Friday the 5th Homework...was 3 pages as a word document

Matt Ellman
ENGL 3116
Winokur
11/5/2010

The Creative Mind of Paul Neave

            Neave.com is an interactive website offering a variety of activities for the users to immerse themselves in.  Its goal is to allow the computer to expand the users creativity and imagination, while at the same time, remaining a creative medium for the creator, Paul Neave.  In a section of his website, Neave explains what the website is and what he as the designer does, “I'm an Interaction Designer, which is a fancy way of saying I make interactive tools and toys: websites, games, web and mobile applications, experimental interactive art, installations and intuitive user interfaces.”  Each tab of the website is unique in its creativity, whether it is a collage of randomness or a virtual reality flower.  It could be argued that this website is nothing more than an extremely lazy means of going through normal experiences, but Neave argues that its purpose is to provide an alternative, creative means of those experiences, “I love dissolving the barriers between technology and people and making the digital world more simple, fun and human.” 
            The first feature of the website is Neave Television.  In this feature, Neave hopes to model the human mind.  The television is supposed to follow a stream of consciousness, jumping from one idea to another.  It is comprised of short, streaming video clips on a loop that have nothing to do with each other.  After watching, the user is encouraged to follow a similar thought pattern, and think of other viral videos that fit in to “not fitting in”.  Though this is not an interactive part of the digital playground, it uses the videos’ pictures and sounds to inspire the watcher to creativity similar to the creators.
            Several of Neave’s more creative and interactive hybrid pieces of art use noise as the key interface.  A microphone on the computer is required for these to work, because without the programs able to pick up outside noise, the screen will remain either black or stagnant.  These programs allow the user to expand on the creator’s art.  While Neave provides the lifeless canvas to the user, he also provides the user with a tool to turn the canvas into something.  The programs react differently and uniquely to the user’s noises, allowing the user to be original and create something that nobody has ever seen before.
            The first and least impressive of these noise-activated programs is Neave Bounce.  Once opened, there is a black background with a bunch of different colored balls of varying sizes resting on the bottom.  As the user talks or more specifically, plays music, the balls bounce to the beats and different sounds being played.  This allows the user’s media to become multimedia, manipulating the different colors and shapes on the screen, and allowing the user to creating moving art as well.
            Neave Light is the second noise-activated feature of the website.  Neave light is very similar to Neave Bounce.  It starts with a black background, and as noise is added, an orb of light starts to shine in the middle of the screen.  As the beats and tones of the music change, so does the orb.  It will begin to shine in waves rippling out from the middle of the screen while it changes ambient colors.  This again serves to change the users media into multimedia, allowing the user to create new art.
            This final noise-activated feature of the website is Neave Dandelion.  This activity is unique in that it has the user actively participating in it.  Before the program opens, Neave gives a message, “Sit and blow at my digital dandelion seeds.  Not quite as fun as the real thing, granted, but at least here you have an endless supply of fluffy blowballs.”  After clicking the message, the screen changes to a view of an empty field with close up of a dandelion.  The program is designed to pick up the noise of the user blowing air towards the computer screen.  The harder the user blows, the more noise the computer picks up, and the harder the flower is blown back a little bit while some of the seeds blow off and float away.  The user can continue to blow at the screen until the dandelion is bare, at which pint a new flower will replace it.  The concept of an interactive, virtual flower is unique.  There may be programs where a user can point and click on a “water the flower” button to make the flower grow, but with Neave’s program, the user need not touch any part of the computer at all.  The flower also reacts in real time to the user’s actions.
            Neave’s website is all about user interaction and combining modes of media.  Some of his other features involve the user personally contributing webcam footage to a wall of different video screens each having a different effect.  The website is not only an experimental piece of art, but it allows the users to contribute to the experiment, or just experiment on their own, exploring new patterns and media combinations that nobody has ever seen before.  It is a truly unique experience.

internet sites and articles

Any online role playing game: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/342735,games-let-be-be.html "Who hasn't at least once dreamt of being someone else, of being able to fulfill every wish or even change the entire world with just the tap of a wand? Such dreams aren't hard to attain in virtual online worlds." Online role playing games allow the user to step out of their earthly shell, and into another world where they can be whoever they want to be. The use can be someone totally new, or can be themselves, fixing any self imperfection they see fit. darwindating.com http://articles.datingsites2.com/alternative-articles/What-is-Online-Dating.html Darwin dating is a website designed specifically to match attractive singles with each other, in the hopes of making attractive offspring. This weirdly specific dating sight is unique i that users need to fit a certain mold, age and looks, in order to become members. But if the stigma of online dating is that it is for the opposite sort of crowd, why would such "attractive" people need to use the internet to meet more like themselves? Totalfratmove.com http://ezinearticles.com/?Is-the-Internet-Ruining-Our-Personality?&id=2757706 Total frat move is a website, much like the popular "fuck my life" internet craze, where users post a quote or story that fits into a particular stereotype. In this, the user's goal is to seem like a stereotypical scc fratboy, and be as obnoxious and cocky as possible. Upon reading the posts, one will realize they are not all true. But why would people be creating these false personas and posting them online?

Avatar Critique

Matt Ellman
ENGL 3116
September 3, 2010

                                                David Bell and Digital Representations

            I’m not familiar with photoshop or dreamweaver, so I decided to go the simpler route and use the southarkstudios.com avatar creator.  As hard as it is to create an accurate avatar from the “South Park” website, I tried to stay more true to what I look like and what I wear, as opposed to other avatars  that let the users be whomever they choose to.  A perfect example of this would be an avatar from World of Warcraft.  However inaccurate or outlandish either of the representations are, David Bell would argue that they are still the users’ identities because of the cyberspace medium.
            My avatar is of a similar age to me, having an adult body.  With a lighter skin tone, and short, dark hair, I chose the option to make it look as much like me as I could.  I even went so far as to adopt a similar style of clothing for the avatar.  When I go out, I usually wear jeans, a button down shirt, and a sport coat, something my avatar and I share in common.  As it is a close representation, I am able to post it on my blog giving the viewer an idea of what I look like, while still hiding behind the computer screen.
            If I were to play World of Warcraft, and adopt an elf or wizard as my avatar, that would also be an accurate representation of myself too.  Controlling the character in it’s simulated world, the avatar would have my personality, or at least a side of my personality.  Because the avatar would be my customized character, doing what I choose, it would be a representation of me, however it looks.
            Bell’s reasoning towards accepting both representations as viable is his idea of “identities”.  He believes that online, you don’t communicate firsthand, and nobody actually knows your true identity, or if it is even you they are communicating with.  Rather, when communicating via cyberspace, he believes that everyone has many different identities, that all work together.  The “South Park” representation of  myself  would be one of my identities as well as the World of Warcraft representation, because nobody but myself is able to know what I actually look like or what I am actually like.  This would work the same way for almost any other representation of myself on the internet.  If I wanted one of my identities to be so, I could create an avatar of myself and put it online being nothing more than a picture of a banana.

Avatar

Captain's Blog: The First Week of Class

I have recently departed on a long journey in this strange, new academic endeavor. This frightening and wonderful new place, ENGL 3116, seeks to challenge me with it's technology and whatnot, but I will remain strong and resist. The concept of digital media as text is new to me, and I will apply all of the literary theories to it that I can. But first...I will have to figure out how to use a blog.