Where The Wild Things Are

That was very nostalgic. I liked it. It's always curious to know how these things came about, and of course Toy Story is one of the most revolutionary movies of all time, paving the way for some of my favorite movies ever like Finding Nemo. And this is a great quote: "Think of it as a rare window into the old “wild west” days of computer graphics, when computers ran slow, programmers ran fast, and we all just made it up as we went along, with nothing to go on but some pixels and a dream."


Rawk.

The Rest of NMR

Chapter 16
--"demo or die"
--1968 - Fall Joint Computer Conference, a demonstration of the Augmentation Research Center's work so far, the "mother of all demos"
--After this, the ARC developed programs that went on to overtake the market

Chapter 17

--1970 - Exhibition Software - invited visitors to operate the computers

     --Mostly failed, but some good things came out of it

     --Useful to get artists and technologists in the same room, "cybernetic serendipity"

Chapter 18

--Ezensberger

     --Media produces new forms of complete "intellectual property"

     --All forms of media are melding together to form one

Chapter 19
--Baudrillard - argued against Ezenberger
     --Said a situation won't improve by allowing everyone creative freedom, that will just make it worse

Chapter 20
--Concept of flow is main way to organize television
     --Allows for a fluid combination of programs and commercials
--Television remains a major part of media in our culture

Chapter 21
--Theodore H. Nelson, 1974
     --Computer Lib predicts the rise of personal computers; challenged the purpose of computers at a fundamental level
     --Dream Machines sees computer as a new form of media
          --The essential message was about media and design
--Nelson suggested new media experiences should be published on basically the internet

Chapter 22
--Augusto Boal, 1974, Theater of the Oppressed
--1992, Boal runs for public office
--Boal imprisioned for practicing interactive techniques
--Boal's techniques are effective for creating embodied interaction
--Some of techniques now practiced around the world.

Chapter 23
--Nicholas Negroponte, 1967
     --Founded the Architecture Machine Group at MIT
     --Developed methods of managing data spatially
--1975 "Soft Architecture Machines"
--1985 MIT Media Lab opens with aid of MIT President Jerome Weisne
     --Researches future applications of technologies via academic disciplines
--Structures for human activity are the basis for architecture and human computer interaction
--Negroponte believed users should be empowered by computers
--Co-founder of Wired Magazine!

Chapter 24
--Joseph Weizenbaum, 1964-1966
--Invents Eliza [chatter box system]
     --System can interact and respond to humans using a script called "Doctor"
--He explains the influence computing has had on linguistics
--His specific concern is that people are unable to draw the boundaries between the proper use of computer technology and computer applications

Chapter 25
--Myron Krueger, 1977, Responsive Environments
--"Father of Virtual Reality"
     --Worked on virtual reality concepts and received mixed feelings from the community
     --Losts of critical response for "lack of humanism"

Chapter 26
--Alan Kay and Adele Goldbergm 1977
--Foretold notebook computing
--Almost all the specific ideas for the uses of notebook computing developed in the group that Kay directed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
--Kay believed computers would be used creatively and even by children
--Their group at Xerox PARC developed not only the notebook computer, and the personal desktop computer.

Chapter 27
--Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 1980
--The idea of rhizomatic writing, sometimes used to describe hypertext
--Challenges the reader to consider dualisms
--Foucault calls their writing an introduction to the non-fascist life - "a call to be radical without being sad."

Chapter 28
--Seymour Papert, 1980
--Papert believes in the power of the computer to facilitate educational experiences
--Constructionism
--Mindstorms is a hypothetical conversation between two children who are working and playing with a computer

Chapter 29
--Richard. A. Bolt, 1980
--Multimodal interfaces, combining speech and gesture input, etc.
--Data represented spatially on all graphical computers today
     --Almost always in two-dimensional space
--Multimodal interfaces allows people to communicate with a computer by simultaneously using channels such as speech, gesture, gaze and facial expression

Chapter #30
--Theodore H. Nelson, 1980
--Literary Machines
     --Complete outline of his Xanadu project and the concepts behind it
--In this vision, people will read and write almost everything from and to a global computer network
--Xanadu is the ultimate archive with each element of this archive constantly in process
--The Web is only a slice of this vision

Chapter 31
--Bill Viola, 1995
--Video artists vs interactive video artists
--In the 1960's video appeared to be only lesser version of film
     --His interactive video relates to an instruction manual that makes us consider language anew
--He takes a poetic approach to exploring the video medium

Chapter 32
--Ben Bagdikian, 1983
--Old and new media are becoming increasingly compatible, comparable
--New media is becoming big business, and no longer operates as a marginal phenomenon
--He traces the changes over nearly 20 years in his book "The Media Monopoly"
-6 firms now control all U.S. mass media

