My World

Final: Texan Tiger Station

2005-12-19T22:03:00.000-08:00

There is a secret Tiger Refugee organization found in Texas. It is a place where tigers and humans live together in harmony. The humans provide a safe home unnoticed by the rest of society and the tigers get to live in happiness without the threat of going extinct or being bored staring at stupid people watch them walk back and forth, or in circles, and the tigers don't eat the humans. :)

The tigers travel from all corners of the world from jungles and zoos using their stripes to hide in shadowy areas. These trecks are long and arduous, but you will see it is well worth it.

Though even in teh Tiger sancuary, the tigers must keep as hidden as possible as to not atract attention....

there is plenty of private protected space for the tigers to live freely..

From an outsider's eyes it seems as if the tigers were never there.

Head public relations councelor Kevin Orbo explains, "There are no tigers here. What are you talking about? We only have the most advanced disguises-uhh, the best darn coffee you ever had."

The Tiger sancuary at Tiger Station, Texas has recently opened up it's town to Ligers as well (Tiger and Lion mixed breed.)

Head Welcoming Counselor Steve Kabbas gives warm welcome to new tigers at a new drop location everyday.....the only problem is he forgets and gets lost on the way......what makes it worse is HE set the drop in spot.

Here at the Tiger Station fake golf course tigers enjoy many fun activities like songtime with Steve.....

and Hide n' Sniff

Sometimes things get a little too rough and out of hand. Oh my God!!! There's a fight!!!!

Steve rushes in stop the fight. "Hey you two! You know the rules, No Rough Housing!!"..........R.I.P. Steve....R.I.P.

Steve actually stopped the fight....but not until he had six fractured ribs, a concusion, and broken arm, various laserations, a twisted ankle, and a need for a neck brace. Anyway, Tiger Station is a lovely place for refugee Tigers and Ligers. Hopefully more of the world could follow their example and learn to work with animals instead of against them. .......and don't worry. Steve will be out of the hospital in a few days. :)

Mori

2005-12-06T18:23:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday November 30 our class took a trip to the Arlington Art Museum. We explored the various floors that had very interesting art work. On the top floor there were very intricate paintings. They were abstract, but they had a certain format that was very interesting. The paintings tricked your brain not knowing what images were being made by the forms changing color. It was like seeing the abstract images through a cut out lens that changes the colors around. One of my favorite exhibits.

The exhibit we went to see and analyze is Professor Randall Packer's Mori exhibit. It was the most interesting of all and favorite due to it's unique complexities. Mori means mortality in Latin and in Japanese literally means "forest sanctuary". This is very intereting because it has to do with the power of Mother Earth. It is our sanctuary that breathes life into us though often we forget. At the same time she let's us know that we are not soverign over her. Through the mysteries of the Earth we are seemingly punished in natural disasters to remember to respect it's power and control. Our place of sanctuary and life as well as our place of death and jugdement. It is almost creepy in that sense.

Mori the art piece is a multimedic telepresence piece. It is like a big dark sound proof guitar that you can walk in and even lay down in. Inside the darkness guided by little light there are powerful sound systems playing a mix of 'Earthy' noises and sounds. What makes it special is that the sounds you hear on the inside are directly activated by a seismograph in California. The seismograph measures the Earth's movement of tectonic plates. It helps predict and measure Earthquakes.

We were lucky enough to see the Earth's movement during a very active time. Certain movements in the Earth's plates activated certain sounds like rocks falling or a landslide. In a sense it was like listening to Mother Earth herself. The various sounds played were an interpretation of the activity of the Earth. When we laid down to feel the booming of the subwoofer below us you could almost meditate to the music of the Earth. We felt one with the Earth almost. In this way actually we were. The seismograph activity connected each and every one of us to the 'heartbeat' of the Earth in a way we could understand. It was Telepresence to the max.

2005-11-30T07:57:00.000-08:00

This is the first picture of the park across the street. So small.

This picture is a little closer. On line the pictures they had made the park look like an actuall park. It definately isn't a place to take a Kindergarden class to.

This is the sign to a metro stop. It stops right at park.

This is the plaque in honor of Sonny Bono........they could've made a bigger park in a less busy area
.

This is the street intersection where Sonny Bono park is located.

