There Is Only Software – Manovich
Posted: September 8, 2015 Filed under: Connor Wescoat Leave a comment »While this article makes complete sense and might be obvious to some, I never looked at “digital media” in such a straight forward manner. Manovich paints a pretty bleak picture of conventional media in that everything that “could” be, is ultimately controlled by the software at the end of the day.
“Digital media” does not have any unique properties by itself. What used to be ‘properties of a medium’ are now operations and affordances defined by software.
Squares – The Stop Rule of Death
Posted: September 8, 2015 Filed under: Connor Wescoat, Josh Poston 1 Comment »
Behold! The classic game of squares. While up to 4 players can participate in a single game, Only Josh and I participated in this strategic game of Mortal Kombat. The rules are simple, a grid of “dots” are drawn on a piece of paper. From these dots, players take turns drawing a connecting line from dot to dot going up & down or left to right. The objective of the game is to create a complete square by conjoining the drawn lines. This next rule is critical, once a square is completed by a player they get to draw another line. This “extra turn” is a reward for completing a square and can cause a lot of squares to be completed in one fell swoop. The game ends when all dots on the grid are drawn in and the number of squares are tallied.
After playing one full game of dots, Josh and I chose to implement a “STOP rule” to the equation. This stop rule would function as a one-time stop to a players square completion. Simply put, if a player realized that they were about to get a lot of squares stacked against them they could stop that momentum of the opposing player. This new rule brought an added dynamic to the game by offering a strategic last resort. If used correctly, this rule could completely flip the tables in your favor. Used incorrectly and you would become crippled by the opposing players onslaught of square completions! Play at your own risk.
PP1 – Fashion Meets Music Festival
Posted: September 8, 2015 Filed under: Connor Wescoat Leave a comment »Getting Started: I chose to document my time at Columbus’ 2nd annual Fashion Meets Music Festival (FMMF) that took place this past weekend. My organization “Heart Of It All” was featured at the festival as well as many different talented designers, brands, musicians and artists. While I have attended a few festivals in my life, this one stands out in that its lay out was a little “unconventional”. Is that good or bad? Lets find out!
Note: While I have outlined a top-down diagram in my post, I will elaborate further on the installations and lay out of the event. I chose to observe both the “Fashion Stage” where my booth was present and one of the main music stages called the “Stella Stage”. Beginning with the Fashion Stage; this stage was constructed just like a fashion runway with 2 separate smaller stages on both sides. One functioned as a regular artist stage for musicians whose performance would accompany the fashion act and the other was a raised soundboard area which functioned as the technical hub for the runway. Seating was offered on the left and right sides of the runway. While seating was available, I observed that the majority of the audience chose to stand for the event.
Map: Overall map of the event
Note: The second stage that I observed was the “Stella Stage” which functioned as the main-stage of the festival. It was not only the largest of the 4 stages but it also was situated at the back of the field which housed the most people. I observed that while the other stages would only gradually get more and more packed when an artist was about the perform, this stage remained pretty crowded. In my opinion this was because the field offered a large social area to hang out in while also offering relief from the other aspects of the festival. I also observed that people started migrating to this stage 30 minutes to an hour before a performance. In contrast to the fashion stage which would progressively fill about 10 minutes before the designer went on.
Devise: For the fashion stage, I devised an idea to implement a visual aid to the back drop of the runway to reduce standing congestion. One idea of mine would come in the form of a downloadable app that would showoff the presented garment on the viewers smartphone. The other idea was to project either a picture or a video of the presented garment on the backdrop of the runway. I believe that these methods would dampen the amount of crowding around the stage. For the Stella Stage I took a page out of the band Metallica’s stage show in the form of a centralized main stage.
With this viewpoint, people cluster around the stage rather than being in front of it. This mode, while more expensive and harder to implement, would provide more people with better views and less centralized congestion.
