MY LATEST IDEA: ORIGAM-E

My idea has been heavily influenced by the idea of electronic folding paper, I researched Origami as it is the art of paper folding. I immediately thought that in the future foldable electronic paper will be so flexible that people could create their own Origami characters / creatures /pets etc which could then be controlled via voice recognition or via software installed into your laptop / computer.

In the future, the possibilities are endless...

C-DRAGON / PHOTOSYNTH

http://www.neublack.com/tech/685

"An amazing demonstration of Photosynth given by Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs and the co-creator of Photosynth. With this technology, images are connected and compiled seamlessly to create experiences with incredible depth and scale. Definitely worth a view."

If you visit this link and watch the video there is a wonderful demostrating explaining the technology behind C-Dragon and Photosynth, I feel this technology is could be enhanced and applied to my concept of an I-Paper. The ways in which the demonstrator navigates the software is exactely the image I have in mind of how my I-Paper could be used and controlled.

-TAKING DATA AND VISUAL IMAGERY OF THE WORLD AND NAVIGATING IN A 3D BUT SIMPLE MANNER

-EVERY IMAGE WILL HAVE A HYPERLINK

SUNDAY 28th OCTOBER - USEFUL YOUTUBE LINKS

IMAGE ABOVE NICELY SUMS UP THE CONCEPT OF MY IDEA/PRESENTATION

In relation to my studies on Newspaper History and the Future of Newspapers, I came across these useful links on youtube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zFIirbayrCs - John Curley on the history of newspapers

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DDmrxEZysW8 - College Digital Newspaper Advert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y68dySUNtZ4 - How is the digital age influencing newspapers?

Both these links are useful, in particular the second link which shows how a digital newspaper could look in relation to my idea.

This looks like a low budget advert, with my skills and software available, I feel that I could create a much more hard hitting and powerful advert that could really sell my idea of an I-Paper, it is clear that people have thought of this idea but has not yet been invented.

This is encouraging and i look forward to creating my product...

MONDAY 22nd OCTOBER SESSION

3d studio max tutorial,

Presentation for thursday,

REVIEW OF WEEKENDS WORK - 19th - 21st OCTOBER

Over the weekend I organised my work and put some interesting ideas into my sketchbook. I researched Virtual Reality (mainly in relation to children due to my Virtual Classroom idea) and it's effect on society and education. It is clear that virtual reality has been used with education (see sketchbook) and I feel that it is a matter of time before this is applied to our schools.

The only real fallback of this Virtual Classroom idea is the lack of socialising and interactivity the pupils will have. This is why my idea would relate more to the idea of pupils socialising normally out of class time but when class begins the children would put on their headsets to begin the lesson, this is turn would enable sufficient and correct teaching of the exact curriculum.

This idea inspired me to research forms of online interactivity and socialising (e.g. 2nd Life, Facebook, Myspace, MSN). If we can log onto virtual worlds now and actually live another virtual life in the form of an avatar, then surely it is a matter of time before we can put on our virtual headsets and live in a virtual world. This idea is not so different from 'The Matrix' where we see characters such as Neo getting plugged into the matrix (see image right).

In relation to our speaker we had last thursday, Simon Morse, I thought of his idea of technology becoming over complex and making it too hard to use. This in turn making us 'dumb' due to over-complexity, this is a simliar concept to the movie 'Idiocracy' where the main agonist wakes up in the future to find that everyone has been 'dumbed down'. Although This film isn't the greatest (in my opinion) it is useful in relation to this project because there are some interesting perspectives of the future portrayed throughout this movie.

I have been practicing with After Effects over the weekend because I want to be fully capable of using this program before I begin creating my presentation and final project idea.

I stumbled across a useful 3D tutorial in Creative Arts, which I feel will be use to everyone as it is simple to follow and I completed succesful in relatively short time, click on the truck image below to visit this link to the tutorial:

THURSDAY 18TH OCTOBER 2007

Simon Morse came in to discuss his work today (See Blog 15th October). I really like Simon's Work because it directly relates to our project... See sketchbook for more info and Blog Posts (Rewiew of the weekend 19th - 21st October & Monday 15th October)
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I had to leave university early today as I met a client for the next brief (where I understand we need to get our own work via actual real life clients). My client is Scratch N Groove Mobile Disco's (http://www.scratchngroove.co.uk/ / www.myspace.com/scratchngroove). I have actually DJ'ed for this company before but I approach them the other day asking if they were in need of any promotional material. I was given the following options:

1) Help promote new album - DJ Raph's 'Relentless'

2) Create New Flash Based Website for Scratch N Groove

3) Design and Promote T-Shirts which can be sold via online shopping on scratch n groove website.

