1w55 (2w3) – contacting Kenji

Just a last note.. whilst waiting for youtube to upload my videos for the last post, i sat on my bb and wrote a short msg over facebook to kenji ko ( graduate from this year’s course – www.kenjiko.com ) i asked him some questions related to his exhibition – mainly related to the audience interaction to his piece and how they interacted with the set up and also some questions about his sound exhibits – how ppl react to them, what importance he puts for sound/images and what would he change for the next performances/exhibits.

i’ll post up the answers and questions when i hear back from him

thank you in advance to kenji for helping ^^

and can i just add that it’s great to have such great people on this course – both past students who i’ve mentioned in my previous posts that i’d like to get in touch with at one point and they’ve come back and literally said ” sure thing how can we help” and to my current classmates who endeavour to collaborate and pull all of us through the course together as a whole and never hesitate to help and share their experiences, skills and knowledge   and to andy and jonathan with their unconditional enthusiasm, inspiration and understanding…u guys all rock! :-p

1w54 (2w2) – onedotzero exhibition – interactive music lounge

so this is a while back but better late than never i guess.

i went with a couple of friends and my bf to the onedotzero exhibit. namely i dragged them to the interactive music lounge. we entered a room that to be honest, wasnt very inspiring. there were 5-6 pc’s set up with a keyboard, mouse and headphones. each monitor was of each artists’ exhibit for the interactive music lounge. here are some pics:

there was an artist which used a batch of youtube videos that you could play in any order you like and it’d make a random song. Another artist had a song playing and visuals were created as you moved the mouse. The third was music being played where u coud select from 3 different visuals made up of coloured pixels. u could zoom in and out of the images but that was about it.

The fourth was music being played that had shots which u could view in black or white. the last was music being played that you could move facial parts around on screen.

i liked the first and second pieces the most as i felt they were most relevant to my project work. i like the youtube videos allowing each user to create their own music from the way they decided to play the various videos and the combinations were limitless. the second piece was just visually interesting to look at and it was fun to see my friends/boyfriend interact with it. it managed to hold the user’s attention for a while although i felt the visuals were the main focal point and the music merely an accompaniment.

I took pictures of each artist and the object of their pieces so that u can see the intentions of each artist.

Here are two videos – one of my friend chan interacting with the exhibit consisting of youtube videos and the other of my bf playing with the mouse on the second exhibit piece:

 

 

overall the setting of the exhibit was a bit of a downfall – it looked like a lecture room/classroom, but the exhibit pieces themselves were actually really interesting. it’d probably be much better if they were given a room each or a bigger screen so that the user would be immersed in the pieces more.

1w53 – micro manage

i had a 1-2-1 with andy last week to catch up on everything. i literally freaked about my lack of work on the project and he suggested i micro manage rather than making big plans.

i think that helped calm me alot.

i know i’m one of those ppl that have the thoughts in their heads and just get down to doing it when the time comes but for this MA; I’m really struggling if i’m honest.

working and studying is difficult already and i thought i could manage but come this year; with the recession and problems in the economy, my workplace decided to get rid of a designer and condense the two roles into one.

yes, i’m pleased that i got the role and kept my job but at the same time i dont think anyone knew quite how much i took on and how much the role has expanded. sleeping at 3am from stress, coming home and crying twice in the same week, being depressed about the job and worse of all… having lack of patience and being short-tempered/frustrated to the point that my team mates noticed a change in me… it really became too much.

ok so i didnt snap at people but i did notice myself huffing and puffing alot behind my screen and lots of ppl noticed my lack of smiling which i myself missed. a part of me literally just couldnt take the workload any more and wanted to just cry and scream at the same time.

last week was better aside from being ill on thursday and friday and having to be off work but still insisting to work from home because i just knew i couldnt leave things hanging till monday or else it’ll just pile up again and then the cycle would go around and around.

part of me was really considering deferring the course for another year until i could manage my time properly. i have a real worry that this workload will be the way things will be from now on and with the new site and waiting for a new designer to take on campaigns for the new site.. i just dont know how much of myself i will be able to give to this MA now.

but i dont want to feel like a failure too. right now i feel i’m failing the course.

so i’m going to try andy’s advice of micro managing. if i can manage to get back into blogging then hopefully i’ll get back into the MA.

but there’s so much to do. i’m behind on my gantt chart. i hate organising myself and not keeping to it.