Busy people all around on a Saturday going somewhere doing something with seemingly lots of worries. No one wanted to talk to us.

Though there wasn't much to keep clean... there was a trashcan.

This is a building across the street. Fedex/Kinkos building. Huge.

Right down the street is Dupont Circle....You would never know Sonny Bono Park was there in the midst of the fast paced city scene.

We found some illedgible writing on one of the seats....I wonder.

Lots of busy people that don't care about our project.... ;(

A cool old vashioned car across the street. Nice.

Another large building around towering over the park.

Our goodbye picture of Sonny Bono Park......not what we expected.

Situational Tour #3, Sonny Bono Park

2005-11-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

When Rachel and I got to the park we were astonished. It wasn't a park at all. Or at least not what we considered a park. The pictures online made the place seem a lot bigger than it actually is. The little metal fence around it looked huge, but in person it barely passes your knees. Our key topics were mood, formal/informal, cleanliness, business/speed of life, nature vs city, socioeconomics, law enforcement, youth (or lack of...), and gov't presence. The mood was urban. The small plot of land was surrounded by towering buildings that gave a business sense, but then there were more old fashioned buildings too that looked gave a historical importance to the area. Like living in an old time. The environment was a mix between informal and formal, but no signs of poverty. There were no police present. It did not look like an area requiring much law enforcement. There were no children and no trash around either. It was like a busy little corner in the middle of the city. Not much attention paid to it except for the fancy old style car across the street.

Flashpoint

2005-11-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

At the Flashpoint Gallery I saw some interesting art pieces. Some of them I thought were a tad elementary but an interesting mix of technologies nonetheless. Most of them were heavily involved in the use of integration, interaction and emersion. My favorite piece was called Fields. It used a magnetic presence sensor that feeds data to microcontrollers. These microcontrollers drove stepper motors that shift the position of magnets and change the form of a frivolity. It detected body magnetism. The closer you get to it the more the liquid forms rose up like little urchins. There was a video close up of the fluid projected on the wall for a more clear view. The sent Project was cool. It was music made from sound files remixed by artists one after the other. My least favorite was quite simple. It was called Guinea Piggy Bot. It was a remote control bot that drove around with different commands. These commands came from a barcode scanner. There were four bar codes with different vitamin labels. When the user scanned a certain bar code, the guinea pig bot would move in a certain direction. I did this kind of project in highschool. It was a nastolgic experience, but not impressive. All in all the experience was fun and interactive. Lot's of creative thinking was involved.

Situational Tour talk

2005-11-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

Me and Rachel's partners Yurike and Andy did there situational tour on a police patrol route. In our convorsatoin we discussed our different experiences. I told them about the cute cheetahs and they told me about the trouble makers in College Station. They were nervous at times and often afraid of what the problem students would do in the area. There seems to have been a lot of drinking and loud parties that get out of hand. In their picture blog they have a picture of shotgun instructions.....the police have a shotgun ready for use. I would be nervous too. Yurike and Andy went on patrol with poicemen to be on the look out for trouble and hopefully catch pictures of the officers in action. They went on their second trip with the police already and will post new pics.

Telematic communication

2005-11-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Roy Asscot telecommunications has grown over the years. The level of control of interactivity has risen and the amount of communication has expanded. With the internet things are communicated almost instantly. In the days of the Enlightenment things were not as swift. No longer to do we need a Paul Revere to race across the country to inform the people. An email or news blog is all we need these days. More people are getting their news online and less from reading newspapers. The Internet is faster with giving information on a larger scale. Now various types of communication has reached the web from online dating to business transactions to music and movies. I learned about the next Spiderman 3 villain before it came out on the news! The availability of information allows for no late birds. Because of the different types of media interests many artists have turned from being the omniscient creator to the facilitator of events. Role playing games are no longer played just by yourself and a friend who came to watch. Now everyone can simultaneously interact with each other in ever changing games. New "patches" are downloaded every week to improve on these digital interactive worlds where many can almost live another life. The internet has become a network of information creating a global personality. Living, thinking, ever changing all the time from countless stimuli.

