Short Presentation of Sketches, Artwork or any Unfinished Work
On the 8th November, I think I got the wrong end of the stick, on the unfinished work presentation. This was after I listened to the other presentations of other peoples. I got the interior designs/layouts of the new millennium dome which is now called the o2.
Anyway here it is, I was just going to talk through the images on the website.
Research File
On the 11th October, which was our second week we got our first project which was a
group research project into interactive media artists. We had to research and present to
the class the artist we had been given and we got Joseph Beuys who produced a number
of different forms of art including graphic, painting, sculpture, performance art, video art
and installations. He was a Conceptual artist who was from Germany where he was born
in May 1921, and then he later died in January 1986. We had to have it done by
Wednesday 18th October for the presentation.
On the 18th October, we also got set another quick 1 week project which was to do a short
presentation about yourself. My quick presentation was about my age, where I come from,
my school history and my general hobbies along with my family. Here is the web address
to my presentation online, on my website (http://www.benmgiles.co.uk/uniwork/
imvc01.html). We had to have this done by the 25th October which took all morning.
On the 1st November, we start to go through the inspiration timeline which is a web-site of
the beginning of the last century all the way to the present of all the main artists who have
contributed to interactive media. These are some of the main Items and dates that
interested me they were, the 1906 - Reginald Fessenden (1st radio broadcast),
1928 - Walt Disney (voice) Ub Iwerks (animation) (Mickey Mouse), 1929 - Elzie Segar
(Popeye) and 1929 - Herge (Tin Tin) I used to see some of these old cartoons when I was
a small boy. We then got given a short presentation to do for next week 8th November, the
theme was to find sketches, artwork or any unfinished work.
On the 8th November, I think I got the wrong end of the stick, on the unfinished work
presentation. This was after I listened to the other presentations of other peoples. I got the
interior designs/layouts of the new millennium dome which is now called the o2. I haven't
got round to putting the content onto the mediaweb server yet, but I will have it done as
soon as possible. Plus bob went on with more of the inspiration timeline again, I found this
one interesting as I am into all the gadgets and electronics 1938 - ILEA/ GPO (Cable TV).
TV is another area that has grown hugely, as you get digital Freeview, Cable and Sky and
now the High Definition system has moved in now. Tv's have come a long way from the
black and white. Then we got told we need to to this research file for 22nd November.
On the Friday 27th October our group had the chance to go
up to see the Mac Expo but not everyone went there loss as
it was excellent. As you do I got lots of free stuff that was
being given out all over the show, free cd's, leaflets and a
Google t-shirt. One of the stalls I found interesting was the
Vertus stall which had a demonstration on a Adobe filter plug-
in which which cuts out really awkward images like hair and
leafs in the image below. I also found out stuff on the Google
stand I didn't know before about Google which I found
interesting. There was also the latest games for Mac's there
that you could actually play and the main software
companies adobe macromedia doing demonstrations ofsoftware.
On the Thursday 2nd November the week after the Mac Expo we got the chance to go up
to London again to the Science Museum were there was a Games exhibition being held. I
had a great time there as you could actually play on all the games, it was all the old to the
new games and consoles so it was great playing on all the classics. It's quite amazing how
everything as evolved from the basic button to the wireless and motion sensitive game
play. Unfortunately they didn't have the new Nintendo Wii as I thought they would because
the exhibition was sponsored by Nintendo. We also went into the Imax Cinema to see
Space Station 3D which was pretty amazing I thought as it felt you were in the film it's self.
Me and My Maps
One of the things I found interesting in the inspiration timeline was Harry Beck and his
London underground map. This one was interesting because I am generally interested in
maps anyway and I like the simplicity of it, the block colour coding so you can follow
everything easily and set angles that are always vertical, horizontal and diagonal of all of
the tube lines plus none of the station names are squashed together or overlaying others
with the addition of simple symbols for the stations as well which makes it very easy to
use. The map its self was actually based on circuit boards/diagrams when Harry Beck was
an electrical draftsman, he did the map because he had just lost his job as an electrician.
There are other underground maps from around the world and all of them now a days has
reference back to the original Harry Beck design, but one foreign map I have found have
advanced it to look a bit better. All they have done is have the centre made bigger, mainly
for tourists to find them self's around more easily and then when you go out along one of
the lines the line changes into just dots which represents they are not so important, just
names more for the commuters.
In all I like this sleek and sharp edges to the tube lines across the map, like vector based
images that you get in Adobe Illustrator, but with the original Beck maps he actually hand
draw them, it is just I suspect that the new maps are done using vector based software.
Staying with my interests in maps they have come a long way in interactive media/
interactive content since the introduction of the internet. As you can now get GPS that
tracks your movements across the map so you never get lost now a days, this is all possible by the introduction of satellites high in the earths atmosphere orbiting us. You can
also go walking with these things but not all GPS actually show you what you are going to
walk into next plus it is not always 100 hundred percent accurate were you are. The first
versions of this idea used SatNav.
One of the most fun things to come out of it all is Google Earth and on the back of my
google t-shirt I got recently at the Mac Expo in the Olympia in Kensington, London it says
"4.7 billion years in development and still in beta" which I thought was quite fun as it is a
very powerful bit of software. Google also has Google Maps as part of their main search
within there web-site, this is a very basic version of Google Earth but in a web browser and
also has a lot less even none functions than the main Google Earth. With Google Earth
you can have loads of different layered content like the actual road maps themselves on-
top of the photo earth. On some parts of Google Earth the actual terrain is 3D so when you
change the tilt and angle of the earth it feels like you are flying through lets say the Grand
Canyon. That is were the photo has been stretched over it there is also 3D buildings you
can get on Google Earth for example if you zoom to New York City and turn on the 3D
Buildings layer on.
In Google Earth you also have the options to e-mail and even print the photo image you
are viewing, GPS even works with it but you have to upgrade to Google Earth Plus for it to
work, you can get even more functions with Plus. Google Earth Plus you have to pay for iyou want the extra functions and gadgets.
With Google Earth there is also another part of software called Google SketchUp which is
where you can even import the Google Earth image and start building anything you want
in 3D and even once you have finished with your lets say house you can import it back into
Google Earth.
There is one airline company which I found out not long ago at the Mac Expo Google
Stand which is were I found out much of the google information that you can actually track
any flight around the world on Google Earth and see exactly were it is. So you could
actually see it, lets say it is over France at the moment and even see the altitude above
the ground it was at.
What I would like to see in the near future is a live Google Earth, so I mean not photos but
videos constantly streaming of the land below, (talking of videos there are sometimes live
web-cams on the google map, I think I have seen them in the London area I know you can
get them), so it could even help out with natural disasters. Saying that you would need it to
rewind and pause, that would be amazing but I think we need tocomputers first and maybe high definition but that's just crazy.