www.dandad.org/studentawards08/

The brief - Use the power of photography to communicate the many facets of dementia.

Below are links to some of the competitors.....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mackphotographer/sets/72157603652697689/

http://www.kaymay.co.uk/photo/index.php?album=current-projects

1st life in 2nd life?!

2008-03-31T10:48:00.004+01:00

I have spent a lot of time 'playing' 2nd life, and have discovered few interesting facts and 'people'- avatars. What begun to perspire is that 2nd life characters are not really fantasy or fake they are merely reflections of peoples real lives in 3D, so 2nd life allows us to fulfil our fantasies, however our fantasies are part of who we are there for 2nd life is just a part of 1st life.

Who's pixel is it anyway?

2008-03-03T10:23:00.004Z

My pixels are better than yours... are they?

Pixel, my pixel. How are thou?

Professional development project

2008-03-03T04:08:00.005Z

Great. Got to find a client and make him/her like my work so then I can convince them that they will actually benefit from my work.... bleh...

Ok. I have got a client, not very good one but it's a client anyhow.

It's a project that I have been working on for some time now, not very successfully due to my clients incompetence or client not being available, now I know how frustrating it must have been for all those people that where crazy enough to employ me in the past. What goes round, comes around.

The project is to build a website/web page for restaurant menu, which also promotes organic ingredients from India. The site has to have scope for expansion as the business will be expanding to include other services.

We have agreed on colour scheme, look and feel, amount of pages that will be included. One thing I have not been able to obtain from my client is the content for the website. Because of that I have not been able to evaluate amount of work that I will need to put in to it, hence I can not price the job.

My client managed to cancel something like 5 consecutive appointments. _______________________________________________________

At last my client has arrived on time and on the date arranged. Full of all sorts of excuses and reasons why he couldn't make it before. Oh well. That is just another reality of working freelance I suppose.

Client liked changes that I have made to the original ideas, Logo, web page layout, color scheme if you want to see latest updates to the above mentioned follow this link http://flatproduct.co.uk/mika/ and http://flatproduct.co.uk/indiaorganics/

D&AD - photography - Alzheimer's

2008-02-25T11:16:00.007Z

This the state of my appartment while working on the D&AD project, I will be glad when it's over. D&AD - photography - Alzheimer's. Got some ideas, need props and good photos. Oh dear, this is a big project.

Work so far...

this is just a test shot, to see if it's worth me working more on this image. After three hours of cutting bits out of this book, my thumb swelled up and it hurts!

I think it was worth it. Got one more book to cut up, and then I'm ready for a photo shoot.

This is a set for another picture that I am producing

and another one - this image after some deliberation has been scrapped from the repertoire. Shame. It's a nice image, but it just doesn't say what it supposed to. Oh well, another one for the wall.

Transmediale

2008-02-25T10:26:00.005Z

WOW... what a great event, I'm sure most will agree. Loved the animations, films, interactive music shows, seminars, installations. My favorite must be the blade attached to a computer installation sculpture. In my opinion this encapsulates the essence of computer/digital interactivity. Man putting computer/machine in charge of, what is essentially supposed to be mans decision or action - is this wise? I believe that, that is what this piece is exploring.

long, long time ago in a blog even further away.

2008-02-25T10:23:00.001Z

It has been a long time ago since I've updated this thing, not through the lack of not wanting to. I have been busy with all of the projects running at the same time, and trying to have live beyond university, bleh...

dj or the egg - dj scotch egg

2008-01-24T16:20:00.000Z

Minimal sounds = minimal production?

What is minimal sound? - it's not just 'white-noise', it is a singular note, instrument or maybe a chord, these are used in such a way as to fill in empty space with these simple sound and create something that might resemble what we call - music.

DJ Scotcheg's minimalistic approach to art in general, is inspirational and refreshing in the age where noise - music is generated using many samples of sounds, voices, beats, instruments etc...

Make sound not noise, make music not sound?! Music is sound, sound is noise. Minimisation + Repetition = Creation

Art for technology or is it technology for art?

2008-01-04T21:49:00.000Z

What was first Chicken or the Egg?

Does art need techno?

Does techno need art?

Both need each other, however both also exist and function perfectly well without the other. Is this true?

