Monika - Creative Digital Media
What ’tis to love ?
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The finished video. Read about the making of it here.
Made using Motion 4.0
Critical Theory – Assignment 1 – week 1 – Research
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The assignment is to capture a-day-in-a-life of a person of different cultural background and thus capture their identity using 6 A5 images.
The idea I have for this is to create a silhouette of a person and through the use of polaroid images capture their everyday life. With the use of these images, a story must be told. I intend to tell a story through the use of a timeline along the silhouette. For example: 7am (one A5 photograph, split into two polaroid pictures, one with the person’s eye open and one with closed.) The polaroid with the eye open will depict 7am, the person waking up. This will then be followed by another set of polaroid images of the persons hand or shoulder, let’s say, 11am, where the person’s hand is in the foreground, and the background will be what the person is doing at 11am, in focus.
When I began my research, I was inspired my polaroid collages, such as one below, but decided to take it one step further and develop it into a 24 hour timeline.
I also found other polaroid collage examples, such as one from Jean Snow (Guide to Design and Pop Culture in Tokyo)
I also found an example of a (short) photo essay using polaroids, at a blog I stumbled upon.
I have always been fascinated by the use of lenses and the result of out of focus background/foreground and in focus foreground/background.
For this, I have done some research and found a few really good examples of out-of-focus photography.
I couldn’t find examples of the type of shot I’d like to create, but this (the swans) is quite close to what I’d like my final piece to look like.
So the cultural background I picked was Icelandic. Because, I happen to know someone who is Icelandic and still stays close to her customs and traditions in Ireland. For example, the way she dresses, her hobbies and the particularly strange food she makes and eats. Yea, I;m really excited about it, and so is Hulda, my Icelandic model for a day.
So, the things I will try to capture in my photo essay will be, her background, the warm knitted wollen clothes, the strange food, her hobbies (such as horse-riding and snow-boarding) (not sure which one of them is more possible, but I know she does go to those fake-snow places in Ireland where she practices her snowboarding.) I also asked her about the food and how it differs from Ireland, and she said it’s all fish in Iceland. Fish, Fish and more Fish. I do need to ask her more about the traditions, such as 13 Santa Clauses in Christmas, because there is only so much I can read about the culture online, before you realize, you need to talk to (or live it) a person from that cultural background to really understand and be able to depict it correctly.
So, the last and main part of this week’s assignment is to find 5 photographers/photo essays which inspire us, and identify what makes their imagery so powerful.
1. Danny Ghitis http://dannyghitis.com/personal/land-of-os-in-progress/
I particularly liked his NYC teachers collection, because it documented real teachers interacting in their natural environment. It was so easy to see their emotions and image what they could have been saying. That collection, to me, really told a story, because every photograph could have told a massive story of the teacher, the students and the lecture they were attending. The emotions, in this case, is what made me inspired by his photography.
2. Sally Mann http://sallymann.com/
Her photography is mostly black and white, and usually quite thought-provoking. Her collection “Proud Flesh” is quite close to the effect I’d like to create in my project as well. Maybe not to the same level of skill and talent. Her photography really inspired me, because of her use of colour (or lack of), the shot angles and the ideas behind the photographs. They seem so much more than just time frozen in collour, but rather a piece of art that could never be re-created in the same edgy and open style.
3. Photo Essay Entitled “Marcel Marceau” http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1664876,00.html
This photo essay shows the lifetime collection photograph’s of the famous Mime. This photo essay both portrays the timeline of his entire professional work, and his aging throughout the years. I think photo essays are important such as this one, as they pictures can tell more than a thousand words, and this photo essay really acts as a biography of Marcel. I was inspired by looking at these photographs in a way that only old photographs can ever inspire, they show the long and tedious process of something great, while adding a little character and expression to the overall impression of the person in the photograph. I would enjoy to express this much thought and life into my photo essay too, I think only the careful details and planning can create such a lasting impression of a person when told in a medium of photographs.
4. A Photo Essay entitled “Cirque School In Holywood” http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2108216_2337802,00.html
I really enjoyed looking at this photo essay because of its interesting and provoking camera angles. These angles inspired me to experiment with the photographs for my assignment, as I have discovered that different angles may evoke different emotions and moods in a photograph.