Situational Tour #2

2005-11-02T17:15:00.000-08:00

Nick Foster and I decided to check out a public display at the Wesley cemenary. upon approaching the cemenary I noticed more and more white bags on arranged on the front lawn. We estimated that there were about 2000 bags on the lawn. We figured that it was a reaction to the deaths of 2000 United States Soldiers in the war in Iraq. Reluctant I went up to them to see what was inside. There were candles in sand and rocks. According to a graduate student we interview this was an antiwar piece done by a social justice group called the "Plumb Line". He told us that teh term "Plumb Line" came from the book of Isaiah. He described the Plumb Line as a set standard to live up to. The next person we came accross was an AU History teacher. She had often come to this particular area on Wedensdays to work and was interested in seeing the exhibit today. she said:

I almost didn't want to step into it like it was a cemetary.

She commented that it was "Kind of awesome". It clearly got an emotional response from her. She thought that it was probably a statement of loss. Judging from the campus she figured that it was more of a progressive atmosphere, thus the exhibit was probably antiwar and pro peace. She was very reluctant to check and see what was inside the bags. After entering the building Nick and I searched for a sign that the graduate student had mention. We eventually found it. It had a picture of all of the candles lit at night. It would have been a nice thing to see had I known it was there earlier.

Our First Trip to the Zoo

2005-11-01T18:37:00.000-08:00

My partner Rachel and I did our situational tour at the National Zoo. We had never been to the zoo in DC before and we had been in DC for so long. So we decided to go to the zoo. When we first arrived that cold morning we saw two giant sculptures of lions at the front entrance. They were very powerful muscular images that gave the zoo a sense of pride and beauty. To check out the pictures we took, click here.

Right after entering the zoo to our dismay we came across mass reconstruction of the zoo. The entire Asia Trail was being rebuilt. Where we were supposed to see a multitude of animals we saw big machines and construction workers. Despite this we continued on to find animals of interest. To our surprise the confines of the animals did not look at all like the cages we were used to when we were younger. The first animals we found were cheetahs. This was my favorite exhibit. The cheetahs were separated from us by height and electric fences that did not stand out much. As the space for the cheetahs got closer to us the land went down hill. So we could get pretty close to the cheetahs until they disappeared below the bushes chasing each other and seemingly playing tag.

Most of the zoo was covered in plants giving it a natural style even outside the spaces for the animals. Everything looked safe and secure without being too constricting so that you could see the animals or get fairly close to them. There was plenty of good information on the animals as well as things for children to learn from and have fun with. While looking for new animals we kept running into parking lots which I guess was a design to keep people from getting lost. One ideology that many zoos have in common was the dedication to save and inform about endangered species. Like the pandas the zoo keepers helped give birth to a cheetah artificially. I believe this is becoming a growing ritual in the race to save endangered species. The authority of the zoo keepers was shown when we saw that one cheetah was held by itself apart from the other cheetahs due to it being born artificially. It was a sad sight because it looked like the cheetah wanted to be with the others and run around and have fun. Hopefully the zoo keepers will let it be with the others soon.
We spent the most time with the cheetahs because they were the liveliest of all of the animals we observed. We did see seemingly rivaled Kangaroo and Emu. They did not appear to be as cheerful as the cheetahs.

ECI, the Ultimate Integrating platform

2005-10-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

Galloway and Rabinowitz created some of the most intriguing work of their time. I can hear the voices of old naysayers down playing such great ideas. "What would I need to see people miles away from me for, I got people her!", or "Who needs to see them, we don't like them!". The work of Galloway and Robinowitz forshadowed the many forms of communication we have today. Eevery computer has the availability to create and cross examine art as well as artists in real time. Computers are apart of everyday life and new technologies come faster and faster everyday. The need for high powered computers opens up high networking and integration. Because of the digital network there lies a dimension free of space. This dimension is hampered only by your comuter and network capabilities, which everyday is becoming less and less the case. Computers are almost useless without a proper internet connection these days. Most of the media today is transferred via internet. The whole world is connected throught ideas, art, business, and so on. I downloaded the Skype program which is a program that allows verbal communication via microphone, written communication, and visual communication via web-cam. After I got the program up and running I was randomly sent a message by some guy in Asia. It was weird, but he was just looking for new people to talk to. I had downloaded the program to keep in touch with my girlfriend, and got this random fellow to speak with first. I called the internet a dimension free of space because I anyone can create a hole in space at anytime and almost as many holes as they choose to create.

