slide.com

On browsing through the second year blogs, I saw a sliding banner that looked really good. Luckily, this really good looking banner is available for free at slide.com.

It is really simple to set up, there are several styles, themes, effects that can be applied, and you can pretty much grab images from anywhere (facebook, myspace, flickr, bebo, oh and the now old fashioned C: drive!)

I made a quick one with a simple sliding effect to showcase some of the colour and light images I collected for SPP1.

Very useful utility in my opinion. I predict it will be used quite a bit!

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3 Electronic Portfolios - SPP1

www.nottoscale.tv - 20.5/25 = 82%



Initial impact – 4.5/5

Technology used is sophisticated, dynamic, appears very suave, sleek. Humorous large mouse cursor appears when using the ‘not to scale’ link.

Quality & range of work – 4/5

High standard of work, lots of content, but is limited to AV work, as they are an AV co. crediting their directors. Employers include Honda, The Mighty Boosh, Volvo.

Navigation - 4.5/5

Four separate areas, and you can access these via textual links, or the graphic links which float around the site – interchangeable. Once accessed, items are presented in a rollable show reel, or links below.

Supporting contextual info - 3.5/5

On the surface, not that much information made available. But going further, there are biogs, details.

Hanging togetherness - 4/5

Sleek, contemporary design, with motion that all flows nicely. Design scheme is implemented throughout – consistent.

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www.jam-factory.com - 20/25 = 80%



Initial impact – 4/5

Funky, cool, bright, vibrant.

Quality & range of work – 4/5

Web, graphics, painting, video, photography – very good spread. Also, funky style to his work – modern styles.

Navigation - 4/5

Typical webpage design. Links to each section on the left, with expanding options. Also, when going from individual item to the next, you can click and it will take you to the next one, rather than having to click back then find and click the next.

Supporting contextual info - 3.5/5

Limited info about each of the individual items, but his biog informs fairly well about himself. There is a blog link so you could find more about his work there.

Hanging togetherness - 4.5/5

I like how he’s gone for a punchy vibrant look which is also representative in his work as well – mirrors well. It all is very sleek looking, and well arranged. Only wish that the space he uses to showcase was larger!

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www.tanyamerone.com/#container - 15/25 = 60%



Initial impact – 2.5/5

Bit wallpaper-ey, colours quite calm, pastels - bland? Nice swirly horizontal divider, maybe a bit “pretty”.

Quality & range of work – 3/5

Print (logo, photography, illustration), web. The thumbnails all stick out as bright and vibrant against the pale background, and there is a range of stuff, different styles. Overall, does have quite a matt look to her work, rather than glossy.

Navigation - 2.5/5

One single page, with the sections at different levels down the page. Has included anchors which let you get back to the top, at each section. Some may see as old fashioned, others may see it as being per functionary.

On clicking on a specific thumbnail, a white square appears which zooms to the correct size of the item, blurring out the background in burgundy. Can then click on the image to go to next item, rather than go back and click on the next, user friendly in this aspect.

Supporting contextual info - 3/5

Biog is at the very top, with photograph and introduces the graphic designer well. Tells of her skill set also.

Other stuff could be more in depth, most do what it says on the tin. Can visit some of the websites and find out there. Many, many relevant external links, which you can check out.

Hanging togetherness - 4/5

Slightly alternate format, rather than the animated, jazzy shiny sites we are used to, but there is an inkling of this with the thumbnail loading screen. It goes in one direction (whether this is a good one or not) and more or less sticks at it.

practitioners

Here's my pitch for a Multimedia practitioner for my chosen pathway (online environments).
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Rather than being a single person (which is actually quite hard to find, as most people sign themselves up and work for companies) I found lightmaker, a web/interactive/mobile based group who truthfully, have made a website for about every company going...
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BMW - check. BT - check. Bacardi - check. And that's only the B's.
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One site that I've known of before, and always like for it's individuality is JK Rowling's office desk. Surprise surprise, lightmaker were behind that site.
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So check them out even for a quick look at how many different things one company can spit out!
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I said I couldn't find any individual practitioners, but that isn't completely true. Being a graduate from Northbrook College, Adam Asigno's site http://www.code-d.com/ caught my eye because of the interactive piece he has floating smack bang in the middle of the site. I've never seen anything like it before, it's something quite original and fun. Also, the colours he's used make the site seem modern and sleek, providing a real professional feel, in my eyes.
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Oh, and if you want a laugh, look at his Tesco Value cards. Pure genius! .
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Being Connected

Shared cultural codes are obviously going to be influential in respect of our output. Take NTU for example. We are all in the same vicinity, watch more or less the same things, we all go to the same sort of places, whether it be bars, or food places. Hence we are all amongst the shared cultural codes. On the otherhand, a remote student, studying via the internet and living in Europe, will probably have very different culture codes to follow, be it social terminology, the art they find of interest, or maybe their culture in depicting religion or death, for example.

