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This post is full of SPOILERS and should not be read by those who have NOT seen the Lego Movie.
The basic argument I am going to make is that The new Lego Movie is a critical design. It is a critical design that makes you think about the ways Hollywood makes children’s movies. Specifically about how Hollywood interprets children’s toys, comics and stories and re-appropriates them into stories for adults. Now this in itself is not necessarily bad, but the movie points out other unexplored avenues and that maybe its time for hollywood to break out of its habits.
A Given collection of Designs (unit of analysis)
In this section, I am going to argue the similarities in story structure and treatment of material and compare it to the Lego movie. My claim is that Lego movie is critical because it points out the flaws in the way Hollywood treats childrens titles. The Transformers movies, The batman movies, Avengers, Harry Potter, etc in my opinion are all part of the same collection. They are either toys, comics or childrens stories being transformed into adult movies. But there itself is the critique that lego movie tries to make. Will Ferrell (Mr Business) wants to see order and organization in his legos and, claims that he is doing it in a way that makes sense for adults. Mr Business’ view on organization is critical because the adult perspective on childrens products is being challenged. A common critique we hear about movies like Harry potter, Transformers etc is that they were not as good as their original source material. Is it possible it is true because a certain adult perspective has been added on to it? A perspective that takes away the creativity and inspirational qualities of the original source? We see this question being raised several times during the movie: the master builders not following instructions, the existence of cloud cuckoo land, metal beard and ultimately Will Ferrell’s son reminding him that it is a child’s toy and that the game itself is meant for 8-14 year olds.
More later! Any thoughts ?
I really enjoyed the discussion on aesthetics, and the Danto reading really helped to pull it all together. It also made me ponder many things; luckily for you, I only remember a few:
ICT4D
Many moons ago I stared at a blinking cursor (now there’s an aesthetic expression!) desperately praying for some coherent thought to flit by so I could pin it to The Statement of Purpose. One of the not-so-coherent thoughts that kept popping up was something like “ICT4D should be pretty too…because it affects how people engage with it.” So the notion of aesthetics as a matter of ethics hit home as “Bingo; that’s it!”
Aesthetics is to surfaces as body language is to human beings. Very few people merely listen to what you say, and act on that alone. What you say will always be mediated by how you said it. The medium is the message. I wonder now if that isn’t partly why younger people are more likely to blame technology for a failing, while older people are more likely to blame themselves. Apart from having grown up with more technology, they grew up with particular forms of technology – tech you could put in your pocket or customize as a fashion item; or flat, black minimalist PC forms that practically apologize for taking up too much space. Contrast that with the large, standalone, mini-edifices of the older mainframes; or interfaces that required you to talk their language; or PC forms that were white or bright and showy and took pride of place in the household. What conclusions would you draw?
Mr. Bennett
I’m not sure if the timing works out (having to toggle your wi-fi every 30 seconds seriously cuts into Googling rigor) but if Jane Austen was influenced by Wittgenstein, I now really understand what she meant when she described Mr. Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) as a philosopher. It’s one thing to find ironic humor in having an atrociously silly wife and like-minded daughters, but to not do anything about it at all? I mean, she was like the proto – Jar Jar Binks. Now I understand he was actively pursuing non-action, since apparently that’s what philosophers do.
Abstractionist Life? (a.k.a Why the Abstract Expressionists Were Like the Dealers in Sub-Prime Loans)
One of my favorite stories is this pithy parable of the Credit Crisis:
If you don’t have time for pithy parables, the moral of the story is that things went awry because people started selling concepts and concepts of concepts at the expense of the real thing – much like the abstract expressionists did. I guess that technically makes Andy Warhol the Crisis.
Thing is, it’s one thing to abstract to that level in art, but I think we’re doing that, to our loss, with real life. And to illustrate, here’s a video one of my classmates posted of a toddler’s first experience with rain:
Little Girl Experiences Rain for the First Time
(Used here under educational fair use)
As charming as the video is (and shocking to my Jamaican sensibilities – to have your baby play out in the rain? You must be mad!), I couldn’t help but contrast the baby’s first hand engagement with the all the camera phones trained on her. That’s pretty much how we enjoy things these days: through a screen, attempting to capture for posterity a moment we didn’t actually get to experience ourselves – we were so busy recording it.
P.S. I doubt that link on Jar Jar Binks really gives you a true appreciation of the character, but it does allow me to go into a mini side-rant about the “allegations of racial caricature”: Wha? I might need to watch his appearances again (riiiight; I’m not that much of a sucker for punishment), but in this case, I seriously suspect that the fact that people liken him to a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit” etc. says more about those people than it does about the character.
