Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
After Converstaions
The things that i would like to take from my conversations would probably be some confidence in my idea. After explaining how I planned on taking my project, most of my partners told me that it was interesting. As to how to make my piece more literary-oriented or how to make it less depressing I find myself on my own.
what will your last piece be?
funny,serious, life-changing, important, moving, profound
I fell like once it is done my piece could illicit humor, or possibly a feeling not unlike profound. Pragmatically, I think viewers will find my animation pointlessly frustrating or dark or mildly entertaining.
My idea is of a Maze, with the viewer trapped inside. Choices move the viewer about in a confusing manner and all options should seem equally hopeless. I'm having trouble making options not serious enough or so serious that it gives off a different message then I'd like. I think that after a viewer is done being bamboozled by the game and think about the options and how they are juxtaposed they may contrast it to their own views and be enlightened. Not inventing a new system of government or nirvana enlightened but maybe a "huh" type deal.
what will your last piece be?
funny,serious, life-changing, important, moving, profound
I fell like once it is done my piece could illicit humor, or possibly a feeling not unlike profound. Pragmatically, I think viewers will find my animation pointlessly frustrating or dark or mildly entertaining.
My idea is of a Maze, with the viewer trapped inside. Choices move the viewer about in a confusing manner and all options should seem equally hopeless. I'm having trouble making options not serious enough or so serious that it gives off a different message then I'd like. I think that after a viewer is done being bamboozled by the game and think about the options and how they are juxtaposed they may contrast it to their own views and be enlightened. Not inventing a new system of government or nirvana enlightened but maybe a "huh" type deal.
On Monstrum
I learned with this project how to make a lot of frames out of a small number, to better know what I want my end result to look like to make the beginning and middle steps more streamlined. I learned more about timing and using amounts of frames better, which I seem to learn some of every project, and also I did a lot of work with symbols inside symbols. I tried to make something only possible through animation, that couldn't be captured by normal writing. I completely abandoned my original idea about internet grazing and focused on a monster of adjectives that looks like a cloud, but probably represents multiple images to viewers.
If I had two or three more days to work on the project I don't know what I would do. I might speed up the start or sped more time on the monster's origin, on a blackboard or a journal of an angsty youth. I spent a lot more time then I planned on this piece at first but to make everything look like I had envisioned I needed to put forth more then I expected. I hope my long project is not shorter then this one.
I would decide what I wanted to have happen a lot sooner were I to tell past me what to do differently with this project. I spend time making my monster but it had words that were backwards and vertical so I thought it might be hard to read. I tried to make my stick figure look more realistic in his movements and wasted a lot of time.
If I had two or three more days to work on the project I don't know what I would do. I might speed up the start or sped more time on the monster's origin, on a blackboard or a journal of an angsty youth. I spent a lot more time then I planned on this piece at first but to make everything look like I had envisioned I needed to put forth more then I expected. I hope my long project is not shorter then this one.
I would decide what I wanted to have happen a lot sooner were I to tell past me what to do differently with this project. I spend time making my monster but it had words that were backwards and vertical so I thought it might be hard to read. I tried to make my stick figure look more realistic in his movements and wasted a lot of time.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Autopoiesis
In the article ar is decribed as, "that human activity that can confound the basic sense we make of things so that we see things in a manner we might otherwise never have considered." While this can apply to some art it isn't the definition of art. All the post-modern and experimental art seems to try to subvert our assumptions of what art is or our beliefs, but I think a well made pot or painting of some fruit also count as art.
I was fairly confused throughout the reading as to the implications of what was said. The definitions of what was being done never seemed to be definite. The first sentence,"Novelty is intrinsic to semiosis, the complex processes by which meaning is differentiated in signification.", broke down to "Producing meaning involves importance and new-ness", in my mind. Art is described to show the viewer a representation of something and through that, the new ways in which that thing are related to the viewer.
Concerning how novelty and semiosis and creativity tie in to identity, I don't think this is an easy question to answer. I guess that identity can be how one sees themselves in relation to other things; be they religions, social groups, other indivduals, and by making art that reinvents how you see things it changes how you see yourself?
I was fairly confused throughout the reading as to the implications of what was said. The definitions of what was being done never seemed to be definite. The first sentence,"Novelty is intrinsic to semiosis, the complex processes by which meaning is differentiated in signification.", broke down to "Producing meaning involves importance and new-ness", in my mind. Art is described to show the viewer a representation of something and through that, the new ways in which that thing are related to the viewer.
