Continued Bloggings from the World of Leron
research for ubiquitous computing for mobile devices:
I’ve tried several of the popular photoblogging / moblogging apps, including TextAmerica and Flickr. Both operate on the concept of emailing a photo from your cameraphone to a unique email address which automatically posts the photos to your account.
On David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards
Of course this ties ever so neatly into Aristotle’s observations about causality. I think one element that Ball uncovers is how causality can be directly tied to suspense — building the audience’s expectations in such a way that they can’t help but watch. He mentions directors cutting out huge scenes from Hamlet, without realizing the significance to the story; I am reminded of watching The Exorcist once, late at night, and I would doze off in the ‘boring’ parts of the film, and wake up just in time for the scary ones. But they weren’t scary at all. The pacing of the film, and the events that set up the most disturbing moments are only scary because of the lulls before, either because some bit of information had been laid out, or often, because the audience has been misdirected so as not to suspect the inevitable fright that is about to occur.
Continue reading ‘on Backwards and Forwards’
This was one of two masks, this one meant to “reveal yourself” Decoupage’d images of friends and family. Turned out a little creepier than I imagined…
My friend Theo Watson did a lot of computer vision work while he was studying at Parson’s design and technology program. this is a project called virtual daisies: as a person walks across a field of daisies, they die beneath their feet and regenerate moments later…
IT Conversations: Richard Marks – User Interfaces in Interactive Entertainment
This is an interesting recording from the game developer’s conference, where the developer of Sony’s EyeToy talks about the benefits and challenges of video sensing in interactive entertainment.
We had an interesting discussion about privacy in our wearables class today, and this post over at John Battelle’s Searchblog seemed apropos:
As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com,
Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one
that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely,
one that most have not taken much to heart.
This is a response I wrote up for Tuesday’s class on The Poetics…
For Aristotle the climax of a Tragedy should have two characteristics: that it be both surprising and inevitable. These qualities can be found in non-linear or computational media, but in different ways. If you are trying to tell a story but allow changes to the order of the plot, or the behavior of the characters, or prevent certain events from happening at all, the sense of inevitability is inherently removed. Perhaps surprise is heightened, as the audience is never quite sure what to expect. This tends to put the audience in a position of trying to figure out just what is going on. In traditional linear media a certain level of confusion might be tolerated, even welcomed, if there is some payoff for it. In non-linear experiences (games, for example) the payoff of overcoming this confusion — putting all the puzzle pieces together — can be even greater than that experienced at the resolution of a Tragedy — IF the audience is engaged and/or committed enough to suffer through the learning curve, and IF there is indeed the a resolution to be had (some non-linear pieces stop at the level of invoking confusion). Here is where the inevitable kicks back in — when some solution or pattern or story becomes obvious – and the audience can experience the same ‘A-ha!’ moment which is so critical in Aristotle’s definition of a Tragedy’s climax. Indeed, our minds are pattern matchers, and pattern makers — we want to see disparate elements resolve themselves into something recognizable–take this week’s LeCoq exercises — given enough effort and a little bit of structure, and we can make even the most absurd elements seem ‘inevitable’.
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