4) Create Promotional Posters, Flyers and Business Cards for Company.

Each of these options are tempting and I hope to try and incorporate them all into one project which I believe isn't out of my reach. For now I am happy that I have a client for the next project (Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance) but now I need to concentrate on this Design Futures Brief.

WEDNESDAY 17th OCTOBER -"THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE"

Today's session consisted of a class discussion and analysis of Marshall McLuhan's Text - "The Medium is The Message". We listened to see some interesting audio and watch some various videos of Marshall McLuhan e.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7GvQdDQv8g.

If you visit the Stu-Shared Section on the university computers, there is a useful Powerpoint Presentation which Michael (Our Tutor) put up for us. This presentation on Marshall McLuhan has various very useful links on.

We each were given a chapter of 'The Medium is the Message' to analyse, which we presented to each other. I was happy with my analysis, considering we only had an hour to read a chapter of such theoretical and complex ideology.

Today's session was useful in terms of improving our critcal and cultural evaluation and analysis, I hope to read the the whole of McLuhan's "Medium is the Message" so I can fully understand his theories. I have this his theories intriguing, especially considering how his theories related so much to the future of technology (which directly links to our project - Design Futures).

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Apart from this useful study in the morning, I had some major input into my sketchbook and got down a few more of my "potential" ideas:

1) Interactive DJ (Like the Microsoft Surface and a DJ interface put together e.g.

2) Sport & Technology - Robotic Referee's (see sketchbook)

3) Sport & Health - Fitness Trainer with Biosensor (Bit like a Mash Up).

These three ideas are clearly explained in my sketchbook, I must remember to put some research into my sketchbook on "Mash-Ups" as these are extremely useful concepts in relation to our brief e.g. the combination of different softwares or technologies like Google Mash Ups (http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ - image screnshot below)

MONDAY 15th OCTOBER SESSION

We were given a Handout by Simon Morse (Visitor coming in on Thursday this week) which at a glance looks like his theory on how technology is becoming over complicated. To the right is an image of one of his products, or if you like his "view of the future", showing how technology is becoming almost over-complex.

As a user we cannot possibly use this equipment, its functionability is completed non user-friendly.

But this is an interesting concept! Will the future bring over complex and ridiculous designs!?

This clearly relates to our brief "Design Futures" and I have included this into my sketchbook.

You can see more of Simon Morse Work by visiting http://www.simonmorse.co.uk/.

Dan Mellor - Freelance Designer (Mainly 3D / After Effects)

Dan was a guest speaker in today's session, he is a freelance designer and has a very respectable portfolio / show reel.

There were many interesting pieces of work and points that he made in his lecture, the main points I gathered from his talk were:

1) When working for Now.Com in 1999, Dan helped the company come up with a new venture - to create internet and TV together online. Today we see this type of technology all around the internet but 8 years ago this idea was too ahead of it's time due to the lack of fast internet (broadband).

2)When carrying out the viral marketing campaign for 'The Object', this again was ahead of its time because this type of marketing wasn't really accesible to the general public. This reminds me of the great Leonardo Da Vinci whose sketches seemed utterly ludicrous during his era, however today they seem completely feasible.

3) Tips for being a freelancer:

When doing any project / job, organsiation is the key and try to back up all your work. Factor the cost of software into any job and the company should tend to pay for this as they have to stick to strict deadlines. Keep up-to-date with technology and read magazines such as Computer Arts and 3D World so you see recent design issues. Never undersell yourself as this undervalues the industry and your work.

4) The Compton Skyline Project:

http://www.comptonskyline.com/

Quite an amazing project and I recommend you visit the website for a better explanation on the sheer size and awe inspiring scale of this project.

I wont go into too much detail about this project but it inspired me with another idea / presentation for our Design Futures Brief:

**IDEA**

INTERACTIVE BILLBOARDS? The audience and general public found this piece to be very exciting and intriguing because they felt they were part of this project (being in a Brighton Street). If Billboards were interactive would this make people more intrigued and therefore be an excellent Advertising / marketing tool!? SEE MORE OF THIS RESEARCH IN MY SKETCHBOOK...

