Her solo work is a color-blind test. I am quite immersed in it because I want to know how well my visual sense is. I felt it like doing the body check in my high school, but this time is digitally. The pictures there are not easy to identify the figures, so I need to spend a few time on find out the correct answer. It is good to make some challenges there to test our sensations so that we would fell better when finish the test. One thing that can be improve is to add a timer or scoreboard to record every participants spending time.
Ming
I’ve seen Ming’s second solo work, that was a football game but controlled by capturing players’ head movements, This time he still concentrates on making football game, but changes non-tactile control into tactile, by using game handles. One attractive thing of this project is it is versus game, which is rare in all of the works. This is also the first work I’ve played by using trigger outside the keyboard, I learned how to make connection with Max and the handle there through his patcher. It is easily operated with only compete in penalties, so that even player doesn’t understand football roles like me can play it.
Chi Kay
Chi Kay’s work is similar to the sensation game in Melbourne museum. It is a card matching game, I have spend a long time play with it in the excursion, as well as in Chi Kay’s work. I am addicted to this kind of game in my spare time so it is my favorite work, easy play but interesting. The interface is simple but I think red background is a little stimulating, change to a soft background color might let player concentrate a longer period. A further challenge point compare to the museum one is that Chi Kay randomize the keys as the triggers to each card, which is harder to memorize. It is good to make deep interactions.
My solo work is a piano-based musical game controlled by the keyboard, instead of actual piano keys. All you need is to follow the “code” on the right, and better to familiar with it so that you can play the song fluently. Participant can remain a sustained interaction with it because the song “Canon” is last for 5 minutes and it might take a longer time on the game since they probably make some mistakes while first playing. I wanted to make all things as simple as it can at first, was trying to make the typing order just follow the song flow, then participant can simply play the song in sequence. However, I finally changed my mind — why not make some challenges? As a result, I made the letters generally in the order of the order of real piano keys, but some are out of order since the keyboard has different amount and sequence as piano key. That needs to ask participant pay more attention on it and try more times.
3.2 Group Work
Our final group work is an escape game. We were thinking about how to grab participants’ attention and last for 7 minutes. We guessed a game is the best method to achieve it, easy but funny. When participants playing on it, they need to type the key words in the message box, we only give some tips but sometimes they need to figure out what key words should be added to trigger the next theme. There are at least two options in each theme, different choice makes a different consequence, but it is simply controlled because one of the option is always game over, and you need to start again, which doesn’t spend over time on it, just exactly within 5-7 minutes. We are using first-person angle to shoot it since it would getting more involved when experiencing the game. There’s a interaction with sound and video, you can even make a screen to trigger the horror sequence.
3.3 Reflection
To be more specific, our group work is describing an escaping process in a room. In regards to the plot, the main character (lets call him J) wakes up and there is a ghost in front of him, he needs to make several choices to avoid being killed. We leave the right of choice to audience, once they choose the wrong way, J is gonna be died, and game is over. For make the game more interesting, if you game over, it will automatically restart again, you can rebirth a thousand time until the story end, so don’t worry being killed. There are some little traps within as well, which requires audience think carefully to trigger the next scene. For example, the story stops when the door is opened after waking up, participant should correctly type “open” in the message box as a trigger, the story would continue. The story eventually ends unexpectedly — J doesn’t escape successfully, the story is repeating as a cycle. It is also an immersive game, through the first person perspective. We’ve record the breathing sounds, that creates a deeper nervous environment. Making options by audience themselves gain higher participations from them, instead of just watching an room escape process. I think they are more willing to play with it like this version, by using their intelligence.
Nevertheless, there are still many shortages that we should improve, for instance, the project we have made are not coordinated enough overall, and the post-editing both in individual video and Max are not as fluent as it can be yet. In addition, we create limited options since we need to control the playing time within 5-7 minutes, which reduce the level of enjoyment. The game interface is not beautiful as well; a good-looking interface probably brings a better playing experience to participants. In other words, I think we’ve got a good idea but lack of professional techniques to build a formal game.
This is the most interesting program I have studied throughout all studios, although it is difficult, Max is a good tools have the potential making various productions, I wish I can get a chance to study further on it. To sum up, I am thankful to our studio, Camille and my group mates in each assignment are really kind and patient, they taught me lots of technical skills when I felt confused, which brought me out from trouble. The harvest from this studio is not only improving skills in Max, but also my collaborative skills and creative potential.
