System Update Outtakes

Watch Brandon embarrass himself.

www.youtube.com/frusterbatedboi

Digg plz.

Hey, friends,

I gave the final big push on Like a Donut yesterday and added almost all the features from the original want-list, including integration with Digg. :) Since the videos have unique urls, they're set up to be dugg individually; so I've been using ninja turtles as the promotional guinea pig.

So please have a look and Digg it! ... Well, only if you like it. I hope you do.

I've asked a special guest to join us this Thursday! His name starts with 'P' and ends with 'hill.'

Video on Flickr

Flickr pro members can now add 90 second video to their photostreams.

http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/04/09/video-on-flickr-2/

Take Better Pics With Your Mobile Phone

Here are some tips for those of you shooting with your mobile phones.
http://www.thenokiaguide.com/my_weblog/2008/04/getting-the-m-1.html

Ding, the donut is done!

Hey, friends, Like a Donut is feature-complete and ready for your scrutiny!

I'd love to hear what you think - particularly about things that don't work as expected, work better than expected, or don't work at all. :) Please take a second to leave a comment or two, either here or somewhere on the site.

I'm going to put up another dozen videos on Friday, and three per week after that. There's a few fancy-pants extras still missing (draggable playhead, draggable mini-windows, streaming the videos, a theme song that won't get me sued), but all the building blocks are finally there.

Many thanks once again to Brandon, whose idea it was to let users suggest links -- the more I thought about it, the more that became a pretty central concept of the site. :)

Shift Happens

Some neat facts about what's going on in the world.  It might get you thinking.  Hope you can get through the fiddle music.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/shifthappens

New media that's decidedly *not* free

Admittedly I'm kind of posting for the sake of posting here, but perhaps this is suggestive of new media we might see with the slow-but-sure evolution of consumer hardware.

Tantalizing! But you can't have it now, unless you're Warren Buffet or something. That is a lot of zeros.

Now for something completely irrelevant, but which you might appreciate: I saw this guy in Hot Fuzz and couldn't help thinking, Holy crap, it's Dean Terry. Also see here 10 seconds in.

Meme-worthy

Poking around Youtube, I found a series of funny takes on internet memes from knowyourmeme.com.
For example:



So I put forward this discussion point: do we strive to make our content meme-worthy? What are the effects of our meme-dom (did our content become a meme because it's that good, or because it's laughably ridiculous)? Your thoughts, please.

Read and comment

This is a bit long, but it touches on one aspect of blogging that drives me nuts... bloggers who block people who make comments that counter the post.
http://tinyurl.com/3yha6q

I Found Your Private Stuff and I Posted It Online

I'm afraid this isn't very relevant, but it does have to do with forging connections online over bits of personal media; and it has a voyeuristic aspect to it, which reminds me of PostSecret (well, and YouTube and Flickr and all kinds of online user-generated content):

I Found Your Camera

There's potential for serious privacy problems here. I'd think most people would object to having their private media published without their consent -- although, in this case, it does help reunite people with their lost photos, and the submitters do seem to respect the owners' privacy as much as they can.

But how about the note from someone saying she wished she'd lost her camera? Is she interested in taking part in this ad-hoc community? Maybe this has some compelling social networking aspect aside from the lost-and-found. Or maybe she's just lonely and wants someone to look at her pictures and contemplate her life.

Is anyone here familiar with geocaching? This also reminds me of the caches with disposable cameras or memory cards in them, asking visitors to take photos of themselves to be posted online later. Hooray for ad-hoc communities that form around a place, but not a time.

Click!

Click! is a photography exhibition that invites the general public to be the jurors. This is an interesting concept and experiment. Check it out and be part of the experiment.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/click/

Metaverse Roadmap

This is a site where people like Edward Castronova try to study and forecast the near-term (2016) future of the Metaverse (including Augmented Reality, Lifeblogging, "Mirror Worlds" like Google Earth, and mash-ups of these realms). Metaverse Roadmap.

http://www.metaverseroadmap.org/

Distributed Narrative

Here is an interesting way to tell stories using digital media. I grabbed several urls from the site as it's a bit vague IMHO.

http://www.wetellstories.co.uk/
http://www.wetellstories.co.uk/stories/week1/
http://www.sixtostart.com/

10 tips to make your online videos better, and lighting tips

So it seems that many people have questions about lighting and other aspects, and we looked at a few tools in class, I just thought this video gave some nice and easy tips on making your next video a success.