Conclusion: While I believe these methods would dampen the overall congestion of these high traffic areas, the context in which these bottlenecks occur is a massive festival setting at the end of the day. People being packed in like sardines is an expected outcome and even the goal of many of these popular music festivals. In my opinion, I would like to see improvement on the fashion end of the spectrum rather than the contemporary “main stage” layout that is so prevalent at today’s major music festivals. By making the fashion stage more accessible and experiential for the consumer, more people will demand events like FMMF and the programmatic quality of these events will continue to grow.
Top-Down Diagram: PP1 FMMF
Dots
Posted: September 8, 2015 Filed under: Connor Wescoat, Josh Poston Leave a comment »The object of the game when presented with a grid of dots is to draw a single line connecting two dots while alternating turns. The player that closes the most complete squares wins the game. When a player closes the box they are given a followup move. This continues as long as they string together the closure of squares with a single line.
In the rule change we created a stop order or cease and desist. Under this rule a player may once per game elect to stop another player following the placement of the line for their first turn. This prevents them from continuing on a string of moves.
We found that using this modification increases the strategy and attentiveness to the overall game. It can be effective in creating a minor system of checks and balances in which both players can simply offset the others move, or strategically hold their stop order for a different point in the game.
PP1: Greek Festival/Claw of Eradication
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Alexandra Stilianos, Pressure Project I Leave a comment »Get started: When asked to go to a public place and make hypothetical choices that will affect the general population, the urge to (theoretically) choose malevolency was too strong an urge to ignore. Also, first instincts were embraced and explored.
Location: Columbus Greek Festival, Courtyard
Food: My favorite Greek pastry, galaktoboureko- Delicious
Map: I choose to observe the courtyard area of the festival which served multiple functions. The east side of the lot held the entrance, a performance space for folk dancing and a small stage with a band and various musicians. The center and rest of the space held portable tables for dining and various food/alcohol vendors. The flow of traffic moved erratically (as would any festival) but most often it was cyclical. Existing major technologies were listed in the legend but also included my main focus/perpetrator: the cellphone.
Notes: The highest areas of congestion were around all the vendors as one would suspect but the corner that shared space between access to the bar, stage, musicians and dining area was the most dense. Not only because of sheer numbers, alcohol consumption and children running erratically waiting to perform but a common 2015 problem: the multitasking text and walk combo. While this problem was illuminated in this space, it is a common problems in all areas of the festival (not to mention shopping malls, side walks, the oval, etc.). While hardly anyone can admit to being innocent of this crime, it is more problematic in a setting such as a small festival than it is in a large, public area. For that reason, I choose to devise a system that was effective, isolated and also a bit hilariously cruel.
Devise:
“The class is our master, the claw chooses who will stay and who will go.”- Alien’s, Toy Story
I devised a crane of sorts that can eradicate people who have, in a congested public space, become an obstruction because of their absorption in their devices (particularly, smartphones.) This would be done by a sensor who reads body posture, as well as other factors, and in a sort-of magnetic field, alien abduction-esque way, be lifted from the space and returned to the entrance where they can re-enter after disregarding their distraction.
I used the ability to ignore actualities of creating this device freely but did determine three factors that needed to be taken in account when determining who gets ejected. They are:
- Device in hand
- Curvature of cervical spine
- Forward mobility
The Claw would have a system of sensors that had the ability to read these various requirements and would only eject perpetrators that met all three. The first would require some sort of heat sensor that could detect the phone was out of a pocket or purse and touching human skin. Then it would also be able to detect the curvature of the cervical spine, since a person can walk and talk on the phone more effectively than when they are hunched over staring at the ground. The final requirement is the necessity for the subject/victim to be in a forward motion, a considerate person can step aside out of a traffic pattern to complete their cellular duties, which should not be punished.
Conclusion: While this solution is highly impractical in the ‘real’ world, it was enjoyable to not only observe and find a solution, it also gave me a sinister satisfaction to deal with a pet peeve of mine. All the while, with a devising experiential mind.
OPA!
The Overview Effect
It knows when you are sleeping , it knows when your awake, it knows when you are board. …
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Extras Leave a comment »http://www.technologyreview.com/news/540906/your-smartphone-can-tell-if-youre-bored/
M(ansion) A(partment) S(hack) H(ouse)
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Alexandra Stilianos Leave a comment »A twist on the classic fortune-telling list game.