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For the rest of the day I have continued with my research and my sketchbook has some interesting and well presented ideas within it. I feel very fixated on the idea of an "interactive newspaper" but wish to eliminate other thoughts and ideas that are confusing matters at present.

THURSDAY 11th OCTOBER SESSION

Rona Innes was our guest visitor in the morning of today's session. She is primarily a Flash Animator (2D) and along with her animating, she does a lot of soryboarding and idea generation for her projects. If you check out her website / homepage: www.moshimachine.com, you can see a huge range of different multimedia applications that she and her teams in the past have created.

Storyboarding is a vital part of any animation / film / E-learning project. It should be used whenever a storyline is involved and personally I enjoy this part of any project. It allows you to put what's in your mind onto paper and from your sketches you can eliminate problems and improve areas of the project in a practical and efficient way.

Flash is an excellent and enjoyable program to use, I seize any opportunity to use Flash but there is always room for improvement e.g. CSS is an area I feel reasonably comfortable using but could work on.

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**IDEA FOR DESIGN FUTURES BRIEF**

When Rona Innes was showing us her work via the Projector, I had a brain storm. I thought that the Projector(s) that we commonly use could easily be made more practical, smaller and portable. I will put this idea into my sketchbook and will decide whether or not to pursue this for the final presentation / deadline.
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After the break Rona showed us some more proffesional work, some of it being quite amusing and some very serious. Again if you look at her website - www.moshimachine.com you can this work.

After we were showed work we had the opportunity to ask questions about the multimedia industry, in particular getting work as a freelancer, here are the points I took:

1) Getting Recommendations from companies helps to get work.
2) Working via an angency.
3) EPIC - company that uses freelance (EPIC is One of the biggest companies in this industry within Europe.
4) WORKMEDIA - another company that uses freelance.
5) Wired Sussex - a whole range of job opportunities.
6) Bang (Brighton Animators Network Group) - useful to join.
7) Lots of work available in London (contract work)
8) CHINWAG (www.chinwag.com - company that emails job contracts around from various agencies)
9) CREATIVE CATAPULT (www.wiredsussex.com/Projects/CC/index.asp) - post-graduate scheme helping the stage between graduation and career paths.
10) FLASH BRIGHTON - another useful group to join in terms of getting Flash animation work.
11) UHC (Manchester Based Ethicallly sound company)
12) Probably better to start off as freelance before becoming soletrader.
13) Or start off in an agency.
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Afternoon Session - Angie Taylor (The Guru of After Effects - www.creativeaftereffects.com)

I feel that I am not the only one that was seriously impressed about the skill Angie Taylor has using the program After Effects (After all, she did write the book!). Not only was her tutorial on using After Effects Enlightening but also awe inspiring, this combined with her creative and "different" background made her a very interesting speaker and kept the class very involved.

Her history followed a similar to path to what I believe I am taking e.g. Angie became a DJ / Producer around 1990 - 1994 and became a Designer in 1994.

I feel that I could relate to her due to this and this made the talk that more interesting! Her show reel was excellent and extremely diverse, this opened up my mind to creating my show reel. It is important to be specialised in one area of multimedia but also have a versatile manner. Your show reel should also show potential for companies with low and high budgets so you can appeal to broadest audience.

I have recorded her brief time line in my sketchbook for the Design Futures Brief because it showed how history and technology has vastly changed over the last 10 or so years. One way of looking into the future is examining the process of history in technology.

When asking Angie "What do you think the future will bring in terms of technology?" her answer was as vague as ours. Again the possibilities are endless and you cannot really predict the future, for example how did mobile phone texting become some popular!? Nobody would have predicted that years ago.

