EC Container 4
apps
5th May
05/05/10 16:16
Right it is Wednesday 5th of May I am walking up the hill I don't feel this morning like I've got a great deal more to say on the work that I'm doing on the MA because so many other things crowd in this time of year and make it difficult for me to concentrate I want a month off now do it all wrapped up to my satisfaction which would be impossible because I'm impossible to satisfy although I can relate to feeling I had this weekend that to me finishing the MA now it is sort of irrelevant I'm already on to next year and thinking about next year and no matter what the outcome of this MA there is so much that I have gained from it way more than what I set out thinking I might achieve err that it has been an extremely useful experience for me there are lots of loose ends some of which make me quite cross the iPhone apps in particular because I still think that my iPhone app is a brilliant idea and I would very much like to develop it and maybe I can for next year but that thread of the MA has receded a bit as the photoshoppingpong has come to the fore and photoshoppingpong is really beginning to take off from my point of view again looking towards next year I will need to get more students involved to turn it back towards students and hope that it's not too much work for me to keep a pottering along but slowly getting lost in the play activity of creating photo shop files painting with digital paint really enjoying the ideas has been a fantastic experience just having that element of game gives a little bit of the incentive that is needed to get me creating to get me into that state and I have myself always needed that he's never been quite good enough that I'm just doing it for the sake of doing it I need that little bit more incentive whether it's working towards a degree or an A-level or GCSE or whatever her or whether it's doing it because there's something else or someone else on the horizon with the rather stupid amount of work that I put in over the weekend to the BAL library presentation that I created which in many ways was way way over the top a .doc document properly would work just as well but I spent very many hours producing the pressie presentation for the Olympic Museum and I will put it into the MA somewhere because it is definitely part of it from my point of view maybe not for marking point of view but it does encompass a lot of thoughts that have I been having with this thought in particular that I do something like that because there's a very slight outside motivation to produce the work I'm thinking of someone else or thinking of a target audience as I do it at the same time mostly doing it for its own sake because it's so way over the top so perfectionist and no one is ever going to really look at it that closely unless of course I make use of it myself for next year perhaps working with a history teaches the idea of the timeline dropping things into the timeline organising your brain space three dimensionally rather than two dimensionally I think that's the main thing that's perhaps the main thing the essence to get into the MA is this idea of three-dimensional space three-dimensional patterns as the brain is a three-dimensional object and we're still in a two-dimensional space often with our computers it's still print based or computer based on a two-dimensional model that comes from the written word and the book and then the screen and while film added linear time it was time that went from here to there a not time the you could jump about in and the beauty of the prezi is that you can jump from place to place and the prezi in relation to timeline as you can jump from place to place within that timeline from era to era and it zooms and out in this beautiful way
25th April
25/04/10 15:51
It is Sunday 25th of April I'm heading up the hill in glorious sunshine and wondering about all the recordings that I've been making recently that I haven't yet turned into type and about how much time it takes and how useful the recording is well I guess how accurate it needs to be as well I don't guess it needs to be too accurate main thing has been going on over the last couple of days is a game of drawing ping-pong mobile drawing with a tutor of art drawing at Wimbledon art college which opens up lots of exciting possibilities of developing a project there over the coming year not that this would be hugely useful to the MA but there are so many parts of this project which are now set to continue into the coming year the task than I do today or one of the tasks is to set out some of my ideas that these ongoing projects for school in order for them to give me the time to do it time is an interesting point because I find that I am rapidly running out of time time and energy are both limited my energy is very definitely limited at the moment and over the last week I've been trying to get lots more sleep recharge my batteries after the fairly titanic efforts of the Easter break when I was really pushing myself quite hard and in terms of the work that I'm doing for the masters it seems that I might need to rein myself back in a bit simply because there won't be time to do all the things that I wish to do to any degree of finish although I am a bit sad that the iPhone app in particular isn't further because I still think that that is a very good idea and it will also be very useful for the flipbook stuff that I'm planning to do next year so I would very much like to get the iPhone app working and the other app on the iphone which is consequences I've not heard back on that at all so I would like to move that one forward maybe get that finished but the photoshoppingpong has been working beautifully I am thoroughly enjoying it and I'm keen to get more people involved are and that it is I guess going to be another ongoing project one bit of work that has to be done this term for that there will be the preparation of the presentation that I will give in San Francisco this summer and I'm thinking that that presentation or at least my part of it could be the bulk of the evaluation that I do for this master's project to combine those two bits of work and to try and get them finished in the half term in the summer what else I would much like to move photoshoppingpong towards freehand drawing as well as photomontage and to mix up the elements of drawing and montage and get computer drawing much more established at school it's something that we don't do a lot of at all and it may be simply that we haven't had the devices with which to do it the graphics tablet helps but I am very much looking forward to the possibility of the ipad with drawing applications on that one of the things that was coming out yesterday with the iPhone drawing that I was doing was the ability to mix many of the apps use the appropriate app rather than one program that does it all to use the program thats most suitable to the idea and mix and match them
1st April
01/04/10 07:43
I just recorded all that and none of it recorded so I shall have to do it again.