Chapter 33
--Ben Shneiderman, 1983
--His idea of direct manipulation
     --Data is being processed, exposed and accessed in a graphically representational way
     --GUI, visual programming environments, etc
     --Relates the computer activity to an ordinary action
-Wrote how it can take a great effort to learn certain specialized direct manipulation interfaces

Chapter 34
--Sherry Turkle, 1984
--She noticed how video games were descriptive of how we interact with computers
-- Asked players about their experiences to determine why they played video games
--Discovered these games play a social and psychological role
--Games provide a way in which people can take on different roles that are important to them psychologically
--Considers the nature of games themselves
--Adults think the stories associated with arcade video games irrelevant to their play
I find this to be untrue--a lot of people don't like games with no story. But some do. To generalize this in this manner is short-sighted.

Chapter 35
--Donna Haraway, 1985
--Her cyborg is a socialist-feminist mythology not founded on belief in an idyllic past
--Feminists have not always engaged with the mythology of the goddess
--Boundaries between humans/machines, physical/virtual
--Technologically mediated societies
--Approaches cyborgs/feminism from a whole new and different perspective

Some Fun Things

Some fun stuff!!

The Muppets and Andrea Bocelli sing Jingle Bells

The Farting Turkey

Let's Say Thanks

Bohemian Rhapsody

Ninja Narrative Redux

: 5 More Minutes : Foamy The Squirrel

For 12/3

Data Visualization
I don't really have much to say on this (surprise, surprise) because I don't think it's at all a new idea. I mean, pie charts and graphs and diagrams have existed pretty much since the printing press, and I'm sure there were doodles to explain data before that even. I just think, as with most things, technology has allowed us to become inappropriately obsessed with things, and we spend all our time trying to represent it instead of acting and being constructive.

Glass Tower
My best friend LOVES this building. I think it's tacky. Then again, my favorite architect is Gaudi, so that's kind of the pot calling the kettle black.

The Highline
Now this I could appreciate, and I can say I'll definitely be going back when it's weather-appropriate. I love that they've turned something old like that into something pleasant that everyone can appreciate. And no, it's not the same thing as taking garbage and making "art" out of it. That's just dumb.

The Galleries
Yes, I'm being insulting and lumping all the stuff we saw together. I'd never been to any galleries before, and now that I have I never have to again. I didn't see anything I considered to be art. It was mostly just awe at the fact that people do think that's art. But I'm both a cynic and (apparently when it comes to art) a real asshole. I'll define "art" as being anything that anyone else considers beautiful. I'm not saying all that stuff wasn't art, I'm just saying I didn't see any art. That's all. I saw some very nice candles (candles are really hard to make, and getting the colors that bright is tough too) and I saw a cool laser-pointer-operate gimmick I'm sure could be put to better use. But that's about it.

Some Interesting Things I've Stockpiled

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2243176
I'm allergic to bees, and therefore they're about the only thing that really scares me. But this was just hysterical.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFP0q4qzGw4
For Cynthia--you may or may not have seen this, but it's my favorite viral video ever.

YouTube - David Sedaris on Letterman
I love David Sedaris. A lot. This was the first time I ever heard anything from him and it was years ago. Since then I've actually heard quite a lot about... the product in question. I don't know, I just like him. =)

tallyhall.com/media.php
youtube.com/tallyhall
These are some really good friends of mine, and I feel like I've probably mentioned this before. The internet show, though, is one of the things that actually got them started. On their official site is the Tally Hall Internet Show (THIS), and I recommend episode 2. You can also head over to their youtube page and check out all of their stuff from when they were in college as Atlantic Records has finally deemed fit to put them back up.

Better Than Ezra - Absolutely Still
I tend to hate music videos. I think they made sense when the market was closed and labels relied on markets like MTV to sell records, but nowadays they tend to be stupid, cliched, or just plain bad. This, however, is the only one I've liked in a long itme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mji82PQTYeo&feature=PlayList&p=1C899B263451A4E6&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=47
This was the first viral video I ever saw and it still makes me laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hRgzRSazIs
This was the second one. Again, still hysterical. Also socially relevant, because it's funny how angsty people get about their web browser. Yes, I use Safari. I like Safari. I will use Firefox if I have to, but only as a last resort (ie. anything to not use IE). Just weird like that.