tonight i will post this post and the onedotzero exhibit as a second post. micro managing for today done

this week:

return library books and get more books out

check RNID website

create questionnaire online and send out to get ppl to fill in

i’m behind on my presentation. i’ve got 19 pages to condense down into it. i dont even know where to start or when i’m going to find the time to do it. but if i make a start then hopefully that’ll be ok. it’s due the 1st week of November but i’m still ill from thursday and havent had energy to focus properly on it.

a colleague noticed that everytime i take time off work, i get ill. he said maybe it’s because i overwork myself during work that when i get time off, my body just collapses so that it gets time to heal itself again. not good.

i really hope for christmas i get a healthier body for 2010. i really need it and i have a feeling next year is going to be even more tough that this.

as for the MA.. i will fight for now. i will try not to give up.  i will have to see how far i can manage and then assess it again later. i hate to fail at objectives i set out for myself but if it means being able to create a satifactory result at the end then maybe i’ll have to go down that route. i’m really not sure.

1w52 – to end the night.. a little of what’s to come.. hopefully(!)

so i wanted to end on a short post, since i rant on and on and i’m sure the people reading my blog must get sick of me by now yapping away endlessly as though this were a continuous piece of automatic writing. ( do u see! how longggg was that sentence! lol )

1) after writing the last post, i went back to look at my “draft essay proposal” post as it contained my proposal and low and behold.. the gantt chart wasn’t visible! why? cos the last theme was black and orange and the table didnt show up. so i had to change to this layout. ideally i will get around to knowing how to code css so i can manipulate the tag cloud better on this theme as it’s a wee bit tiny and i like that the old theme had different font sizes depending upon how often i used a tag ah well.. another thing to add to the to-do list :-p

2) i attended the onedotzero exhibition and the walk in the mind exhibit so will be blogging about these in the upcoming posts.

3) i will be posting up the interview conducted with Brent ( about time too May! pfff.. )

4) i will be going to LCC to return some books and take out some more books. a little random routine that i do when i get bored of seeing the same books lying on my table not fully read. if i dont get around to reading it now; then i probably wont so i should go get a new one. that’s my outlook on it at the moment and hopefully the lengthy journey will motivate me to read the books more so that i’ll justify the trip to myself ( yes i’m weird).

right. bedtime. i hope. i haven’t been asleep before 3am for the past couple of weeks and it’s taking its toll on my body. i’ve become cranky and moody and i have to snap out of it and retrain myself to being a good student and employee again.

have a good night everyone and i hope you’ll look forward to my upcoming posts ( which i am determined to have include more visuals and sound) xxxx <3 <3 xxxx

******** i forgot to add that i won’t be posting up my research essay online as it’s 19 pages long and i really wouldn’t want to put anyone through the pain of having to read it as it’s so lengthy. add to that that i’m not sure it’s my finest piece of work. i’d rather this blog be more multimedia and in keeping with the digital realm that become just an amass of words that spill out of the reflective part of my head. but if u want to read it.. give me a shout and i’ll email it over if you really do want something to put u to bed fast ********

1 wk 51 – research essay reflection

the research essay got me into a spot of bother to be honest.

firstly i hate reading as i’m sure you’re well aware of by now. the thought of just skimming books makes me worry that i’ve overlooked things and then i end up flipping back to page one to read it from start no matter whether it’s relevant or not.

secondly, i get really sleepy when i read. i can only manage bursts rather than sit there for hours on end reading. i think the only book i read continuously and felt compelled to keep reading until i literally fell asleep with the book in my hands was dan brown’s da vinci code! lol.

thirdly, i get into a weird mentality where i start breaking and analysing words and sentences down. i’ll read a sentence, come across a word that i dont know, try to figure out the meaning, get onto google and find the definition, then get back to the sentence and try to analyse it again. i guess that’s what semiotics did to me! the need to make sure that i’m interpretting EXACTLY what the author wants to convey to me.

anyway, writing the research essay made me – correction – FORCED me to skim read and utilise the index to the max. i only looked for titles that were relevant and chapters which had anything related to what i wanted to discuss. if i found something interesting in a chapter, i’d go into the appendix at the back and see if i can find various pages within the book that mention the same thing.

and what a godsend is google books! AMAZING! books that were no longer available in print, i could read sections of and that would take me to new angles.

