Photography Assignment

Chaos

Control

Dissonance

Harmony

Salami Animation

One of my favourite online games.

http://continuitygame.com/

It's so fun, just an awesome concept and logical thinking

Photoshop Composites

Its Better To Burn Out Than Fade AwayThe lyric by Neil Young taken a little bit out of context by a certain face of grunge. I chose to take abit of a literal approach to this and include fading and ashes rather than actual fire to represent having "burnt out". The common thought is in agreeance that it is indeed better to burn out than fade away, but because I'm being quite literal in my representation I wanted to make my point slightly different and show that my subject fading is still leaving an impact and although the slight double up of the car in the background was an accident I ment to fix, I thought it would be best to leave it as is to show that impact. I'm sure thats the reason, and not just because I'm a lazy human being. The ashes on the other hand have no story or journey, they are just simply there.The Other Side Of The Rainbow
The other side of the rainbow, this more of an excercise of just "doing" I found some interesting images on the internet of a desert/rock formation. Included images of my own shrubbery and trees and just tried a few different things with opacity, colour overlays, black and white and colour tints. Erasing certain parts and overlapping images gave me a nice if not slightly confusing effect. A very bleak image, which is what I wanted to portray as the "Other side of the rainbow" at this stage to make it that little bit of an extra cliche I added in the graveyard in the background and gave it a slightly blue/purple tint to make it alittle bit more surreal and obvious. The rainbow itself is doubled up to make it a little wider and clearer. The sign I made in illustrator, and then changed again in photoshop to make it look older and darker. I put the reflective light in the actual post on the oposite side to make it a little bit confusing when it comes to what direction the sign is actually facing. Actually, it was just another accident that happened to work in my favour
How The West Was Won
This one was just pure fun for me. I wasn't really sure how to represent this, so again I just started. I found a bunch of photos I thought would look funny and be good to use, and then tried to think of how I could make a few them work in context with how the west was won. I just thought "Technology" was how the west was won, whoever had the biggest guns. So I threw in the photo of Tom and Soph, drew the sword in illustrator, and had them fighting an Ant. Now the robot is approaching and it's pretty obvious who's going to win. I used the desert scene to just represent the west. I'm still trying different things to get shadows right, in this I duplicated the images and blackened them, added some blur and distorted them. I'm sure I can improve on it but it's a start. Eye Of The Tornado
This one I had a little bit more of a go at. To go with the obvious and show a small piece of calm in the middle of chaos. Originally I planned on having a person meditating in the small patch of calm grass but I decided that just showing that small patch was enough. I also originally planned to have the image full of litter and objects flying around but once I'd added a few of these items I realised it was becoming cluttered and looked more like a garbage pile with a small clear patch than anything else. I distorted some of the brick piers and grass to help represent the wind and drew the commet/meteor in photoshop just for abit of fun and something different to add to the "Chaos". The train carrige in the background is also an image of mine, I turned the red right up on this to draw abit more attention to it. The sky was originally clear, this is what took me the most amount of time was getting it to match in with the trees, I think I did okay with it but could be better.

A stitch In Time Saves Nine

This was possibly my favourite. I started by interpreting what the saying means, to me personally I think it means doing a job now saving doing a harder job later. One stitch to repair now, saves putting in nine later when the hole opens up further. So I decided to show this physically with one deteriorating home in comparison to a clean, well maintained house. The hard line down the centre seperating the two homes was originally going to allow each side to fade into each other but this took away from the juxtaposition I was trying to show. To show the extra effort in maintaining the house I put in the lawnmower, paint cans and bin.

Early Bird Gets the Worm

MH1

Combination of live performance pics and album covers.

Vector Images

PUMA logo

IBM Logo

Lighting a cigar with a volcano

Onstage with Metallica

Swimming inside a water bottle

Pushing a computer mouse

Running away from a mummy

Winning a boxing/UFC fight

Riding a dinosaur

Headbutting a ram

Have my head seperate to my body, hooked upto machines

Getting caught in a disc drive

Standing at a urinal next to Joseph Fritzl

Jumping over a car as it trys to hit me

As a king on a chessboard

Winning an oscar

Multi Me!...

