Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the MPM22b category.
Last week already?!
This weekend I worked on my Object as Interface assignment for Theories of Representation. I was expecting its completion to take much longer then it actually did, only about a full day of sitting in front of my computer and I finished it! I chose to take a motorcycle helmet, analyze it and transform it into a new media interface. I thought of using a motorcycle helmet as my object because I’m re-creating two motorcycle helmets in Norm’s class for my final project. For this project I wanted to create something in the realm of new media similar to my Physical Computing project, but that also had some usability. Therefore I thought to integrate a GPS (global positioning system) into the visor of the motorcycle helmet. I needed to research the history of motorcycle helmets for this project, and I must say I’m very disappointed with the lack of helmet history available on the internet, aside from a fifty dollar book on amazon.com which I would not waste my money buying. I used what I could find though and made it work.
This week I’ve also begun catching up on my readings for Theories of Representation and New Media History, the exams are coming up quickly and I better be prepared. I also have Brian and Robert’s projects to work on, and honestly I’m still blanking on any ideas. I guess a whole year of creativity will do that to you, I’m completely drained. Ahhhhh! So much work to be done and so little time. I just remember I have one more project due for Visual Studies and I need to talk to Pierre this week about my ideas. The project is beauty in art, so basically what I find beautiful and make a piece out of whatever medium I want. No ideas on that yet though…Maybe a beautiful watercolour?
My group is meeting with Norm this week to discuss the Daft Punk helmets. Work on those have slowed to a crawl and we really need to get those done, thats my main priority right now. Tonight though I need to finish a mind map that goes along with my Object as Interface assignment, we did mind maps last year in Concepts and Theories with Ed Slopek so this should be a piece of cake to get done. Its been years since I’ve maintained a blog and I must say keeping this one really rekindled my love of blogging. I think I might even continue this next year too, its good to write down ideas but also this blog helped me keep on top of my school work. Reminding me weekly what things I needed to get done.
In the famous words of Jim Morrison “this is the end.”
Week number…??
So close to the end of the semester and even more projects to finish!! How will I survive? Only two weeks until the end…deep breathes and calm blue oceans.
This week my group for the Collaborative Story Explosion completed the daunting task, I though it was never going to end! From my interviews we chose Erin V’s story of being deaf in one ear, but made the character completely deaf. From Erin’s interviews we chose the one she did with Jessica, which helped us greatly because jess was in our group and could really help us with the narrative. Finally from Jessica’s interviews we chose the one she did with her boyfriend on the topic of a man he knew when he was in the army. We then proceed to pick which elements and setting from the interviews we wanted to use in our story explosion. We made our final decision to base the story on a train in China, Jessica was a great help with this because she knew all the technicalities and had first hand experience. The two characters are a couple, Wallace who was in the army and has some crazy ideas, and Sarah who is deaf but can read lips. It took a couple hours to map out our plan, we made an algorithm to help us sort everything out. The hardest part was organizing the writing so it wouldn’t be extremely difficult to put online and have a good flow to it. Heres how the story begins:
“It was a damp and cold morning in Guangzhou, China, and the train station was packed. It was by all means an ordinary day and furthermore ordinary business for a Chinese train station, but one element—or perhaps two—stuck out like a sore thumb. Amidst the bobbing sea of black-hair crowding around the train, two blond heads—pitched noticeably higher than the rest—were weaving and pushing their way through the crowd to get to their platform.
Sara and Wallace were your typical foreign couple living abroad in Asia – Sara had recently finished her degree and was feeling some wanderlust, and had found it easy enough to persuade her long-time boyfriend that he should leave the militia and come teach English with her in the “exotic far east”. They were both blond, blue-eyed, and consequently figures of extreme interest as they’d journeyed through mainland China together in the last year.
Now, climbing aboard a train bound for an airport in Shanghai, they prepared themselves for the strange and unique experience known as: A Chinese Sleeper Train.”
Also I found out this week that my After Affects animation for Visual Studies was chosen to be featured in CineFranco. I was shocked to say the least because I really didn’t think my project was really that good. But, hurrah!
I finished my third project for Flash Programming. It was a game in which you move your character around the space and avoid other characters which make you lose points and find characters that will give you more points. I changed the design of Brian’s original game to a sort of Space Invaders style game. This was a tricky project but in the end I was extremely happy with what I accomplished, I should really stop doubting my abilities!
Best/Worst of Web Design
This weeks project for Ira’s class is finding the best and worst examples of web design. Here are mine.
WORST
http://www.shayesaintjohn.com/
This is website for an independent filmmaker or I guess you could say “video artist”. I found it quite a while ago during my late night internet surfing. I think there was an actual intent to make the site absolutely hideous, because the video art this guy makes are not only crazy but look as though they were produced in the early 90’s which is not actually the case here. I think this is a great example of bad web design for many reasons. The first of which, and probably the most important being there is no layout to the site. The front page is static with ugly serif and sans serif default fonts, all underlinded with a random mix of capitalization and a horrible looping of audio. The colours are puke-tacular, black background with bright lettering makes my eyes bleed. The website has no flow, you click a link and get lost in a maze of different links going to random pages with no clear path, the only way to get back to the homepage is the back button in your browser. After entering the site the horrid gifs and random noise is enough to give anyone a migraine. Therefore : WORST!!!
BEST
I stumble upon this website quite recently and immediately thought it could be categorized as the best in web design. The simplicity of the site is what really gets me. It loads quickly, isn’t overwhelming and gets its message out in a clear manner. It only uses one MAYBE two beautiful sans-serif type through out the web site and flows easily with a green colour scheme. The menu is easy to follow and well organized. Really there isn’t much to say about this website other then it kicks ass. A beautiful example of 21st century web design, and seriously the “don’t click” concept is awesome. I found myself trying to click a couple times to navigate through the site.
Life as a new media student 