5. Photo Essay Entitled “World’s Wackiest Holidays”. http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1646854,00.html
This photo essay really shows the different cultures and celebrations around the world. Even if it is in a non metaphorical manner. Just simple editorial photographs, which can be easily used in the news. Nothing photoshopped. Which is the beauty. The photographs show the reality and joy of different cultures compared and contrasted to each other. I think this photo essay really inspired me to just shoot the reality and worry about the meaning later. That’s how life should be photographed – with no hidden meaning, flat-out truth.
6. Photo Essay Entitled ” The Year of the Dragon” http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2104896,00.html
This photo essay depicts the culture of China and its celebration of the new year. I think the colours, and the people really make these photographs something special, as no other culture celebrations the New Year with such rich culture and mythology. I really like extra colour the photographs seem to have. And the simple way the culture is shown. Not just in town, but also in schools and on the street.
Meeting with Danny
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Earlier today I had a meeting with my supervisor. I showed him the progress on my flash code and my not-so-working app.
I was working on the app over the week, and was experimenting with more touch code, buttons and animations.
The problem with my app code was that the button on the intro page worked to send you to the next page (label) but the buttons on the main page did not connect properly to other labels. Also, if, by chance the buttons worked and send you to the test animation page, the animation would not play.
Danny looked at some of my code and we did a few test traces methods and tested out the app by changing the settings of the file from “AIR for Android” to “Flash Player 10.2″. This helped us to test the files on the pc, as supposed to publishing it to the xoom tablet.
During the testing, we found out that the buttons, when clicked do register the click but cannot find the path to the label on the timeline. It just seems like a bug in the code, so Danny asked me to send him the test app / not working code so he can look at it and maybe, hopefully find the annoying bug.
Daniel also asked me to document all the meetings with him from now on and document every single eureka moment on my blog.
He also asked me to create a project management type calendar to plan out the work and the tasks I must do to complete my project.
Oh! Also, I was asked to start writing my thesis, since I have the topic picked out and just need to commence the impossible task. I need to start it, I know, because I feel I might be a little behind with all the work.
The students, all of the 4th years, were also asked to think about their final year project presentations at the exhibition. We need to think about the kind of materials and assets we need to show off our work in the best way possible.
For my exhibition I was thinking about having a nice table with a laptop and Flash opened up, when people would be able to see the code. I’d also need an Android tablet (obviously) to show off the actual app. I also thought that maybe I should have a few A3 posters of the app and the storyboards for the animations, to show off the thought and style process behind them.
That’s it for now, will begin to debug my app asap, and will update the blog as I progress.
Tags: AIR, android, app, application, code, debug, exhibition, experiment, flash, test, thesis
Coding and publishing
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This week I was working on getting the app published on the Android tablet and testing the multitouch code in actionscript.
I created a few test files, which test the multitouch for
1. Zoom-pinch
2. Rotate
3. Pan
4. Swipe
I can’t actually include the swf files on wordpress, but I took some images to show the progress.
Zoom (which, I know, looks like I am scaling the square, but it’s only because the background is white)
Rotate
Pan (the reason why only half of the square is showing is because when I made the sqaure into a movie-clip, I made the registration point the middle and also because I left the square only half showing just to see how this would work on the tablet… the results are that you can pan the square from the stage and never get it back, unless you restart the application, which means, that I have to code some stage restrictions, so this bug does’t happen again. )
For this I mostly used tutorials and code snippets included in Flash. I also learned how to publish the app files on the tablet and how to test them using the Device central (which is included in the software package).
Using this, I can now begin to implement my actual app. I will continue to test the app as I work. The next step will be to test the option of including swfs into the main app. In simple terms, this just means that I’ll try to connect my animation swfs to the main application swf through as3.0 code.
Awesome, now that I can test everything on the xoom tablet, I feel so much better about the whole project.
All this week I was reading/watching there tutorials:
+ iBrent
+ Code snippets explained by Adobe
+ GotoAndLearn – all kinds of useful tutorials, I just looked at the android and IOS ones, for publishing and developing apps
+ republicofcode – The most useful tutorials for developing an Android app so far, simple code, well explained steps. This is where I found out how to use and implement the multitouch code
Tags: 3.0, actionScript, android, app, code snippets, flash, flash cs5.5, ios, lite, mobile, pan, pinch, registration point, rotate, swf files, swfs, swipe, tablet, test files, tutorial, tutorials, zoom
Thesis topic … and how I searched for it
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Okay, so I hear thesis are hard things to write… Hmm, having a proper topic to discuss in the thesis would probably make the job a lot easier though. So, even though the thesis is due in May, and I should have had my topic picked out ages ago, I finally did it.