I am, admittedly, only half way into the reading, but I thought of something I saw today.
“Dumb Starbucks”, a Starbucks parody, opened up today in Los Feliz today. They are operating their business as “art” and people are confused. A friend drove by and vouched for how long the lines are.
“A barrista who identified herself as Amber said she recently found the job online and was interviewed briefly by a man whose name she doesn’t recall. Asked whether the store was some kind of artistic statement, she responded, ‘I don’t know. What is art? Maybe serving coffee is art.'” (Source http://on.wsj.com/1gj2xvP)
So, is it art or not art? What would Danto say? What would Warhol say? If they were in LA, would they go?
More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/dumb-starbucks-is-la-parody-coffee-shop-performance-art-tv-stunt-or-just-a-legal-dispute-waiting-to-happen-9118464.html
Imagine that you want to visually render something, but in an abstract way. How would you abstract it?
I stumbled upon this page, which offers a visual inventory of different techniques that painters have used to abstract their subjects. Spend even 3-4 minutes on this page, and you’ll probably be surprised at the variety of techniques available and extremely diverse effects they achieve. It’s pretty cool.
http://www.utdallas.edu/~melacy/pages/2D_Design/_Fall2013/Abstraction/SelectiveElimination.html
http://gamescriticism.org/articles/lange-1-1
Little too exhausted from Connect to fully engage with this now, so I’ll come back and write a bit about it later, but I thought this paper was really interesting, and some of you may think so as well!
(Thanks to Gabriele for posting the journal on fb!)
The description of youtube says this: “Using billions of searches, Google has prototyped an anonymous profile of its users.This reflects the fears, inquiries, preoccupations, obsessions and fixations of the human being at a certain age and our evolution through life”
For me it is also very thought-provoking. I would argue this also reflects our conception about the social norm of sexuality. When we are expected to have sex or a sexual partner for the first time, and when we are supposed to get pregnant.
I wanted to share this video so that I can show you all the influence sneakers have on people. It’s not just a hobby, it’s some people’s way of life. Some people start from a you g age. Some continue this way of life, others grow out of it because they start to realize that they are just sneakers.
After watching this video I thought to myself that I should just leave my love for sneakers behind, but then I realized I cannot do it just yet. It’s something about sneakers that draws me in. The color way, the style, the comfort, etc.
Watch the video and see a little of sneaker impact yourself…
While working on my paper, I couldn’t help but laugh when I realized I was writing a definition of a toaster:
A typical household toaster (different from a toaster oven) has the purpose of toasting slices of bread before consumption. Some toasters have more features than others, such as finer-grained settings for how dark the user wishes the bread to be toasted, or more slots so the user can toast bread for the entire family at once. However, the general idea of today’s toasters seems to be the same—place the bread in the toaster, press the lever, and then wait until the toast pops back up and the user can retrieve the bread slices.
I love design.
(If you really want context, I’m comparing a regular toaster to http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/the_highest_popping_toaster_in_the_world_10259.asp.)
Since a long time I have thought that the screen of a computer acts as a wall which separates the real and the artificial world. No matter how immersive the screen-content can be, it still is a different world. It is unreal, but has a lot of elements which are the reasons of our fascinations. Since the 90s, a lot of attempts have been made to somehow penetrate into this artificial world, but they did not achieved what they really promised. It is mankind’s endeavor to somehow get into the artificial world and feel as if it is real. The attempts of Virtual Reality are real and great, but they don’t really dissolve this wall, they just fake being immersed. We have a lot of examples such as virtual reality caves, Head Mounted displays, Augmented reality, but nothing is satisfactory.
We have seen movies like The Matrix, Tron, and cartoons like Johnny Quest where the hero gets immersed in a different world, and this become a great inspiration for reality to come up with something which really gives us this immersed feeling. Many of the people working in this field are trying to achieve this, and one of the attempts is made my Oculus VR by making the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Display.
The Video below explains the capabilities of the headset.
Oculus Rift is the idea of Palmer Lucky, which he started in his parent’s garage. He is a virtual reality enthusiast and big fan of head mounted displays. He wanted to buy the best VR headset to get the immersive matrix experience, but there was nothing out there, so he decided to build the Oculus Rift. The makers of the Rift have specifically targeted gaming industry as they want to focus on giving the immersive experience. They want gamers to feel like being in the game when playing it actually. This is a dream of breaking the wall and going completely in the artificial world and feeling like being a part of it. They never thought of it as for watching movies in an immersive way as because here they focus on games and only games. They don’t want this experience (even if it is so rich) to be expensive so the device only cost for $300. They are giving it to the developers (game developers) to develop content for the Rift.