Concerning how novelty and semiosis and creativity tie in to identity, I don't think this is an easy question to answer. I guess that identity can be how one sees themselves in relation to other things; be they religions, social groups, other indivduals, and by making art that reinvents how you see things it changes how you see yourself?
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Rough draft for Research Paper
I choose to look at some of Neil Hennessy’s digital poetry for my research paper. Here are a few factoids that I found to better illustrate the man. Neil Hennessy graduated with both bachelors of mathematics in computer science and bachelors in English Literature. In his poetry Hennessy seems to draw on the two fields equally. In Neil’s biography he is described as a poet, new media and performance artist, as well as a pataphysician. Pataphysics, I soon-after learned is a pseudophilosophy that is dedicated to studying what lies beyond metaphysics. Pataphysics was originally coined as ‘the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.” It is in essence a parody the theory of modern science and is often expressed in nonsensical language.
This aspect of the nonsensical in Neil Hennessy’s piece “JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine” was what choose me to pick Neil as my topic. The program is a box filled with moving letters. When the letters collide a calculation determines if they stick together or not. The calculation is an algorithm based off the English language and creates the words by the rules that most English words follow. The newly-formed words can then combine with other words to make compound fake words.
Hennessy writes that JABBER realizes a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules, but I see JABBER as something a little different. In my mind JABBER feels very much like looking through a microscope at a Petri dish full of single celled organisms. Instead of the building blocks of matter they are the building blocks of life, mainly because the way they squirm around looks life-like to me. The way the letters and words evolve and feed off one another is very similar to the way atoms tussle for control of electrons and combine to form new elements, but language has always been a living thing in essence. Hennessy wrote that each time the generator is initiated the result is a different dynamic nonsense word sound poem.
“Puddle” is an animated poem by Hennessy that is so simple and short I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in our class. In fact I believe Maria’s word-poem was extremely similar to it. The poem begins with the word puddle alone on a screen, then a stream of i’s fall through the ‘u’ to make the word piddle, which I thought was the best aspect of the poem and then was depressed that my favorite part had to be about urination. The ‘i’ then changes to an ‘a’ making the word ‘paddle’, and acts as a paddle to propel the word forward until finally the ‘a’ changes to an ‘e’ making the word ‘peddle’ and the ‘e’ then moves like a bicycle peddle, causing the word to glide off screen. The meaning of this poem seemed to be the same as the meaning behind all of our word-poems, to play with animation and language. The viewer is meant to see the words, associate them to their meanings and be entertained by how the words act inductively.
(Epitome,, Absurdism, dada, language poets)
The Obfuscator is a writing program that Hennessy has written that takes writing and creates longer words around the existing words to it to create new meaning and new poetry. I think that the explanation Hennessy gives for his program’s applications and purpose were humorous as well as insightful. Hennessy boasts that his program can make the sentences unwieldy, plodding, and needlessly complex. The purpose of the program is clear, to add meaning and words to existing meaning and words.
Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll both inverted conventions in language to create works where meaning was prevalent and absent. While both these authors wrote in ways that deviated from the norm, their works were highly entertaining and purposefully structured. I believe that is the primary difference between non-sense poetry and Concrete poetry, which I like to refer to as no-sense poetry. Where both subjects can contain white spaces with words randomly floating, nonsense lacks any coherent meaning, which invites incoherent meaning, while experimental poetry rejects the conventions of meaning. If a coherent sentence with easily ascertainable information were to be fire, nonsense would be ice, and experimental poetry would strive to lack temperature in any way. It would be non-temperature.
[[I know I spend too much time writing about what his projects are and not about how they mean or what they do, other then that any feedback would be appreciated]]
This aspect of the nonsensical in Neil Hennessy’s piece “JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine” was what choose me to pick Neil as my topic. The program is a box filled with moving letters. When the letters collide a calculation determines if they stick together or not. The calculation is an algorithm based off the English language and creates the words by the rules that most English words follow. The newly-formed words can then combine with other words to make compound fake words.
Hennessy writes that JABBER realizes a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules, but I see JABBER as something a little different. In my mind JABBER feels very much like looking through a microscope at a Petri dish full of single celled organisms. Instead of the building blocks of matter they are the building blocks of life, mainly because the way they squirm around looks life-like to me. The way the letters and words evolve and feed off one another is very similar to the way atoms tussle for control of electrons and combine to form new elements, but language has always been a living thing in essence. Hennessy wrote that each time the generator is initiated the result is a different dynamic nonsense word sound poem.
