Where am i again?

So not a great start to the week… I woke up thinking it was 8am this morning (yes – day light saving jet lag even on monday morning) I changed my phone time, but not my clock time – hmm… that gets you everytime!

anyway, woke up, a little disoriented – i wanted to be at uni, “concentrating” right now, but that’s not happening… so things to do by tomorrow:

1. finish splash page

2. experiment with flash for

a) higher interaction with my website

b) to see if i can create a prototype of my visualisation

3. don’t get so easily distracted by trivialities on the internet

4. finish my layout (:-/ … eek.)

ok… better get busy now!

How do i keep up??

Oh it’s gonna be rough… I seem to have come to a road block of innovation. My brain is officially fried and Minisite 3 is a distant goal (even though it’s due next friday)…

Tonight, i had dinner with FLASH MOON. For those who don’t know. He’s a pro wrestler from Osaka Pro.

Pretty sick huh? Well, he’s in Sydney for a holiday. I’ve decided that masks are cool and more of them should be worn (not the plastic phony masks that smiling superficials wear everyday, but actual colourful cool masks.

I saw this (below) in the paper yesterday from The great robot festival:

They modeled prototypes of face robots using a Japanese kabuki actor. Looks ca-razy… I have actually been thinking about how to use this for another application… but that’s another story. More in the inspiration department, I designed my very first stencil tonight, and it is so fun. Looking at Banksy books, make me want to be more daring with my ideas about interaction and contradiction and predictability… but they’re just feelings and thoughts, nothing I can call an “idea” yet.

Droopy eyelids and all this colourful input is inspiring.. but I can’t think properly about what concept i want to use for my next minisite. My concept of “Origami” that I created a splash page for has been canned (officially). But I like the image, so I might go with it, but just as a splash page, unless something else light-bulbs over the weekend.
Hopefully after handing in Maya-boo-hoo (what i have decided to call the next assignment due) my mind will clear up and be able to convert all this inspiration into more “tangible output”

Website Analysis – Minisite 2

A bit late after – but I think it’s still worth while to do since the last minisite is worth 50% of my final mark, and it’s good to know where I’m going and not just making things look pretty and clickable.

OK… I started writing this blog on FRIDAY (last week) and it’s almost TUESDAY…. So i decided that even if it’s gonna be shorter and less detailed than I planned – the reason why i was delaying it’s much anticipated release (not) … I don’t want it hanging around. And I’ll just blam DECP1005 – the current pain in my backside and brain.

So feedback from Minisite 2 – yea – a few comments about the artwork. Rob said it was a little “too” organised and lost something that Minisite 1 had. I would say that I have to agree with him… To fit in line with his remarks about my idea development… the original “Maltese Falcon” kind of got lost when I got all bright eyed and dreamy.

Things to do/ include for Minisite 3 + personal feedback for Minisite 2:

1. Don’t use “height” attributes for content unless it is “auto” – otherwise I will have to include 4-5 (i.e. too many) “contentcontainers” in my stylesheet.

2. include an FAQ page in Minisite 3

3. Challenge myself with flash (since i didn’t have the time to do this for Minsite 2 and I think a flash presentation would be helpful when i present my protoype of the “conversations”

4. Think of a title for my website and more importantly a name for my application. My favourite words so far are: Beat, Climate, Origami, conversations, Me, reflections, “Reflex-Ions” (ha,,, i just thought of that one)… anyway… keep thinking of what would ring true to the concept and be catchy too.,

5. Keep the iPhone section since Minisite 3 is supposed to be the “pitch” of the product. (Can i just say – I have seen a bit of Kristian (“i’m too cool for school” ’s Minisite 3 – and it looks really professional… Can one of my goals be “Try to look professional”??

6. I supposed that means research minsites for product launches… and techniques they have used to make the site look professional and slick. I realise that the inclusion of flash gimmicks isn’t necessary. Things to consider are font size, font family, size of page container, borders?, javascript to heighten interactiviy, layout.

7. Remain more “true” to my idea. Stick to themes of choas, interaction of sometimes opposing yet always interlaced elements, “emotivity”, conversing entities, unpredictability, engaging content/ images that provoke curiosity.