The original MASH is played by making lists of various aspects/milestones of ones life (marriage, job, home, kids, etc.) in separate categories, picking a number at random then using that number to cross off potential ‘candidates’ one by one until each section has only one option left. The method we used to decide how many jumps to take until a candidate was crossed off included me drawing a spiral until Sarah said, ‘Stop’ and counting the number of rings.
Original constant: spiral in UR shows 5 marks starting from center to detonate a cross-off every 5 moves.
In our (truncated) controlled, original version of the game Sarah can look forward to marrying Stephen Hawking, living in a mansion in Ireland and be employed as a CEO. Not too shabby a life, Sarah!
Next we decided to take out the constraints of having all the corresponding potential categories in the same list. We randomized them in a word cloud, used the spiral method to find a number and cross off at random until only 4 remained. This added the possibility that a player could have multiple jobs but nowhere to live (and all the variants therein).
In this version Sarah can look forward to having no job or income but traveling the country living in apartments in California and Kansas with our fellow classmate, Josh Poston.
I very much enjoyed the ‘risk’ involved in the world cloud set up of the game. In the original, making some of the categorical choices unappealing left some risk but the stakes are higher when all these ‘goals’ are not necessarily guaranteed. We ran into a problem when in the second version, which was at times it was difficult to be unbiased when ‘randomly’ crossing off choices. An amendment which included still putting the contenders in a list, but one long continuous and arbitrary one adds the element of organization with the suspense of the intended outcome.
All in all: we are the future.
There is only software (Manovich)
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Anna Brown Massey Leave a comment »Okay, okay, jeez. I get it. THERE IS ONLY SOFTWARE
“There is no such thing as digital media. There is only software–as applied to media data (or ‘content’).
“Digital media” and “new media” are not enough
Digital representation makes computers possible.
Software determines what we can do with them.
Baudrillard: Short Introduction (Mann)
Posted: September 7, 2015 Filed under: Anna Brown Massey Leave a comment »[I am analyzing a five-page typo-riddled summary of a sixty-year span of work, so I am uncertain whether the vigorous disagreements I have with Baudrillard are actually with Mann, or with Baudrillard’s work itself.]
Added “sign exchange value” to Marx’s “use value” and “exchange value”
– signs of social distinctions
Vietnam War: we won through our own camera reality of victory-aimed cinema
My dear Baudrilliard, I do think you are entirely alone in this interpretation, at least about Vietnam, but perhaps you wrote this in the middle of the war, or were only reading the National Review?
The Gulf War didn’t take place because Americans experienced it solely through hypperreal images on tv.
“We” (this summary uses “we” instead of “Americans”) actually experienced the Gulf War as people who flew across, shipped across, and fought, and traveled, and died, and got hurt, and were okay and killed. And not “we,” but yes, “we” were also the 20,000+ Iraqis who died. Right, I get that there is a sense of the “hyperreal,” but this ain’t new my friend. For as long as there have been humans using language or drawn symbols to communicate, we have been living in the hyperreal. All stories are “hypperreal.” The advent of television did not bring those stories and that sepration of experience; instead it provided a different forum for those stories, and for different types of stories.
I appreciate later that Mann points out Baudrillard’s interpretations of misogyny, er, “love.” It always helps to have a sense of a person’s perspective on the ladies when examining their worldview. The gentleman was born in 1927 France, so his fixation on the binary of the sexes and women as “seductive, artificial, symbolic, manipulative of signs” (Mann, p 2) against the male direction and “rational” phallus enlightens us to his ignorance that perhaps he misread his own “map of reality.”
Orders of Simulcra
.. Because yes, we do trade in maps of reality. We always have. One essence of our human identity is our cognition with which we may interpret experience. We derive meaning from experience, and Baudrillard’s suggestion that this means that we live among simulcra I can stand behind, but his ethnocentric “Orders of Simulcra” is pathetically narrow at best and insidiously culturally harmful at worst. His orders also further exclude that living in a “desert of the real” is the nature of being human.