4-11-11 Class Response

I completely understand why you believe that Sharayah's project and the resulting discussion was the most important thing that happened this semester. You had mentioned previously that part of this course's purpose is to give us tools to help prevent and recover from burnouts like Sharayah encountered. Also, it came to light that many of us have encountered this even before now, and we actually came together and discussed it. I mean, most project discussions have been based around talking about the technical aspects of the work or, more recently, thinking about what lead the person to create the work. However, until that discussion, we had never had a real, lengthy discussion about the reasons and what it means for us as people who are going to make stuff for a living. If I had to guess, I would say it's due to the topic being something that is important, shared by the majority of the class, and something societally accepted as being "normal." With the fear assignments, I feel there could have been more, better, discussion if there was an understanding that many creative people have had shit happen in their lives.

I know a big theme in this semester, at least for me, is an understanding that I'm not, in fact, alone. In anything, really. Other people in the class have issues with their family. Other people have a pervading feeling that their work is never good enough. Other people have lost the feeling of love they had for what they do. I also found out that sometimes people actually give a damn about what I have to say. Shit, people actually know my name, which is something I'm going to go into more detail with before this semester's done as to why that's important.

From where creativity springs - 4-18-11

I've discovered throughout my life that I'm not a particularly creative person, at least by what I feel is the traditional definition: coming up with wholly (or mostly) original ideas. I tend to get most of my ideas from finding stuff and thinking of ways to tweak them so that they fit something I want to do or how I think they should work. In truth, I have to imagine this what creativity truly is, as ideas completely unrelated to existing ideas/products are so rare that you could say they don't exist.

This past week, I encountered a wonderful site called "My Next Tweet." When you give it a Twitter account to look at, it scours all of the posts that person has made and then cobbles together a new tweet based on what has been said previously. Most of the results are giberish, but I liked the idea. So, I made a simple (and definitely unfinished) web "app" I'm calling Catharsis. It has flips through a pre-generated list of statements/affirmations and allows users to enter their own. It accomplishes the goal of letting people know a side of me I rarely share, as well as let mess around with the concept of making a web app and get a little more experience working with a typographic interface. Here's the link: http://www.cs.iupui.edu/~brjgraha/catharsis/




My weakest assignment was definitely the stuffed animal one. Part of it I think was due to not knowing that you weren't expecting to get these back, so my ideas were simpler and, due to procrastinating, I didn't even do my initial idea. Also, I'm not sure I ever "got" what the purpose of that assignment was. I thought of it sort of as a "egg project redux" which I also was not happy with my end-result. My issue seems to be with having true and utter freedom to work. I prefer to work in a scenario where I'm playing in someone else's sandbox or have some sort of theme or loose structure. Obviously, I should have come up with my own restrictions for those assignments since I now know that's how I prefer to work.

Why am I here?

When I saw the assignment, I couldn't help but think of that video. I had a hard time coming up with an answer and creation to this question. I've come up with a pair that I'm conflicted about. The answer to the question, at least when "here" is equal to "alive", is often tied to one's religious beliefs, of which I have none.

My answer to the question was the following: "I'm here to become the best possible version of myself." On face level, it sounds like a cop-out answer, but after thinking about it over th weekend, it still resonates with me. I like the things in my life to have a purpose, and I don't think I would've been satisfied with my answer to the question if it couldn't stand the test of time. My answer does that as it is tied heavily in how I define myself, which is not static. However, it still is a purpose in life that demands that I improve myself.

As far as a creation, I decided to make something that would remind me as to why I exist, in the event I forgot or strayed from my path or goals. It's a simple wallpaper, but I like simple.

Like with the answer itself, I'm concerned that it's *too* simple, but I made it for me, and I wanted it to be something that I would actually use, and right now I'm using minimalistic wallpapers.

Fear Response - Day 2

So, that was an interesting class period. It was refreshing (although that seems like a bad thing to say) to know that having shit happen to you previously or currently is a shared trait in this class. It reminds me of something I heard on a podcast once. Jerry Holkins, the writer for Penny Arcade, said something that boiled down to, "There is something inherently broken in people that leads them to want to create."

Broken is perhaps a word too harsh, as it suggests that it's a trait that needs to be fixed, but I don't think he's wrong. While there were plenty of people who talked just about phobias as opposed to fears, I don't recall anyone saying that their life has been perfect up until this point.

I think Colby's presentation was most impactful for me due to my dad and step-mom's drug addiction, but there were quite a few heavy-hitters in class.

The Scientific Fear Method

1. Examine the situation
     - In my life, it seems that fear is a controlling aspect but I have never really considered what I'm actually afraid of besides the things that don't constantly affect my life, like arachnophobia.