Thanks to google and wikipedia for all the research I was doing.
Anyway, I decided that, as I am a very visual person, I should make a quick brainstorm on the branches of animation (because I am certain about this main topic).
Now that I have done that, I picked out a few main areas I would like to focus on, so I’m just gonna run them by my supervisor, get some feedback, see what he thinks, and get cracking . （￣～￣;）
Should be fun, can’t wait. （＾＿－）
By the way, from what I gathered, the topic I have my heart set on has not been analyzed in a thesis, but has been discussed online quite a lot, so I am really looking forward to doing some proper research and analysis.
Kinetic Typography – the step before animating in Motion
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For the new Post Productions module, we have been asked to create a simple 1-2 min kinetic typography animation using one or more TED.com speeches.
For this we were asked to chose a lecture we liked and edit the audio.
I chose the a talk by Helen Fisher called “Why we love and Cheat”.
And this the transcript of my edited audio file:
"What 'tis to love?" Shakespeare said. I think human beings have been wondering about this question since they sat around their campfires or lay and watched the stars a million years ago. The first thing that happens -- a person begins to take on what I call, "special meaning." And then you just focus on this person. You can list what you don't like about them, but then you sweep that aside and focus on what you do. As Chaucer said, "Love is blind." not only does this person take on special meaning, you focus your attention on them. You aggrandize them. But you have intense energy. You feel intense elation when things are going well; mood swings into horrible despair when things are going poorly. Real dependence on this person. You become extremely sexually possessive. You know, if you're just sleeping with somebody, you don't really care if they're sleeping with somebody else. But the main characteristics of romantic love are craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally. The other main characteristic is motivation. The motor in your brain begins to crank, and you want this person. And last but not least, it is an obsession. "What percentage of the day and night do you think about this person?" "All day. All night. I can never stop thinking about him or her."
It’s very cliche of me to chose something along the topic of love… （￣ー￣）
I know, but her talk is actually so interesting and scientific, it makes me wonder about how simple love actually is, just a reaction caused by the chemicals in our brain. … Food for thought, you know (＞。≪)
Well, anyway, for this kinetic typography thing, I created some short storyboard-like collages, just so I know what I’m doing and how I’m animating stuff.
So here are some poster-like images from my my so-called storyboard :
The second one is totes my favourite thus far (^-^*)
And the last one just shows how it will actually be animated, as in, the sequence of the sentences etc.
Do you like the style? I went for a sort-of old book effect, inspired by the second sentence of the transcript - Shakespeare said . Gives the animation a nice mood and style, don’t you think? (*≧▽≦)
For this assignment we are using Motion 4.0 – a very cool and powerful software, except, the assignment is for us to learn how to use it, because it’s the first time for all of us. I keep getting mixed up between illustrator’s and Blender’s shortcuts, they don’t work the same way and it is so extremely annoying. Oh well, better watch more tutorials on Motion and make an interesting kinetic typography video.
Tags: cheat, cut, final, Fisher, Helen, kinetic, love, motion, poster, studio, typography, valentine, valentine's, we, why
Critical Theory – week 2
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This week we studied the topics of Myth, Metaphor and Narrative.
We compared the Effects theory and the Reception theory in terms of media and their influence.
Effects theory = passive , “What does the media do to the audience?”
Reception theory = active “What does the audience do for the media?”
Morley 1980:
Nationwide audience, different things to say about similar texts.
Dominant (Hegemonic) reading – shares encoded meanings.
Negotiated reading – shares some of the embedded ideologies, but not all.
Oppositional (counter-hegemonic) reading – does not share programs code.
Members of the same audience decode texts similarly.
This week we also studied Dallas, a “low-brow” TV series. We discussed how the people with a similar cultural background liked and enjoyed the series, while others, from a completely different side of the world did not.
During the lab, we worked in groups by discussing the cultural taboos, myths and symbols.
I was working in a group with Fodhla, and we looked up the meaning of her name, while I told her an old Lithuanian legend about witches eating kids which are uncared for by their mothers. It’s a morality tale, but since I am from quite a different cultural background, it seemed relevant in this class. Anyway, we also looked at general taboos, and most of them seem to be pretty standard, such as topics of food and sexuality.
The last objective of the lab was to draw a symbol which means something to an individual.
I drew this metal wolf, which is known as the symbol of Vilnius, where I am from. While Fodhla chose to talk about the Claddagh ring.
