New Media Exploration - The Nouse

While searching for new media designs I came across reports about the progress of voice and facial recognition technology. While most of us have seen the new voice activated stereo and GPS systems in cars, this technology will be greatly supportive for many people with disabilities.

Virtually every facial feature has been mined for its interactive capabilities. Researchers have attached electrodes to eyes, eyebrows and temples allowing users to engage with the world via their computers with winks and sideways glances.

One of the inventions is the "Nouse" a computer mouse that allows users to move a cursor around the screen with gentle movements of their nose. Blinking the left or right eye replaces the customary left- or right-mouse click.
The Nouse, used in combination with perceptual vision technology tools like Blink Detection and Facial Memorization and Recognition, offers a new vision-based and hands-free interaction with computers. A camera mounted on the top of a computer takes a picture of the user's nose, then uses that picture to track the movement of the user's nose – to make the cursor move.

Although most of the voice and face recognition technology is still in its prototype stage, the experts predict it to be fully functional within the next 10 years.

new media exploration

I chose to do my new media exploration on the Film project "LUCID DREAM" which I presented in class. This is a project mostly created in After Effects and photoshop. You can see that photoshop was used to clip out different sections of the photos and knock out backgrounds. After Effects was used to do all the animation of the pictures including the zooming, panning, motion tweening etc. It is a snowboard film that is put together with all still photography images by Ian Ruhter. It is has a unique style that allows the images to come alive. The whole idea of the project came to Ian in a dream. He always pictured his photography images were moving. To keep prices down on the project they sought after design students and interns to help put together this overall film. This is a great short film, go find yourself a copy.

Design Exploration

The websites I chose to critique for the design exploration are for artists Aaron Jasinski and Matthew Mahon. Aaron Jasinski's portfolio is displayed in a unique fashion, using both timeline and circular navigation. His paintings and music are cleverly archived in these forms respectively. You will notice that the simplicity of the website, bright colors with carefully chosen fonts on white background, make this interface appealing and inviting. When you click on the "Paintings" header, your interest is immediately drawn to the array of colored bars that are numerically arranged. It doesn't take long to realize that the intent is to display his art in the same manner you would find posters at a store - neatly filed away. Click on any bar, and a full color depiction of the painting is unveiled. At the top you'll find that the artworks are even categorized,and that the bars under the "Sketch Book" portion are no longer in color but in grey scale. This attention to detail makes it enjoyable to continue perusing this site.

The look and feel of this website carries over to the"Music" page of Aaron's website. This section neatly organizes the music he has composed by genre. The user is granted control over each excerpt. Each segment provides you the ability to pause the music,or increase and decrease the volume.

The only aspect that detracts from this site are the Google Ads at the bottom of each page. From a design standpoint, this takes away from the elements that make this site so creative and unique. In other words, the Google Ads make the site seem more ordinary and commonplace. Oftentimes, I personally associate this with websites that have little or no direction in design.

Navigating this site is not only user-friendly, but very smooth. The upload time is quick, and thus makes you want to continue looking through his pieces. Overall, this website has a harmonic and almost soothing balance one might associate with in places such as a gallery. The website is clearly well thought out and nicely put together.

The second website I visited was for photographer Matthew Mason. This website is very similar in style to that of Leo Burnett. Navigating Matthew's portfolio is fun and user friendly. Simply click on any one of the photos, and it's as if the camera zooms in on it. One of the nice attributes that this particular site offers is the very brief hint to"click outside the photo to zoom out" when your mouse lingers in the white space for a few moments. This allows the user who may not be familiar with this type of interactive interface the ease of moving from picture to picture. Pictures are not the only focal point of Matthew's site. He also carefully places creatively designed information on his dashboard, such as a 1983 drivers license that has been modified to read "Future Photographer." The clean visual appearance, sense of balance in design, and smooth transitions make this website captivating. The webmaster made a good choice in selecting a solid off-white color for the blank space. The negative space compliments the portfolio by not taking away from what is most important - the art itself.

British Flash!

--Warning! Some of the content on the following sites may be offensive and NSFW---

One Flash animator I'd like to share is Joel Veitch, whom many people know through his recognizable animations in certain television advertisements. His website is

http://www.rathergood.com

which has several of his animations, many of which are set to the music of his own band, the quality of which is for you to decide. However, also on the website are various other animations, showcasing his usage of Flash. Many of these feature cut images that move together in a way that shows their having been cut apart, rather than the smooth animated motions many people might expect. Despite this, the animations work rather well, and often quite amusingly. The first animation of his I came across was this one:

A Frightened Boy

Also leading me to the discovery of Ivan Rebroff.