The Oculus Rift is made of two in-built Hi-definition screens — one for each eye– and two lenses which allows the eyes to see the things on the screens which are really close to the eye. Together they give a VR experience. It has a gyro sensor and an Accelerometer which act as the motion sensing couple to track the head movement and translate them into the game, so if the user moves the head, he sees where he is looking. The best part of it is that the motion sensing is very low latency, so the combination of the motion sensing and the one screen per eye generates a stereoscopic 3D image which actually fools the brain to believe that it is experiencing an actual thing. The device itself is very bulky and wired to the PC via an HDMI cable. It has foam layers to make wearing it comfortable. People with spectacle can wear it as because it fits perfectly on a spectacle and also they thick lenses on the device itself can be change to suit the vision of the user. Compared to the traditional VR options available, it is very different. The existing VR goggles give an experience which is like sitting in front of a 100 inch screen kept at a distance of 60 feet, and the head tracking is also very lagging. Oculus Rift has a very low latency head tracking and it feels like being in the environment as you don’t really get to see the ends of the screen so it is a curved, very wide screen giving you a very engulfed experience.
When I tried it for the first time, I was completely astounded. I had never experienced anything that immersive. Initially when you are new to the device, you feel a bit dizzy because your brain is orienting to it, but once you are accustomed to it, that experience you can never forget. When I tried it I was asked to move my head turn it to right and left to see if I can see stuff, but when I was asked to turn and see what’s behind me, I was simply shocked. You can move your head and orient yourself to the virtual environment which gives you a feeling of actually being there. The only thing you will say when you are wearing it is “This is amazing”. If you are using something that immersive, then the traditional keyboard and mouse doesn’t work. I was asked to use the keyboard and mouse to move around in the virtual environment, but it seemed not at all intuitive. So I feel that for this kind of technology, the interaction has to be very natural. Using omnidirectional treadmill, gestures, mind-control to interact in such environment is probably the best possible things to be done to make it more realistic. It was hard for me to find the keyboard and the mouse since my eyes were covered with the Rift. Although, it has all the good aspects of interactivity, it is hard to keep wearing it for a long time because of it’s big form factor and the fact that it is wired.
What effects can we see because of such a piece of technology. Well there can be both good and bad. Good is that there are can be games that help us relax from day to day activities and isolate us from all the tensions. Such kind of immersivity is very essential for relaxing. Instead of visiting families, you will have these virtual hangout where everyone will meet in this virtual space and celebrate and electronic Christmas. Imagine the future of gaming. What would it feel like actually being the avatar you are playing. How will it feel like actually taking a bullet from the enemy. Will it be for people with a light heart. Imagine the future of porn. Having a virtual sex partner in such an environment will change every thing. You won’t won’t want to come out of it. It being very immersive, the user will get detached from the real world he won’t be aware of the world besides him. What kind of design guidelines with it suggest. We today are so much immersed our cellphones that we forget the world around us. What will happen when we are totally into different world. What will it change.
Overall, I feel that is a great piece of technology. It truly gives you a very rich immersive experience. Although, it is not very real, but slowly it will get there. So far there was nothing like this. It has a good side as well as a bad side. It is in the hands of design and the designer of the content how it will be used. Given the applications are made that rich and after carefully thinking about the things this device can change it can really bring about a huge transformation in immersion in to the virtual world completely destroying the wall separating the real and the virtual world.
Somehow, WordPress ate my long and arduous post but I will painstakingly recreate it for your viewing pleasure, to the best of my ability.
This post is going to be somewhat long and rambly but I haven’t posted on the blog in a while and I wanted to discuss a film that’s been giving me some pause for a while.
A few weeks ago I was watching Jurassic Park with my girlfriend Michelle and having a good time. It ended quite quickly, despite being over 2 hours long and reminded me of the discussion we’ve been having in Experience Design about flow. However, the thought that passed through my mind as I looked at the DVD sleeve is “boy is time sure relative”. I’ve been thinking about this as well as the discussion about horror and humor that the classes have had in the last week or so.
A few weeks before Jurassic Park, I was sitting on my futon, teeth clenched, fists tightened and the sound low. Shortly after I went to my room to lay in my bed alone with the lights off. Michelle asked me what was wrong since I was acting weird and my response was “I just finished watching Tetsuo: The Iron Man. I need to think for a litle bit.”