Also, there is a video that deals with the color of white light, and light temp, these are more than likely foreign terms to most, and this is a great tutorial on getting your desired effect out of video, and photos.

Something for you to play with

Another one! You might want to play with this a bit and see what you think. Not sure how long before you get to sign up (you have to request an invite).

http://iminta.com/

Tips for Success in the Web Video World

This is a bit simplified, but it's good for you to hear from someone else the importance of building and maintaining your audience.

14 Ways to Broadcast Yourself Live

This is a bit old news, but it's a nice compilation for those of you who are new to this area. Please read the article below, and post your comments here. I want you to seriously think about the issues, such as copyright, etc. and post a thoughtful response. You don't have to have all the answers, but I want you to consider the issues.

http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/02/14-ways-to-broadcast-yourselflive/

Helpful links

Here is a list of links for you to peruse.
Photo/Image Sharing sites
Flickr
Fotocommunity
DeviantArt
iPernity
Saatchi Gallery
My Art Space

Video sharing sites
YouTube
Blip.tv
Vimeo
Kaltura

Other resources
Digg
Twitter
LinkedIn

Resources to track your stats/traffic and see who is linking to you
Site Meter
Technorati

Feel free to post any additions you like.

Survey for Chris

Here is the link to Chris' survey. Please take the time to do this. This is an assignment. There are only 8 questions.
http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB227JJ9BHGAA

Second Life

I saw a few of you playing on Second Life during class today. Please send me your avatar names if you don't mind so we can find each other there. I built the Metaverse Gallery on the UTD Island, and I curate it. The gallery is down right now because we are rebuilding the UTD Island. However, when it's up and running again, some of you may be interested in showing there.

My avatar name is Juliette Cordeaux.

AND - just my editorial comment - don't let anyone tell you that Second Life has nothing to do with web presence. The Metaverse is what we see as the future of the web where these worlds will merge. We're seeing the very beginnings of it with v-commerce. Companies have a virtual presence where you can look at their products. Deciding to buy takes you back to the web to purchase because at this point it doesn't make business sense for most companies to deal with the Linden conversion. But it's coming. ;-)