2. Experiment idea
    - It made more sense to me to do something to discover, expose, and (on some level) confront my own fears as opposed to trying to draw out the fears of my peers. I decided to make a video (included at the bottom of the post) and talk about it while it plays.

3. Hypothesises-es-es-es-es-es
    - For me, the most basic outcome is to have a better understanding of what I'm actually afraid of. Hopefully, displaying them and talking about them would lead to me overcoming them, but I'm not convinced that a couple-minute speech would accomplish that task.

    - For others, I fully expect them to not care, and get the impression that I feel my life is much harder/worse/etc. than it really is.

5. Reaction
    - While my mind went "dumb" while I was presenting to the point of not being able to focus on anything other than getting the words out, I was all but dumbfounded to get some applause at the end of the presentation. I don't know if it was pity applause or patronizing applause or legitimate applause, but it was applause. Then I got a nice sense of perspective and a great insight into codependency from Beth.

   - I didn't feel a weight lifting or anything while presenting, nor after. In fact, for the next day or so, I was depressed. I'm not sure if it was from disappointment for not feeling significantly better or because of any number of "reasonable" explanations (weird sleep schedule affecting length of sleep, etc.), but since Wednesday, I have felt better.

6. Analysis
    - The applause was really shocking. In the "best case scenario" I was expecting perhaps a brief discussion from a couple people. Now granted, the only person who talked about what I presented (at least in class; I haven't looked at anyone's reaction blogs to see if I was listed yet) was Beth, but getting applause when we weren't really "doing that" was weird and cool. Perhaps they related to my fears, or perhaps they just felt bad for me.

    - The day-ish depression was not a reaction I was prepared for. I felt like shit for a couple days, but as I type this, I feel better and I do feel a little "free-er" to talk about myself, which is definitely a side-effect of bearing your soul to a group of people without total anonymity. =)

7. Future changes
    - The best change I can think of is to force (or at least request) responses and discussion after presenting, which would help get an idea of how, if at all, it affected people. Also, I need to make sure that the video is paced for speaking-speed as opposed to "inside-your-head-reading" speed.

Fear Presentation Reactions: Day 1

First thing's first: it was weird having a class session where nearly everyone was talking freely. I don't know if it was being out of the chairs or the topic forcing discussion to avoid fear/awkwardness, but it was awesome.

An unintended side-effect, however, was setting a mood in the room that I was incredibly hesitant to kill by presenting my (considerably "debbie downer") project.

While Pluckett's and Glasscock's projects were interesting, cool, and fun, they were "cop-outs." It's not my place to dictate what they get out of the class or how they do it, but they both avoided the topic, which perhaps is as telling as doing it "right."

Sandy's presentation about her fear of her son being kidnapped was the most powerful, which was bizarre to me, since I don't have children. I think what did it is that the emotional response to that situation is so clear and intense, it's easy to relate to.

The Scientific Method of DOOOOOOOOOOM!

Hypothesized Reactions: "Do you really think your life is/was so bad?" "What a douche." An overwhelming sense of boredom or apathy

Repurposed Rodent - 3/7/2011

The Bliss Assignment was more difficult than intuition would suggest. It turns out that I have no fucking idea about what makes me happiest, as much as I know the stuff that I enjoy and makes me happy. I ended up playing a new game that I received last week, which I enjoyed; I just didn't experience what I would call "bliss." If it did anything to my creative side, it wasn't anything that I noticed. I didn't have an epiphany about what to do on the stuffed animal assignment or anything. When I came up with my idea, it was a day or so after I did the Bliss Assignment.


Given a stuffed animal of Mighty Mouse, I was confronted by the knowledge that I really knew nothing about Mighty Mouse. My knowledge of cartoon-superhero-animals essentially encompasses Atom Ant and UnderDog. So I started thinking about superheros in general, and came up with the idea of a non-confrontational superhero, and the implications of such a creature existing.

The part that intrigued me most about a non-confrontational superhero is thinking about "What's the end-game?" Would he get fed up with himself for never using his powers for anything, let alone good? If he did, would he discover that his powers had atrophied due to his decision to not use them? Would people discover his abilities and then mob him for not using them? I don't foresee a happy ending for this character.

For shits and giggles, I figured it would be a nice link to the stuffed animal to call this superhero Mighty Mouse and made a quick mock-up of how this person could be dressed.

The contradiction is a super-hero that is not heroic through actions, although he would certainly classify as super-human, with the harmony being the decision to become heroic or the backlash for his decision not to be heroic as such a character cannot last in that state for long.