His concept is using sound to control the amounts of camera windows, the louder sound audience make, the more camera window show up. It is a good combination of audio and visual contents, and audience can also gain a good interactive experience with the camera by making sound. Joey’s work is helpful for improving my innovation of the practicing in audio-visual media, which I think I an inspired to enable our group work to be adjustable in changing volume or amounts of animations. What he can improve might be make the appearance more attractive, such as changing background.
Kimmy
Kimmy’s work has four frames, two are in normal color and two are in black-and-white, they are reflecting with each other which makes me think about mirror. There will be a piano sound played when I move every time. It is quite interesting because I can see myself in four aspects. Adding sound makes a better experience in watching this. One thing I thing can improve is he can make different pitches within while moving.
Rico
Rico’s work makes a good interaction with me. The Pikachu is always moving with me! It has a similar idea as my solo project, which is discovering the relationships with the media and human movement, but this one contains more interaction than mine since it also uses sounds. Pikachu can make sounds according to my movement, I think that’s quite cool. Using popular figure is a good point for attracting audience. It inspires me that I can add the easy-recognized stuffs in my work to gain attention.
When I see the word “non-tactile”, I knew this would be a hard task for me, because there is a more limited range to produce our artwork. The good thing is, we’ve learned some ideas and techniques of Max in studio at the start of this assignment. Before I started my solo work, I was running out of idea, cuz the theme I could choose was only between audio control and facial control. Therefore, I found a large amount of Max tutorial on Youtube to stimulate myself to get idea and finally, I found a tutorial (showing below) which is kind of relevant.
It’s about using a funny icon moves along with the figure in a media piece. In this example, the used icon is a potato, and within the frame is Trump, who’s talking intensely. And the potato is automatically identified Trump’s face and keep covering on his face. I think the idea is funny. Even through this is no interaction with audience, I can develop it to be interactive. Thus I changed the video piece into camera, which can capture audience in front of the screen, and make the icon follow the audience’s face.
The technical aims I want to reach would be using Max to build the loop. Although this is not a complex work (for me it is), it still needs to be built with several kinds of functions such as identifying face, reading image, etc. One thing that I did not achieve is that I want to combine audio and facial control into my project, which would be imaginary look like when a person framed in the camera, the sound would play and if the person is outside the frame, the sound would be disappear. But it is more complicated and I didn’t find out the way to achieve it.
2.2 Group Work
In our group work, we also did a lot of research for the tutorial. What we wanted to do at the beginning was to make something similar to an artwork we’ve seen in NGV, which is about changing the light gradually by people stepping on the lighting surface. That’s tactile and we originally desired to use sound instead of touch the surface, but after watching thousands of tutorial, we couldn’t find a way to do it, so we changed our mind eventually. This time we still focus on sound, but creating different effects. Below is the tutorial we found.
This is telling us about how to make changes in visual effect. And we gonna use a similar technique to do our work, but we will build it with sound. In other words, our work should be something like changing different effects by audience’s sound. In terms of the technical process, we should put at least three different effects there so that we can gain more interests by seeing the transformation within; the function of sound would be more obvious as well. Another objective we are focusing on is the visual effects, we want to make it attractive so we will keep concentrating on creating some suitable effects. The biggest challenge for us might be how to make the sound to be the controller.
2.3 Reflection
Our group firstly decided to make a 3D animation like the artwork we’ve seen in NGV, and after learning the 3D alien model, we were confident that we can make a similar animation like that. But during the work, we hardly found some similar 3D figure and we couldn’t match the found materials with our concept, so we eventually change our mind. When we found the effect transferring theme, we all thought that’s amazing, that could be easily attract people’s attentions by the variable animation flashing.
Basically our finished work is showing some different effects changing by sounds. We have added a piece of music within as well. And this is a confused part during processing because we firstly considered that the effects are both controlled by the audio recording as well as the music itself, but finally we found that the effect moves along with the music because its soundtrack is gained to the audio recording. The reason we add that music is to get a better vision in effect — if there is no music, there would be some unexpected consequences such as less or no animation if audience do not present the sound properly, or the computer doesn’t gain the voice clearly. So the music here will be played constantly, and when audience make some sounds, they can see easily see the change in animation.