Lastly, we were asked to chose an influential writer (from the list of : Saussure, Marx, Joyce, Beckett, Foucault, Derria, Barthes and Chomsky,) and together, as a team, give a short presentation on two of the writers chosen in the group.
Myself and Fodhla decided on the topics of the presentation slides and began reading the insane amount of extra material provided for this module.
So the influential writer I chose to discuss was Ferdinand de Saussure.
For most of this information, I watched a lecture on structuralism and Saussure, which can be seen here.
Saussure
Swiss linguist. His ideas laid a foundation on the 20th century developments of linguistics.
The Father of Modern School of Structuralism
Structuralism: elements of culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overreaching system or “Structure”.
Influenced Barthes, Foucault, Chomsky, Levi-Strauss.
Work / Main ideas:
“No ready-made ideas exist before words. A word does not unite this pre-existent thing in itself with some perfect name, rather, a word or ‘sign’ links a concept (signified) with a sound or an image (signifier).
The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Why? If it were not arbitrary, there would only be one language in the world.
Neither plutonic forms, nor transcended truths lurk behind the words we use. Words or signs are merely arbitrary man-made concepts.
Words or signs only have meaning when part of a system.
For example, the word cat (CAT) is not the same as BAT or CAN, because the letters form a structure which has a meaning. Alone, these letters mean nothing.
Believed he could plot all the language on a graph. Called it the ‘Langue’.
Langue = The deep structure that produces our ideas.
Which differs from the ‘Parole’.
Parole = A specific instance of speech or writing.
Saussure was interested in the Langue and how it produced the parole.
Which is the main structuralism idea.
Wrote about all these ideas in a book called “Course in General Linguistics”..
UPDATE: 23/02/2012
We had our presentations yesterday morning, and me and Fodhla were talking about Karl Marx and Ferdinand de Saussure.
These are our presentation slides. The first 7 are Fodhla’s, on Marx, and then I take over with the Amazing Sauusure.
Okay, so for Saussure, I took a different approach than most people. Instead of talking about semiotics and the media today, I decided to explore Saussure’s other work, such as language and the idea of Structuralism. I did this because I was researching a lot about Saussure and I realised that, as much as semiotics relate to media today, it’s a difficult subject to relate to media. Media is semiotics. Media has always been semiotics and colour and shape, so Saussure’s theories didn’t really influence it, they juts relate to it.
Instead I watched a lecture on Saussure and learned that he is known as the Father of Mother school of structuralism. I then researched what structuralism was and learned all about the magic of it. Saussure was one of the first people to believe that ideas are not material (as apposed to Plato, who thought ideas were real material objects somewhere in heavens) and develop this further into structuralism.
In simple terms, structuralism is what the separate elements create when combined together. For example, the letters C A T and the letters B A T mean nothing on their own, but when part of a structure, they create meaning.
In relation to the media today, Saussure’s structuralism works on many levels.
I chose to explore and talk about the structuralism in social media. Websites such as facebook and twitter, for example, only work when the community of people can post and reply to each other, if the possibility of posting statuses and tweets to others was not available, if other people would not be able to see them, then these statuses to no one would have no meaning, just like separate letters, which are meaningless when not part of a system.
Tags: audience reception, cultural taboos, influence effects, linguistics, marx, reception theory, saussure, structuralism
Developing an identity and business cards
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Great News! I am going to the Offset 2012 this year.
I cannot be more excited, it feels like a birthday present, because it’s during my 21st birthday. And Offset seems like the perfect place for me to celebrate my old age.
Anyway, because I am going to the awesome Offset, I wanted to create some business cards so I could give them around and maybe get an interview for a job or an internship.
So I started by creating an identity/logo for myself. Since my initials are MK, I thought that’s where I’m going to start.
I have also been slowly developing a font for myself and thought that this is the perfect opportunity to use it. I’ve never really studied typography, but I have a strong passion for it and since I was involved in digitalazing a font at Red Dog, I really wanted to create my own.
So that’s my initials created using the font I have been developing since the summer. I really need to scan it in and post it here, because, it could show that, even though I have never fully studied typography, I have a great passion for it and would like to develop this passion into a skill.
Anyway, here are the images of the evolution of my identity/logo.
And here is the final version which I have decided on using :
After the logo was created, all I needed to do was create the business card design.
