Exploring Quartz Composer

• left is original, right is after a few random alterations
• added crystalize effect to the background that is attached to the patch time node
• added a blue effect to the dragon's body
• reduced the number of iterations for the body
• original video can be found here: http://vimeo.com/5697326

Global Closed Circuit: The Earth as Software

While I agree with Youngblood's assertion that television is the software of the Earth. I find the statement to be a bit dated now and find that the internet is the upgrade to this software. It has become much easier to track the social and psychological conditions of people, and therefore the environment, through social media and blogs. Thanks to the end user agreements, it is also possible to track the locations of specific social trends and such with the use of servers. The internet has essentially given us a higher resolution model of the human race which can almost be broken down to the separate individual. I say almost as there are still those without a social media profile or still refuse to use the internet.

The Technosphere: Man/Machine Symbiosis p. 180-207

I read “The Technosphere: Man/Machine Symbiosis” in the Gene Youngblood text. This chapter spoke on the man’s right to be unique and the relationship between man and machine. Some key items mentioned in the text were the evolution of leisure and how computers are used in society. There is an ongoing debate on whether computers make leisure a problem or if our culture is one that demands leisure. I believe that it matters on which way you are using computers. Although some may argue that playing video games all day is still productive because they are therapeutic, improve motor skills, improve vision, etc., I would argue that this form of computing makes leisure a problem. Playing games and aimlessly surfing the Internet all day only becomes a problem when it takes over one’s life and keeps a person from benefitting society. Another interesting point of view that Youngblood had was that computers change the meaning of life. He stated that we must learn how to live all over again and intelligent machines are beginning to dominate man. I agree to some extent. Society as a whole is becoming lazy when it comes to using our brains. We live in a country today where it is very easy to just “Google” an answer to a question rather than find a book or person to track down information. Why would you scramble through several books for hours in a library when you can easily search for an answer in a matter of seconds online? There are certain benefits to both. While searching on the Internet may be faster, you will be able to learn more in depth about a topic by doing research in the Library.

NO CLASS TODAY

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You may use this time to start to develop your idea for your final project.


PP

Cybernetic Cinema pp.184-206

In this chapter, Youngblood gives examples of using computers to make films in the past. One of the examples indicates the mechanical analogue plotters draws pilot for computer-animated film by William Fetter of Boeing company. There are three key terms in this part which are online, off-line, and real time. It is said that no computer has the power to generate real-time images at that time so that computer art has to be made off-line. Meanwhile, Youngblood predicts that location shooting will be completely simulated with computers in the future. 

Wave-Front Reconstruction: Lensless Photography

            In 1947, Dennis Gabor discovered the art of capturing and reconstructing wave fronts of light at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London.  By reading the light waves in both intensity and frequency, Dr. Gabor was able to record them by imprinting interference patterns of light on a photosensitive surface.  The key is to key the light waves “cohesive” over distances to remain “in phase”.  He discovered that in order to reconstruct a 3D image, he would need very cohesive light.  His idea was to have light whose waves traveled at one frequency.  This did not exist in 1947.

            In 1960, Dr. Theodore Maiman invented the laser, an acronym standing for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.  This laser generated a beam of light that was totally coherent since it was all one wavelength.  Later, in 1965, Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks used the laser in a modification of Gabor’s original holographic technique to produce the first completely successful three-dimensional image.  They used a prism to create two beams from one laser.  To reconstruct the image, a second laser is directed at the hologram from the same position. 

            My first memory of seeing a hologram was at the Haunted House at Disney World in 1973.  I think it was a hologram.  It was 3D inside a glass globe.  Now I’m not sure if it was.  Does anyone know if it was/is a hologram?

reading from p150-p206

In these pages Youngblood mainly discussed Jordan Belson's art and then the next chapter about the relationship between the science and art. I watched some of Belson's work on the website, he was an avant-garde artist who focused on the dynamic movement of form and color in cinematic area.
Through Youngblood's description of his concentration, I thought this artist must produce endlessly critical thoughts and emotions in his life, his artwork possessed a power of transmitting the procedure of forming feelings, making a connection between internality and externality.  Combined with the Youngblood's idea in the following context, I started to think about this question: whether everyone have endlessly abstract thoughts and feelings need to be expressed, if they do,  how they find their own technology to represent them?  part of them? whole of them? or re-determined and re-shaped by the the actual outcome of the artwork? So the computer and the technology brought the revolution into cinematic field, but the thinking in expanded cinema is how the notion of film changed and made, based on the envision of the future technology and extant practice in the present time.
For individual,  we normally design something and then the thing reflected our experience and personality automatically, technology could define how exactly it be, but I just couldn't stop myself imagining a form like telepathy which could not be limited by any of technology but still convey our human's feeling artistically, although it's unwise to divide them separately in this highly-technological world.