Is art necessary to produce new technology?

Does new technology inspire new art?

2007-12-10T12:31:00.000Z

“Society, Luhman argues, is a system comprised of variety of sub-systems. These are operatively closed and functionally distinct from one another. Each system operates according to its own internal and self-defined rules.”

Systems meaning, rules like communication – languages, country specific traditions, social knishes – Punks or Hippies or even science Physics or chemistry all of the above follow certain line of rules, even something like Punk rock movement follows rules, i.e. hair styles or leather jackets (looking at the aesthetics of Punk Rock) have to follow certain set rules, thus creating a subculture and existing within society which is a system that comprises of many sub-systems, of which all of the above are part of.

Systems within media arts are often used in such a way where one system is used in relation to another system that did not/was not designed for its original purpose, i.e. as in ‘Semiconductor’ art installation/performance, they use data that is originally decoded to create a digital image, to generate sounds. Data for image decoding is a form of a system, this applied in to a sound decoder creates a sound.

2007-12-06T10:53:00.000Z

1. Are we, as people being forced in to interaction. Advertising

2. Who is watching who?

3. Freedom within the boundries of preset/preprogrammed structure

4. Audience is the actor

5. What is cybernetics

Some ideas for Interactive instalation

2007-12-04T18:02:00.000Z

Reverse Technology

Mechanical Space Invaders

Emergency Keyboard

Touch Sensitive Cup

Instant Messaging

Idea-Generating Exercises

2007-12-01T19:57:00.000Z

Q1 - What traditional ritual have you participated in, or are aware of, that reminds you in some way of an interactive narrative? What is it about this ritual that you think is like a computerized interactive experience?

A1 - Christmas is almost always prepared in advance, basic narrative/process cook food, dress the tree/house, wear a posh frock, eat, drink, presents, watch TV, etc... This process has a tendency to follow the same script every year, with variations IE. different menu, guests, clothes - but the actual ritual remains the same. Computerized experience is in many way very similar one follows a preset (by the programmer) plot, however one can get to the same outcome using many combinations of links, methods etc...

Q2 - What game or sport have you played that you think could be adapted to a work of interactive entertainment? What would remain the same, what would have to be changed, and in what way?

A2 - When I was a child (not much has changed there) I used to play a ball game called squares, we would draw a big square on the ground which then would be divided in to four even squares, each square is one persons field. The game is quite simple one has to juggle the football within the designated field (small square) to another player without the ball touching the ground or hand touching, if the ball touched the ground in or out of the square the player is out of the game. Any game is essentially INTERACTIVE, I presume that, what this exercise refers to is digital entertainment. Assuming this is true, I believe that what would change is the type of interaction, should this game be converted in to a computer game the interaction would still heavily rely on skill of the player however it wouldn't be as physical (no fancy footwork), this would be replaced with skill and speed of using a computer input device (mouse, keyboard or joystick)

Q3 - What work of traditional storytelling (a novel, a play, a movie, or even a comic book) have you read or seen that contains a narrative technique that could be applied to a work of digital entertainment? What is this technique, and how could it be used?

A3 -

Q4 - Describe some ways that hypertext could be used to deepen the characterization of a fictional character?

A4 -

Q5 - Can you think of any work of traditional entertainment (poem, short story, novel, play, movie, TV show, etc.) that breaks the "fourth wall"? Describe how the fourth wall is broken in this work. Could the fourth wall be broken in a similar way in an interactive work? Why or why not?

A5 - Oliver Hardy in 'Laurel and Hardy' films, breaks the fourth wall by staring in to the camera and making facial expressions as if to say look what I've got to put up with, this is quite disjointed from the action in the film. Action in the movie halts and the viewer becomes aware that Oliver is starring at them and tries to communicate with them directly by addressing them.. This action appears to be totally unnoticed by other actors in the movie, but very noticeable by the audience.

Can this be achieved in interactive/digital work? Good question. The longer I think about it the vaguer the answer becomes. Firstly I thought of the dreaded Microsoft Paper Clip application that definitely attempts to Break the Fourth Wall, by directly asking the user a personal question 'What do you want to do today?", or "Did you mean...?" etc... . This process could be improved by addressing the user by their User Name or First name based on the data entered at Log-On, ie ... "What do you want to do today Peter?"

