Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Self Crit

The title of my piece is “Recollections of a Zebra”. This stems from one of the more personal random thoughts that I had when doing the free writing. That is, it was one of the parts that I edited out of the public version of the free writing. The original idea going into the image selection process was to be as whimsical as possible in the selection, which came from the rambling free writing. But, because of the selection method, which was as random as I could bring it to be, I wanted to try and control it with a moderately rigorous structure in the video. I decided to use morse code as a means of structuring the images, and sticking that morse code into a mask inside of other images. I was attempting to make it so that, while the audience may not understand the code, they were still associating what was going on in the mask with what was going on in the larger images, which had been separated into different segments based on subject. Also, I put the mask of the morse code at the bottom of the screen, where subtitles would normally be.
The primary issues arose in photoshop. For some reason, when trying to create the pauses between images that would show the separation between the letters in the code, images would stick. I ended up having to create longer and longer pauses to make up for this. However, in the final version, for some reason the images didn’t stick in the final render. This caused the pauses to last longer, and created, what seemed to me, to be images appearing at random intervals. However, when watching I could see that since a lot of the images were reoccurring due to certain letters being used far more than others, a weird repetition at odd intervals was occurring inside of the larger images. I was not opposed to this effect and decided to stick with it. In fact, I started to see it as the real strength of the piece since the images were easily noticeable as being repeating, and I think really pulled together the idea that it was trying to say something. In the end, my primary issue with the piece is the length, but due to the sheer number of images used it was almost unavoidable if I wanted people to be able to see the images at all. Also, I should have worked mainly in FCP, as FCP really streamlined the process. Things that were taking me tens of minutes in Photoshop were reduced to a minute or two in FCP.
Some things I may try to improve this project would be to use a long rectangular mask rather than the circle mask for the code. This would make it read more like a subtitles bar, but the images themselves would be lost, thus the repetition of the images would be lost. The other thing I would change is to decrease the size of the whole thing to about one and a half minutes, and use only the images from a few of the major groups since at the moment the whole piece runs pretty long. These can be resolved pretty easily.
The biggest thing I learned here was that FCP seems to automatically resize images to scale down to the screen when imported. This greatly simplified the process and I wish I had learned it before I started to run scripts in photoshop, which would have been completely unnecessary if I had realized from the start.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

proj2 write-up

This project was much more difficult to acquire the resources for than it was to put together…or at least it would have been if I hadn’t been stupid and done half of the project in Photoshop. I suck at Photoshop, and Photoshop likes to crash on me fairly consistently…always right when I’m about to save (It’s talented like that). Anyways, right when I decided to ditch that program and compile the whole thing in FCP, everything started to go wonderfully smooth. In the end, I had to do the final masking and rendering in Photoshop, since for some reason some of the .mov’s I created in Photoshop wouldn’t transfer over to FCP for compiling for some reason, but just doing that in Photoshop was a simple matter.
The project came out about how I had hoped, though some of the Morse code bleeps are a little bit far between as re-rendering the final file in Photoshop seems to have finally corrected the black space issue, and a lot of the black space I had expanded for various reasons. It still comes out looking alright, but after watching it a few times I think I’m going to redo the Morse code when I can get a moment.

article response

These articles provided a lot for me to digest, too much perhaps, but even among the overload, the article “The Internet: Is it Changing the Way We Think?” stuck with me due to the compilation of viewpoints from many social scientists, psychologists, neurologists, etc. Even though all of the contributors seem to agree to an extent with what the original premise is, that the internet is causing a mental shift in its regular users, they seem to disagree in a much larger extent about whether the changes are “good” or “bad”.
The majority of these individuals see the brain as plastic. It is malleable and changeable on a day-to-day basis, which seems true given how the body itself is malleable. The mind continues to take in information, and just as opinions can be formed, the way the mind thinks can be changed, or manipulated. The Internet is causing the brain to think in a different way, using different aspects of the brain.
The consenting opinion, or rather the one that appears to think of this process as a good thing, seeing it as, essentially what the Google executive stated in the “Is Google Making us Stupid” article, a second brain. It clears away the need for one to do all the memorizing that was deemed necessary for the growth and development of young children, whether in school or church, and leaves room for the “important” things, later in life when all the things memorized as a child become nonessential. In another article, “Internet Use ‘good for the brain’”, it is also stated that browsing the web could increase the critical awareness of the elderly, as it stimulates a large amount of the brain.
The dissenting opinion sees it as a bit of blessed nuisance. It’s something that can’t be done without, but it also causes hardship. The contributors in the article have a variety of reasons for disliking the effects of the internet, but of course what seems to be the most popular reason is the decrease in attentiveness among even the contributors. Perhaps even more so, as pointed out in the article “An Ugly Toll of Technology: Impatience and Forgetfulness”, the effect it has on the social capabilities of individuals who shut themselves away from face to face interaction and associate anonymously over the internet. This, according to the article, leads children and young adults to ostracize themselves and become more depressed.
Both of these sides see the same effects of the web and based on the observation of different focus groups arrive at different conclusions as to whether the effects are positive or negative. I, personally, am not certain whether the internet is actually sapping attentiveness out of people. I find it just as likely that it’s more of a result of media itself being integral to our daily lives. As far as the children becoming more depressed, I think that may be the result in different ideas that drive parenting these days, and that children who are naturally more depressed would find the computer an easy way to shut themselves off. Depression has always caused individuals to become reclusive. Nowadays people just have a way to be reclusive while still being connected to the outside world through an anonymous terminal.
One idea that I do agree with, wholeheartedly, is that the internet is beginning to affect peoples ability to deal with persons on a face-to-face basis. Just looking within the school, if you look at the incoming freshman both last year and this year, they’re a very quiet bunch when not speaking amongst themselves, versus when I first started college and would go to social gatherings to form a social network. I think people are too comfortably with anonymity and are not comfortable presenting themselves before new people, mainly due to the forced restraint that has to be practiced.
Anyway, I find that while the internet might be contributing to the media madness that rushes at our mind everyday, there are so many things changing at once that it’s hard to state that the internet itself is changing our brains. While I can see the points made by the various articles, without seeing a sample audience and some testing, in the end all I can do is speculate. I saw it most profoundly in the original article I mentioned, but the people consistently say that it “seems obvious” that since our mind is plastic our mind would be changed by something as monumental as the internet, and I would agree looking at it like that, but saying that something “seems obvious” seems to imply that there is at the theory should be held with at least a little doubt as there is a lack of hard evidence to support it. Right now it is still in the realm of the social sciences, and is built up of speculation with some observation of sample groups.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