We were given some useful links and programs / plug ins to visit which I have listed below:

Marketing and advertisings Links

1) Mobstar Media (www.mobstarmedia.com)
2) LSN-SINGE MEDIA

Video Integration Systems Online

1) SILVER LIGHT
2) ADOBE MEDIA PLAYER

After Effects Plug Ins

1) 3D INVIGORATOR
2) TINDERBOX (Better Blur Plug in)
3) CINEMA 4D
4) POSER (Copy movie image files particles e.g. Dancers in Club Scene Anige showed us on After Effects Tutorial)

Protect Your Work and Spread Your Ideas

1) Creative Commons (This allows you to patent/copyright your work in a specific way e.g. I want my name credited for every time my work is publicised, but my work cannot be stolen or copied)
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Angie Taylors Tutorial was quite intense and I have noted down some of her points in my sketchbook, this is because I aim to use After Effects for the main presentation in the Design Futures Brief.

To end this post, I spoke to Angie about working as a Freelance Demo Artists e.g. showing lecture halls how to use a specific program. I have emailed Angie about this as I can see it as a potential path towards a successful career. If anyone wants any more information, feel free to contact me.

NEXT STEPS:

- RESEARCH / IDEA DEVELOPMENT
- SKETCHES

WEDNESDAY 10th OCTOBER SESSION

In today's session (tutored by Paul Grant) we had an opportunity to carry on with our research and idea development. I seized this chance to pursue some extensive and detailed research and came up with some interesting thoughts:

1) Fingerprint Money - I thought that there could be a more secure way to look after peoples money e.g. Chip and Pin. I thought about fingerprint scanning for security but this had already been invented - visit this link: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money-savers/article.html?in_article_id=404564&in_page_id=5. There must be other possibilites for securing money, I may look into this further but this seems like a difficult area to cover for this project,

2) Microsoft Surface - An amazing piece of software by Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/surface). If you visit the site you will see what I mean! THis idea of fully interactive material really inspired me and my idea of an interactive Newspaper / Magazine / Book / Flyer/ Banner etc.

3) Bye Bye Batteries - When Researching online I stumbled across an article based on Battery Life / Power. I found that there has been so much improvement on the functionality of technology, but no improvement on actual battery power. There has been some issues in making battery life too powerful and therefore dangerous, mainly due to poor manufacturing. If a strong chemical and body was found for a battery then this is a feasible idea. Maybe the first Mobile Phone with a Month -Long Battery!? Charge once a month!? Sounds like a good idea.

4)Interactive Paper / Online - Continuing my research on interactive paper (E-Paper) I found a useful website which explained the basics of online interactive newspaper (www.newsandtech.com/issues/2006/04-06/nt/04-06_epaper.htm) which I can directly link to My idea of I-News (Interactive News which you control. I created a basic layout of how my interactive paper would look, using the site - interactives.mped.org/ppress110.aspx. This can be seen in My sketchbook.

Next Steps:

More Research, Begin to pursue a general direction / form of technology.

MONDAY 8th OCTOBER

In today's session my classmates and I carried out some intensive research into our workbooks. We also had a guest visitor 'Mike Blow' who showed us some really interesting work, in particular the sound-art installation called "machines for singing". This installation involved setting up recording and listening software all around a building and studying the noises.

I spoke to Mike about my project and we discussed my most recent idea of a "Virtual Primary School".

The idea basically involves children logging onto a virtual world (via a headset/virtual glasses) and interacting with other classmates and teachers during lessons. This obviously would be done in the comfort of their own home with parental care.

The main fall back myself and Mike Discussed was that children will detriment from this because there will be a lack of social (hands-on) interaction with other children. Social Interaction in Primary school is a major factor for the learning curve and raising of a child so this idea would have some fall backs.

I have recorded this idea in my sketchbook which you can directly relate to via this blog.

Next Steps:

More Research, Idea Generation, Work out the most feasible ideas.

FRIDAY 5th OCTOBER - PRIVATE STUDY

I came into Uni Today to keep up to date with my research and workbook. I found today very productive in relation to my research and I feel that my inital idea of Design Future products had been thought of already, I have now learnt to think outside the box and further into the future where possibilites are practically endless.



My research today primarly consisted of three sections (in my brainstorm page - see workbook), these were:

1) Health Technology e.g. Lifestraw (http://www.lifestraw.com/), and the Zerofly (http://www.zerofly.com/)

2) Living / Home Technology e.g. GE Future Kitchen (Search for Kitchen of the future in Google.