Tomorrow is Forever

2005-10-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

A group of four media/music artists came together in the Fall of 2003 to make music and videos to go along with it. The group has been classified as an indie rock or progressive rock band called Tomorrow is Forever. They originated out of Fredonia, NY. The members of the multi media band are Steven Googin who on bass, Elliott Rothman who does guitar, Brian Franklin who also does guitar, and Bc Mostyn who plays the drums. All members of the band do vocals. These four have posted various media on there website that goes along with their message. There is a main character and his pals that have a storyline that is basically a social commentary. The storyline is uniquely presented in a video game called Tomorrow.

On the main page of their website they seem to have created an interesting video game that resembles the very first Super Mario Brothers and early Mega Man games from the very first Nintendo game console. The music is taken from the band’s songs and played in the old school digital Nintendo sound. In the words of David Ross, this would be “the simulation and construction of truly credible images,” but not a bad job and certainly entertaining. This interactive game takes you through a storyline of the mascot of the band. His name is Ray, he is a little robot that is fighting against the evil Power Keeper to protect the Soul Keeper. You go through a series of levels jumping and blasting robot drones to get to the end with the occasional boss battle. The band has made a full hour long album along with synchronized music videos.
Three of the music videos about the band members, characters, and their exploits are posted on their website so far. While performing live they have a projection of the video behind them playing in sync with the music. Both the songs and the videos are made as one piece making it a live visual music exerience.
The band says:

All of our songs follow a story that is illustrated through the visual that comments about the state of modern entertainment culture and what it is doing to our society.

I personally like their works. The music is catchy and sends you on a journey. The videos are a bit confusing unless you have played the video game. From what little work I was able to experience I think that they are very creative. The scenes in the videos have a lot of dull grays and warm colors. There are a lot of 2D cut outs of the band members with 3D backgrounds and 3D robot characters. The shadowy contrast is unfocused giving the sences a slight sense of humidity and comfort.
The only things I would negatively criticize is the audio of one of the songs, but more importantly the layout of the website. The music of one of the songs sounds like it came out of a garage of one of their mother’s houses. But still it is nice to listen to while you are working. The website however seems very half finished. It does not feel complete. It seems as if they did the minimum amount of work to set up their website. It is very bland and not very informative. It leaves me lookinf for links that should exist, but don’t. There is no information on the site exept for some of their works and links to myspace and purevolume. The lyrics of the songs are fitting to their social statement and very catchy. The music is played professionally. You would think that they were a professional band. Besides that the animation is great. The 2D 3D integration is done very nicely with a very calm and mellow mood for the most part. Nothing is out of place or too confusing. It makes me wonder why I haven’t heard of this group or seen them on TV yet. The quality of their work gets an 8 out of 10. Tomorrow is Forever has been getting a lot of new attention. I believe that in we may see a lot more of them in the future. Hopefully we will and they will do a lot more work. I would love to see it.

The essence of Telepresence

2005-10-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest problems with Virtual Interface is the interface format. There are many different ways that have been created to move through a virtual world and let you feel like you are in it at the same time. A programmed glove and word commands are nifty, but very boring. Moving larger parts of your body has a much more real affect seeing as it is closer to your body. It feels more like living in another world as opposed to playing in another world. The realness of the environment depends on how the person gets to navigate the world. If it is too difficult than the person will only feel stuck in a twilight zone with no control. The control system should also feel natural. Much of this depends on how the creator of the world wants the person to interact with the world as well as the size and type of equipment. Then again we now have cell phones that can fit in your pocket. I wouldn't be surprised if we could make virtual reality equipment that could fit in a hand bag, or a really big pocket.

Virtual interface environments have a lot of study and testing to undergo before it becomes more practical and popular. It is very complicated and a not very well known. It has almost too many variables to be a concrete technology like video games, though even those are becoming more and more true to a virtual interface. That is probably the route virtual interface will take since it is one of the biggest and most popular markets out there and is also easily compatible. The video game industry tries hard to put the player in the world of the game. Especially in RPG's (Role Playing Games. Nowadays games look a lot more real than their blocky low res ancestors.