Talking about the technical method, I learned how to read media pieces from websites in Max by using “jit.gl.” object; change color by changing data; change scale and position such as zoom in or zoom out by data too. Another important basic is that we need to add the downloaded materials into search path so that Max can read it. Compare to the first assignment, the connection in objectives, triggers, output and input messages are more complicated. I usually made mistakes while processing, so we practiced thousand times to make it on the right track.
Overall, I feel a bit satisfied with our work, because I’ve acquired a further understanding of media interactions, and started a new area on it — non-tactile. What we achieved in this assignment is it is quite interactive with the animation that can be easily seen the transformation along with the voice change. And we’ve got some fancy animations effect which increase attractions. And I have also developed the knowing of sound in interaction. However, some of the objectives we originally had haven’t achieve at the end, we were forced to change minds on account of some technical reasons as well as conceptual. For example, we couldn’t make interactions on 3D figure so that we change to 2D animation. In my next assignment, I want to figure out more on it, and keep finding out how the sound make effort in media interaction.
(Notes: there is no screenshot of Max because they couldn’t be uploaded in this blog post. I don’t know why)
We found an interesting room in NGV. It contains thousands of diamonds on the ground there with the coloring light changing gradually; the other surfaces are mirrors to reflect the diamonds and participants; surrounded with loud music, which overall looks like a dancefloor. It makes interaction with the participants because they can see themselves moving with the music through the mirror, they can react with music and light. In the description, it is based on the makeup products, such as lipstick, eye shadow… Its creator, Darren Sylvester says he desire to look good on people, he’s trying to show the season colors of that brand by changing the light colors. (He said he doesn’t want to mix the color so the colors transfer gradually)
Our group gonna make an interactive work base on this artwork as shown. One thing that Darren’s work doesn’t attached is the lights do not change according to people’s movement. When participants walk on the floor, the light wouldn’t move with their steps. I think it would gain better interactions if we add the triggers from participants. Since it should be non-tactile, we might use sound or facial expression as the trigger.
My individual work is basically defining how the sound influence or interact with visual materials; so I put three music pieces and one video in silent and edit in Max. My conceptual purpose is to let audience get involved in my production through choosing any of the music and apply it in that silent video by themselves. The three music I used are totally different in genre—classical, rock and blue jazz, which is easier to make comparisons within sounds. Furthermore, it can show the interactions between sounds and video, so that the visual and auditory effects generated by their interactions are more obvious.
In terms of my technical aims wth Max, I make my work looks succinct so that audience can clearly understand each icon’s representation (honestly it’s because I’m not familiar with Max cuz I’m a beginner). Firstly I need to figure out how to switch the sounds and the video is playing at the same time. I added two playlists, one is for music and the other is for video. Then I need some message boxes to notice the system which music is gonna to be played. I also add a toggle for playing and stopping the video, as well as an volume control linked with the audio playlist. The most challenging thing would be adding the special effect on video, I need helps from Camille.
1.2 Group Work
Referring other artists’ work, we found interested in building a story and invite audience to develop the storyline. We focus on the interaction between audience and media. We want to tell that audience is active and they can either give order or make response to the computer. I think our work would be really interactive because audiences’ role here are the directors — they can choose what’s gonna happen according to their minds.
To achieve our conceptual aims, we need to make a general structure of the story, think about all the scenes to provide choices for audience. And we should find out how to place the options in Max and how to link it to the next scene through clicking each toggle. We have a huge amounts of toggles uses in our production — each step has around three options. I think this is the biggest challenge for us. The transitions between each part would be another challenge, we have pre-edited them in Premiere and should finalize in Max. Lastly, one or more relevant sounds are needed to be our background music and we should either make it or find the resources.
1.3 What Have We Done?
When talking about interactive media, the first thing comes to my mind is all the messages are transferred in both-side, computer can also feel audiences’ thought and respond immediately. In this case, audience become active, which I think is the biggest difference and improvement compare to traditional media. Contribute to our artwork, our group originally had a conceptual aims about presenting the interaction between auditory and visual media. However we found some similar ideas in class; therefore we change our direction — tactile interaction with audience. Finally we took the shoots in Melbourne museum, and our theme would be kind of an interactive tour there. It works tactilely with operating the keyboard to make order. The following result is different depends on the choice you’ve made, which means the exported information is controlled by audience.