For 11/19

Microcosms
I liked it. I mean, it was seriously creepy and I had some nightmares, and I don't ever think I'll be able to purge the image of the slug sex from my mind. But I liked it. I was a big PBS girl growing up (mostly because we simply didn't have cable until I was 13) and I watched every nature show there ever was during those 13 years. I also have a passion for the macro lens. It's how I shoot my photos--I like to get really close to things, see details. With people, I like to get a little closer than most people are comfortable with. It's fun. And this was kind of like that. Except with slug sex.

William Boroughs
I was going to say something sarcastic about how he should stop doing crack because it's clearly affecting his faculties... but it appears that actually happened so maybe it would be best to just say I think he's out of his mind and move on.

John Cage
We were actually talking about John Cage in one of my ISes the other day--the professor was at a piece where he sat in a class room, just occasionally dropping things and making gutteral noises. Apparently it became a piece revolving around audience involvement but until they realized that's what he wanted (about 13 minutes in) it was so boring he wanted to run out. I think that maybe had I been there and had that experience, I would not think he's completely lost his mind... but unfortunately, I do. What is with us elevating the "work" of crazy people to such a level? Have we lost so much of our own collective minds? Seriously, dude. This is ridiculous. That piano stuff was crap. I've heard some pretty horrible music doing what I do, but that was ridiculous.

NMR For Classes 8 & 9

Chapter 10 - The Construction of Change by Roy Ascott

• 1960's - Cybernetics & art continue to retain focus - the distinction between participation & interaction
• Art of the Electric Age focuses on the interaction and relationship between the work & viewer.
• 1980's - Telematic art: communications & collaboration between people far apart
• Relationship between art, science, & behavior, a flexible structure to bend science & art

Chapter 11 - A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate by Theodor H. Nelson

• Nelson coined the term "hypertext" & offered a complex, reconfigurable structure for info
• Thought about the web years before it came to be commonplace

Chapter 12 - Six Selections by Oulipo

• Developed a system with the potential to create computer-mediated textuality
• Enhances the readers ability to create literature
• Renegotiates the relationship between the work, the creator, & the viewer
• Yours for the Telling
• Like Choose Your Own Ending books we used to read in elementary school
• Allows the reader to take an active role
• Computer and Writer by Paul Fournel
• Outlines the different relationships between creator, computer, art, & viewer
• Talks about math & literature
• Prose and Anticombinatorics by Italo Calvino
• Examples of how computers help create literature
• Chooses compatible possibilities

Chapter 13

• "The medium is the message"- McLuhan.
• 1962 - Typographic technology causes a change in western thought
• Printing press - Gutenberg - people can be hypnotized one sense at a time by a new technology
• 1964 - "The Medium is the Message
• This essay makes me want to claw my eyes out.
• Talks about the idea that the media itself overshadows the content it puts out.
• Hate.

Chapter 14 - 1967 - Bauldrillard's critique of Understanding Media

• 1965 - Influential artist were gathered from various groups in Europe and New York
• 1966 - E.A.T was founded, Experiments in Art and Technology
• 1970's - Advancements of technology and art together
• The Pepsi Expo Pavillion is created as a collaboration between artist and engineers.

Basically, McLuhan is a nutcase. A brilliant, brilliant man, but a nutcase. Why do brilliant people feel the need to write in such a way so that it takes an average person a lot of serious work to figure out what they're saying? A lot of McLuhan's ideas and concepts can be restated in a way so the average high school student could understand them, but they're so convoluted that I don't want to read it because it makes my brain hurt.

For 11/5 & 11/12

Scots & Lasers

I'm sorry, but so? Get over it. Who cares if you can scan it on the computer? Go there and see it yourself. As for urban planning, I really don't see how this is going to help. You only can scan something after you plan it. Whatever. Yet another invention that doesn't actually do the world any good.

Lifelog

This is absolutely retarded. Not only is it a waste of way too much money, but it's pointless. What's the point of filming your entire life? It would take your entire life to watch it all. And the whole "outsourcing mental tasks" thing is just retarded. Why don't we just offload our consciousness onto hard drives now and live as computer minds in a virtual world?

Scott McCloud

Interesting. I might actually be able to use this in one of my interdisciplinary seminars, and I think the only reason I watched the whole thing was because it was a video. If it was a paper, I would have been far less interested.

Marshall McLuhan

I'm actually reading Marshall McLuhan in another class. He's really freaking smart (duh) but I really hated reading his stuff. I'd rather read other people's readings of his stuff. Nutcase!

And I don't want to watch anyone's wake online ever. That's just weird. Specifically not watching that because of the creepiness factor.

Piano Stairs

Fun. I like it. They should find some big staircase with 88 stairs and have a bunch of people play some Brahms.