It was beginning with the idea of making an iphone app out of a filemaker pro database, I had an email advertising this as a possible service and I immediately thought of the possibility of the game of consequences as an iphone app I shall have to have a search when I get back to see if one already exists, but otherwise it seems like a good idea, I could at least do the interface if I don't actually build the app because of the expense. I went on to do some talking about Hare Brain Tortoise Mind' and - this is really difficult now because not only am I talking, but i am trying to remember what it is that I was saying, it was to do with the radio 4 programme where there was a propensity for people to believe in wrathful gods as a way of control in large societies where in small societies people are more inclined to worship spirits of natural things. And it was about teaching as a gut feeling working with the gut feeling with an artistic sensibility and wether people are genetically wired with certain brains so that if you have a brain that is more spatially aware and makes looser connections does that mean that you are going to be inclined to be an artist. And if you decide that your are going to be an artists, do you become an artist, or is it the way brain works that turns you into an artist. Are you an artist if you decide that you are going to be an artist - can you be an artist if you are not mad? VG, Picasso? I think that is basically what I was trying to say.
Take three
I had an email this morning from a company suggesting that I could make an iphone app from a filmmaker database and my immediate thought was that I could turn my title game of consequences into an iphone app and gradually build up stories over time. I may design it anyway even though I am thinking that it would be a little bit expensive to actually put it into practice just for that. But if it is designed and the idea is there then that will be a part of the work done. And then I went on to talk about 'Hare Brain Tortoise Mind' and specifically talking about the way our brains are built would give us a propensity to be an artist or a mathematician perhaps but if we have somehow a loose more right brain approach then we are more likely to be artists and have that artistic sentimentality. I think that came from thinking that you can teach proportion, golden section, balance and composition, perspective, but mostly this just comes by feel, you get students that just seem to have an innate ability with putting colours together and making comfortable and easy compositions. Where does that design sense, the balance, the composition, come from? Is it somehow in the way that the brain is working is it trained? I definitely think that I have students who seem to have a natural ability with it, is it therefore programmed somehow into the genetics, into the brain, do certain brains have a propensity towards being artistic and if they do does that predetermine what you might become if you have a brain that is somehow looser, are you more likely to become an artist. And how much is the teaching in education involved in that and how much is the identity - if you decide that your identity is that of an artist, If you identify with artists is that what makes you want to become one and therefore you find the tools. So is it that identity that is vital, and are there experiences in life which give you that trigger to be choosing your identity in that direction. That reminds me of north american indians and the fact that if you are born with green eyes you are destined to be the medicine woman and then the programme on radio 4 about the basis of god and religion talking about the fact that is small tribal societies where everyone could know every one the sprits are more likely to be in and of the earth and in the animals they wouldn't be overriding creatures spiritual deities that have control, they would be more benign perhaps but big societies like Egyptian and Greek Roman and then Christianity, the other big religions, have powerful god or set of gods in control maybe big societies need to have the control in order not to fall apart. A sort of spiritual police force. Maybe that is programmed into the brain collectively as we are social beings.
It is an extraordinary experience in itself that the first recording that I made flowed pretty well - the thoughts just tumbled out - and then the second third and fourth recordings when I was trying to reproduce what I had said, I couldn't do it. The thoughts did not tumble out in the same way as I was trying to think about what I had said as well as saying it.
It was beginning with the idea of making an iphone app out of a filemaker pro database, I had an email advertising this as a possible service and I immediately thought of the possibility of the game of consequences as an iphone app I shall have to have a search when I get back to see if one already exists, but otherwise it seems like a good idea, I could at least do the interface if I don't actually build the app because of the expense. I went on to do some talking about Hare Brain Tortoise Mind' and - this is really difficult now because not only am I talking, but i am trying to remember what it is that I was saying, it was to do with the radio 4 programme where there was a propensity for people to believe in wrathful gods as a way of control in large societies where in small societies people are more inclined to worship spirits of natural things. And it was about teaching as a gut feeling working with the gut feeling with an artistic sensibility and wether people are genetically wired with certain brains so that if you have a brain that is more spatially aware and makes looser connections does that mean that you are going to be inclined to be an artist. And if you decide that your are going to be an artists, do you become an artist, or is it the way brain works that turns you into an artist. Are you an artist if you decide that you are going to be an artist - can you be an artist if you are not mad? VG, Picasso? I think that is basically what I was trying to say.
