Peripheral Pre-Writing

So I would like to focus on different drum peripherals for my final paper – using semiotics – and am showing what I have so far. Here are the peripherals I am looking at:

Guitar Hero Drum Set	Rock Band Drum Set

One of the things that I just noticed when I was looking at these peripherals remediates other real-world drumming equipment:

Drum Set (kinda like Guitar Hero)

Quad Toms (kinda like Rock Band)

So I don’t know where this will lead me, but I thought I would share and see if you have any other insights as well.

(^^)V

Semiotics of The Walker

I’ve been following One in 8 Million, a NYTimes.com section, for a while. Each week there will be a different story. I choose a recent one, a story about a walker in New York City, as an exercise for semiotics. (Click on the image to watch the story in the website. Sorry, flash player is needed.)

I am not sure what genre it is, but it is different from a movie. There is no movement, but continuous static photographs.

MONTAGE

Due to the pictures are chosen to match what the character says, so I think they use montage as one of the editing techniques to make the sequence of this story.

MISEN-EN-SCENE

I am sure every picture is deliberatively selected, including the composition of each photograph, how that photograph match the voice over, etc.

Production Design

They shoot on location, and the props are from the real settings in the city and costumes are all from the character her own.

Actor

Although the “actor” is not a professional actress, I think there is still a sense of performing in this story-telling, photo pose as a performance.

Sound

They use voice-over as parallel sound, and I think it is non-diegetic sound, since in this case, only us as watchers could hear it, not the people in the photographs.

Color

Black and white, so that people could only focus on the content of the photograph and the story itself.

Framing

There are some photographs use close-up camera position, and the one above is a deep depth of field but with the character blur. My connotation is that this photo reveals the inner voice of the character that she doesn’t like to walk in the city, as her voice over in this part is “I don’t feel like in the city.”

There is one look-down camera angle. My connotation is that it reveals the loneliness of the character.

ICON, INDEX & SYMBOL

The walking man sign on the road is at the same time iconic, indexical and symbolic sign. It is iconic because it is the resemblance of human being; it is indexical because it is caused to exist by the existence of human being; it is symbolic because the sign is not exactly like human, but by convention, a sign with a shape like this would make people think it is human. [I am still not confident when trying to distinguish these three concepts. These arguments are copied from Barnard's book, page 148-149. Please help me.]

At when there is 1:13 left, the photo of the character’s sketchbook is seen as an index to her thinking, for her voice over is “if I don’t walk, I can’t think”.

I think the graffiti picture when there is 1:28 left is an icon. It is like a portrait for a lady.

The photograph when there is 1:20 left with a picture on the ground with two women in cheongsam on it, (I think they are from old Shanghai time), it is iconic, but I am not sure whether it is symbolic. Can you find any conventions?

QUESTION

When there is 00:38 left, I don’t understand why when she said”I noticed buildings”, but the photograph shown is having a shallow depth of field and making the building out of focus, instead focusing on an old man. Maybe they don’t have a better photograph? Probably not so.

CONFESSION

This exercise really helps me to think deeper of the terms, instead of just memorizing.

This is by no means a complete analysis. I would like to hear your voice.

Pre-Writing Nightmare on Elm Street

Hey Class,

Spending my lovely Sunday afternoon wrapping up the essay outline and I had question for you. Basically because my interaction is with a consumer model camera it is starting to sound like a cnet.com review or something, only with a more technical vocabulary and resources to back up what I’m saying. Is this okay? I’m actually thinking it might be an extension of my own experiences in reading reviews of such devices.

So, to get it down to a particular I am saying a particular user, a dad,  using a particular camera, my Polaroid HD DV,  for a particular event, his child’s first birthday.

I’ve been walking around my apartment imagining what that would be like. Thinking about the elements of the party. What would the dad want his audience to see. What types of extensions of his own eyes will he want with the camera. My main argument is that because the camera has such poor quality and terrible ergonomics, it interrupts the extension of his visual understanding of the event because he must take time to make the artifact known, taking away from the natural flow of him recording the experience the way he is experiencing it.

I think that’s basically where I am right now. I have some resources sprinkled in there, read-to-hand, present-to-hand, lifeworld, flow, etc.

Let me know if anyone out there has any last second feedback or if you are experiencing similar things.

Calling bullshit on the Davis reading

So I often find I have many notes in the margins of our readings commenting on some statement or claim the author has made that I don’t agree with. But I do not get so bothered by them most of the time to feel the need to vent about them. For some reason I do feel that need with this piece (very possibly influenced by the knowledge that I have’t been on here for a while and need to post something). Sadly though I know I am not critiquing this piece in any sort of one vein, which would be good practice for class, but I just didn’t have quite that much time on my hands.