Erin McKean

I'm amazed it took this long to come up with this. It's really interesting, because I like words a lot, but it doesn't really excite me. It's just another dictionary, like urban dictionary that anyone can modify. So both exciting, but anticlimactic. I really like her presentation though, she's an excellent and very entertaining speaker.

Eric's Lecture

• Human Visual System (hvs)
• Need to understand how the hvs works if we want to create visual technologies that look REAL or can create images that look real (ie. camera)
• Cannot see color in very low light (only using rods, which only detect blue)
• The best part of human vision uses 6 million cones--6mp is six million sensors, but we still see better with our eyes than these sensors could ever do.
• 400 years ago they decided we see in red, green, & blue (some women see in 4 colors, also orange and yellow) and we still haven't proved it.
• All tetras have fathers who are colorblind--the gene that makes them colorblind in the male is what makes them hypersensitive in the female. They're larger and theoretically can receive more information like a radio antenna; has to do with the wavelength of light
• The standard color chart was developed under nonscientific settings by two Germans on a rainy day.
• Cameras can't capture all the colors our eye can, which is why none of our photos look real
• Printers can only ever print a few colors--it's a little sad.
• Make the levels right when you take the picture, not in Photoshop --YEAH RIGHT. This is pretty much impossible to do 100% of the time. Clearly if you didn't have to change the levels of a photo, it would be better, but when you're out in the field the time it would take to achieve this is almost never realistically feasible. NEVER. Keeping all the information intact is definitely the ideal, so when image processing technologies become more advanced you will have all of your data. Duh. Just save it as a separate file when you edit it. You can't tell a photographer not to make their photos look the best we can achieve right now in case we come up with better technology later. That's like saying since your kid will get a B on his test if he studies by himself, you shouldn't help him study so he can get an A. Seriously. Don't be a twit.
• We use Jpeg as a standard and that's bad. There's a really good reason we use it as the commercial standard--it's not enormous. Get over it. If you're shooting in JPG, you aren't losing anything by keeping it that way, and decent RAW compressors are way too expensive for the average Joe to get and the files are too big for normal consumers to keep around. I'm a photophile too, but this guy's ridiculous.
• Temporal order
• Okay, seriously? The preachiness is really annoying. Yes, our video technology today doesn't necessarily give us images that look real. But haven't other people already proven that we as human beings aren't comfortable with things like that which look too real? Seriously, I'm okay with not being able to track the total arc of a baseball on the TV. I'll get by. Not to take away--he's very smart, and he knows a lot about processing images. but he's very VERY OBVIOUSLY not a photographer. No one WANTS a photo to look exactly real. And besides, it's physically impossible to have an image be a copy of reality because there's no depth. You can't make a 2-D image look 3-D. Just can't do it.
• Wave-based imaging sensors are the "wave" of the future. Ha ha, I'm a riot.
• This lecture is making me really cranky.
• Long-term storage -- thanks for being depressing. I needed that. This discussion wasn't really constructive at all. In any way. Because he said the same thing over and over and over again. I've never heard anyone say "in perpetuity" so many times in ten minutes.

For 10/29

National Novel Month Thing

Not gonna lie, I think this is stupid. While some decent novels might be written in thirty days, I sincerely doubt that anything remotely great will come out of this. A former professor and dear friend of mine just had his first novel published. It took him ten years to complete. I'm all for the idea of having people write, etc. but... this is one of those things that's just kind of dumb.

Ken Perlin's Lecture

He was great. Very entertaining to watch, he had good answers to our questions. I personally found the stuff on his website much more interesting when he presented it himself. I loved hearing about how the face program helps autistic kids. I liked talking about the game-per-day thing, and I think I will pursue that as my final project. I happen to really like educational games, I played a lot of them when I was little, and I really do believe that they really enhanced my learning. That game that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of taught me to read by the time I entered kindergarten. I'd like to explore those games myself.

Stuff For Week 6

Google Wave

I dislike Google Wave. Maybe it'll be the next big thing, maybe I'll change my mind, but I think it's kind of stupid. It's really complicated. I can't say what exactly about it I dislike, except that I like simple things and I feel like it's just one more step toward having people actually be more disconnected. If you're having a BBQ, why don't you just call people? I'll probably get some flack for this, but I like actually talking to people, and while I utilize tools like facebook invites and all that nonsense, I still like to actually see and speak with people, because that's a real connection.

Digital Dirt

Duh.

Yes, that's actually all I have to say.