Trippin' - 2/21/2011

The field trip was a good break in pace for the class, and it let me realize that UITS had more of a purpose than being the people to yell at when the internet is slow.

The Cube was really neat. I had an idea for a Capstone that would involve Kinect, but the Cube could be a way to do the idea in a similar way, but on a larger scale. The 3D stuff didn't work all that well, or at least no that consistently, which would be a problem for a project because you don't want the technology to take people out of the experience you're trying to give them.

However, the most mind-blowing thing I saw was that NUI-device that lets you use a stylus to interactive with digital objects in "real-space." The first time I made contact with that cube, I was sure that I was hitting the wrist-rest. Then, I looked under the mirror, and proceeded to spend the next minute or two just toying around with a fake box in a digital environment and was more immersed by playing with a CGI-box than the best video games I've played. The only downside to it, on a Capstone-thinking-front, is it's very small scale. I don't know how they're laid out (which I'm going to rectify by going to Capstones this year), but I would like my Capstone (if I go with my current idea) to be something that someone can easily see and understand while walking around. I would need to see what I could do to extend the scale and/or combine the Cube and the NUI-thingy.

The super-hi-res monitor was neat, but Chauncey sort of introduced and destroyed the main reason I would want to work with it at the same time: high resolution image creation/manipulation. Photoshop ran worse on that machine than on my laptop.

The other 3D setup was fine, but I would think that if you're going to work wit a 3D environment, the Cube would be better every time.

Regret is a energy drink on an empty stomach - 2/21/2011

Inspiration - Inspiration is a very broad step in my workflow, and it encompasses both an artist and a designer: this is the step where you realize an idea or concept you want to play with, experiment with, make something with. This could be an emotion, a tool of creation, whatever you are interested in.

Idea - Typically, I don't even realize that I've completed the Inspiration step until I've already come up with my idea. I have to analyze the idea to understand where it came from. The idea step is when you take the object of your inspiration and flesh out a general plan of what you would like to do with it. This plan is typically pie-in-the-sky, and potentially impossible to fully realize.

Concept - In this step, you take your idea and think out what would be involved in creating it within the timeframe you would like to complete it by. In this step, you rough out the work and will likely end up taking away pieces of the idea that you believe are not truly necessary to the core "goals" of it so as to make it more reasonable to create. At this point you have likely envisioned your Product to look like/feel like/be/etc.

Trial - This is the first step to willing your Concept into existence. Taking the steps you've fleshed out in the Concept step, you try to create what you feel your final Product should be. Depending on how broadly you envisioned your Product, this step may involve creating "rough drafts" that are dramatically different from one another in look and feel but share the same ideals.

Refine - Here you take the draft(s) created and examine it/them. Do they live up to the ideals of your object(s) of Inspiration? Do they feel as if they were borne of your Idea? Once you've answered those questions, you determine whether the answers suggest you polish one of the drafts, combine elements of the drafts, or go back to the Trial step.

Product - The only real creative acts in this steps are reflective. Once your Idea has been realized in a product you ask yourself questions: "Am I happy with this?", "What could I have done differently?", etc. Typically the answers to these questions won't affect the Product, but will help you continue to refine your process.

I like the "equation" for the most part. The only change I would make would be to have Inspiration be a "sub-step" of the Idea, as in my workflow I've really never been cognizant of the Inspiration until the Idea has either started to form or is fully formed.

I don't agree with the black and white demarcation of New Media vs. Art; primarily because I consider Art a subset of New Media. I equate "New Media" with Designs which I consider to be Art with an outward-facing purpose. Of course, now that I look at how I just described New Media, I essentially just agreed with it. Designers make things that are going to be used by other people, so they have to think of them while making them. However, good products/designs/etc. are not dictated solely by what the intended audience will think, otherwise it would just be gray, unrecognizable, paste.

In my workflow, a New Media person can't start with the Product unless (s)he has already created it. The difference between an artist and a designer in regards to the workflow is the idea does not have to be something that people will be able to interact with unless you're a designer. However, that does not mean that the designer's idea is going to be the same as the product. Often, it will be the perfect version of itself, something that will fit the audience's every need, and be stylish/attractive at the same time. By the Concept step, though, the designer will have grounded the concept into something that will be reasonable to create.

For my test-case of my workflow, I created a concept-design for what I think a tablet computer running an operating system similar to Windows Phone 7 would look like.

The inspirational factor for this project was the design philosophy Microsoft used to create the aesthetics of Windows Phone 7: what they call Metro. They looked at the current UI paradigm and abstracted all of its elements to its simplest forms. Metro dictates that "buttons" are squares/rectangles with text or an icon in them. No faux-3D effects, just the base shape. Microsoft says it's "authentically digital" which is marketing bullshit for "we're pretty sure you know how to use a button."

