Projects

Hi

I have been getting a ton of questions about projects. I am excited that some ideas are forming for some of you.

A few quick answers: YES, you can work on a show as a project: marisol, violet hour, Florida players, hippodrome etc are all valid.

I would love to see you all try PD [pure data] in one of your pieces, but it is not essential.

YES, working in the demo modes MAX/MSP JItter or ISADORA is fine too.

If you are having difficulty with deciding on a project focus, please come see me during office hours or find me wandering the halls. Usually the answer is YES!

see you all on Monday!

The IMAX Experience

Reading chapter 22 in the multimedia book made me think about the times I've been to the IMAX Dome at MOSI in Tampa. You’re surrounded by the images on the large, dome screen and at times it's easy to feel like you're actually wherever the movie takes place. However, every shot becomes its own experience and at times it becomes hard to focus on anything in particular. This was okay for the slow paced documentaries that I saw which give you plenty of time to take in your surroundings, but I can't imagine watching a huge blockbuster movie on one of these screens. I’m pretty sure they actually do show some of them at MOSI, but watching a fast paced film edited MTV style in that type of setting seems like it would be nauseating and irritating to sit through. Adding the senses of smell, touch, and taste could actually become a hindrance to connecting to an audience. I could easily see the film becoming more unfocused, chaotic, and impractical. This futuristic cinema not only calls for a new type of artist, but also a new type of audience if it is to become standard for films, which is what I believe the author is suggesting will eventually occur.

Soft Cinema

I watched each of the minimovies on the 'Soft Cinema' DVD a couple times to see just how they varied with repeated viewing.  I think that the randomizing format used by the three movies works better for some styles of storytelling than others.  

For 'Absences' the format worked just fine.  As a movie that is more abstract and about setting a mood, the building of images and sounds was effective no matter what order they occurred in.  However, the lack of a real storyline made this movie rather uninteresting to me.

For the other two movies, 'Mission to Earth' and 'Texas,' I found the format interesting but less effective.  The first time through 'Mission to Earth' I found the link between the images and the story to be compelling.  On a second viewing, however, the random selection of images in some parts of the story was more obvious.  While in the first time through there had been a logical link between the image on the screen and the story, the second time through the connection between video and dialogue was less strong.  

The random selection of story parts in the movie 'Texas' proved the greatest problem for me.    Most of the story segments, even when played in a random order, could be strung together to tell a cohesive story.  However, there were a few that depended on certain segments playing first to make sense.  The second time I watched 'Texas'  some segments were not selected and as a result the ending suddenly discussed plot points that had never been mentioned before.

I think the format of the movies is very interesting.  Telling a story in a different order, with slightly different segments, or with different image associations is a powerful way to examine the variablility of human experience and the way that a slight shift of perspective can alter our understanding of information.  However, I also think that with too much randomness, understanding can be lost, rather than enhanced.

Photography

Hey all,

So I took a snapshot.  And I made a landmark on the Babylon 6 Station.  It's kinda cool that there is a space station to explore?  Jerome, have you found some of the "live action" rpg locations?  It looks like some people are using Second Life as a gaming forum.  I wonder if they facilitate actual battling, etc. or if they are strictly dialogue based.

Calling all Mac's w/ Cameras

I stumbled across a few interesting patches that utilized my built in iSight camera.  These patches can be found in the browser under "examples/Gem/04.video/."  Check it out.  

In theory it will work for others who attach a web cam to their computer.   

OSX puredata builds

try these if youhave not gotten a full working OSX puredata yet

http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/

	Pd-0.40.3-extended-20080115-macosx104-powerpc.dmg
	Pd-0.40.3-extended-20080115-macosx104-i386.dmg

i38g is for macbook and macbook pro

pp

Configuration Details

okay

anyone who has not configured there system yet, please come see me. Jerome's post is a great place to start, i wanted everyone to fiddle around a bit and open some patches to get the feel for pd and how it looks and responds before jumping into control, but if that is where you feel you woudl like to begin awesome!

So what we learned from 1 class period of Configuration.

1.) Do not have Email, word, anything! else running when working pure data. Remember we are turning our computers into design instruments, not "appliances". This is essential basis.

2.) Q: Some machines will run AUDIO extremely well, and will not run GEM properly! What does this mean?

A: It means you will be focusing on the Audio/Control portion of pd

3.) As a result of 2. The inverse is posssible. Machines that run GEM, PIDIP etc.. will focus their projects on either. It comes down to basic computing power and i assure everyone there are infinite possibilities for pratical theatrical audio based control as demonstrated [MIDI, network, DMX]


4.) please start exploring all the tutorials, we will move into splitting our classes into Theory & Application after this next class or so

Control Tutorials

FYI folks,
I had a difficult time making sense of the audio tutorials on my own as did alot of you. I basically went and did the Control tutorials before really jumping into the audio ones and it helped immensely as far as getting down an idea of what a lot of things do and how the connections work. I tend to be one of those types of people that has to know exactly how and why things do what they do so it helped. If you're still a bit confused give that a go. I'm not saying all will become apparent but it should help a bit.

Oh and I'm sitting here with a bunch of questions about ideal system set up etc etc and stuff that i wanna be aiming to do and I'm wondering...put that stuff here? on our own blog? or shoot a personal email to Patrick?

Video Tutorial

http://createdigitalmotion.com/tag/linux/

here is a quick how to written last week with a Youtube video as well. A great starting spot for a project!

pp

1st Patch

I had some time to sit down and play with PD this weekend, and built an amplitude modulator that lets you set the carrier frequency, the modulation frequency, and pick either a Sine and/or sawtooth signal generator. It outputs the audio and a graph of the wave. Nothing to spectacular. There are still some things I can't figure out like how to implement conditional logic. Also, any time I try to use GEM my computer crashes, seems to be happening when PD tries to take exclusive control of the video card. :-\ A link to my AM patch is below:

http://students.fccj.edu/~bakema1/public/mbaker1-a.pd

You may need to right-click and Save Link as, to d/l

PURE DATA DOWNLOAD

http://puredata.info/downloads