...And Ricky Gervais

5 Pretty cool restaurant menu's

#5
The E-Menu
Originating in Israel, the E-menu is an interactive LCD touch screen located at one end of the table to be used by one or two operators sitting close by, a downside to this being that multiple people may want to look at different things at the same time.
The entire menu is visible with full descriptions and calorie count, it has a call button for a waiter and can view the current bill. It also has interactive group games and music to keep the customers occupied. There is a video available of it being used in the above link. I'm not sure how well food/drink spillage would be handled by these screens

#4
Zupa!
Not exactly interactive, and it is more a cafe than a restaurant but their menu, specialising in soups(Zupa is italian for soup) contains a video of their special being prepared. The special changes often and they rely on recipes from around the world, the video being of the original recipe preparer. The video incluedes sound so that people can here the instructions and know exactly what is in their soup. What makes it interactive is the fact that the recipes and videos are actually made by the people from around the world, they encourage family recipes and alike to be filmed by people and the best stays as their "Special" for a week or longer "And it's fun for the customers, when they're in line, they can look at it and decide whether or not that want to try it."
#3
The Interactive Wine Menu
The basics of the menu come up at first, but selecting "Red" lets into a whole new level, to names, years, producer and a whole lot more. All by simply using your hand to select what you are interested in, order a bottle or a single glass. The menu is projected onto the bar and uses object recognition software to follow your hands selections to delve deeper into the menu and ake your order.
#2
Everyone has it, Inamo
The whole tables are interactive, displayed from overhead projectors and use touch screens to do everything I've previously talked about with every other menu on here. Nothing extra except for the fact the entire restaurant is themed this way and makes the experience more wholesome and less tacky
#1
Well, everything from here is basically the same. Projectors and touch menu's

5 New Technologies

#5
Self charging mobile phone battery
The only real source is the patent, available here
Not a new technology, more of an adaption of old technology but still really cool and could easily become a part of the everyday. Just a mobile phone, with slightly heavier components(Like an older phone, really) all the standard components are inside a frame and this frame can move along two sets of rails, one allows it travel up and down, the other side to side. Strips of piezoelectric crystals sit at the end of each rail and generate a current when compressed by the frame. So as the user walks, or otherwise moves the phone, the motion generates electricity. This charges a capacitor which in turn trickles charge into the battery, keeping it topped up.

In other words, badarse. Of course there will be issues with over charging the battery and things but I'm sure this will be overcome

#4
Mind controlled wheelchair?
In development by multiple universities, they use an electrode filled skullcap connected to a PC running brain-computer interface (BCI) software. The user thinks about their feet to move forwards, their tongue to stop, and their right or left hands to proceed in those directions. The researchers placed 12 phone vibrators, positioned like the numbers on a clock, on a belt worn around the wheelchair user's waist. These vibrate sequentially for 3 seconds each. If they wearer wants to go, say, in a 4 o'clock direction, they wait until the appropriate "tactor" vibrates and then think "that one".

Still in experimental stages, there is very little known about it. Source here

#3
Latex Soundproofing
Info from here
The reason low frequency sounds seep through walls is due to their long wavelength, and when traveling through solids the wave length can be increased. What Zhiyu Yang at the university of science and technology in Hong Kong has invented is a specific Latex based tile that cancels out sound, only being 15 millimetres thick!

These noise-cancelling panels consist of a latex rubber membrane stretched over a 3-millimetre-thick solid plastic grid of centimetre squares. In the middle of each square is a small, weighted, plastic button.

When sound waves hit the panel, the membrane and weighted buttons resonate at difference frequencies. "The inner part of the membrane vibrates in opposite phase to the outer region
" So essentially the the tile cancels the sound out by absorbing and reacting to the sound.

Yes, awesome.

#2
Interactive Paper
Well, the paper itself isn't really interactive. It's more to do with the ink used on the paper. The Ink itself is a conductor, and reacts to the current activated by moving the paper around ( I.e in greeting cards, pop up books)The conductive ink can also create touch-sensitive components and also link to other devices embedded in the paper, such as microphones and LEDs.

The best example is a birthday card in which the interactive card of a birthday cake in which the candles light up when somebody triggers a touch-sensitive switch by picking up the card. The lights go out again when a microphone senses the user blowing on the card.

#1

LCD screen that reacts to what happens infront of it

Not the best title, but it makes sense. The screen allows users to manipulate or interact with objects on the screen in three dimensions. It will also function as a 3D scanner. It reacts to the user waving their arms, fingers and general movements in relation to what is happening on screen.

The brightness of each of an LCD's pixels is controlled by a layer of liquid crystals, which can swivel to physically control how much light passes from the display's backlight. This screen uses the reverse of that and reacts the amount of light passing through from the outside source

Not too much more to say. Info here

Ge-H.P

Flowers

Flowers in a slightly different version to Lukes flower display, thing.

