Exam Project Extended Theory

Interactivity and Interfaces

Title : The humane interface: new directions for designing interactive systems.
Author : Jef Raskin
Publisher : Addison-Wesley, 2000
233 pages

Interface Definition

“Many people assume that the term user interface refers specifically to today’s graphical user interfaced (GUIs), complete with windows and mouse-driven menus. For example, an article in Mobile Office magazine said, “Before too long, you may not have to worry about an interface at all: you may find yourself simply speaking to your computer.” As I pointed out in response, a voice-controlled system may have no windows, but neither do telephone voice-response systems, and they often have hellaciously bad interfaces. The way that you accomplish tasks with a product—what you do and how it responds—that’s the interface.”

Keep the Simple, Simple

“Despite a burgeoning population of interface designers, few consumers claim that new products, such as an electric, four-button wristwatch, are easier to use than they were a few decades ago. If you point out to me that watches, like computers, now have much greater functionality (true) and that, in consequence, the interfaces have had to become more complex (debatable), I respond by pointing out that even the simple tasks that I used to do easily have become mired in complexity. Complex tasks may require complex interfaces, but that is no excuse for complicating simple tasks. Compare the difficulty of setting the time on your electronic, four-button wristwatch to that of completing the same task on a mechanical model. No matter how complex the overall system, there is no excuse for not keeping simple tasks simple.”


Title : The art of interactive design: a euphonious and illuminating guide to building successful software.
Author : Chris Crawford
Publisher : No Starch Press, 2002
385 pages

User Interface

“The study of user interface is a modern offshoot of human factors. Its focus is narrower, with the goal of optimizing the communications between people and electronic devices. Consequently, some people prefer to refer to this as the study of human-computer interface. Its focus is more on communication that interactivity.
Interactivity design, on the other hand, addresses the entire interaction between user and computer. While it shares much with the study of user interface, interactivity design differs because it considers thinking in the process of optimization. The user interface designer optimized the design towards the computer’s strengths in speaking and listening, and away from its weaknesses in these same areas. The user interface designer never presumes to address the thinking content of software (the algorithms that determine its core behaviours).
The interactivity designer optimized the design for all three dimensions of interactivity; this entails additional balancing considerations and could conceivably produce results that the user interface designer, using his narrower considerations, would reject as incorrect. We can grasp the task of the interactivity designer by regarding the thinking content of software as its function, and the user interface as its form. In this frame of thinking, the user interface designer considers form only and does not intrude into function, but the interactivity designer considers both form and function in creating a unified design.”

Exam Project Initial Idea

Initial Idea

After reading Joseph Addison's quote over and over again, I finally devised a full idea I wanted to work on, which consists in animating with music.
I'm calling my project 'Imagine Music', and this is somewhat going to be an animated music video to a short 1 min and 30 seconds long track.
This idea took me a while to come up with since I was having trouble trying to understand the quote and making something big out of it, but then decided to use certain words from the quote as a starting point, and relating them to something which hasn't been thought of before.
My plan is to create an animation using very simple shapes and different colours to visually show someone creating music in their mind. It will be shown in a first person view where the viewers will see basic movement from the characters imaginative hands, which will be doing different animated actions that change or take effect on the music.
I will be animating the hands by rotoscoping my own in a first person shot, and giving them very basic outlines, so the viewers can still see what is happening behind the hand, when it covers certain parts of the animation.

Inspirations

These Music video's inspired me a lot to come up with my animation idea, especially the ones made by Cornelius.

Cornelius - Smoke

This is one of the first music videos by Cornelius, and the thing I like most about this video is the play of words and how the animation is very well synced with the music, even though it is a very basic looking animation.



Cornelius - Coloris

The animation and the music in this video is very well made, and fits perfectly with the sound and style it is used in. This is originally the ending credits to a Japanese Gameboy Advanced game called Coloris, who Cornelius created all the sounds and animations for.