I dunno somemore...

Response to “Is Google Makins Us Stupid”

This is an intense article. The first few paragraphs dragged me in due to it’s relevance to my own past. I used to read books all the time. I would read at least one book a week, usually two to three. I spent a good amount of time just browsing books at the bookstore. But I all of a sudden stopped reading as often. I still read a book here and there, but not at the rate I used to. Moreover, last year while reading a book I did something I had never done before…I stopped the book halfway through. I liked the book, “David Copperfield”, I was even engrossed in it at times, but I all of a sudden quit reading. This has been a growing problem in games that I play as well. I used to play long story driven games, RPG’s, and while I still do play them, I find myself stopping somewhere in the story.
Anyways, because I can see the effects mentioned in the first few paragraphs in correlation to my own past, I was drawn more into the article. The irony being that I was drawn into an article which stated that we were being less and less drawn into writings (someone somewhere might be screaming “that’s not irony”, but I have long since learned that I’m bad at pointing out irony…hmm, I just distracted myself). Thus, while the article deals with several things, the parts that garner the most of my attention are the parts that deal with “deep thought”. The idea of efficiency has indeed taken root. I see this most evidently in my recent self, as I skim over articles and readings and take out the parts that seem most necessary.
The other thing that was most surprising to me was the idea that we need an artificial brain to supplement and direct our primary brain. When I read that I actually had a mental jump of my mind screaming “WHAT?” (in internet terms that would be “WHAT???!!!??!!?!?!”). I knew there was a reason I didn’t trust Google, with it’s fancy logos, ease of use, and amazing work environment. The human brain is amazing for many reasons, not the least of which because different brains can ponder the same problem and come to different conclusions. Thinking in terms of just productivity it might be a dream, since everyone would be working off the same information and thus would have no issue arriving at the same conclusions, making board meetings a breeze, but when thinking in terms of creativity, everyone would be painting “The Last Supper” for the rest of their lives.
I feel like I’m rambling, and the more I do so, the further I move away from the article. I feel like this is what the article was afraid of…then again rambling is a result of the mind exploring connections, so perhaps it’s what the article was trying to promote… But then again, rambling also seems to be something that skims the surface of the brain as it is jumping through thoughts. The article seems to want more exploration of an idea, or perhaps a “deeper” connection to an idea. However, rambling, while it is a bit of a light skimming of the brain, is still creating a sequence of connectivity between thoughts, thus expanding the original idea without actually going deep into the meaning of that idea, so perhaps rambling is creating depth within that idea by adding more material to the idea.
I have just successfully, I think, rambled about rambling. I think I deserve a pat on the back. But I think I can honestly think of rambling as being intricately correlated to the idea behind the article, as rambling is a process that can only be done by the human brain as it makes jumps through separate ideas that are only loosely connected. Where as I believe that the supplement of AI will cause the mind to see only what is there directly.
I might devolved a little to far away from the article, so I’ll stop now.

definition of random as according to wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

lacking any definite plan or order or purpose; governed by or depending on chance; "a random choice"; "bombs fell at random"; "random movements"


However, I think this is lacking in that I believe that random is more of a matter of perception. I believe that in order for something to be truly random it must be perceived by a different source. i.e. If rather that putting a definition here I had just stated "Mashed Potatoes" or some such, it would not have been truly random for me. I would have had to have made the choice to write something there, and while it might have been the first thought that came to my mind...some connection would have had to have been made between the need to write something random the mashed potatoes in my head. In this case it's easier for me to see the connection between random and mashed potatoes in my own head as it's something that I recall something in the past being random to me when someone said "mashed potatoes". However, you as the reader, would have no idea what I meant there, and it would have been random to you. Thus, for something to be truly random, the connections have to be made in someone else's head.

