.wk15. Blobjects

1) The 'blobject' phenomenon took off in the ID (industrial design) profession in the 1990s. Why?

Though the blobject was spurned by a changing culture mixing lives with the fluidity of technology, it propelled into such a big phenomenon because of CAD, modeling techniques and the development of new materials, production methods and rapid prototyping.

           

2) Which year in the 1990s was a watershed?

            1998

3) What three other products were introduced this year that were good examples of blobjects?

            New Volkswagon Beetle

            “5 flavor” Apple iMacs

            Nike Triax watch

4) On page 29 of "Shaping Things" Bruce Sterling describes when a 'gizmo' becomes a 'spime'. Copy the sentence here. ( actually found on page 23)

“When the entire industrial process is made explicit, when the metrics count for more than the object they measure, then gismo become spimes.”

5) On page 45 of "Shaping Things" Bruce Sterling describes a defining characteristic of a Synchronic Society. Quote him here.

“A synchronic society generates trillions of catalogable, searchable, trackable trajectories: patterns of design, manufacturing, distribution and recycling that re maintained in fine grain detail.”

.wk14. myMaps visualization.

Check out myMap of my neighborhood and favorite places!

.wk13.Animation.

1. Squash and Stretch : 
As the ball is stepped on by Luxor Junior, it squashes and stretches according to the amount of force applied to it by him. 

2. Timing and Motion : Movement of the ball in relation to the lamp characters. The ball rolls toward them and there is a moment when the lamp slowly looks up, recognizes it, questions it, and reacts. 

3. Anticipation : As the little lamp begins to jump on the ball, the ball squishes more and he begins to jump higher and harder each time building up to the ball popping. 

4. Staging : Pixar sets the feeling of Luxor Junior through lots of little interrelated actions that express a specific mood. This is the combination of the movement of the lights and the spotlight they give off and the motion of the lights when excited or unsure. 

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action : The movements of the light characters are examples of both of these actions. Follow through takes place as the lights move, especially when the little light is jumping and excited. When done jumping he doesn’t just stop, but his springs and body bounce a little even once he’s landed. Overlapping action is similar, but one action starts before another ends like while he is jumping along. The front of the lamp begins the next motions toward jumping before part of it has even completely landed. 

6. Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action :I’m not sure how this can be seen in the actual video as it applies to the drawing process. Straight ahead action is drawing the scene frame by frame, while pose to pose is drawing key frames and filling in the intervals. The film probably uses a combination of the two but I don’t see how one can tell unless we were looking at the actual machinery behind the animation. 

7. Slow In and Out :Seen in the movement of the ball. As it rolls onto screen it slowly rolls in then quickly bounces against the larger lamp, and slowly stops. 

8. Arcs : Seen in Luxor Junior in the movement of the cord as the little light hops along, and in the light spot following the movement of each character. 

9. Exaggeration : The motions of the lamps are exaggerated to amply realistic human emotions to them in order to convey the story. 

10. Secondary Action : Any time a light pushes a ball, the ball rolls. 

11. Appeal : The lamps are characters that take on humanistic emotion and expression making them relatable as more than inanimate objects to the viewer.

.wk12.Special Effects.