Ken Perlin

I don't really know what to say about this guy seeing as I've never met him. Old-school though it may be, I don't actually care about people until I meet them in person. The niftiest website in the world doesn't make you interesting. He's got a lot of cool stuff, and if I actually had time to spend with it and got to look at every thing... no, I probably still wouldn't care. I realize in this blog I probably come off as completely apathetic and kind of an ass, but I'm not the kind of person who gets really excited about java keyboards. Yeah, it's cool, woohoo. It just doesn't strike my undying passion and interest. Maybe I'm jaded, but more likely my current bad attitude and resentment has to do with the fact I got almost no sleep because of CMJ.

I hate CMJ.

My hatred of CMJ is bleeding through somewhat into everything else, so if I hate everything this week, you know why. And while I don't hate Ken Perlin's page, I don't know him and therefore don't give a hoot. Some fun toys to play with, some cute little dudes, but that's really all I see.

Ken Perlin's blog

Again, I don't know the man, so I don't really care. It's not just him--the only blogs I bother to put in my RSS feed are stupid photoblogs--namely Photobomb and The People of Walmart. I read some of Ken Perlin's stuff, but I wound up doing exactly what I do when my best friend goes off about the latest dweeby advancement in all the tech stuff he's into--completely zoned out. After having studied this for four years in high school, my ability to care about it has expired.

Perlin Noise

I know from having been in film school how awesome this is, and it makes total sense to me that he got an award for it. I'm glad his mom was happy, and I agree he's a good American.

And that's me trying to be upbeat.

PAD

Again, this is one of those things that is pretty cool, but I don't see it ever coming into mainstream, household use. I also feel like if I had to use it I'd spend way more time trying to make it organized so my head didn't explode than I would actually using it to do work. But it's an interesting concept to lay out there.

Other Crap

It occurred to me today I don't like New Media much. I mean, I took this class to get a different view on it, but I realized I don't actually like any of it or the implications it has for us as a society. I don't really know how much of this can be considered art. I also don't like the fact that people are spending so much time futzing around with social networking and online culty communities as opposed to going out and actually socializing. Chatting with someone on the internet is not socializing. Blogging and commenting on other people's blather is not socializing. We're moving more and more towards synthesizing life and life experiences than actually getting out there and doing things, creating things, touching and speaking to real people. And I don't like it.

Don't yell at me, it's just what I think.

NMR For Class #6

Chapter 10 - The Construction of Change

• 1964 - Roy Scott
• London
• Made connections between art & cybernetics
• Frank Popper
• Defined the distinction between interacting and participating
• Participation = involvement in both a contemplative sense and a behavioral sense
• Also, a relationship between a spectator and an already existing open-ended work
• Interaction refers to comprehensive involvement; two-way interaction between work & spectator
• Also, a 2-way interplay between an individual & AI

• Culture can be defined as the sum of all the learned behaviours that exist in a given locality
• Art exists between the behaviors of the artist & the spectator--it exists neither by itself nor for itself
• I think that's crap
• Cybernetics - the study of control and communication, information, perception, translation, logic, & chance

Chapter 11 - A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate

• 1965 - Ted Nelson
• Hypertext: a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not convieniently be presented or represented on paper.”

• ”Chunk Style hypertext" refers to static links which permit a user to jump from page to page

Chapter 12 - Six Selections by the Oulipo

• Raymond Queneau
• Yours for the Telling
• ie. "choose your own ending"
• “Un Conte a votre facon” refers to the application of simple algorithmic techniques to narrative
• Used as the structural model for chose-your-own-adventure books
• Paul Fournel
• Computer and Writer
• Potential literature analyzes & synthesizes limits
• Concept taken from current mathematics as well as from older writing techniques
• Lipogram, palindrome, et al.
• 1983 - One Hundred Million Poems: 10 interchangeable lines of a sonnet.
• Italo Calvino
• Computers may be used to do more than spit out virtually infinite variations based on set of initial materials
• ie. Taking a very large space of possible stories and narrowing them down until you end it only one
• Clinamen is a deviation or error in the system

NMR - Chapters 5-9

Chapter 5- Intro to Man-Computer Symbiosis
-1962 Joseph ‘Lick’ Licklider

-Head of DARPA

-1968 worked with Robert Taylor

-“The Computer as a Communication Device”

-Computer Science Ph.Ds offered, expanded support of academic institutions
-ARPAnet: intner-university computer network
-Oliver: an on-line interactive vicarious expediter and responder. A personal networking agent.
-Online privlage vs. online right

Chapter 6- “Happenings” In the New York Scene

-Alan Kaprow

-1950's Introduces the idea of interactive theatre
-Interactivity in art. Cornerstone of New Media discussions.
-Provoked a desire to break down distinctions between creator and audience.
-“Reversibility”?
-There are three kinds of "happenings"

1) sophisticated, witty works put on by theater people

2) sparsely abstract, zen-like works by musicians and writers

3) crude, lyrical, spontaneous works by contemporary painters.
-Context: the place of conception and enactment. “Habitat” is not only a space, but a set of relationships to various things around it, a range of values, and an overall atmosphere.
-Happenings don't necessarily have a plot or obvious philosophy

-Materialize in an improvisatory fashion like jazz, contemporary painting

-Chance in conjunction with improvisation

-Cannot be reproduced
-”Happenings have emerged as an art that can function precisely as long as the mechanics of our present rush for cultural maturity continue.”