Thinking about this, I can relate this to the response to "Is Google Making us Stupid" in my following post in that if google was successful in directly attaching the algorithm and information to our brain, random itself would be a thing of the past, as everyones mind's would have access to the same information. That does raise the question, however, of how a person's personal experiences would be handled by the algorithm. I believe people would still have individual experiences, but "how would those be handled?", is what I mean to ask. If everyone was operating on the same database, would a person's personal experiences be enterred into and processed by algorithm? Would the information itself become a part of the greater database? If so, once a person had an experience, wouldn't everyone who had that experience or a similar experience after that be using the information from that first experience, and those after, to process what would have been a unique experience in their life?

Now that I wonder, is this process happening now? Since google is the primary search engine, and we are all under the thumb of the information that google decides to provide for our searches, are we being funneled into a certain thought process? The article has a part where a friend of the writer is quoted as saying that the way he thinks has changed due to the internet, so it's feasable at the very least. But is the way we think being standardized, or rather being made universal? I have asked a lot of questions, but the method I would probably use for gathering the answers to these questions would be google searching...so I dunno.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The order...

...in which i looked things up in google. I would look it up then hit the show more button. I would pick a couple from the first page that i could see, then I would just scroll down the page and randomly pick horizontally arranged rectangles before they could fully load.

Comfortable place
Pigeon
Pig bat
Bother with shower
Lock up your daughter
Final fantasy cosplay
Bathroo
Mildew building up
Break down
Computer breakdown
Bible
Skateboarding country music singer
Halloween super hero
Grover does drugs
American Presidents in anime
American Indians in anime
Indian band
Busted pipe
Mad cow cartoon
Akira pose
Ninja
Cyborg pirate ninja jesus
Female ninja
Pokemon
Action figures
Jesus action figures
Action hank
Action jew
Hamster hat
Character card
DnD
Deadly wake up call
Deadly creatures
Oil crisis
Grate
Monstrous
Destroy us all
Fishstick paradise
Spliced cartoon
Cartoon graffiti
Cartoon conniption
Tie play
hippie
competitive eating
insignia
coat of arms
overcoat
trench coat mafia
warcraft nerd
nerd rage
lolwut
meme
internet meme
steampunk
raisin
reason
hurricane wreckage
fire hot
megaman
8-bit
fight
80’s anime
crazy anime
sayonara
comic suicide
awkward
junk
pirate robot
ninja robot
loading screen
demon butterfly
mastermind
Kermit postal
Future cars
Cartoon spaceship
Cartoons of the 2000’s
Layout
Depiction
2 more til 1000
white on black
black on white
crime
crime rates by city
tiles
mosaics
mosaics cartoon
either or
shower scene
alien encounter
mind control
lip service
funky outfits
weird asian outfits
tribal Africa
“garade”
multinational
you win again
flawless victory
side scroller
16-bit
64-bit
rambling
ruby
evil candle
black people in anime
foreigners in American cartoons
foreigners in cartoons
butt on fire
fire safety
danger zone
umad
haters be hatin
plushie madness
maybe later
lego lol
“astoner”
valley
natural body
larynx
copyright protected
where’d I put the tuna
wheres waldo
where’s fluffy
big monster
grammar nazi
word nerd
good news
read all the pamphlets
rebel
console games
evil power
defeat
ymck

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

free-writing pt 3

These are the words and or phrases that i intend to look up first and see where that takes me

Comfortable place, bother with shower, bathroo, mildew building up, busted pipe, grate, raisin, reason, junk, tiles, bathroom shower, “garade”, “astoner”, opinions of work, assignment, screen, grammar nazi, reconstruction, teddy Roosevelt, came to fruition, uncomfortable position, notice what can’t be…, movies blue and orange, animations, with a friend, bit drunk, night time, incandescent bulbs, books, “badstool”, waste of money, console games, held a grudge, merits, saw, torture smut films, grown out of the world, world is just a dream, random things, shoot yourself, straight through the earth, hit the moon, center of the earth, oblong, gravity, “oftsen”, ancestor, private, head itches, coco rosie, male audience, bjork, figurative you, adventure time, futurama, tcby ice cream, Starkville, bops, freakin, jazz, camping, fallen away, nice to smell, sky at night, space between houses, catholic club, homeless people, ymca, ymck, bad manager, lifeguard, Madonna, coco rosie, flavored water, gunner, sucky job, old fashioned tank, wrinkles, “gasstation”, energy drinks, see the sea, diabetes with every sip, Giancarlo, 5 hour energy, odd stuff, comedown, have to piss, maids, manga, psychic, broader spectrum, wearing something normal, electro magnetic pulses, deadpan, loser regular people, dilate, discarded pants, worm in apple, nightmare,