My first note (and realistically it is likely only this late because I was feeling over whelmed while reading before this) is on page 9, toward the end of the continuing paragraph from the previous page, when Davis notes as if its a second thought, something note very important at all, “right down to the very shape and bearing of the body itself.” Well of course. The way someone carries them self can nearly completely refute the feeling their clothes would give me, no matter what setting we/ I/ they are in. If I see a man in an expensive suit standing on a side walk corner, waiting for traffic to let him walk, standing aloof from the crowd around him, looking at his blackberry or snidely looking down at some begger down the block I will think a million degreee different from if I see the same man on that same corner in that same suit bending down and happily playing with/ petting some dog among the crowd while he engagingly talks to its owner. Bearing and manner speak volumes about people; as much or more than their clothes do.

The next note I have on the reading to complain about is probably very personally driven. On page 12, about in the middle of the first actual paragraph, Davis notes again as some sort of after thought (in parenthesis no less!) “some of whom truly are artisits,” refering to the people who design the fashions being discussed. Of course some of them are real artisits, really it should be said all of them are real artisits! There is no clothes designer one could sit by and watch them puzzle out some new idea or way to cut something, some new pattern to use in a novel way, that you could say is not an artist. How could you sit by someone who is sketching out idea after idea after idea (so very like any one of us) and say it is not their artistic process?

The next note is a very small one, but one that again was perhaps a particular sting because I felt it more personally; on page 15, again about half way into the first actual paragraph, Davis says that “our intuition says no,” referring to the tiny differences possible in clothing that can make it difference enough to be a fashion or not. Of course a tiny difference in a garment can make all the difference. Take a knee length skirt vs. a mini-skirt. Merely a difference in hem length, they can even be made of exactly the same fabric, same number of pleats, same colors, even standing right next to each other, even match them with the same shirt! And you will get a radically different feeling about them. The mini-skirt is flirting and suggestive, the knee length skirt is conservative and possibly strict feeling.

Maybe all these previous notes really woke me up, or just got me going, because on the last real page(s), 16nd 17 I have three complaints. I will do my best to wrap them up quickly though.

The first one is actual in the notes of pages 16 and 17, it was a complaint until I read the note on page 17 and now it has tuned into perhaps a smaller complaints about misunderstanding/ Davis being unclear. In the note on page 16 Davis notes that there was not fashion in civilizations of old, such as Egypt and China. This is either a gross point of not having done the homework/ research, for China had VERY stringent fashion rules, or else it is unclear to me how “fashion” is being used, for in the note on page 17 Davis calls a possible example of first fashion “an institutionalized fashion cycle.” So would the fashion rules of ancient China be merely an institution, or would it not have been as it is now, a communication method they would have used to note (if nothing else) how much they cared to pay attention to the fashion rules of court or the market place?

The second note on these last pages is on 17, bottom of the end of the paragraph from page 16, where Davis notes that we all “[share] a strong collective component.” The point in this paragraph seemed to be that people growing up in the same situations would end up being very similar as people. I have huge arguments with this idea. From my own life I have a perfect example: my cousin and I had nearly exactly mirroring situations in life, with very strong mothers, seemingly very loving fathers when we were young, then abrupt and violent divorces between our parents. I came out very much of the mind “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, Paul my cousin is the greatest victim of the world, it’s always out to get him. We often can’t stand each other because of this huge difference in our reactions to the same situation. So I find Davis’ point here very aggitating.

Finally, my last note on this reading in on page 17, toward the middle-end of the only complete paragraph on this page, when Davis is talking about how the designers of fashion do what they do to give us the populace a way of expressing our selves, how fashion sprouts from their minds as only their attempt to help us truly reflect and express how we really feel inside. What nonsense! Sure, I suppose some fashion may come from this vein, like the militant shoulder pad example used earlier in this piece, but I am not wearing my jeans with the holes in the knees because I feel the need to rebel against the sterility of new jeans, or that I wish to convey that I’m a rough and tumble sort and I wear my jeans out, I just think they get softer with all that wear, more comfortable, and I just think they look fun, with all the texture and roughness.

Steps 20091027

Class Notes

I think I remember Jeff asking us to post a copy of the notes; Here is my version.

• Generic Process & how to do this process
  • Pick an interactive artifact
  • Its in the subjectivity; in their understanding; fears, reactions, etc.
  • A user interacting with an artifact
  • And there are multiple users using the artifact
    • Different lifeworlds; (foreigner, native, etc.)
    • Different practical contexts
    • A phenomenological account explains the interaction
    • Talk about a very specific thing; talk about a specific user
    • You need to think about a specific user and a specific setting of use;
      • Once you do that it is easier to think about the paper
    • What is not in this diagram is you.

10/GUI critique outline(updated)

My phenomenology account of critique is on this concept design called 10/GUI, reinvent desktop human-computer interaction design.

I found it interesting that there are already many critiques going on in the comment area, and someone even wrote a post to exclusively critique this concept. I think it would be better to write my own before taking a look at others’ critiques, which will be an interesting read.

This video contains both the design and design rationale. So I guess I am going to critique both, but focused on the design. I have so much to say about this proposed new interaction, but I feel I am not there yet. Just post this as a place holder and will come back later.