Chapter 7: The Cut-Up of Brion Gysin
-William Burroughs = “cut and paste” editing.
-1959 "Minutes to Go” Random newspaper

Chapter 8 From Augmenting Human Intellect
-1962 Douglas Engelbart

-With increased complexity in humans comes a general increased urgency

Chapter 9 Sketchpad
-1963 Ivan Sutherland

-A program allows users to draw on an electronic display

-Considered a crucial step in screen development

-The first direct-manipulation interface

Links for 10/16

Create Your Own Font

This is pretty cool. It's something I definitely will do once I get my personal tech geek to set up my wireless printer. I'd like to use it for my watermark on my photos--I've been trying to come up with one in my handwriting but it never really comes out right with the trackpad or mouse. At the same time, it's a little bizarre. If someone got their hands on it, they could forge your handwriting, you know? I mean, people can do that anyway, but it does bring into play some weird privacy issues.

Photosketch

This I hate. I mean, it's nifty, whatever, but it's pretty sketchy. Ha ha, get it? Anyway, it's just making it easier for us to fake our life experiences. I was talking about this with my dad the other day--one of his co-workers is getting married and they were talking about their quest for the perfect photographer. There's actually one guy who just takes all your pictures on a green screen and then photoshops you into whatever setting you want. WHAT'S EVEN THE POINT?!? It's stupid. I mean, yes, by all means, please photoshop out my little sister's zits on her high school year book picture. But to completely doctor your wedding photos? Get real. Literally.

Augmented Earth

*blinks* Hi, creepy creepy stalker-like technology. I'm a map. I'm pretty much fool-proof. Bite me. Kthnxbye.

10 Sites To Help With Music

This article did pretty much nothing for me, but only because it's pretty much my life. We could get into how stupid all of these services are and how the labels managed to screw themselves big time, ultimately causing their own demise and the complete revamping of the industry and how everything is going to be payment optional in a few years etc. etc. but that's a whole different discussion. By which I mean "rant".

Cyberpunk Whatever

I like how in the article they admit that to anyone post-1980's the concept of cyberpunk is basically just science fiction. Because that's all it means to me. That and people with way too much time on their hands. It reminds me of the book I wound up writing my senior thesis in high school on. Too much technology = the downfall of the human race, blah blah blah. It's just old hat at this point, for those of us of the Matrixian Generation.

Steampunk Month

Just goes to show you that any online community (*coughCULTcough*) can have their own month. Give me a freakin' break. And considering that the big Steampunk celebration is in Brooklyn on October 24th just goes to show how wrapped up in themselves these people are--that happens to be CMJ weekend, and anyone involved in the music or film business is pretty much booked solid. Nice move there, slick.

History Of The Internet

I'm pretty sure I've seen this before. It really wasn't anything I didn't know already, but that's because I majored in computer science in high school. Yes, I had a major, I went to nerd school, don't ask. You can tell from my enthusiasm on the topic, right? ...yeah, I really don't have anything else to say about it, other than I feel like they made us write a paper on it freshman year of high school. It was exactly as amusing then, too.

NMR - Chapters 2 & 3

Chapter 2

Vannevar Bush

• Organized of the Manhattan Project (Fat Man & Little Boy)
• Completed groundbreaking analog computing projects
• 1940- gained funds & political support form Franklin D Roosevelt
• Proposed the concept of "MEMEX" -- afuture device for individual use, an automated private file and library, a personal storage devide
• "Iron Triangle"

Doug Engelbart

• Circa 1945
• Invented the mouse, the word processor, and the hyperlink

Ted Nelson

• Discovered the hyperlink
• Coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"

"As We May Think"

• July 1945
• Pertains to the recording and organization of information, greater information access, "MEMEX".
• Influenced technologies today ie. hypertext, personal computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web,online encyclopedias
• Foreshadowed much of the future, especially the internet
• A a different take on Bush's vision is what inspired the start of new media
• "Turning an information explosion into a knowledge explosion"

