History of Computers Video Response

The rather short history of the invention of computers brings to mind one seemingly unique aspect of their rise: Just how fast it all happened, and how fast expansion of computers’ capability and usability happened. Someone mentioned that if cars saw the same rapid growth, then they’d drive faster than we can imagine and cost so little that they were nearly disposable trash once used. So, why are computers so different, I wondered.

My best idea is that computers don’t have to deal with physical constraints and barriers as often as other inventions do. What could we really do with a car that drove a million miles an hour? Surely, we’d all crash and die constantly without some equal innovation in safety. At a technical level, there are often physical constraints to how good a computer can be, like the mess of wires that used to block progress as mentioned in the video, but these things were all hurdled relatively quickly without any inherent difficulties stopping us from going further. Computers deal with virtual reality, which so far has always demanded faster processing and more memory, always having a use for it. We can’t even use the fastest cars we have today on streets, but we can process data just as fast as we want to without fearing for our lives.

Responive Environments Response

From reading Responsive Environments, the section which most sparked my interest was the one mentioning interactive play as a method of education. Both of my parents are teachers, one an elementary-school music teacher, where experimentation and play is more or less allowed, and one a middle-school math teacher, a curriculum that at least traditionally has no room for play or anything but sitting still and studying. I would personally agree that education can only be improved for most subjects by injecting interactive elements, like the reading’s example of a virtual Big Bird instructing/playing with a kid.

I know geography and history far better than I would have simply through high school classes primarily because I’ve played grand strategy games that dealt with specific historical periods. Hearts of Iron is played via several infoboxes and a world map, and so I’ve had every country that existed in 1939 pounded into my head, as well as the historical events of World War II. Even though the player can influence history to change through their play, they still learn the true history through multiple plays, and if the game is accurate enough, they now know more about the dynamics of the system more easily than they would through reading. It becomes immediately apparent when playing as France as it is invaded by the Nazis that the Allies were too apprehensive of war preparations before war began, and therefore unprepared and extremely vulnerable once it started anyway.

It definitely takes a lot of effort to change an entire system of education, but in the case of history in particular, I think the technology and capability to teach this way is available right now. It just takes initiative and innovation, both of which are starved out of education at every level except pre-school and some college classes.

Running Fence Post

1. Who is the artist?

Clearly, in simple terms, the literal concept comes from Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The work required to create it, however, comes from both of them with a large team of manual workers. Then, the argument can be made that the piece is really just showcasing the earth surrounding it, in which case the artist is either god(s) or a semi-random process of plate tectonics and erosion over time. Probably easiest to just say Christo and Jeanne-Claude, if not necessarily correct.

2. What do you consider to be the artwork?

Again, the same problem. Does the fence do anything on its own worth talking about without the environment around it? Based on the responses of most people who look at the fence, the best thing it does is bring out the contours of the earth, which suggests that the fence is hardly more than a revealing lens for us to appreciate the geography better. It’s like the fence is just marketing to make people look at the earth they haven’t been appreciating so far. So, what is the artwork? The fence and the land around it have to combine to make it all make sense and appear meaningful.

Bonus time! Feeling too happy about everything? Then go straight from looking at the young and happy Christo and Jeanne-Claude you saw in the film from the 70s and then look straight at their Wikipedia picture here! People age!

Engelbart Post

The Engelbart reading here is revolutionary for the several computer-related inventions it generally speaks of, and the introduction mentions that. Just one thing I’d like to comment on, though, is this sentence: “With a ‘pointer,’ he indicates two points of interest, moves his left hand rapidly over the keyboard, and the distance and elevation between the points indicated appear on the right-hand third of the screen.”

So, the “pointer” is clearly what we now call a mouse, and this comes very close to how we use computers today with a few slight differences. First of all, I don’t think that a lot of people have ended up actually using the “left hand keyboard, right hand mouse” approach too well. If our keyboard were ever redesigned, that might be a useful thing to change, to load up the keys that are useful to browsing on the left side of the keyboard to facilitate this simple way of doing things (ignoring, of course, that not everyone’s right-handed, but still…).

Also, the division of the screen into separate useful portions hasn’t always worked so well. The very concept of Windows should make this an easy accomplishment, but the way that only one window can be active at a time limits users’ ability to keep separate useful windows open at once. Many professions have fixed this problem by keeping separate display windows synced to the same computer in creative ways, which solves the issue, but isn’t viable for the public at large, really.

Happenings Blog Post

Descriptions of some of the Happenings reminded me of (general video gaming smart person) Ian Bogost’s alternate reality game, Cruel 2 B Kind, which involves people moving about a city, generally unsure who else is actually playing the game, with the objective being to do a specific nice thing to an opponent to knock them out of the game.

This resembles Kaprow’s description of a participation Happening, in which people are led around a city by certain guides, which he says suggests the possibility of a lifelong Happening at some point. A lifelong Happening sounds sort of dark to me for some reason, subsuming humans into a work of art, though, well, how is it any better or worse than any other way of spending your time? Depending on what the Happening is, it may play out without the people having to really alter their own lives much at all, and it could really be a stunning work on that scale.