The creators of Tekken 3, an old, but popular fighting game at the time, tried to imitate telepresence in some arcades years ago. There was a rare station set up that had two circles on the platform and a screen with the game in the back of the station. A person would stand in the circle which was equipped with motion sensors to detect movement of the person. There was no joystick or buttons at all. Just the circle. If you stepped forward, you your character moved forward and visa versa. Crouching made your video game counter part crouch as well. Punching and kicking caused your counterpart to punch and kick. There were two of these circles on the platforms so you could fight against a friend. My brother and I tried to fight each other. It was a new and experimental game station so it didn't work that well. We knew all of the special moves of certain characters and found it very difficult to perform them on the platforms. We couldn't actually do the special moves, so we had to use a combination of punches, kicks and random movement to try to make it work. It wasn't very fun, but it was very interesting. We started to feel like the characters until we found that the controls were increasingly difficult.

Format

2005-10-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Konoha Senpu!!!! consccious
Spiderman is really cool, and we are in class discussing inmersion and interfase.

Rock Lee is cool too. I am going to web link to another site.

To web, or not to web, that is the question

Overture

2005-09-28T10:20:00.000-07:00

Vannevar Bush’s predictions about human and computer interface were true. With the boom of the internet and advanced computer programming many common people have access to creating worlds within the digital universe. Ted Nelson’s suspicions of hierarchy are taken into consideration in many of today’s works. Many movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and various video games and novels give the audience random pieces of story and sometimes random points of view. Sometimes these works are designed as story webs as apposed to storylines. The “Hole in Space” by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz reminds me of a program I recently discovered online. It is called Skype, and allows one to “call” someone else anywhere in the world through the internet with a microphone. You can only call other people online of course, but it is a communication specifically made for long range audio communication. I have been using it to communicate with my girlfriend in London. It is free, but also has purchasable features like voicemail. It is similar to the famous AOL Instant Messenger, also having icons and a screen name. Skype’s communication system is a lot clearer and easier to use. It incorporates integration, interactivity and narrativity. Every day people are making leaps into free expression. From “The Hole in Space” to cell phones, to Napster, AIM, and Skype technology has spread to ordinary people and everyday we are closer and closer to our dreams. Will this have a negative effect on our society of “I want it right now for as free as possible”?

Visual Music, Seeing Sound

2005-09-27T21:49:00.000-07:00

The exhibit at the Herschhorn Museum was utterly amazing. Seeing the abstract paintings from 1913 seemed common to me. Learning about the history of visual sound opened my mind to the breakthroughs that the early artists help create. You usually wouldn’t couple sound with sight. You can’t see sound waves and don’t expect to see this type of form. But when I think about it, since we were kids we have experienced visual music. In this day in age it actually is not all that rare to experience visual music. In Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, and videogames we have become more used to the blending art of sight causing sound. It reminds me of an episode of Family Guy where Peter was sneaking around the high school and instead of playing the music of the 80’s in a creepy scene, he sounded out what I expected to hear from instruments. But to use sight and sound as an art form in its simplest form was never really considered until I experienced this exhibit. My favorite exhibits were the very last one and the slow moving cyclical smokey light pieces. The last piece was just an awesome experience. I felt like I was in a transdimensional time warp. The entire exhibit was a delightful experience. We were lucky to catch it before it closed.

Intertwingled

2005-09-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

It is amazing that Ted Nelson’s idea of intertwingledness has come to fruition so quickly. The gathering, relating and sharing of information have greatly increased because of it. Hypertext on the internet is almost a direct translation of things being intertwingled. Through Hypertext everything can be related to everything. It is scary that seeing our technology grow every hour almost things are becoming more digitized. Art, music, video and interactivity are all being stored in the digital world. Parts of the Matrix movie are beginning to see more truth. It seems like soon everyone will have there own matrix, or digital world that they can take anywhere, or access anywhere. To just think how awesome it would be to be able to visit other people’s worlds. It is happening right now. Everyday things become more accessible. Nowadays people can shop through the internet without leaving their homes, without leaving their seats. Someone might buy something online from a reference on a completely different web site. Wikipedia is an interesting site that I found a while ago. It is an online encyclopedia that links many key words to other information in its web site. It has lots and lots of hypertext. An article can have numerous linking words like bugs, names of people, titles of books and movies, videogames, you name it.

testing 123

2005-08-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

Seeing if this works ! :)