Delicate Boundaries

Possibly the coolest thing I have seen, aside from Viggo Mortensen's beard in "Appaloosa".

Delicate Boundaries from csugrue on Vimeo.

Using touch screen interaction with outside sources of light to make real world computer interaction, having the lights follow your touch and move about outside the screen.

More about it here

Pictured above: Badarsery

Fruitay!!!

The fruit!
"Fruity" is a little hard to see I know, but you get the gist of it.

Awesome

Black Dynamite

Awesome parody of the old 70s blacksploitation films. All the old visual effects and stunts

Found it over at Arstechnica

Top 5 IDN links

In the future, without the occurrence of a global catastrophe, density will plague all mankind. Design needs to embrace minimalism and simplicity to counteract super-abundance. All true things come from a single source

Number 5#
Can be found Here. Although by itself may not mean much by itself, in conjunction with it's explanation means a whole lot more. The deliberate display of minimalistic views and the upside down "Trust" reflect society, in which trust is the very centre of. It is very simplistic but at the same time provide the depth of true art using it as a purely visual image. When the text is incorporated it utilises both mediums to portray a vision of "Less is more" which in the end, is the very purpose of the artwork.

Number 4#

Tame the Beast is an advertisement for "Flame TV", as a video advertisement it's purpose is to generate interest, this is done easily by it's use of the contrasting silence to loud rock music as the surfer mounts his board and proceeds to kill things, which for lack of a better word, is badarse. In terms of style it is very modern but nods to the original "Cardboard cutout" animation style of early south park and alike.

Number 3#
Hank the Singing Bottle

Another video/audio advertisement, and it's hilarious. Good sense of humor and even though it's trying to get people to recycle there is no preaching or guilt trips laid out, just good humor and greatly but not overly complicated animation. The message is clear, and it's use of innocent childlike looking characters adds another connection to the audience.


Number 2#

Can be found here

The photograph above above has a very cold and industrial feel, but the people visible on the shoreline (possibly a family) juxtaposes the initial feel of the photograph. The natural and the unnatural. The artwork is one of many used in a gallery exhibition to show the damage inflicted on the environment by our lifestyle, and i believe this image sums up that feeling perfectly. The photograph asks the question of what life was there before industry took over and choked the water with fog and steel.

Number 1#

Suspicious Cargo

A brilliantly done short video, relying on motion comic animation and a black and white style to capture the mood. Although there is sound, it is purely there for mood and there are no voices to accompany the speech bubbles that pop up, adding more to the comic style of animation. The purpose is simple, to inform people of not only the dangers but also the consequences of pirated software (Pirating in general, really). The bad joke ending can be forgiven for the animation alone, almost any story in this style is made more interesting.

Result;

Toadie Approves.

An Objective Review of "Get The Glass"

This review is not a requirement and is purely done of my own free will.

http://www.blogger.com/www.gettheglass.com provides you with the game, free of charge. Who do we have to thank? http://www.goodbysilverstein.com/ the company responsible for possibly the biggest and most recognised marketing campaigns in the history of…well, campaigns.

Got Milk?

Yes I do.

So, what is it? A Game or a Marketing tool? The answer is simple, both. And a whole lot more.

The initial load time is actually quite reasonable for a low bandwidth connection when you take into consideration the fantastic fluid movement of the animation. The story is light hearted with plenty of small jokes to keep you giggling like the schoolgirl. Without going into too many details, you and your family are on the run and if you get caught you will be sent to Milkatraz. Roll the die to continue, the rolling of the die is a very nice touch, there is no simple “Click here” mechanism. It is a click and hold scenario where there is an accurate “Cube” rolling about, and it reacts to the limits of the screen and the ferocity of the thrower.

There are three kinds squares you can land on “Fortune” which usually results in moving forward one or more spaces, “Misfortune” which as you may have guessed means you have to move back, or if the cops are close behind you it is known as the “Well, now you’re boned” card. Lastly there comes “Mastermind” in which you are asked a question, usually multiple choice or true or false, but occasionally you’ll have to manually type the answer. This is possibly the best in-game feature, some of the questions are actually quite difficult and because of the time limit you can’t exactly google an answer in time. That’s just the main aspects of the game, there are still many mini-games to complete along the way to escape from milkatraz and the police. For instance, the incredibly annoying and frustrating “Put flowers in her hair” game.

Pictured above: The angriest I've ever been.

Some of the best parts of the site are not included in the game, at the very beginning of you click on “Case files” there are literally pages of terrible jokes and bad puns to gorge yourself on.