For a 67 minute film (and apparently there’s a 77 minute version that I may watch when I recover), this was a seemingly endless all-out assault on the senses. Despite that, it was engaging and drew me in for the duration, even if it was a fucked up menagerie of events from basically start to finish.
Let me post the plot synopsis from Wikipedia:
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The film opens with a man (called only “the man”, or the “Metal Fetishist”), cutting open a massive gash in his leg and then shoving a large threaded steel rod into the wound. Later, upon seeing maggots festering in the wound, he screams, runs out into the street, and is hit by a car. The driver of the car, a Japanese businessman, and his girlfriend try to cover up the mess by dumping the body into a ravine, but the dumped man gets revenge by forcing the businessman’s body to gradually metamorphose into a walking pile of scrap metal. This process starts when the driver finds a piece of metal stuck in his cheek while shaving. He tries to remove it, but realizes it is growing from the inside.
The scene shifts to the businessman at his home having breakfast, with a bandage over his cheek. The businessman receives a phone call, consisting of nothing but him and the other speaker (possibly his girlfriend) continuously saying “Hello?” to each other and thinking back to having sex after dumping the Metal Fetishist.
The first of several highly stylized chase scenes starts with the driver pursued through an underground train station by a woman whose body has been taken over by the Metal Fetishist. The businessman seems to win this encounter by breaking the back of the radically transformed woman (she begins the sequence as a demure office worker and ends it as a wild metal-infected woman) after even more metal has erupted on his ankles and arm.
The next segment is a terrifying dream sequence where the businessman’s girlfriend, transformed into an exotic dancer with a snake-like metal probe, terrorizes and rapes the businessman. After waking from this dream, the businessman and his girlfriend have sex at his apartment and eat erotically. As she eats each bite given to her, he hears the sounds of metal scraping. The businessman suddenly discovers his penis has mutated into a gargantuan power drill. A fight ensues where the businessman terrorizes his girlfriend, and acquires more and more metal on his body. She fights back and in the end impales herself on his drill and dies.
Helpless to do anything, the businessman, now the Iron Man, is visited by the Metal Fetishist, who emerges from his dead girlfriend’s corpse to show him a vision of a “New World” of nothing but metal and turn his cats into grotesque metal creatures. The Iron Man flees and is followed by the Metal Fetishist into an abandoned building. After the Metal Fetishist explains to the Iron Man how both of them became what they are, a final battle ensues. The Iron Man ends by attempting to merge himself with the Fetishist into a horrific two-headed metal monster. The two agree to turn the whole world into metal and rust it, scattering it into the dust of the universe by claiming “Our love can put an end to this fucking world. Let’s Go!” The duo charges through the streets of Japan in a horrific fusion of the two men and the accumulated metal, in a largely phallic form. The film ends with the words “GAME OVER” as opposed to “The End” after the closing credits.
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Long story short, the film explores a lot of different dark human emotions: fear of the unknown, of domination and/or rape, death, loss of control, etc.
What the synopsis doesn’t cover is some of the other things that make up the film: The pounding repetitive soundtrack, the jump cuts between reality and fiction, the minutes-long action sequences where frames are cut to create a stop-motion effect. The jump scares from awkward silence to deformed monsters chasing the main character. The fact that there’s only about 3-5 minutes of dialogue in the film. It’s a dizzying experience that makes the intro to Run Lola Run seem rather tame by comparison. I would say that this film explores just about everything that makes something a horror film by the Carroll definition:
In Noël Carroll‘s ‘Philosophy of Horror,’ he postulates that a modern piece of horror fiction’s “monster,” villain, or a more inclusive menace must exhibit the following two triats:
- A menace that is threatening – either physically, psychologically, socially, morally, spiritually, or some combination of the aforementioned.
- A menace that is impure – that violates the generally accepted schemes of cultural categorization. “We consider impure that which is categorically contradictory[14]“
What I think I took away from this film and the horror genre lectures is that there is room in interaction design to explore these negative and uncomfortable emotions. I think too often we focus on things that “make sense” or make us happy or function efficiently. There’s nothing wrong with plumbing the depths of our confused and primal existence which is covered by a thin veneer of normalcy. Films and literature have long explored (and games more recently) negative emotions: things with poor closure, things that make us angry or confused. Things that make us question ourselves.
We can make long-lasting and meaningful interactions and designs that stay with us, but we shouldn’t be afraid to explore that range of emotions that we often refuse to discuss: depression, hate, lust, anger, confusion, sadness, etc.
Watch the film if you’ve got a strong constitution.
Interaction Culture: The Class Blog 
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