(as pointed out by Claire the answer below is not correct, above is the corrected answer)

A good example of a traditional entertainment that breaks the 'fourth wall' is a TV sitcom 'Frasier' where the audience sat in front of the TV screen can see at all times what is happening inside of the 'Frasiers' apartment thru an imaginary wall, camera moves around the, what appears to be an city block apartment, always facing one of three walls, it never points towards where the fourth wall would normally be, towards the audience. With digital/interactive work this could be and has been achieved in very similar way if not even more successfully, 'SIMs' game is a good example of this, where the fourth wall quite literally disappears in front of the player as one navigates around the environment. It's more successful because user can choose which wall becomes the fourth wall, as the navigation is three dimensional one could choose to see the stage (game plan) thru the roof, should one choose to.

Minimise to reproduce

2007-11-08T10:49:00.000Z

Technology is endlessly miniaturised, compacted, sped up, made stronger and cheaper. All of the above attributes lead to one thing only - reproduction on grand scale at a fraction of a price and use of minimal resources and time. Great! So as society demands more, smaller, better, cheaper - the factories and their owners oblige and produce lots of duplicates of what ever it is that the public demands. In their enthusiasm at making a profit out of the consumer, inevitably they overproduce, making the particular product even cheaper, to the point of it becoming disposable, imagine what it was like in the late 70's or early 80's, when you received a pocket calculator, or personal stereo, one just wouldn't dream of throwing it away, just because there is as new model available, (unless money is no object).

http://www.genealpha.de/wang/

Now that market has been completely flooded with this products, and they have been replaced with new versions, calculator is included in the mobile telephone, personal stereo is replaced with an MP3 player (another sort of personal stereo), and became disposable. And so on, the mobile telephones are disposable, the MP3 players too, 1 year ago to have 1gig MP3 player was the thing to have, now if it's less than 4gig, it's not worth having.

What Next

2007-11-07T10:53:00.000Z

Technology keeps changing, getting smaller, more and more replicated and replicable. Where is this trend leading us to, is technology forever going to be improved? I say YES, inventions will stay the same until somebody approaches it from a completely different angle and reinvents the 'wheel' again.

Worlds smallest PC that runs Vista

2007-11-05T10:19:00.000Z

This is here and available now http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/16/fujtsu_touts_worlds_smallest_pc/

and some of it's contenders from other manufactures

http://www.hemmy.net/2006/05/02/space-cube-smallest-pc/

http://www.mini-itx.com/

How about a PC that can be intalled in to your wall

http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2007/01/15/a-pc-that-you-can-install-in-your-wall/

And something for the linux fan

http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2007/06/26/calao-usb-9260-worlds-smallest-pc/

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/14/review_sony_vaio_vgn-ux1xn/

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/16/review_ubiquio_701/

Bargain Hunters Essential

2007-10-30T16:43:00.000Z

Digital, wireless, fits in your wallet, saves paper - AdCard A credit card size device for collecting current classified and commercial advertisements As one walks around town with this device in his/hers wallet, information stored at designated locations is wirelessly and automatically transferred in to memory bank of this device for ones perusal at their own leisure. AdCard

Uhmm.....mbrella

2007-10-18T10:45:00.000+01:00

Here is another not really amazing idea. An E-brella (electronic/digital umbrella)

Digital Doormat

2007-10-17T00:56:00.000+01:00

I love the idea of such a mundane object as a Doormat becoming digital. To achieve such thing one should disconnect from convention.

What next?

2007-10-15T10:19:00.000+01:00

Another day, another Pixel

2007-10-04T20:07:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about the future, after many hours of serious thought and deliberation I have come to conclusion, the future is uncertain...... bleh, One thing that is definite, is that our immediate future (at least 10years ahead), will involve more than one pixel around us. They (the pixels) will dominate our lives even more than they are now, they will be smaller, brighter, more colourful, and there will be more of them. Pixel is in the future, future is the pixel..... ! Future is now?!

Pixelation of a kind

2007-10-01T14:46:00.001+01:00

Spending a lot of time in front of the screen has it's drawbacks.

2007-10-01T14:30:00.000+01:00

I am here, watching my pixel blink in front of me. I'm mesmerised