The idea(l) was to create a functional mock-up of this imaginary device. Sadly, I did not have the time to learn and implement the knowledge necessary to program even a simple mockup of what I had envisioned, so the concept became just an image.

The trial/refinement process involved me deciding what design elements of Windows Phone 7 would suit a horizontally-focused orientation as well as additional screen real estate, as well as making adjustments to placement, sizing, and content of the filler content.

I'm not convinced that thinking through the process and trying to work through it made any major impact on the result. I'm happy with the Product, but I don't feel "proud" of the workflow. I feel like being inspired by an already existing thing is bullshit, but I also know that it is nigh-impossible (if not just truly impossible) to have a truly immaculate idea with zero link to an existing product/idea/etc. However, I'm terrible asshole to myself when it comes to my work, so I decided to try another creation.

This was inspired by being brutally tired this morning. Due to the strong genes on my mother's side of the family, she and I both have a reputation of looking more tired (or even angry) than we actually feel. So I decided a picture of my face could possibly demonstrate my physical and mental state.

To my surprise, I didn't appear to look as tired as I feel, so I did a little touch up in photoshop to increase the "tiredness." I did not intend to have text with the image, but the phrase was a thought that came into my head this morning, and I felt it fit my concept well. I didn't want to separate the text from the picture in an obvious way, so I had originally tried just placing the white text where it is without any background.

However, I knew that I would probably feel obligated to present my work, and figured the white-on-gray wouldn't hold up so well with the jacked-up contrast of a projector, so I attempted to recreate the effect in Photoshop to see if I was right. Indeed I was, so I added a black background to the text with some modifications to let it "blend" in better. In the end, I'm not terribly thrilled with the final Product, although I imagine the knowledge of the amount of work is skewing things for me. I am however, happier with the Inspiration/Idea side of the workflow on this project.

I wanted to destroy something beautiful... and make it beautiful again

This assignment request that we anaylze the consequences of breaking a rule in "our field of study" and then break said rule. Wtih "Media Arts" utilziing Photoshop and elements of Graphic design, I decided to break an unspoken rule of  graphic design, at least as it pertains to creating forum signatures: don't use photoshop filters.

While creating the initial piece, I decided to also break some other design rules: the rule of thirds, make sure your focal point guides he viewer's eye throughout the piece, and keep you graphic within the its own borders. The obvious consequences are that any finished piece would look ugly and/or amateurish. This is what I made:

Awesome, right? I then gave myself the task to salvage this, using filters only and I couldn't undo anything. I ended up creating this:

No, I didn't upload a horribly copied Jpeg, that mosaic look comes from a filter. While I liked the way it was looking, I felt the piece needed a "layer" of obscurity, to hide in plain sight, so to speak.







I'm not particularly proud of this project. I feel like I didn't "do it right," and I'm not entirely sure why. I was under the impression for most of the week that this assignment was about breaking a rule in general, and ended up not knowing what to do until this morning when I decided to write up a bullshit post about a rather interesting idea of breaking the rule of "You can't rewrite history", and then discuss in class why I had so much trouble making that project. Then as I began to write it, I looked at the assignment page that mentioned a rule "in your field of study," and the projects that were already turned in reflected this. Maybe everyone fucked up here, but I feel like I just did what was necessary to fit the directions of the assignment and that's it.

The impact of "the concept" and art as therapy

While discussing everyone's weekly projects, we brought up the unspoken truth that the perceived amount of effort has an impact on how we feel about it, highlighted by the green door project. This began a discussion as to why this is the case (which was never fully answered) and what impact the artist's concept for his/her work has on its reception.

The effort thing is entirely cultural. The US, for better or worse, was based largely on Puritanical beliefs, and by God did the Puritans value a hard day's work. We are conditioned to expect to be "repaid" in equal measure for the amount of effort put into our work, so when we understand that someone put more work into a project than we thought initially, the Pavlovian response is to drool and then appreciate the creation more.

Much like the effort topic, the importance of "the concept" matters entirely on the quality of the final product. If you did not successfully execute on the concept, then it doesn't matter how cool it was or how much effort you put into it. The only works that are aided by knowing the concept or the effort put into are products that are "good enough" where the concept can be appreciated on some level without being told. An OK work is made better by knowing that the person hand-crafted it versus clicking two filters in Photoshop and calling it a day.