as for the essay.. well, looking back at the abstract, i thought i laid out the structure fairly simply. i’d choose a model, i’d analyse it and pull in other communication models to compare and contrast.

the only problem was the structuring of all the data i had. how could i effectively analyse Berlo’s SMCR model in relation to another model without diverting away from the point i was initially making? and then how does what i’ve written actually relate to the actual research essay question ” how effectively is Berlo’s smcr model when describing music textually and visually?”. how could i also structure my essay in a format that would fulfil answering the research essay question as well as be detailed yet simple enough to give them sufficient background knowledge of communication models, semiotics, music, etc.

the word count was helpful i think. it helped me structure my sentences more effectively and eliminated the waffle. but sometimes i feared that i was trying too hard to condense my sentences too much in the hope that they’d be direct and to the point that perhaps i actually over-complicated the explanation?

then the diagrams. how should i show them? should i have included more examples to demonstrate my point? should i have conducted some primary research and testing to prove that what i was implicating actually does apply to the real world and in real time?

overall, i think it was an ok essay. when i get to writing something formal i put on my “thinking formal” hat and then words that normally spew out from my head naturally become all tangled in the web of “the third person”. points that could be made easily had to be restructured so that i didn’t break the number one rule of writing an essay ( which is never to say you, I, me, myself etc. in case you didn’t know).

if i had to rewrite the essay again, i think i would like to have addressed the subject of music, text and visuals in further depth. i think i concentrated too much on analysing berlo’s model and the other communication models that i didn’t focus much on what the nodes of each model imply in terms of their application to the research essay. i think i compared nodes too much and didn’t relate them in as much detail as i would’ve liked to the main point of the essay.

so now what? i guess i can take this reflection and think about how i’m going to structure the presentation of the research essay… this will have to be another blog post so that i can keep each post having one main point and then i wont get confused when going back to reading old posts again in the near future =)

1wk50 – catching up

right. i’ve realised i’m missing about a month’s worth of posts. Why? it’s really simple.

procrastination, procrastination, procrastination, stress, stress, stress, illness, illness, illness and work, work, work!!!!

arghhhh. yes. these kill me. literally!

so the procrastination.. mostly due to me constantly filling my time with other things that i don’t get around to blogging. i’ve tried to tell myself over and over again that i should blog religiously on a certain day of each week but well.. that didnt work and then i tried to blog when i was motivated to do so in the hope that it’d come in bursts. that didn’t work either becuase i spent too much of my time thinking about how to approach the project that i’d freak out and spend time freaking out instead of actually confronting the fear head-on.

stress.. well i have a list of things on my mental to-do list that keeps getting longer and longer. i seem to have so many things to do at the same time that i just dont know where to start. coupled with the procrastination – i end up not getting anything done and just freaking out lol.

illness – urgh. this is the worst. i took a week off work to dedicate time to writing the research essay and guess what?! i had to do work from home because we had a new website launching and as it was a big deal, i was asked to do some work from home during my leave cos unfortunately i’m the only flash designer. so come monday – day 1 of my week off – what happened? i got ill! fever, cough, blocked nose, headaches – the works! it sucked so bad. the following days were spent doing work work and dying in front of my pc until “work time” was up and then crawling back into bed to continue dying/mending. i only managed to get back to my essay writing on thursday and it was a frantic rush and major stress. i think everyone literally knows me as sick girl or the sickly child! cos i’m ALWAYS sick. this christmas all i truly want is a new body. one that doesnt break down or get ill for at least a month! :’(

work – well.. with the new site comes new stresses. i have to learn AS3 and to be honest; i’m totally crap at coding! no matter how many times i read code over and over again, it never manages to go into my head. ok so understanding code a bit and being able to decipher some parts gets me by but geesh.. i wanna be able to write code without having to google for examples and take chunks of code from here and there and put it into a big melting pot. on top of that, i have to learn CS4 since i now have that system on my pc at work cos the new site uses flash player 10, AS3. joy! and also i have to learn this new system cos a company we use at work has updated their old system with this new one.. so i have to get my @ss onto learning that. not to even mention the fact that i have 5 goals i set out to accomplish by the end of the year and i’ve literally had no time to spare from my daily workload to even dedicate to that. so i guess it’s bye bye target goals.