Take three
I had an email this morning from a company suggesting that I could make an iphone app from a filmmaker database and my immediate thought was that I could turn my title game of consequences into an iphone app and gradually build up stories over time. I may design it anyway even though I am thinking that it would be a little bit expensive to actually put it into practice just for that. But if it is designed and the idea is there then that will be a part of the work done. And then I went on to talk about 'Hare Brain Tortoise Mind' and specifically talking about the way our brains are built would give us a propensity to be an artist or a mathematician perhaps but if we have somehow a loose more right brain approach then we are more likely to be artists and have that artistic sentimentality. I think that came from thinking that you can teach proportion, golden section, balance and composition, perspective, but mostly this just comes by feel, you get students that just seem to have an innate ability with putting colours together and making comfortable and easy compositions. Where does that design sense, the balance, the composition, come from? Is it somehow in the way that the brain is working is it trained? I definitely think that I have students who seem to have a natural ability with it, is it therefore programmed somehow into the genetics, into the brain, do certain brains have a propensity towards being artistic and if they do does that predetermine what you might become if you have a brain that is somehow looser, are you more likely to become an artist. And how much is the teaching in education involved in that and how much is the identity - if you decide that your identity is that of an artist, If you identify with artists is that what makes you want to become one and therefore you find the tools. So is it that identity that is vital, and are there experiences in life which give you that trigger to be choosing your identity in that direction. That reminds me of north american indians and the fact that if you are born with green eyes you are destined to be the medicine woman and then the programme on radio 4 about the basis of god and religion talking about the fact that is small tribal societies where everyone could know every one the sprits are more likely to be in and of the earth and in the animals they wouldn't be overriding creatures spiritual deities that have control, they would be more benign perhaps but big societies like Egyptian and Greek Roman and then Christianity, the other big religions, have powerful god or set of gods in control maybe big societies need to have the control in order not to fall apart. A sort of spiritual police force. Maybe that is programmed into the brain collectively as we are social beings.
It is an extraordinary experience in itself that the first recording that I made flowed pretty well - the thoughts just tumbled out - and then the second third and fourth recordings when I was trying to reproduce what I had said, I couldn't do it. The thoughts did not tumble out in the same way as I was trying to think about what I had said as well as saying it.
30th March
04/04/10 10:22
Okay so Tuesday first week of my holiday already I don't know what the date is I've spent yesterday and will be spending today teaching some teachers about digital media but getting some ideas as I go the ideas that came up yesterday were particularly to do with rotoscoping because these teachers had done some very successful rotoscoping particularly a cartwheel which fitted in very well to things I've been doing and they entered these rotoscopings for a competition and they involved Julian Opie who is obviously an artist who has used rotoscoping quite extensively in his art so there is the link there to Julian Opie as an artist but also I was introducing them to the idea of a fixed rotation like the cartwheel cycle that remains in the middle of the screen while the background goes past behind like a panorama and I was looking into that a bit and discovered that the diorama a sort of endless landscape not endless but a landscape that went past operated by a couple of cranks and with another crank performer music hall Muybridge sort of character doing a talk err possibly puppets and that sort of thing in front of the diorama possibly with a proscenium so that it really is a precursor of Cinema and it was very popular in fact at one point it says in Victorian times it was the most popular form of entertainment and the people who ran these dioramas would go from town to town giving their shows a bit like the Punch and Judy man I guess so there's a link with and earlier even earlier generation of showmen so it all sort of fits together in retrospective and then there was the programme on television and Paul Merton presented on very early Cinema err and some ideas have people to look at but a particular idea picked up from there was to visit the current exhibition of early cinema in the museum at Hove and that led me then to think about adding exhibitions and meetings to the website that I'm creating and to get in contact with Antony Penrose again to arrange a meeting with him it's going to be a very busy Easter I think but good news today in that my iPhone app has been created as a draft so I need to download and look at that and possibly I can get in contact with the person who programmed the zoetrope app just to get some more ideas from him some connections or maybe suggest things to him err what else has been going on this as a bit of a chatty and newsy recording this morning rather than a meaty one I desperately need to get on with the writing and that my early-morning rambles are making connections but I did have a thought yesterday while I was demonstrating Photoshop to these teachers that a lot of my use of Photoshop is trial and error iteration rather than really a solid knowledge so my demonstrations particularly when I'm trying to demonstrate in talk at the same time are not brilliant but I can do it if I'm not talking so it's definitely that right brain left brain stuff if you believe in that
24th March
24/03/10 09:57