In the days where reproduction of work was limited, this probably spurred the most individual creativity. With no other artists to refer to, or ideas from further afield, people no doubt created what they experienced in the bubble of their life. Anything further than this, say, extra terrestrials, would no doubt have been considered abstract, or a highly warped mindset.

Yet indeed, when Medosch comments on the importancy of collaborating and combining ideas, I see this to be quite true idea wise, and definitely a profitable one. For example, the combination of touch screen and gaming resulted in the DS. Innovative approach, strong response from public, 40M+ DS sales worldwide. In fact, it has revolutionised the market to a point it almost seems odd to return to just button pressing.

I definitely believe and understand the merits of team collaborations, connections. You can hear another's point of view, whether it be addressing negatives, or equally, promoting positives. In the same way, you can feed off each other's ideas, sort of giving you the energy to come up with even more. If one person were to be of a higher standard in their ideas, this may rub off, adding to the sophistication for the other.

Using the example of a foreign studies student, this could work both ways. It isn't inconceivable that very different people have no interest in one and other, instead, wishing to seclude themselves and stick with what they know, as being right. Such a stance though would be quite disruptful creativity wise. Convsersley, the collaborators may really hit it off and produce something really diverse, combining both their culture and outlooks produced from the livings in different parts of the world - a great outcome.

In a social group where all ideas are shared and spread, one person could develop more, becoming more profound, meaning the group tend to turn to them for material to sample. This idea is something Albert-László Barabási acknowledges, a Professor and Director of Northeastern University's Center for Network Science, where he helped conceive and introduce a theory on scale-free networks.

The grey dots being more often used nodes, or 'hubs'.

"Barabási and collaborators coined the term "scale-free network" to describe the class of networks that exhibit a power-law degree distribution" within them. "Some network nodes had many more connections than the average; seeking a simple categorical label, Barabási and his collaborators called such highly connected nodes "hubs"." (web: Wikipedia, 'scale-free network', 06/02/08)

Considering this idea, I can think of an example of it being permissable in a large party situation. For example, family are all more or less of equal quality, aunt, cousins, grandparents. Yet they all link towards the birthday person. Friends and or work colleagues then also link to this birthday person, whilst having a few ties amongst themselves.

Will Durant wrote, “Nothing is new except arrangement" so perhaps everything made by man, after two thousand years, is just a recycled, maybe diluted, or exarcebated form of another. Fashion goes around in circles, 80s fashion reoccuring again in 2006. This would mean that the newer designer putting the clothes out nowadays, is infact, connected to the designer who sat before them and made the clothes in their era.

You could also contest products which have been deemed innovative or ground breaking. The iPod for example, it just a highly upgraded form of a portable radio. It is portable music, but arranged to be smaller and of a much higher capacity for holding music. The implentation of ideas is what makes things 'new' in our eyes nowadays, I believe.

Lastly, the addition of Web 2.0 has furthered the sort of information flow chart we receive nowadays. Bands for example post on their sites, giving it a sort exclusivity of exclusivity for their fans. This is then often reiterated by journalists putting it on their news sites. Fans in general of music on forums then pick up on this news, posting their own thoughts and feelings. This I think is a great example of being connected. You can really get a wide range of thoughts, rather than just your own, or those of fans - it kind of challenges bias. Also, it speeds up the notifying of people, whilst exapanding the net the news reaches overall. -This being more or less the equivolent of what Manovich in The Language of New Media p.199 iterates.

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So overall, I believe that whether we like it or not, we are all connected in someway. Whether it be the news we read, the art we look at, the food we taste. Its what makes us the way we are in the modern day world. Certainly, a life without connections would be quite limiting, uninspiring. But that in itself could inspire creativity, for need of change.

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SPP1 Thoughts of the future

In our lecture today, we learnt, in summary that things of the future would probably be:

• smaller
• portable
• more energy efficient
• reality / virtual reality
• change in distribution
• change in authorship

Deb asked us to predict what we should expect to see existing in the future.

Having a think, I've come up with a few zany (put possibly not too crazy) ideas:

• In ear phone - this removes the need to have to hold a phone, scroll through menus, dial numbers, instead a miniature bluetooth type headset, small enough to fit in your ear and go unseen will be the new form of 'mobile phone'. You simply voice program in all your numbers and then when wishing to call, tap the earpiece and say the recipients name. -This idea isn't that far off from bluetooth headsets, and the way we use mobile phones is so much more advanced than just calling devices now, so the idea would need evolving further.
• 3D media - currently in 2008 we look at our photos, videos and games on screens, whether they are flat screens or traditional bulky monitors. A new invention would see us launched into the actual worlds contained within the videos or pictures,by means of a 3D projector. It could use holograms to bring pictures of friends, pets, family to life, replaying the memories you previously captured. - Although no doubt highly expensive, over time and as with all technology, the costs would come down. The only issue is that the photos and videos we currently create would create real difficulties in turning fully 3D, perhaps in fact impossible. As of which, new capturing equipment would be required.
• Advanced paper - a sheet of paper, mimicing paper in pretty much everyway (thickness, size, but perhaps slightly more substantial in quality) which has the ability to record what we write onto it in a digital form. This is like a step on from the tablet PC, but the advance is that the paper you write onto is so thin and durable that it can be rolled up, or folded, meaning is it very compact and even more portable. There are already systems which have handwriting recognition, but with more sophisticated technology, the traditional method of using ink can be replaced with digitally writing onto the paper, and from there, we can erase it, or, transport it to a computer as a Word file, or image piece. - This I think has potential for reality in the future. It meets the criteria which technology is forming itself around: it would be smaller, even more portable, would be more efficient material wise, could distribute your work into several formats, and at its utmost, is interactive for the user. Similarities could be drawn with smart boards, proving the idea is technically viable. It simply requires evolution in regards to computation and size.

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What I do think is a likely reality is that shown in Minority Report.

Identification, over recent years, has become increasingly more important, and in accordance, more advanced too. The scenario pitched of iris scanners, linked to ID databases and identifying us and acknowledging our activites, whether it be paying for something, mapping our travel to places, or validating who you are for age or health reasons, I think will become a reality in some shape or form.

As seen in the clip, the digital assistant recognises the customer by means of scanning their iris and then highlights what is available for them to buy, offering advice specific to the customer, be it suitable sizes or colour preferences. This though, it not a truly futuristic idea. Website already use 'cookies' which remember our previous actions. Amazon for example, uses a cookie to recall the searches we have previously run, and uses these to suggest other possible items we may find of interest.

This could be expanded further though, depending on how much information people are willing to divulge. One example could be that our utility companies interlink, so our bank account, with an allotted spending allowance, is reported to the digital assistant and so on entering the store, appropriately priced objects are recommeneded. The possibilties are endless, if not worryingly invasive on our privacy!

Such iris technology implemented

throughout our world would help and hinder us in a number of ways. Not having to carry money to pay for things would be safer, and the ability to track people would be helpful for parents and their children, for example. It would make life easier too, not needing to remember codes or carry additional objects. However, on the otherhand, digital databases can he hacked into and stolen. In addition, to be constantly tracked by the Government or any invasive hackers - would that be wise, or actually safe? Definitely things which need to be questioned and thought about.

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Colour and Light

For SPP1, we were been asked to take a picture that screams colour and light.

Having a look through my wallpapers that I've collected from the internet over time, these pictures screamed colour and light, well to me anyway.



All these pictures were posted online by users who wished to share the images they'd captured, more particularly, putting them forward as highly aesthetic and suitable desktop wallpapers.

Of particular note is that all these images are formed by nature: grass, leaves, tulips.

I really like these photos due to the strong hues, and there tends to be one predominant colour in each respective photo. The grass has different variations of the green due to the brightness of the light differing in response to the thickness of the grass stem. The autumnal leaves feature strong colours too, red, orange, and green, but obviously it is the strength of the bright red which catches your eye in this picture, almost a fiery feel to it. Lastly the red tulips I believe make up a strong colour and light photo due to the volume of tulip heads, each of which are tipped with white. Again, the red provides the vibrancy, contrasting against the softer green and tips of white.

If I were to chose from the three which I believe fits the 'colour and light' title the most, I believe it would be the grass. It is definitely colourful, albeit that there is just one colour, the sheer quality of the green, how it changes in saturation around the photo, and then coupled with the light surrounding and even sort of permeating through the stems, it makes an altogether vibrant picture.

To find such a photo that can I could take myself, I am met with one problem. We are currently in Winter, in England, and therefore the chances of finding something colourful and light is going to be quite hard, nature wise. Nonetheless, graffiti, electric lights of all colours, or even different coloured liquids lined up with a spot light behind, would be worthy candidiates of colour and light (inspiration from my wallpaper collections, again!)





Next up, I've decided to comment on Sarah's blog in regards to her choice of a colour and light image.

"I think this is a blatant display of colour. There are the bright yellows, oranges, reds and then even some greens in there giving this a dramatic and quite punchy feel. Also, the way in which the fruit has been arranged means that we get blocks of colour, and this distinction between colours provides a contrast, drawing the eye. It has almost a mosaic quality to it.

You are right too, Sarah. The way that the actual content of the image expands further than the edges of the photo, impacts on our overall impression of all the colour. From wall to wall, it is non-stop colour.

You could say light is provided by the colour. If we were to have dull, dank objects it would draw the piece down and make it seem darker. On the contrary, this bright, colourful picture is vivid, bold and vibrant, featuring the warmer hues of the colour spectrum. The image, to me, has the feel of being sourced somewhere overshores, perhaps tropical... and sure enough, the photo was taken in Barcelona; a sunny, vibrant location.

When comparing to my own selections, all I will say is nature again, really does provide."

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