anyway.. enough complaining. we started class a few weeks back and it’s good to be back =) we were all stressing about the essay and now we’ve got a presentation to do based on it at the end of this month. then our assessment for unit 1 is in december. i’m kinda silently panicking because i’ve realised that i havent conducted much primary research aside from attending a few exhibits that mention sound and the interview with Brent.

so today i wrote myself a list( by list i mean scribbling it on the back of my hand so that i wouldnt forget). the list consisted of:

creating a questionnaire on survey monkey to send out to deaf ppl

update my blog ( yay.. achieved this at least)

sound animation ( i guess this relates to actually doing something physical so that i can start creating the animations)

email societies ( this was to remind me to go back to my email and read any responses that i got and find some new contacts/links that could help me with my project research)

so.. this week… i’m going to try to get through this list. the blogging should be easy. i have a few posts in mind ( everything seems to always be stored in my head but never anywhere realistic) so i will try to get up to date with my posts by this time next week.

i have a couple of weeks holiday leave remaining from work cos my flight back to thailand is booked and i need to change the dates so i might take another week off to do some major primary research. by that i mean going to meet people within my target audience, go visit some societies and charities related to deaf ppl blah blah.

i’m not going to mention any more. i feel the more i say things the more i dont get them done and plus i hate being one of those types of people who say they’re going to do this and that and never get around to it. well.. actually i end up being one of those types of people because unfortunately life gets in the way of achieving any of the goals i set myself ( i.e. attending a djing course is brushed aside because i first need to buy a house and then get dj decks and then i can take lessons, learn the drums – again the whole space/practise issue, go back to my martial arts – they only have classes on weekdays and to be honest i dont think i could magic up any more energy after my work day ends blah blah blah). it’s a terrible cycle to be in and hopefully one day i will achieve a point in life where i dont have to make lists of to-do’s and just enjoy and live for the moment

1wk49 – Me, myself and I

I conducted the interview with Brent yesterday. It was a real eye-opener for the things he had to say both agreed and disagreed to the “laws” of semiotics. on top of that, the location of where we were interviewing was fairly loud and that gave me a discreet opportunity to question the communication models i’d been looking at for my essay.

anyway, i will write up the interview tomorrow or over the weekend when i have a nice space of interrupted free time.

within this post, i just wanted to write for me. i was told today by AK that i had a unique learning ability. that i pick up and learn things fast and run with it… i think that was kind of the jist of what he meant. Do i? after Brent’s interview yesterday i thought to myself maybe yes.. maybe no. no in the sense that this course isnt going as planned to my gantt chart. yes in that what i learnt and interviewed Brent on yesterday; i’ve done some surfing online to find out more of. but then again, i could’ve done this a while back when i first noticed this but didnt get around to it.

what was it that i was rooting around for? subtitles.

because i asked if he watches tv with subs or not and if he’d noticed the various colour usage? so here it is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_(captioning)

it’s a lot to read through so i’m going to do that tomorrow if i can.

in a way i like these short bursts of motivation that i get from my surroundings. reading to write the essay at the moment and it’s made me concentrate all my energy on finding models of communication but at the back of my mind, i’m constantly worried that 1) i’m behind schedule big time and 2) i’m constantly thinking about the project but not pro-actively doing anything physical aside from blogging.

so these little ‘moments of inspiration’ really help keep me back on track and i’m thankful for that.

hopefully my hibernation/procrastination period wont last much longer. i’m hoping that after the essay, i’ll pull myself away for a week from work and spend that time conducting interviews for my MA and dedicating time on actually creating. even after Brent’s interview, i was scribbling non-stop on the tube a list of “to-do’s” for the project.

yes.. a week off to do work for the MA sounds good.

well done me. hahaha

i guess nothing can be done without looking inwards first. it starts from yourself and then u draw outwards.

oh.. and i’ll also be putting up an interview at surveymonkey and forward onto as many deaf forums as i can find. hopefully i’ll collate a decent amount of responses that will provide me with the sufficient conclusions that i need to draw upon before i start the animation process.

1wk48 – Subtitles on a music channel

yup.. you heard it right!