Something I wanted to talk about beyond what was discussed in class was the idea of Art as Therapy. I thought it was interesting that Sharayah used her project as a means to force herself to do something she doesn't enjoy. Looking back, my project was therapeutic as it forced me to notice things about myself and share them. I was kind of surprised that no one asked me why I was so unclear as to who I am really am. Of course, hypothetical hindsight is better than 20/20 and I'm somewhat appreciative for that as I'm not sure what I would have said in response.

"You keep telling yourself what you know, but what do you believe? What do you feel?"

As anyone who, like me, just watched Inception (again), you'll recognize the quote. Also, I'm going to get this out of the way: BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM. That line resonated with me, especially in regards to this assignment. As I mentioned in the class response, I associated "seeing" more with understanding or feeling and "looking" more with just the concrete knowing.

For this assignment, I "cheated" and used the response I gave for what I saw and used it. I probably would have been able to get away with not mentioning that it was mine, but omission would imply guilt. I really wanted to see what I could do to expand this concept and figured it would be better to create something that I'm proud of, even if it "breaks" a rule whose value is questionable, than to create something of lesser quality just for the sake of following it.

I saw me looking at myself in the mirror. Creating the perspective of being able to see me look at myself was simple; the challenge came in what I would see in the mirror. The idea of looking at yourself in the mirror has many meanings. Typically it's used as a way of telling someone to look at themselves and their actions. Throughout my short time on this planet, I've noticed myself become increasingly apathetic, or even negative, towards my actions. This seemed an interesting concept to bring to life, given the framework of what I saw.

Class Response - That totally looked like a butt

So last class was a discussion on rules as well as a discussion on perception. I'll save my thoughts on rules for later, though and just talk about looking versus seeing.

To put it simply, looking is knowing, while seeing is understanding. It's the equivalent of hearing and listening. If you hear something, your brain is perceiving sound waves; if you listen to something, your brain is perceiving a deeper meaning (however shallow it may be) to the sound waves it heard. Evidence of the link between seeing and understanding shows up in our grammar, too. "I see," is synonymous with "I understand," or "I got it." However, in a world where one of the primary means of communication (the inter-tubes) all but requires a WYSIWYG attitude to it (due to the inability to assume others are intending for deeper meaning), the ability to "see" things has become something that takes practice.


In regards to rules, and the question posed on Oncourse about when one has stopped me, I'm conflicted. Perhaps I'm just a boring person, but I can't recall a single situation where I was prevented from doing something I wished to due to a rule. I'm typically the person who, without thinking, follows the rules as in most cases I understand the purpose of the rule and don't disagree with it. Well, it's that or it's because I'm terrified of conflict and it's much easier to avoid conflict when you tend to go with the rules. I'm not entirely sure.

This is my egg. There are many like it, but this one is mine. 1-23-2011

Driving home from campus on the 10th, I started brainstorming. I wanted to think of something that wouldn't be an obvious "something:" to do with an egg, I came up with an idea to make a "photo hunt" game where I put the egg in a pile of stuff in my room and people have to find where, in the picture, the egg is.

I made a couple other shots, but the egg isn't as well hidden in the other pictures. However, I felt that this concept was too simple, so I wanted to do something else, so I made a CSI-Miami-pun comic to go along with the game, starring my egg.

Boom.

1/11/11 Class Response - The First Rule of Seeing Sideways is You Won't Be Able to Describe Seeing Sideways

Yesterday, I had an epiphany: I could not have possibly picked a better class to complement the rest of my schedule.  The other 4 classes in my schedule are all typical, very structured, courses: programming, history (even though it's video game history), and political science. Then, to contrast them all, there's Seeing Sideways, a class whose only rules exist for how to go on break in the middle of class.

I'm really excited about the class's unstated (or indirectly stated) purpose: undo the behavior training we have received throughout our lives that stifles creativity and makes everyone everyone less willing to speak their minds. Only time will tell how well the class succeeds in its purpose, but I'm looking forward to it.

I hope that we come back to yesterday's conversation topics later in the semester to see if anyone's thoughts on art, music, and design change or become more refined as we progress.

Expectations for the Semester - 1/11/11

I expect this class to show me new ways to look a the world around me and everything in it. In the event that this somehow doesn't happen, I expect to refine the way I currently look at the world around me.  I want to be better at being creative.

That sounds silly, but I'm aware that my strength is in the more concrete aspects of media creation: coding, editing, etc. I want to get better at brainstorming, at being able to think of things that are more than just a modified version of something that already exists. I don't expect the class to change the way my mind works overnight (though how awesome would that be?), but I expect it to help me along the path.

I'm really not sure what else to say.  I guess I expect the class to be fun, but that seems a far too arbitrary thing to expect of anything.