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.