It was about 4am and I had on music factory or some sort of music channel on digital where they continuously play music videos throughout the night.

but this time they had a person in the right hand corner who was signing to the lyrics! yes! can u believe it?!?!?! i’ve never seen it before – perhaps cos it’s rarely that i stay up till 4am

anyway, i noticed a few things – 1) that the person was located to the right of the screen. why are the “signers” always located to the right? if i draw upon my previous knowledge acquired from my old MA course; in a lesson related to interface design, we were taught that left is given and right is new. i.e that any elements to the left should be for information that is given or known and that the right hand side is for content that is new. which explains why most websites have navigation systems that are on the left and the content-well lies to the right.

so .. does this apply to the signing process too?

2) the signer was rhymically moving/swaying along to the beat of the music. he was literally bopping along to the music as he signed the lyrics!

so i did a little test.  i turned off the sound and turned off the subtitles and watched him sign and bop to see if i could “sense” the music.

ok.. so the music video kinda gave it away a little but his body sways did give me a general idea that of the timing of the piece and hence, the type of emotion the piece was trying to portray ( ie fast moving, head nodding for dancey tracks and backwards/forwards swaying for more slow r’n'b type tracks)

seeing this has made me think – that perhaps i should have a mentronome-type icon on the right hand size of my screen when it comes to creating the animations. that way it would help assist the viewer and it would be a familiar format of screen layout that they are accustomed to seeing. this will of course need to be tested and questioned.

also, it made me think about silent ipod dancing gathering thingies ( i have no idea what it’s actually called). when a bunch of people turn up with their ipods, listen to their tracks via their headphones and dance around in a given space.

i have to find some video’s of this on youtube to see what’s going on. what do their body motions say? can i tell what type of music they’re listening to from the movements they make? is there any similarity in their movements that could be used within my animations?

1wk47 – first signs of primary research

The plan to attend the  ” walking in the mind” exhibition at the Hayward is a fail at the moment. I’ve been busy trying to sort out trying to motivate myself to learn AS3.0 and AS2.0 for work as well as trying to house hunt/get a mortgage ( aka calling up mum every few days to get her to sort out all the boring paperwork stuff). Hopefully i’ll get to go before the exhibit ends.

i want to go just to rejuvenate the artsy tinglying that i used to get from visiting galleries and draw inspiration from them. plus it’d be good to see what people’s interpretation of the mind’s thought process is.

on another note; there’s now not 1 but 2 people at work who are partially deaf! I’m conducting an interview with one on Wednesday over lunch and hopefully it’ll be fruitful.

I was talking to him over email last week to discuss my project just so he knows what i’m doing and what kind of questions i will be posing. Turns out that he’s doing some studies into philosophy and this is what he wrote back:

“…I had to look up what semiotics was. It’s all about meaning huh?
I wonder if you’d be interested in epistemology I’ve been studying philosophy on an amateur
level and I think Ayn Rand’s theory of how concepts are formed and their primary purpose
being for thinking, not communication to be quite well thought out. You might want to read
here theory and see if it gives you any insight.”

cool! so Ayn Rand and Epistemology are also going to be on my list. I’ve got to wiki it and also ask him some questions since he’ll know more about the subject in-depth and see if that can bring about anything that I could incorporate into my study.

i’m really excited to be conducting these interviews.

I’ve realised that i may need to find out if there’s a measurement for the varying levels of deafness. i think i’ll have to define my target audience more precisely because otherwise i wont know what works and what doesnt work when it comes to creating the animations.

questions i hope to pose will be related to:

- if colour, shapes, timing of things on screen have any impact?

- what can they actually hear of the music?

- what are the most important factors when it comes to music? the lyrics? the beats? the music video?

wish me luck

1wk46 – Music DNA

I was browsing through my daily tech blogs which consume about a good hour or so of my work morning, when I came across this site:

http://www.wired.com/listening_post/2008/08/major-breakthro/

The opening paragraph says this:

“Peter Neubäcker, the German music software engineer responsible for the popular pitch correction Melodyne, has created a program called Direct Note Access (DNA) that can dissect a chord into individual notes so that the chord can be re-formed into something new.”

There’s a demo video explaining the program at http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna_interview

I’m not sure yet if this has anything to do with my project but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Additionally, it’s given me a new site ( www.celemony.com) to check out and explore; should there be any leads in that direction.

seems the more i read the more i go off tangents. yes, as jonathan said, tangents are good and exploring is good but .. september is coming up and it’s the final year. The year that i have to seriously get down to creating and putting all this info that’s in my head onto paper and on screen.

eek.. i’m scared.