Cornelius - Fit Song

This is somewhat a stop motion animation which looks very realistic and it was fantastically make, showing every object in perfect sync with the music. There isn't a great deal I can say about this video other than the fact that it is amazing, and I cant quite understand how or what it was even made with.



Bonsajo - Vanishing Point

A very unique looking music video which is also very random, but shows a great blend between 2D and 3D animation, and synchronized very nicely with the music.

Exam Project Theory

Quote Analysis

Looking into the 3 quotes I have picked out to do research on, I have found out which books they have come from and how I can build some ideas using the history of their context.

"The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism."

Jean Baudrillard
Cool memories, Volume 1
Subjects:
America
Literary Criticism / European / French
Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern
Political Science / General
Social Science / Sociology / General

About This Book:

Jean Baudrillard is widely recognized as one of the most important and provocative writers of our age. Variously termed “France’s leading philosopher of postmodernism” and “a sharp-shooting Lone Ranger of the post-Marxist left,” he might also be called our leading philosopher of seduction or of mass culture. Following his acclaimed America and Cool Memories, this book is the first in a series of personal records in hyper reality. Idiosyncratic, outrageous, and brilliantly original, Baudrillard here casts his net widely and combines autobiographical memories with further reflections on America, the crisis of cultural production, new ideas in fiction/theory, and the “verbal fornication” of the postmodern.

Possible Ideas

Showing a futuristic city in which the community cannot escape, making every exit a mirror which leads back to the same place.

Showing all the major cities in the world today, being the same in all senses and showing how they circulate with one another, making them so attractive to draw everyone in.

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"The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village."

Marshall McLuhan Understanding media: the extensions of man Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Mass media Political Science / General Social Science / General Social Science / Media Studies Technology & Engineering / Social Aspects

About This Book:

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century. This edition of McLuhan's best-known book both enhances its accessibility to a general audience and provides the full critical apparatus necessary for scholars. In Terrence Gordon's own words, "McLuhan is in full flight already in the introduction, challenging us to plunge with him into what he calls 'the creative process of knowing.'" Much to the chagrin of his contemporary critics McLuhan's preference was for a prose style that explored rather than explained.

Global Village is A term closely associated with Marshall McLuhan, popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). McLuhan describes how the globe has been contracted into a village by electric technology and the instantaneous movement of information from every quarter to every point at the same time. In bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion, electric speed has heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree.

Possible Ideas

All the new electronic things in our world form a single village which all exist in, re-creating the globe to showing the last thing standing on earth.

Everything in the world becomes electronically new, turning the world into something that looks more industrial and polluted than green with blue oceans.

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"Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed."

Joseph Addison The Spectator Magazine, Volume 2 Subjects: Business & Economics / Insurance / General Fiction / Action & Adventure History / Europe / Great Britain Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Social Science / Penology

About This Magazine:

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by the Barclay brothers, who also own The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture.

Possible Ideas

Using your imagination to form an uncommon world, which shows what our world would be like if things were done in a different way.

Going from past to present, showing all the things that raised surprise in the world, which have made it what it is today.

Exam Project Brief

Brief:

Students are asked to choose one of the quotes as a starting point, or to do an independent project totally of their own choice, and formulate a brief, indicating possible avenues they may wish to explore. This is registered with the Subject Leader and makes up the ‘Part One – Intentions’ form. The ‘Part Two – Project Review’ form is submitted, reviewing the final projects’ intentions and conclusions, alongside all research work and the final project execution. It is the overall intention of this assignment to provide students with the opportunity to draw a distinct parallel between practice and theory. Students should be able to reflect through the development of this piece of work a process of independent thinking and illustrate an ability to problem solve on a conceptual and practical level.

Please choose from one of the following options:

1. Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.
Jean Arp

2. Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere.
John Perry Barlow

3. The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism.
Jean Baudrillard

4. The new electronic independence re-creates the world in the image of a global village.
Marshall McLuhan

5. Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.
Joseph Addison

From these selections, the 3 that interest me the most are numbers 3, 4 and 5.

These are the 3 I will be conducting research on, in order to find out what my final idea could be.