CHAPTER 3

Alan Turing

• 1943
• A mathematician from Cambridge who helped to build the Colossus computers
• Invented the "turing machine", a theoretical machine that can solve any computable problem
• Also came up with the "turing test" which basically asks "can a computer communicating via printer fool a person into believing it is human?"
• The "test" inspired the start of the annual Loebner Prize for Chatterbots

• Early computers were similar to calculators; all they could do was "crunch numbers"; no one noticed they could also be used to manipulate text
• Nowadays they mostly deal with words (ie. email, documents, voice recognition)
• Turing wrote "Computing Machinery & Intelligence" where he lays out the "Turing Test"
• Important because he recognized the computer as a "thinking" machine

For 10/8

Rich's Presentation

I've known Rich since last spring, so he didn't say anything to me that wasn't something we hadn't talked about before, but it was a real delight to see some of his creations. I've always been kind of jealous of his major, because that's a pretty kickass thing to be involved in. I also enjoyed seeing more videos of Little Big Planet because, like I said, it's only been something I've ever been told about.

Steampunk

Retro is cool, but these guys take it to a whole new level. While from an anthropological perspective it's really interesting, I can't ever see myself getting involved in something like that. I feel like it's something you'd see on an episode of Bones or CSI; sadly enough that's where the majority of my knowledge about culty subcultures comes from.

Brain Scan Technology

I don't like this. It creeps me out. Irrational but true.

The end.

Plato's Cave

This was cool, a great graphic representation of this concept, which is so influential on so many bits of culture from movies to music. A band of my friends from high school wrote a song based on the Allegory of the Cave. I juryrigged it up on YouTube in case anyone's interested.

The Watcher: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMwFthmUa8

Sorry for not being more glib. There's some idiot using a jackhammer on my building literally outside my window. It's making it hard to compose sentences.

NMR: Chapter 1

--1941

Jorge Luis Borges published the first conceptual

hypertext novel, "The Garden of Forking Paths"

in Argentina

--1963

Julio Cortezar published the first realized hypertext

novel, "Hopscotch"

--1987

StuartMoulthrop created a hypertextual version of "The

Garden of Forking Paths" called "Victory Garden"

--A hypertext novel implies that it may be read in several ways; an earlier version was the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books

--Borges never actually wrote a novel

--"The Garden"

• Dr. Yu Tsun realizes that on the day the story takes place he's going to be murdered as a member of the German Reich by Captain Richard Madden
• He possess the location of a new English artillery base
• He decides to flee and remembers the name of a man who could get the secret to Germany
• He gets on a train to see the man, and as the train pulls away he sees Madden run up to the platform
• He gets off in Ashgrove and some boys direct him to the Stephen Albert and his labyrinth
• The man tells him he has all the secrets of a labyrinth/novel created by one of Tsun's ancestors who was supposedly crazy and explains his ideas to him
• Tsun kills Albert as Madden pops in and arrests him; he is condemned to the gallows, but managed to communicate to the Germans that they should bomb the city of Albert.

It was definitely an interesting story. The concept of time I'm familiar with because it's been represented many times over by other writers (and in a better way, in my personal opinion) but it's interesting to read this much earlier interpretation of the concept. And call me a traditional old poo, but I think the idea of the hypertext novel is a bit stupid. I just like books, though.

The Guild + Dr. Horrible

I'd never seen the Guild before, but I really like it. I've always been kind of on the outside of hardcore RPGers; a lot of my friends are really into it, but I never got involved because I know I'd never be able to stop. So this is really amusing; I think we should keep watching it. =)

As for Dr. Horrible, I have seen it before because I LOVE Nathan Fillion & NPH. Like, a lot. I didn't really like it the first time I saw it, but I couldn't really hear it. I definitely liked it better this time. Also, Joss Whedon's the bomb. Never watched Buffy (don't like vampires) but I'm in love with Dollhouse and Firefly. Dollhouse is another show that brings up technological advancements and how they might affect us as people. So yeah.

I don't know that these would have made it on TV. Part of their allure, particularly Dr. Horrible, is that it's kind of a secret, almost a cult. It's something you see in the music world too--the consumer likes something they feel is kind of a secret. If it had been commercialized, I don't think it would have been the same.

Videos For 9/24

Water Printer: This was pretty cool. It's not, you know, life-altering or for the betterment of humanity, but it's pretty darn cool. And I'm into things that are cool for the sake of it and not for some convoluted holier-than-thou reason.