Thursday, 24 March thinking this morning about doodles about getting scraps of paper envelopes in meetings Biro scribbling mindlessly letting things grow why do we do it what's the compulsion and what relation is there between doodling and the sort of little flash games that I am playing with on the Internet and where you can get little games on the Internet umm to be more compulsive but I don't think you can ever get them as compulsive as doodles because doodles is not just about the doodling well it's not about the doodling really it is more about the situation of being in a meeting or on the phone it's not something you sit down to do you don't sit down to doodle it happens because you're doing something else it is the situation and that is maybe what destroys just about anything err that you're trying to do with the phone or computer because you're not in the situation except perhaps things on the iPhone apps on the iPhone like ipint where you are sharing little bit of silliness with friends in a pub or in a class it strikes me that the iPhone in a classroom situation is very similar in some ways to the notes used to go around in classes that's similar also to the Facebook social networking and into the iPhone apps I've got dozens of them on my phone and I hardly ever look at them they just sit there I have collected them they're fun individually they are great fun possibly but I don't make time to play with them I don't have time to make time to play with them so they just sit there so how do you make a game that is compulsive but not too time consuming something that people want to do I was looking at a website err this morning and Juan Opie and he has been producing art using Flash particularly one where a camera on the Internet is taking stop frame animations and then the animations are added to the website and other digital artist Ross something or other also I think working for Fabrica err the Benetton establishment producing video cameras that point out of shop windows so all this thing isn't stuff is not very original sadly but I suppose you have to do it and then you become original but the ideas are very clever I'd love to make a camera that is showing what's happening in television downstairs in the art room and I could talk a little bit in my essay about the other networks that I have going the CCTV in the art department and something that I could do with that the flashing on the CCTV and I could possibly also talk about the network whereby I can control people's Facebook and start writing comments into their Facebook as I sit in the art department and the control that gives me a one-way sort of game but it's a similar sort of thing I guess quite harmless from me in this situation but potentially very far from being harmless quite an extraordinary level of control and then finally there's the serendipity of finding Juan firstly online when I was looking for flip-flops because of his flipbook application made for Benetton finding the Benetton site and then in the book that I had ordered from the library at Bower Ashton a book about animation there is a case study on him as well so he comes up twice in a very short amount of time and in fact I had already seen his flip book a couple of years ago when it first came out and I knew it was him but all that serendipity it seems to happen regularly you see what you are looking for our experience is far from objective we know the world as we think we know it there was a little programme on radio four last night which I must re listen to it was actually about religion but it was talking about needing to be in a group so you are needing to know what you think you know I'll have to listen to iplayer and see if I can get hold of it
digital natives
27/01/10 07:16
Here is another plea - just for a bit of comfort...
I downloaded the voiceband app, and was in the staffroom attempting to show it to our director of music - who didn't seem interested, even though she has an iphone, but she was rushing off somewhere... but another teacher was looking on, and said words to the effect - how much time do you waste on that? I was stung, as she said it in quite a vicious and righteous tone, not at all pleasant. And this teacher is our head of ICT.
I was also a little surprised by one of my art teachers - I gave her a macbook several years ago, and she still has not got the hang. Yesterday, after days of frustration, she said that she was going back to her PC. I had no idea that she was feeling this way, otherwise I would have helped her much sooner. She had spent hours and hours making collections of downloaded images in iphoto - firstly using cut and past to copy images from google onto her desktop - so the were not jpeg files for a start - but then, after creating albums - including many of precious family albums - she was deleting what she thought of as the original photos from the library. And wondering why they then disappeared from her albums.
She was literally in tears of frustration and rage.
In the meantime I have my year 7 logging on to the Voki site, and sending me their comments on their photoshop creations via a speaking avatar.
Just to illustrate two huge gulfs - that between the digital native speaker, and the struggling foreigner, and between the pc left brain spreadsheet mentality, and the wonderfully creative, exciting and extraordinary potential of the iphone for learning.
Here's to the ipad...?!
I downloaded the voiceband app, and was in the staffroom attempting to show it to our director of music - who didn't seem interested, even though she has an iphone, but she was rushing off somewhere... but another teacher was looking on, and said words to the effect - how much time do you waste on that? I was stung, as she said it in quite a vicious and righteous tone, not at all pleasant. And this teacher is our head of ICT.
I was also a little surprised by one of my art teachers - I gave her a macbook several years ago, and she still has not got the hang. Yesterday, after days of frustration, she said that she was going back to her PC. I had no idea that she was feeling this way, otherwise I would have helped her much sooner. She had spent hours and hours making collections of downloaded images in iphoto - firstly using cut and past to copy images from google onto her desktop - so the were not jpeg files for a start - but then, after creating albums - including many of precious family albums - she was deleting what she thought of as the original photos from the library. And wondering why they then disappeared from her albums.
She was literally in tears of frustration and rage.
In the meantime I have my year 7 logging on to the Voki site, and sending me their comments on their photoshop creations via a speaking avatar.
Just to illustrate two huge gulfs - that between the digital native speaker, and the struggling foreigner, and between the pc left brain spreadsheet mentality, and the wonderfully creative, exciting and extraordinary potential of the iphone for learning.
Here's to the ipad...?!
EC Container 5