3) Transport Technology e.g. Bionic Dolphin (http://www.bionicdolphin.com/), and the Wheelsurf (http://www.wheelsurf.com/)





I found these three areas very interesting, they all heavily inspired me. Whilst researching online I also came across Electronic Paper (see left). If paper can be made electronic, then who knows what other textures and materials will become electronic!? I have thought of a reasonably feasible idea for my product / presentation we need to have completed. If you look at my sketchbook you can see my idea generation.




My next step is to carry out more research on present and future possiblites in technology. Through doing so I will eventually find out the best solution to my problem!

Over the weekend I will do some more research and sketch some ideas down, keep referring to my sketchbook if you need any more information!

THURSDAY 4th OCTOBER SESSION - SAM BUTLER

Today was very insightful into the complex industry of multimedia that we are all working in. Our tutor today 'Sam Butler' gave us very useful information (mainly about website design) and about the multimedia industry he has worked in for so many years (His agency that he works for is now voted 10th Best in the N.M.A - New Media Age).

N.M.A (www.nma.co.uk) is an extremely important link which will become very useful for myself and classmates alike for finding potential work in the multimedia industry.

We received three Emails from Sam Butler Today which we discussed in class, these are entitled:

1) 'The Elements of Use Experience'

2) 'Visual Design Process'

3) 'Visual identitiy Workshop Agenda'

These three emails enclose documents which evaluate various aspects of design issues within the multimedia industry. We learnt about important factors such as Content Management Systems (CMS - a non HTML based program available for easy website editing), Immediacy and Tridion.

An intriguing new job-role within the multimedia world was introduced to me called "Information Architect" (I.A) whose role is to create site formats, something that I can see myself potentially going into in the future.

Other areas that was raised in today's session are:

- Wireframes: This is basically how content on a page will be structured / portrayed on each page of a website (See left for diagram).

- Moodboards (left): Photos and image used to give a "feel" for the website. Good links for getting 'proffesional' photos are - www.istockphoto.com, www.stockexchange.com, www.getty.com.

Abstract Cropping and presentation of moodboards and images on a website will make the site more intriguing and interesting.

-Brand / Concepts Development: Allowing capacity to expand websites via adding more buttons if needed etc. Use dummy fonts (Latin Text) on website designs so attention is drawn to design rather than text (Which may not be true, out of date).

-Web 2.0 Styling: Using the web as a tool / software e.g. facebook, googlemaps. Everything should have a service on a website - 'Don't let the user think'. SIMPLIFIY THINGS - Big text, bold colours, apple mac style, stick to vertical scrolling - no horizontal! Check out Sam Butler's Website for BakerTilly (www.bakertilly.com) going live on 9th October 2007. Also check out www.webdesignfromscratch.com, a very useful site explaining the goods and bads of various websites around the WWW.

All the above are brainstorms and notes taken from the session, this is why they are in no particular order. They will all come in useful, if not now but in the future.

My next step is to continue my research and idea generation for the Brief - Future Designs. I have some ideas in mind but I feel it is very important to come up with useful research and action plans to keep myself organised.

WEDNESDAY SESSION 3rd October 2007

In todays session we analysed and discussed Lev Manovich's Essay "The Paradoxes of Digital Photography". This was very insightful and inspired ideas for both the Design Futures Brief and the Dissertation that we have to complete by the end of the year.

We also went through the Design Futures Brief which helped enlighten the class about where we should begin our research and what we should expect throughout the next 6 weeks.

I started my research and workbook yesterday (2nd October) which was nice to get a head start, I did find my research to be very vague, however after todays session I will now look into this project into a lot more depth, starting with the recommended areas of research and issues raised in todays session.

I will now do some more research and update my workbook, after this I will add another more insightful blog about information I have gathered

MULTIMEDIA (BA HONS) - FIRST SESSION - 1st OCTOBER 2007

Today I set up this Blog so I can now add information (preferably on a daily basis) about important issues and events that occurr within my Third Year (BA HONS) of my Multimedia Course. Please feel free to contact me about any issues and any feedback is more than welcome.

Today I met the rest of my class mates (who can be seen on my Friend List on this Blog) and we received our first project brief (Multimedia Practice - MUH82 / 01: Desgin Futures) which I am yet to study in-depth. From briefly looking at this it appears to be an exciting and challenging project which I am looking forward to working on and developing my ideas.

P.S. For information and links to everything based on my Music / DJing career visit www.myspace.com/praizdj or visit my Music label by clicking on the logo below.