Sand Beasts: This is one of those convoluted holier-than-thou things I was talking about. These things are also pretty darn cool, but saying you want them to be able to live in colonies and roam freely is complete and total crap. They aren't ALIVE. They WILL break at some point. They cannot reproduce. They will fall apart eventually and leave a mess somewhere that no one will ever get around to cleaning up because some weirdo made some cool looking toys and left them all over the desert. They have no brains, minds, souls, or anything resembling a life, and they won't appreciate, know, or care if they're "free" or not. This is the kind of hoity-toity delusional nonsense that annoys me. I'm very into taking things for face value. It's cool, but please oh please do not try to make it more than that.

Bingo: If I saw this as a child and I wasn't afraid of clowns, I would be by the time it was over. Also wouldn't ever want to go to the circus again. Reminded me of the Sims.

Ryan: I liked this one better. It was the kind of thing we'd watch in classes way back when I was a film student. It's a neat bit of storytelling, and even though it's a bit experimental for my taste normally, I enjoyed it.

NMR: Intro II

--From the first few paragraphs I can already tell I like this one better. The language isn't half as snotty or hard to understand.

--History of new media

-SIGGRAPH & Ars Electronica since 1970's

-The field began to really take shape in the 80's

-1995 art schools in the US began to integrate new media programs

--Other countries are slower to accept different types of new media and therefore think about them more critically

--Art & new media worlds are opposites for many reasons (bottom left pg 14)

--Parallelism between texts by artists & computer scientists, computer technology & modern art

--8 Ideas of What New Media Is

1. It is not cyberculture--focused on culture

2. A useful theoretical category

3. Digital data controlled by software

4. A combination of cultural conventions and the software

5. A stage in a new technology's development.

6. Something that gives us the ability to create or process data faster

7. a translation of the avant-garde into computer code

(Side note: The grammar in the titles of these sections is TERRIBLE.)

Noah's Lecture [In-Class Since I Couldn't Get To The Other One]

--Noah's journey

--Went to a school like Gallatin

--Started working at Gallatin

--Art vs. research ==> Research to create art?

--Graduate degree @ Gallatin

--Tenured professor @ UMaryland

--Left Baltimore to go to Brown for MFA in fiction

--Decided to make the collection of new media writings because there wasn't anything like it

--Took seven years

--1st Person, 2nd Person, 3rd Person

--Expressive Processing ==> Actually wrote, the others he edited (http://www.amazon.com/Expressive-Processing-Fictions-Computer-Software/dp/0262013436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253217177&sr=8-1)

--Wants to play the Sims 3. I can get on board with that.

--Wolfram ==>Search engine

Videos For 9/17

Jeff Han

--It's cool. I didn't know it was the actual thing they used in Minority Report. It's an interesting interface, but I don't really see it being useful for the everyday consumer. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there will be people who will buy it, but I think it would be a waste of money for the average person.

Jeff Han Spoof

--While funny, it also addresses the major issue I have with technology like this: it's creepy. While stuff like this can prove to be an excellent tool, there are always people and instances where it oversteps its bounds and becomes creepy.

Danyl Johnson

--Kid's got chops. Not much else to say about this. I hate these manufactured pop shows that make "superstars" that no one in the industry actually wants to touch.

Fluteboxing

--Now this I can wrap my head around. This is cool. I sent this already to a bunch of my friends. I love it when people can be creative within more "traditional" bounds, like using a classical instrument in a new way.

New Media Reader - Intro 1

--Murray says that the "digital" medium is singular, and equates it to film: one medium that just draws on many aspects

--Borges & Bush: does an inadequate job of explaining who these two are and why I ought to care about them, because I've got no clue what they've to do with anything, other than they seem to be sci-fi writers

--"All creativity can be understood as taking in the world as a problem."

--They're pretty much saying that engineers & scientists etc. take in the world and try to solve their problems systematically; are they implying that this isn't art? That they are only there to destroy (re the arrow metaphor)? That systematic thinking is therefore destructive?

--I really dislike and resent the idea that print as a whole is a dying medium, but this guy seems really gung-ho about it. Then why bother writing a book?

--...yeah, I just really dislike this guy. He says that technophobes are not completely irrational, but you can tell from his tone that he still thinks they are.

--Maybe my main issues with this guy are that, from his tone, he seems to think that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong and clearly an idiot and also that computers are more... transcendental, somehow and not just a tool. Because that is what I think technology is. The computer is equivalent to the wheel, in my mind, and a tool is only as good as what you use it for. Fire's a miraculous thing, but burning down a house... not so much. Computers are great for data processing, photo editing, spreading information, but I think artificial intelligence and "cyborgs" are a terrible, horrible, god-awful idea. Technology is a TOOL, and nothing else.

Home

My doggie is sitting by my feet. My mother is making dinner. And someone not me did my laundry. Going home for the weekend is nice.