For this I researched a lot of business cards for different companies and services. The ones that always caught my eye were very simple almost crisp. I thought, it was easy to understand the brand from the simplicity and use of white space a lot easier, rather than using a lot of complicated shapes and colours, trying to fit as much information about the individual on the tiny card.
That is the approach I chose for my design too.
I also got some feedback on the designs from my peers. And I have learned, that, as potential designers, they all had a very strong and individual opinion about the use of my initials and the font I chose to use.
They also advised me to print the contact details vertically. While others suggested I use my typography portrait on the cards.
I have thought about their input. A lot. Really, a lot.
However, I decided that, it is my identity, a digital signature of my personality. And I like it. I may tweak a few things here and there (like changing the back of the business card, maybe make it vertical too, for consistency), but I am quite set on the design as it now.
Critical Theory – week 1
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So the first class in Critical Theory module, we looked at what is critical theory in general and its importance. We looked at topics such as
Anthropology, which is the study of humanity or “What defines a human life origins”
and
Ideology which is a set of ideas that constitutes ones goals, expectations and actions.
We also had a brief introduction into Marxism and the Media: How does media influence our social organization culture.
For this discussion, we also briefly went over Capitalism and Communism.
Capitalism =
- an ideology
- individuals are free to create wealth
Communism =
- a belief system
- consider that capitalism exploits labour workers
argues that the government should own and control wealth, creation and distribute it fairly among the population.
Following this discussion, we briefly covered Marxism.
Karl Marx – 19th Century Philosopher
said that
- there are divisions and tensions between classes.
- he rebelled
- said that all workers of the land should unite.
In terms of the media and Marxism, we decided that “The Media is creating an ideology”.
From Karl Marx, we went onto Antonio Gramsci – he proposed the concept of “Hegemony” and said that “We all live in a society where there are power structures”.
From this we were able to discuss Marxism in further detail and construct our own opinions such as “Everyday behavior is what keeps the government in power” – a type of manipulation, further developed by the pride and feeling of Nationalism by flags of the country, badges and stickers which show support to the government in power. This just shows how people are following the mass.
Why are they doing this? – Because of social conventions – they feel that they do not want to stand out. Can this be driven by advertisement? Partly, yes, people giving in and buying designer clothes and all the newest technology gadgets like their neighbors. This type of “pompous” culture, giving in the consumer demands, influenced by the media every day.
To support the points discussed, we watched a YouTube video on Anthropology and were asked to split up into groups, jot a few points down . After having watched the video, we were asked to explore:
1. Issues of individuality, community and society in a social media environment.
Having watched the video, I have decided that individuality can be easily expressed online by the use of a cheap video camera, and anyone can voice their opinions freely, but can feel lonely, as the person is talking to an invisible audience and can not always be heard by others online. These individuals can feel part of a community by, in theory, never having to interact with other users.
On the other hand, YouTube has become such a powerful tool to express one individuality, that most people do take advantage of it and new content is produced on the website all the time.
2. Relate to any ideas of the theories (such as Mediation (Marxist theory and media studies.))
Remediation would be the easiest to relate to, as its definition is “new media is remixed old media”.
This can be easily related to the “Numa Numa guy”, by tracing back the steps of the Numa numa craze. It began as a song in Romania, then it became a music video, then a remixed version of the video by the use of animations, which then further popularized the song, which reached a single man in New Jersey, who used the audio from the song and made into a home-made music video. Further on, this home-made music video sparked other users to express their joys about the song in a similar manner and a simple pop song became an internet phenomenon.
New media both increase immediacy / mediation of senses and experiences while creating this by remixing old media (paraphrasing Richard Grusin. )
UV Mapping – test
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For 3D modelling, the CDM students are to create and texture characters in blender, which will then be used as part of a game that the computer science students are developing in Unity.
As I have never textured a 3D model, mainly because colouring the model using blenders brushes worked fine in the past, I have decided to do a short tutorial on UV mapping, just so I’d be up to speed with the workload we’re about to get. I decided to start off simple, with just a box, export the uv texture and colour it in photoshop.
This is the UV map and the rendered images of the textured cube.
Great, that actually worked.
Now, I might aswell do something a little bit more complicated. How about I try to map a nice book? Here’s the awesome zombie book texture that I used for this experiment.
Here’s the texture map:
And the final book rendered with the texture map:
Yea, I think the book looks quite alright, I’m happy with the results.
Tags: 3d model, 3d modelling, blender, book, cube, dice, hunter, map, mapping, photoshop, texture, textured cube, texturing, uv, uv mapping, zombie