That’s all I can think of/ remember at the moment. This post was somewhat disjointed… I have this portfolio to finish so I can’t concentrate properly on my iPHone project – even though How i will express the visuals seems to be constantly niggling at my brain!!

Re: the videos for the last post + Further insight…

RE: “Brinstorming time! Yay!”… –> The videos in the last post that I wrote on 18th Oct 2007 are actually best viewed simultaneously. Play them both at the same time and the effect is surprising and the contrast of colours and sounds and movement actually work really well. Although they are somewhat opposing images streaming at the same time, they compliment each other the result is one that exaggerates the qualities of both of them. This kind of dialogue is an idea for my final visualisation for my application. The interaction of the visuals to try to mimmick the abstract interaction between the user and their environment in the real world while they are ironically plugged into their iPhones and mentally disengaged from their immediate surroundings.

After talking to Petra, I have been filled with motivation and inspiration for my visualisations. We talked about representing the relationship between the user’s weather and the actual weather as more of a conversation of interacting projections. Following specific rules and ideal conditions would dictate what would be seen by the user. We talked about the music in the iPhoe being the driving force for the user’s emotions and I was already thinking about colour – in particular, primary colours and colour rules that applied in creating secondary/ tertiary colours. but Petra suggested – referring to her work Uzume, that chaotic patterns would be a better metaphor for emotion an weather since it cannot really be defined by set rules.

Another suggestiong was that instead of using iEatBrainz or some other Meta Music database, that the user input their own colour choice or emotive reference to a song. It was pointed out to me that music selection and what we feel like when we are listening to songs is extremely personal. When a love song may remind one person of their wonderful boyfriend or girlfriend that they love to bits, the same song might remind another person of their ex partner who they would sooner slap in the face than say hello to. So the song would have exactly polar reactions. By allowing the user to input their own song info, the visualisation would be more meaningful to them and more meaningful in general since it would not be based on generalisations.

BRAINSTORMING TIME!! YAY!!!!

I’m just gonna throw out some words that came up in my brainstorming session this morning with Rob and Kaz — hopefully Petra can develop my ideas more too tomorrow!

Folding, ORIGAMI (love this one), Rules, Rule between relationships, Distortion, Grids + Data + Images + Distortion, Patterns of interaction, Comfort level measurement, Emergence from chaos, Emergent art, Colours, Primary/ Tertiary colours + colour rules, how to make relationships noticable yet not blatently obvious, weather data aggregation, kaleidescope, Johnathan McCabe (Origami Butterfly), http://sf.anu.edu.au/~jrm900/The_Front/ob3halfpartcomp.mov…

SOOOO much to look at and think about!! eek! 

Some inspiration:
“They move slowly”

“Flying Underwater”

Thank u Pat8037 for the input – MY BEAT’s new feel

Trends of phone users – in particular Generation X and Y in relation to what is happening around the world.

Part 1: My Beat – is a way that a user can be part of and visually see and experience their personal story in relation to the global community. The iPhone would track their song selection. Each song is assigned a colour (in a way representing the “mood” of the song. This information would then be ”plotted” against the actual geographical weather. 

 Part 2: This is only the individual story. At the swivel of the finger the user can add other iPhone users and their song choices’ visualisations resulting in a visualisation that could be respresenting the user and their immediate community (city) to the country they are in, to the entire world.

Part 3: This ambient visualisation would remain active in the background or foreground of their iPhones and after a time (of a month, a season, a year) the user would be able to look at the resulting visualisation – this would be interesting when they will be able to draw observations about their emotions/ or a comminty’s collective emotions in correlation to significant events e.g. traumatic events, national holidays like christmas or eid etc…

It would just be a visualisation (not a compiled playlist from the visuals) but instead of using the gestural interface which could be ambiguous, a more definitive way of collecting user “emtional” data and translating it into this digital narrative.

I like this better… simple, back to the original “light bulb spark” but ALWAYS on the lookout for tweaking the protoype to be cooler and more sophisticated.

Making it global

User “emotional weather” –> Meterological weather –> City’s combined resulting ”Weather” –> Country’s  ” ” Weather” –> Global Weather ==> Global community interactive digital narrative…

Thanks Pat.

 I will expand on this later. That’s just to wet your whistle!