McCloud Blog Post

I wrote this last night, and the site was down, so this may feel rushed when I try to redo it today.

McCloud’s Understanding Comics is useful to new media in teaching how to think laterally about an underdeveloped art medium. His meta-comic explains the methods and tricks of comics throughout the years and how they were developed, which, when applied to another new medium, can be used to spark innovation of your own. Some have even tried to imitate McCloud’s style for other media.

In this excerpt, McCloud talks about the issues raised by trying to represent the passage of time through static images placed in sequence. Sometimes, different panels can represent the same passage of time over and over, but it would be so boring and overworked, that that’s surprisingly rare. It’s odd that if you want to set up a scene that takes place over time with a single background, however, you have to arrange the scene to progress from left to right. Everyone who’s talking, barring some creative or awkward text bubble manipulation, has to start on the left of the room and work their way to the right in a conversation, because that’s how we read (in the west, though other cultures have corresponding issues). This seems like it would be more of a problem, or would at least come off as artificial, but that’s rarely the case in comic books, especially because they are meant to be read at a somewhat fast pace that doesn’t allow the reader to stop and reflect on a singular panel.

Fifth Element Blog Post

The first timbre to appear is the piano, which plays for a short period of time as Leeloo is first escaping after she is created. The piano suggests sophistication, and is also best at laying out a melody generically so that it can be recognized again throughout the film. At this point, the viewer may think that Leeloo is a crazy woman who should be tracked down by the police, but the piano suggests that the opposite is true, while establishing the melody.

After Leeloo is freed from the shower in Korben’s apartment, the alto saxophone timbre plays the main melody. The alto saxophone, particularly when played in the sort of lilting and slinky way as in the film, suggests romance and sex. This foreshadows the eventual romance later on in the film, while not straying too far from the comedic nature of the scene and those around it.

The melody plays through cellos as the diva dies. Classical string instruments in general often suggest sad moments, and the deeper cellos better represent the diva than violins, though I’m not sure exactly why.

Violins play the melody in another sad moment in the medical bay after the scenes with all the explosions. The violins work well with Leeloo, and they’re better able to swell emotionally at the line “You’re beautiful,” giving a sort of bittersweet feel to the scene.

The last timbre comes from a toy piano, which suggests childhood and naivete. The scene accompanying it is of Leeloo feeling depressed about war and saying “I don’t know love,” which I suppose match the “naive” association with a toy piano. The toy piano, like the violin swell, is also very bittersweet sounding.

What is New Media? Response

I was interested in the issues with actually defining “New Media” brought up in the second section of the essay. The writer acknowledges, after presenting a definition, that “The problems with this definition are three-fold. Firstly, it has to be revised every few years…” and that part interested me the most. It would seem natural that, with a phrase so bound to a specific point in time as “New Media” that you would have to redefine what it meant every few years, but it also seems that there just has to be a better way to do that. Are we only interested in whatever is new, or is there a better common thread between what we are talking about than just “computers”? Maybe it’s about interactivity in art? Does the term “New Media” have an expiration date?

Second Reading Comments Post

Really, we do two of these? I thought the syllabus sheet said “blog entry” as in a singular post. Oh well. Here goes:

In the second reading, for some reason it is a bit shocking to, in an essay from the 40s, hear someone describe their systems for information retrieval as hopelessly outdated. With the internet, and the advances leading up to it that may have started to become clear to someone in the military post-World War II, I feel like I would have been shocked at how quickly things were moving. But, Bush says, very early on, “Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.” This comes before him basically describing an extremely advanced Amazon Kindle. So, I would certainly say that he’s looking a long way into the future.

New Media Reader Comments

Here’s the quote I found interesting, and realized is really probably true:

[In] the 1990s the U.S. art world proved to be the most conservative cultural force in contemporary society, lagging behind the rest of the cultural and social institutions in dealing with new media technologies … This resistance is understandable given that the logic of the art world and the logic of new media are exact opposites.

Because I write about video games online for a couple of sites, I know of one specific instance of this sort of thing relating to “are games art?” discussions. Roger Ebert, representing the film medium as its most famous critic, has said a number of times that he doesn’t think video games are or ever will be art. Why? One of his arguments is reflected in the last sentence of the quote above. He doesn’t believe that there can be art without a single strict authorial piece. If there are even branching story paths, then that, in his mind, takes that piece further and further from being art.

One of the strengths of video games is their ability to represent user-created or -chosen content, as in the upcoming Playstation title, Heavy Rain, which is a really interesting experiment. The game has a practically endless script, with branching story paths going everywhere at every single moment, allowing for the game’s story to continue even if the game’s main character(s) die, or have something else happen to them that would usually end the narrative. Life would go on, and so does the game, in a totally new path. Isn’t that more interesting than just a regular mystery story?