During the work, I learned some technical skills with Max, which can achieve using simple program to operate a complete media production. What we need to do is change the unidirectional conveying into both-side. We make an overall story and let audience complete the story by choosing the direction and developing it. Audience here is acting as the first perspective, which is more interactive rather than just control it as a third-person perspective.
In my opinion, we did well in our concept. It is a good way to explore the interactive relationships between human and digital world. In addition, we have more a variety of scenes to be the options and make use with Max, which helps gain experience in this editing system. However, I found the work is not that good as my imagines through we finalized it. Firstly, it looks a bit messy — the signs are not clear enough, and the composing overall is not that simple. Besides, the videos are not uniform, some of them are not in the similar mode as others (such as the pace, the filter, camera angle…), which causes a bit disharmonious overall. Also, I think we can make better background music to match the videos. To improve our work, we should recompose the structure in presentation mode, and create relevant music for that. We should make a clearer instructions for audience to understand and operate.
I found an interesting interactive artwork. It is created by Daniel Leithinger and Sean Follmer, from MIT. Their production is called “scrying pool”, for future imagination. Their concept is the future computing is tactile, users can actually touch and interact with the digital world. The surface of the production is 3D changes shape, users can interact with people that far from themselves.
It allows to create a 3D model of an abject by pressing the pins. You can make a rough shape on it and the pins will notice the handler on the other side of the controlling computer, which is because all the pins is connected to the controlling computer. It can transfer the 3D information to digital figures.
Before finalizing the last project, I chose the role of GFX and vision switcher. For one thing, I have been the GFX in practice, which therefore I feel more familiar with. On the other hand, I am really interested in the control console since I firstly entered the control room, so I want to learn how to use it.
Another reason of my choice of the role is I found the importance of GFX and EVS. They belongs to extra or additional resources. It is necessary in a talk show because of a few reasons. One is for supporting the host’s argument, generating stronger effect. The other is for enhancing the satire and humor.
I personally really like the graphic in the weather report. It is not only presenting the Cyclone Malcolm but also the political situation/conflict by using the public figures of Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull.
During the rehearsal, I made a few mistakes on being the vision switcher for segment 1. I did not switch the between cameras and turn to the EVS properly. The biggest reason is because I was not familiar enough with the script and I didn’t know that there were some changes on camera. And I did not control the EVS while practice, so that was the first time for me to operate it, which made me more nervous. After talking with the director and confirmed the changes, I finally improved and solved the problem. Processed on segment 3, my role becomes to graphics. I felt it less stressful than the previous role because I have more experience on it and to be honest it is much easier to be operated with.
Through doing this project, I realize the importance of collaboration in a TV studio. A clear and specific division is an essential process. Communication makes improvement. Every class provides chance to find the existing problem and solve out. Everyone makes efforts to generate the final production. When I met something I did not understand, my teammates were willing to help me and taught me patiently. And the samples we’ve watched in class are good resources to learn. Overall, The New is a Joke is a good opportunity to learn the professional techniques in TV studio, and I obtained the best experience for the further practice.
A good plan is the essential component of a talk show. What we firstly need to do is determine the theme. Talking about the theme, my favorite segment in our Early Afternoon show is the Kim Jong Un part. I think politics is still the best category to make mocking points. We all know that he is currently the top leadership of North Korea, dominates the biggest power there. But who know he grew up in Switzerland and is a big fan of Chicago bulls? This is funny that a man who intensively hates western culture but has these experience and hobby? Using satire is a good way to to explain his life and background, and make comparison to his political aspect. Kim is a good topic since he is a public figure who has topicality with causing a serious of explosive political problems such as nuclear issues. He is constantly making conflict with other countries especially western countries.
Apart from making humor, satirical news makes it possible to remain attached to the political system but keep certain distance of it without a sense of political agency. People who feel burned by the political present can engage the intensity of the political moment through comedy news, while holding it at a distance at the same time; this distance now serves mainly to allay political discomfort (Helphand 2017).
As a result, comedy news is a good way to maintain the transparency of political system, as well as keep effective communication with the public. However, mocking on politics is illegal in some nations such as Egypt and Thailand — the shows are banned, some hosts are even arrested (Hansler 2017). In regards to these countries, make sure the topic is not that sensitive to tough their taboos. Overall, we can see how important a theme brings to the show; therefore producer and staffs should decide the theme carefully before making the production.