mid-century abstract photography

By CHARLES DEE MITCHELL / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News
Ten years ago, Burt Finger, the owner of Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery, received a phone call from a woman who invited him over to see her mother's photographs. Art dealers often receive such calls, and the prospects are not often very promising. But when Mr. Finger arrived at the woman's home, he found the walls filled with remarkable abstract photographs taken mostly in the 1950s.They were the work of Ida Lansky, and the research Mr. Finger and his gallery did with Ms. Lansky's archive has resulted in the exhibition "Texas Bauhaus," which is currently at the Dallas gallery after its first showing in 2006 at the El Paso Museum of Art.
In the early '50s, Ms. Lansky was working on a degree in library science at Texas Woman's University in Denton when she took Carlotta Corpron's photography workshops and got hooked. Ms. Corpron, who had her own retrospective exhibition at the Amon Carter Museum in 1981, was devoted to the theories of the Bauhaus, the radical German art school that promoted a union of art, design and architecture.
When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus in 1933, many of its teachers relocated to Chicago and opened the New Bauhaus, which became over time the Institute of Design. Years before Ms. Lansky enrolled in Ms. Corpron's classes, her teacher had brought to Denton such Bauhaus luminaries as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes. Their theories that a photograph should be about the play of light and not the objects photographed flew in the face of the social documentary and new objectivity that formed the American mainstream, and they along with Ms. Corpron made North Texas a surprising stronghold for mid-20th-century experimental photography.
"Texas Bauhaus" includes work by Ms. Corpron, Ms. Lansky and Barbara Maples, another participant in Ms. Corpron's workshops. Walking through the exhibition, you see a clear line of influence as each of the three women brings her own sensibility to processes developed in Germany in the '20s.
Some of the photographs appear to be multiple exposures, but control of the photographic moment and not manipulation of the negatives is at the core of their practice. It is often difficult to know exactly how a particular image was produced.
Photograms, a camera-free method of producing images by placing objects directly on photographic paper, play a part in each artist's work. Light boxes, at the time a recent device developed by Nathan Lerner, tightly controlled how an object would be presented by isolating it in a neutral setting under directional lighting. Within the light box, mirrors might be used to multiply the image, or the final print might be reprinted in reverse to create a diptych.
For a process known as reticulation, the negative was soaked in water until it began to break up, creating an eerie sensation that solid objects were alive with organic movement.
Both Ms. Lansky and Ms. Maples did some work with architecture and interiors, but for the most part the three worked in the studio with props. Ms. Corpron's Nature Dancer (1944) is nothing more than a splayed Chinese cabbage, but her photograph has the elegance and drama that recall contemporary images of Martha Graham and other modern dancers.
Eggs, seashells and small sculptures also appear in their work, but the object photographed would often be difficult to identify without the titles. Ms. Maples, with such titles as Plastic Boxes, Plastic Jars and Paper Form, is the most informative, although throughout the exhibition there are enough untitled works or those identified merely as "abstractions" that you often have little idea exactly what you are looking at.
Staying true to their Bauhaus roots, however, Ms. Corpron, Ms. Lansky and Ms. Maples are never so much concerned with what they are photographing as how they are doing so, and trying to guess what has gone into each image is somewhat like worrying over how a magician does his act. It is better to sit back and enjoy the show.
All three create images that are at times sensuous, amusing or dramatic. They are equally capable of dissolving physical objects into displays of light and shadow or bringing order to seemingly random piles of stuff. Ms. Lansky used interlocking asbestos tiles, a children's toy of the day, to build puzzlelike architectural models. Ms. Maples crumpled paper with great finesse. For her Flowing Light images, Ms. Corpron left the camera shutter open to create complex spirals and rushing lines of light.
In today's digital world, we are accustomed to photographs that have been manipulated into high-tech wonders of both scale and sophistication. "Texas Bauhaus" shows the roots of those impulses in work that could have been produced in the studio or on the kitchen table.
Charles Dee Mitchell is a Dallas freelance writer.
Plan your life
"Texas Bauhaus: Experimental Photography" continues through Feb. 9 at Photographs Do Not Bend, 1202 Dragon St. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Free. 214-969-1852, www.pdnbgallery.com.

Art or Telematic Labor?

Interesting article regarding art/commerce via virtual environments.

http://tinyurl.com/2d2gnr

Locating Story:

Locating Story:
collaborative community-based located media production


web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit4/papers/miskelly.pdf

Garage Cinema Research Group

Garage Cinema Research is a research group lead by Professor Marc Davis at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) that is focused on creating the technology and applications that will enable daily media consumers to become daily media producers.

http://garage.sims.berkeley.edu/research.cfm

Why are video artists so reluctant to show their work on the internet?

http://tinyurl.com/2kqpcu

Syllabus Update

Changes to the syllabus reflect grading percentages. I had them backwards. No other changes.

Welcome

Welcome!

Here are the links for the project examples I showed in class last week. I have also added a link to the syllabus on the right side of this blog. You can also find it on the UTD website.

http://www.flong.com/projects/telesymphony/
http://yellowarrow.net/index2.php
http://www.justin.tv/
http://valleywag.com/tech/justin.tv/hes-just-a-camboy-so-why-cant-i-stop-watching-247327.php
http://askaninja.com/
http://www.haque.co.uk/skyear/information.html

http://purplestates.blip.tv/?utm_source=jumbotron&utm_medium=jumbotron
http://thistown.blip.tv/?utm_source=featured&utm_medium=featured
http://emac.utdallas.edu/mobile/