NEW Inc. website now online. Here is the teaser video for the event… watch this space.
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The reading / writing, consuming / producing of literary works is having a fundamental shake up in the business and the consumer world. Today we may read a blog, scan the newspaper, and read a book on your mobile. The ways in which consumers are accessing written works are changing.
Find the full article at BenByford.com
Online Creative Networks – survey summary
Posted by Ben Byford | Posted in Arts, Digital Art, Fine Art, Media studies | Posted on 13-08-2010
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This survey was done to accompany my dissertation project on Online Creative Networks. Some of the Networks investigated are: Jotta, Axis, SaatchiOnline, CentralStation, RiseArts, IdeasTap, Deviantart, Behance.
This survey will appear in the appendix to the project concerned mainly with the critical framework of Online Creative Networks (OCNs), user and service provider opinion, direct observation, and learning from other kinds of networks…
A summary of this dissertation will be available here and on BenByford.com this coming October.
Notes on the survey
It would seem that the majority of the 34 recipients are more concerned with having a suitable free web presence than the specific tools part of being a member of the network.
It seems the art students and artists taking part don’t believe that paid services legitimise their users, and if they’re not currently using an Online Creative Network they’re likely to start using one.
Quotes from recipients
Q: Do you believe that due to the digital nature of the internet any art disciplines get left out from these networks, if so which?
“Installation can be photographed. Time based can be videoed. The drawback of the digital is the drawback of photography itself. You miss a whole level of experience of my paintings because photography can’t shift its eyes to catch a glimmer. The scale of a thumbnail is ridiculous as well.”
Q: What impact do you think these networks are having on the art world as a whole, if any?
“They make art more accessible although I am not sure that there is anything that beats seeing art in it’s real state. However, I have had sales where people have wanted prints of either photographs or artwork that would have previously been impossible. “
“It’s too early to say for sure, but I would hazard a guess that a network such as the ones you suggest are of little real importance in comparison to really meeting people and talking”
CREATIVITY / where ideas come from?
Posted by Petra | Posted in Art, Design, Digital Art, Film, Misc, Uncategorized | Posted on 10-08-2010
Tags: architecture, creativity
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I have gone through an architecture education. After a couple of years of testing and feeling my way within the profession I felt that instead of broadening my horizons, my angle of vision became restricted – I’ve been caught out there in a kind of vortex in which you constantly move in circles with some kind of G force pulling you down into its centre.
The biggest shock for me was that I was forced to shut down my creative thinking process, something that’s inherently ever-present in every creative mind. It was as if your ubiquitous cord was cut loose while still in the womb and you’re being told to hang in there for a couple more moths because you’re not big enough to come out yet. You have to grow while choking. Go through the drill. In a couple of years time, if you’re lucky and you’ve managed to keep a few bubbles of oxygen in your brain, an opportunity to impress the world with your creative genius may arise. Or maybe not. You become forever pregnant with possibilities that can never be born. By the time you’re 35 you may start thinking about giving birth to babies instead.
I have made a decision quite quickly to get out there, however ‘green’ I may have still been. I ventured outside of that architecture box, into a much more open space. I’ve packed my black t-shirts and got on the plane. 14 hours later I stepped out into a 40 degrees heat of Havana.
The Havana Harbour Urban Design charrette was just an anchor for me, to take part in an international urban design discourse, an area, which I was increasingly interested and involved in. I didn’t want to be just another tourist, a ‘walking dollar’ on the streets of Havana or the beaches of Varadero.
However, I was determined not to design anything within that week, being so put off from the whole process of architectural propositions from some of my previous work experience (usually involving an endless exercising of options to accommodate function within maximal possible building envelope).
During that week something happened, and it happened so naturally that I didn’t even notice it. By the end of the week I was presenting my proposition – not a master plan for the whole city, not a plan of a building or a street section, but a small vision, an opportunity to create a place out of an existing space, with minimal means, enabling the people to occupy it. It was my response in opposition to what seemed to be the expectation from the charrette organizers that required us to draw options of a masterplan, without any kind of palpable engagement with the existing fabric.
After all, I had nothing to lose. Breathing seemed the most natural process.
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There has been a growing trend in creating 3D stereoscopic films in the last 2 years, and I fear it is only spreading to other screen based mediums such as T.V. and Video Gaming. Other than the fact that nearly 1 in ten people will have problems enjoying a 3D films due to vision differences, there are other facts that I feel are more fundamental to the viewing experience.
Stereopsis and depth perception
There are several visual cues your eyes use to evaluate a scene. One of these can be described as Stereopsis – the creation of depth by the difference between each eyes stimulus. Combined with the ability to shift focus, your eyes can identify distance in a scene.
In 3D stereoscopic cinema your eyes are presented with two different images (synchronise projection) or a single image combining the two with filters to make the separation (the different hue glasses). When presented with stimulus your eyes create distance using Stereopsis, but cannot shift the images focus, this creates a nauseating feeling. As the viewer is unable to focus on different elements of the picture the film effectively leads you around the screen. In the trend for this technology to be used in high budget action movies where the motion occurs at a faster pace, it can be especially difficult to keep up with the point of 3D focus the filmmaker has created. This is contrary to traditional cinema where your point of focus is more like glimpsing a painting, a 2D representation of a 3D environment, which allows your eyes to glide around the picture effectively choosing your own screen narrative with out the need to strain focus as it stays constant. 3D is effectively nearly real enough to be confused with real, but not real enough to pass as real – Freud’s Uncanny Valley.
The illusion of cinema
The next problem is that of the screen itself. The screen is a window; it has dimensions, a projected scene, and mimics our visual breadth. However it doesn’t provide the viewer with periphery stimulus (unlike the full-dome), thus the flat small dimensional screen is condemned to acting like a window: a window into a new space or environment. Without periphery information and the obvious screen extremities, it becomes apparent when a visual actor hits the edge of the screen, or leaves the viewing space. As traditional 2D cinema acts like a window, the introduction of the 3rd dimension, which creates images that protrude the screen, is problematic.
In 2D when a visual actor hits the edge of the screen they are perceived as dropping out of view of the window (imagine seeing people walking by the window of a coffee shop as you’re watching from the inside), in 3D the visual actor is protruding the screen creating the illusion that something has come through the screen (like someone walking into the coffee shop). However when that actor hits the edge of the screen, now the illusion is broken (the person walks through a wall). Whenever 3D focus is pulled to a visual actor surrounded by screen in the scene, then the 3D effect is continuous, but when they find an edge a once whole visual actor is erased by the screen edge itself.
Solutions?
With this said there are some interesting developments in technology that can enable other types of 3D viewing. There is head tracking within gaming, which follows the user’s head movements and adjusts the angle of view respectively, tricking the viewer into believing there is a 3D environment – as objects can be viewed from different angles as part of your depth perception. 3D, like that of head tracking, which can also be found in the 3DS, Nintendo’s new handheld gaming device, utilises the screens inherent nature to be window like, and instead of having 3D elements jump out of the screen, they are set back into it – as if you were looking down into a much larger box.
3D, I believe should be taken responsibly, like alcohol, not every film please. Also please think more about the experience and not just setting standards up, and hoping it’ll be the next filmic capitalist machine.
Now my head hurts.