• What was the name of the film made by Edwin S Porter that made use of a double-exposure to show a train window view of passing landscape? 
• The Great Train Robbery, circa 1903 
• Who invented the traveling matte shot in 1916? 
• Frank Williams 
• How many weeks did it take to animate the main character in 1933’s KING KONG? 
• 55 weeks 
• Which film made use of the ‘slit scan’ process in the 1960s? 
• 2001: A Space Odyssey 
• In his essay “Industrial Memory” theorist Mark Dery argues that the silver fluid T1000 cyborg character represents a ‘masculine recoil’ – but from what? 
• From the feminization of electronic technology. 
• Tim Recuber in his essay “Immersion Cinema” describes the key idea – that of immersion cinema itself – what is it? What makes it unique? 
• Immersion Cinema refers to how technology has effected how the viewer experiences cinema using projection, audiovisual advancements, hi-fi and 3-D. Never before has the viewer been able to be so completely immersed in theatre and be almost physically affected by it. The viewer is able to feel as if they are an active participant in the story. 
• In the special effects history links, in the Time magazine history of special effects, there is a description of ‘motion control’ cameras developed for “Star Wars” in the 1970s. What is motion control? 
• Motion control allows for complicated camera movements during filming. The original motion control system, the Dykstraflex, allowed for specific series of shots to be automated, saved, and re-filmed in the same series. The system was completely digitally controlled and allowed for 7 specific movements: roll, pan, tilt, swing, boom, traverse, track, lens focus, motor drive, shutter control, and then the duplication of the moves for many takes. 
• Out of the 14 minutes of Jurassic Park’s dinosaur footage, how many minutes were computer generated imagery or CGI? 
• 4 minutes were computer generated, the rest were created using animatronic models. 
• In the ‘denofgeek’ website, what is the name of the film that features an army of sword fighting skeletons, made in 1963? 
• Jason and the Argonauts 
• In the ‘denofgeek’ site, which 2005 film used a special effects shot to sell the idea of a remake of a famous science fiction story to Steven Spielberg? 
• War of the Worlds

.wk11. Theme Parks & Shopping Malls

•  In Margaret Crawford's Essay "The World in a Shopping Mall she outlines that 'the size and scale of a mall reflects "threshold demand"' - what is meant by this term? 
• Threshold demand, according to Crawford, is the minimum n umberof potential customers living within a geographical range of a retail space to enable it to be sold at a profit. The larger the mall or more stores involved in it, the larger the geographic space it appeals to.
• In the same article Margaret Crawford describes something called "spontaneous malling" - what does this mean?
• Urban spaces are transformed into malls without the addition of new buildings or developers to create the mall. This happens simply by closing off streets and designating them as pedestrian zones intead. 
• According to Michael Sorkin in his essay 'See you in Disneyland', how did Disneyland have its origins? 
• Specifically Disneyland was paid for by ABC in a deal made by Walt Disney. The ideas for Disneyland stem from a trip to a Railroading Fair and a visit to another amusement park in which he was disgusted by it’s horrible hygiene. 
• Michael Sorkin writes in his essay that Disney's EPCOT Center was motivated largely by frustrations Disney felt at his Anaheim CA park. What were those frustrations? 
• He was unhappy that the success of Disneyland prompted a mass building of hotels and “low commerce”. Disney was frustrated with the sullying of Disneyland and wanted to create a utopia of cleanliness for EPCOT. 
• In his essay "Travels in Hyperreality" Umberto Eco describes Disneyland as 'a place of total passivity' - what does he mean by this? 
• At Disneyland, everything is regulated and dictated by the park. The visitor is discouraged from going off the path and is sort of corralled into certain movements and directions based on the design. 

.wk10.Second Life Funfair Experience.

This funfair wasn’t at all fun, at least not for me, but I wasn’t able to go during the scheduled class time so I went later.  The experience really emphasized how for some people, second life is truly a second life, and for others maybe even a first.  I guess I don’t understand at all where the fun comes in from just walking around and talking to random people or having a character interact and do things that are not real.  During the game play, the only semi redeeming feature for me was the visuals.  It’s kind of neat to look at all the things people made and inspect parts of them.  But the graphics aren’t really nice enough to make it worth actually playing the game.  It just seems like a waste of time.  If you have to spend real life time and real money in order to do imaginary things, why do it?  Maybe if there were more challenges within the game that rewarded you with points to use to get other things, then it would be more of a game and less of an experience.  But who knows, maybe there is and I didn’t realize it in my short time played.

As a place to meet, I think second life could be interesting, but ultimately a basic video conference would be more effective for everyone involved.  For game design and component design, Second life is a good tool for practicing and getting used to gaming systems, but I don’t really see it as an effective gaming tool.

.wk9.Wikileaks.Mindmap.