“Puddle” is an animated poem by Hennessy that is so simple and short I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in our class. In fact I believe Maria’s word-poem was extremely similar to it. The poem begins with the word puddle alone on a screen, then a stream of i’s fall through the ‘u’ to make the word piddle, which I thought was the best aspect of the poem and then was depressed that my favorite part had to be about urination. The ‘i’ then changes to an ‘a’ making the word ‘paddle’, and acts as a paddle to propel the word forward until finally the ‘a’ changes to an ‘e’ making the word ‘peddle’ and the ‘e’ then moves like a bicycle peddle, causing the word to glide off screen. The meaning of this poem seemed to be the same as the meaning behind all of our word-poems, to play with animation and language. The viewer is meant to see the words, associate them to their meanings and be entertained by how the words act inductively.
(Epitome,, Absurdism, dada, language poets)
The Obfuscator is a writing program that Hennessy has written that takes writing and creates longer words around the existing words to it to create new meaning and new poetry. I think that the explanation Hennessy gives for his program’s applications and purpose were humorous as well as insightful. Hennessy boasts that his program can make the sentences unwieldy, plodding, and needlessly complex. The purpose of the program is clear, to add meaning and words to existing meaning and words.
Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll both inverted conventions in language to create works where meaning was prevalent and absent. While both these authors wrote in ways that deviated from the norm, their works were highly entertaining and purposefully structured. I believe that is the primary difference between non-sense poetry and Concrete poetry, which I like to refer to as no-sense poetry. Where both subjects can contain white spaces with words randomly floating, nonsense lacks any coherent meaning, which invites incoherent meaning, while experimental poetry rejects the conventions of meaning. If a coherent sentence with easily ascertainable information were to be fire, nonsense would be ice, and experimental poetry would strive to lack temperature in any way. It would be non-temperature.
[[I know I spend too much time writing about what his projects are and not about how they mean or what they do, other then that any feedback would be appreciated]]
Response to Feedback on Short Project
This blog is dedicated to Adam Koebel, without you none of this would have been possible.
I had technical difficulties with my project so I did not receive much feedback, but the feedback I got was appreciated. I was glad that my monster was recognized as what it was since it is made up of a mass of adjectives rather then having any shape. The suggestions I got were to lengthen the tween so that viewers can see it better. I plan on doing this by giving several shots of parts of the monster. I don't want to show the whole monster at first because from what little i know of monster movies, not being able to see the monster makes it scarier. But since its made up of words I probably should buck those conventions.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
New Medium, New Perceptions
“Innovative practice has pioneered not only new media but also new ways of perceiving through a given medium, a practice that has localized art not as a way of representing but as a way of making.” Page 173 of Digital Poetics by Loss Pequeno Glazier.
After reading the article I choose this quote because it ties in with the most things I have actual experience with, which frees me in part from baseless conjecture. Some new ways of perceiving through a given medium are webcomics, which have shifted in a way that I think most of the poets we have read in this class wish to see. In the early days of the Internet comics from the Sunday funnies were taken, scanned, and put online. The product was un-innovative, ignored the possibilities offered by the medium, and were frankly a little stale. Soon though, the properties unique to the World Wide Web caused a revolution. The idea of the infinite canvas, the idea that the space on a webpage can be whatever dimensions you want it to be, was utilized, bearing works that couldn’t be read in print because they would be very ungainly physically, but also because without the medium the art lost the ease and accessibility that helped shape it. On page 175 of the article the “alt tag” is brought up as a facet that electronic poetry could take advantage of. The webcomics that are my personal favorites all utilize the Alt tag, or hover text. In a webcomic it provided the perfect spot for a second punchline, invisible while the comics is read, and only a mouse movement away from being revealed. Also on page 175 under ‘Enabling new tools for intelligence”, is the concept of community produced works. MS Paint Adventures text-based adventure webcomic that utilized this concept in a very raw way. The artist started a comic by drawing a single panel. On his website he set up a comment box and whatever viewers wanted the next panel to be of, he drew it. The experiment then led to another comic where he used comment input to create the single panels, while he had an overall story arc that he made sure the panels more or less followed.