Here are the clusters I came up from watching the interaction and reading one of the comments regarding to the video. I am not sure if they are good clusters or not. You don’t have to look at the video to tell me that, so here they are,

with ten fingers rest on the pad, the design let me think of playing piano, and I did feel a sense of freedom of operation

but with further examination, I found this design asks a high requirement for the hand/fingers (branches listed below)
• full use of fingers, I cannot as eating as operating for some tasks (ignore the accessibility issue)
• the fingers have to be clean and dry, but my hands (and the commentator’s) are most of the time sweaty, so worried about the pointer “jump” issue
• it could not meet the gamer’s need,
• it is good at general target but bad at small/precise target
• since ten fingers are on the pad, there could possibly be unexpected use (i.e. different finger position, finger joints touch…).

Instead of free, the design restrict the hands (explain)
when use a mouse, the hands stay separate, the design throw the mouse away but also sacrifice the hands position. It bring two hands together in a restricted manner(and it doesn’t have to be that way), to feel naturally, I see “break” the pad while still keep the function would be a better choice.

These are some of the first clusters, and I have some more clusters regarding to the software solution. I know it is too much for now, but there must be some that are not good clusters,

20091022 assignment instruction

Epic 1 Hour Cramming

I took a shot at the 1 hour epic cramming, and found it to be pretty insightful. I was able to start thinking about the critique I would be hypothetically writing about, even though I just created a large text file of words and quotes. If you get a chance to do this before class, or even before any papers you have to write, it seemed to pay off pretty well for me. I also used the notes generated from this exercise and pumped them into Wordle, suggested from Binaebi, which is a tag cloud generator. The results were pretty cool, though part of the image got cut off on the right. The funny thing, is that the tag cloud looks like a drink/sundae. What do you think?

Here’s the link to the actual picture of the tag cloud: here

And here’s the interaction I would be writing about, the character generator in Rock Band

Quick Veronique Critique!

As I was not fully quenched by Kickasola, I read the user comments on IMDB, a few other critics and blog posts. Here are a few things that I found interesting.

Roger Ebert:
Roger Ebert is no Kickasola but I found a few things interesting in his critique of the movie. It starts with the sentence “Here is a film about a feeling.” Then he talks about Kieślowski’s style as below.

“He is drawn to coincidence and synchronicity. He is little interested in focusing on a character hurling from point A in the first act to Point C in the third. He is fascinated by Point B, and the unseen threads linking it to past and present. His films can be mystical experiences. He trusts us to follow him, to sense his purpose, to leave the theater having shared his openness to a moment. The last thing you want to do after a Kieślowski film is “unravel” the plot. It can’t be done.”

Slavoj Žižek:
For the few of us who cannot sleep unless we unravel the message, I found that this small snippet almost paraphrases it. It’s an excerpt from an essay titled “The Forced Choice of Freedom” written by Žižek.

“The perception of our reality as one of the possible, often even not the most probable, outcomes of an open situation, this notion that other possible outcomes are not simply canceled out but continue to haunt our reality as a specter of what might have happened, conferring on our reality the status of extreme fragility and contingency, implicitly clashes with the predominant linear narrative forms of our literature and cinema.”

Joseph G. Kickasola
I am pretty sure this guy was stalking Kieślowski. I am absolutely stunned by both by the quantity and quality of nuanced observations and interpretations he provides us. He situates his interpretation based on the author’s previous works (references to The Decalogue), life (French and Polish politics), lifeworld (Kieślowski’s attitude towards old people) and through his own judgements as well. This, we all agree, is by no means a simple task and Kickasola has done a kick-ass job. (Sorry couldn’t resist it!)

And here is where I start whining. I have one huge issue with this article. He beautifully states of what I think is the paradigmatic glasses we need to be wearing while watching Kieślowski’s movies.

“… the essence of the film hinges on the experience of watching it, not simply on an understanding of its story, characters, and use of metaphor.”

After stating this, he does exactly the opposite – explains the story and provides rationalistic explanations to the characters’ traits by contextualizing them with respect to the metaphors and motifs of religion, spirituality, politics and philosophy. It does help us understand the movie better but aren’t Kieślowski’s movies meant to evoke? Does one need to have a rational understanding to “feel” it better? If Kickasola is trying to do that, then he is essentially at logger heads with Kieślowski.

Kickasola paraphrases Kieślowski’s attitude towards this by saying
“This type of abstract, nonverbal “rhetoric” can be very persuasive…”

In other words, to me it feels like Kickasola attempts to help us understand a movie that the director did not want us to understand in the first place.

All said and done, I do not deny the fact that knowing about the director’s life, his works, his beliefs, the metaphors and motifs used in the movie and Kickasola’s interpretation of them have definitely enriched me to understand the movie. But the answer to the question whether it has helped me to feel it better is NOT a big resounding yes!

PS: I wonder how Pauline Kael would have critiqued this movie!