Through interactivity and user-controlled navigation a lot of web-pages feel less like pieces of paper, and more like virtual worlds to explore. I like the idea of Wiki trees, the concept of creating topologies of your favorite websites and sharing them online to other users with their own trees. The content is the same as if you had typed in each individual site’s URL but the end result is a unique piece that can be viewed as a whole or as the sum of its parts. New videogames like Spore or Little Big Planet allow for users to create levels as they play them and then makes those levels available to other users to play and explore. This user generated content not only is free for everyone, but can buck the typical narrative. A platformer game can become a murder-mystery, or a racing game can have fantasy elements added. Because the content is free, the levels are viewed completely differently then content developed by the company that produced the game. Gamers make the levels themselves and like the boy in the article they twist conventions, like a platformer being tweeked into a murder-mystery. The ways of perceiving comics and videogames has changed due to the medium shift towards a global network that all can be involved in the creation of.
After reading the article I choose this quote because it ties in with the most things I have actual experience with, which frees me in part from baseless conjecture. Some new ways of perceiving through a given medium are webcomics, which have shifted in a way that I think most of the poets we have read in this class wish to see. In the early days of the Internet comics from the Sunday funnies were taken, scanned, and put online. The product was un-innovative, ignored the possibilities offered by the medium, and were frankly a little stale. Soon though, the properties unique to the World Wide Web caused a revolution. The idea of the infinite canvas, the idea that the space on a webpage can be whatever dimensions you want it to be, was utilized, bearing works that couldn’t be read in print because they would be very ungainly physically, but also because without the medium the art lost the ease and accessibility that helped shape it. On page 175 of the article the “alt tag” is brought up as a facet that electronic poetry could take advantage of. The webcomics that are my personal favorites all utilize the Alt tag, or hover text. In a webcomic it provided the perfect spot for a second punchline, invisible while the comics is read, and only a mouse movement away from being revealed. Also on page 175 under ‘Enabling new tools for intelligence”, is the concept of community produced works. MS Paint Adventures text-based adventure webcomic that utilized this concept in a very raw way. The artist started a comic by drawing a single panel. On his website he set up a comment box and whatever viewers wanted the next panel to be of, he drew it. The experiment then led to another comic where he used comment input to create the single panels, while he had an overall story arc that he made sure the panels more or less followed.
Through interactivity and user-controlled navigation a lot of web-pages feel less like pieces of paper, and more like virtual worlds to explore. I like the idea of Wiki trees, the concept of creating topologies of your favorite websites and sharing them online to other users with their own trees. The content is the same as if you had typed in each individual site’s URL but the end result is a unique piece that can be viewed as a whole or as the sum of its parts. New videogames like Spore or Little Big Planet allow for users to create levels as they play them and then makes those levels available to other users to play and explore. This user generated content not only is free for everyone, but can buck the typical narrative. A platformer game can become a murder-mystery, or a racing game can have fantasy elements added. Because the content is free, the levels are viewed completely differently then content developed by the company that produced the game. Gamers make the levels themselves and like the boy in the article they twist conventions, like a platformer being tweeked into a murder-mystery. The ways of perceiving comics and videogames has changed due to the medium shift towards a global network that all can be involved in the creation of.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Big Project
For my big project I was thinking of doing something that involved a maze. My flash trail just expired so I will have to plan out my work more because I can only work on campus. I wanted to convey the feeling of being trapped, but with the idea that there is a way out. It is different then a cell where you are trapped, you know it, and you know there is no way out. I don't know if I am going to have a character trapped yet or if I will make the viewer feel trapped. I thought of using a maze and also about a way to make the animation moving or powerful. This project might have words leading the viewer or simply have writing along the wall of the maze. Probably the second one. I feel like I am having trouble using animated writing to its full potential opposed to just animating things and having it include writing.
I think the most helpful thing I could have from anyone would be help concerning how to make links in our flash animations. I am pretty sure its possible and am going to look online later but if you know how to do it already my life becomes that much easier. Besides learning how to put links into animations, I also would learn a little about steering viewers emotions and thinking so that my works can have the effect I intend them to.
I think the most helpful thing I could have from anyone would be help concerning how to make links in our flash animations. I am pretty sure its possible and am going to look online later but if you know how to do it already my life becomes that much easier. Besides learning how to put links into animations, I also would learn a little about steering viewers emotions and thinking so that my works can have the effect I intend them to.
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