Another British website that Veitch has had a lot of interaction with is:

B3ta

Which is a user-interactive board with heavy flash content. The site also features weekly challenges for the users to create .gif images based upon the challenge. Be warned, the content is on the level of high school humor...or regular Hollywood fare. Still, some of the creativity in the images is amusing:

Challenges

And besides, who can resist the Sleepy Kitten Song?!

New Media Exploration - Modular Cellphones

For my blog on new technology I'd like to introduce the class to modular cellphones. Dov Moran originally created a usb thumb drive company, which he later sold to sandisk for 1.5billion dollars.
Sometime later he hooked up with an Israeli startup company Modu and together they've created the worlds smallest cellphone.
The really neat thing about this device is thats it's not just a cellphone. The actual phone is smaller then a credit card, but the really neat thing about it is that it installs into other devices. Specifically "jackets". So with the cpu of the modu cellphone it can slide into jackets that are car stereos, gps systems, mp3 players, etc. The nice thing about this is the price of the jackets is some what cheap. While the phone is expected to be around $200-$300 retail the jackets should be $20-$80.
Having sold cellphones for sometime I can see how this product will really take off. Unlike the iphone and other devices that try to fit as many gadgets(often not well) into one device as possible, this gives people the chance to custom make their own. Jackets are also simple to make and will be picked up by many 3rd party companies, so not only will they be cheap but unique. Also every few years people change contracts and now you won;t need to change your phone every time also or so people are expecting.
This product is expected to be out sometime next year and will be available in Russia at the end of the year. Here is a teaser - V

Modu

Artist Exploration

For my second blog, I’m going to introduce Anteprima’s website. I like their work because they use a lot of techniques that we learned in the class, and I could recognize that we will be able to create like this design with these techniques.

http://www.anteprima.com/archive/2007ss/

This is the website which is related to fashion. It is really easy to look for the clothes, bags and everything by clicking on the items. They used the technique of scrolling through the items by clicking the next item as we had learned in class. It makes the image bigger, and we can see a lot of pretty stuff. 　Every time when I move the cursor over to the button, the text is flashed elegantly. I didn’t see any prices on this website, but I can tell that the bags and clothes are expensive, because this studio made those items look really gorgeous. I like their website because it is organized nicely. We can see so many beautiful pictures on the website, and this is easy to navigate through.
I found some websites which were also created by same studio.

http://www.anteprima.com/archive/2006fw/

http://www.anteprima.com/fw07/
Customers would enjoy shopping on this website because of their techniques!

Design Exploration

2 Advanced Studios http://www.2advanced.com/#portfolio/bytype/demos
is an interactive design firm based in Aliso Viejo, California whose current website design appeared in August of 2006. 2 Advanced has always been known for their stylish neo-ancient homepage design, but their latest redesign takes that to a whole new level with a background mural that is truly inspiring.
This company takes a bold and unique approach to flash animation and design. They were voted one of the top design firms in 2008. They use background mural that are very different than what most design firms have used in the past. The company spends a considerable amount of time designing the background illustrations and utilizes visual appealing graphics based on visual artistry and integrates sound, ease of use, and certain uniqueness to their work. The designers have taken into account changes in technology software. They incorporate illustrator into their work and use a variety of software platforms to help illustrate, draw, design and implement their clients work. Their client listing is very impressive from Ford, Bacardi to Lexus and Oakley sunglasses. One of the challenges that the company seems to overcome is the constant changes in style, design and creative approaches that their clients may want. 2advanced.com has design a template that a client uses in helping the design team design the content, style and overall goals and objectives of companies such as Ford and Lexus. This company seems to incorporate every facet of flash graphics and animation, from font styles, shadowing and color swatches to delivering high end visual appealing graphics and animation. A major challenges facing the company is keeping up with changes in technology and trying to create cutting end flash graphics and animation. Overall, 2advanced studios is a step ahead of its competition.

http://www.agencynet.com is an agency that specializes in Website development, Viral marketing campaigns, video production, visual effects 3-d and other technology based applications. Their client list is very impressive with such companies as HBO, BBC, golf Channel, Budweiser and others. All of their production takes place under one roof where they can keep their cost in check, they immerse themselves in branding and know as much as they can about their clients and to create award winning work. They were voted one of the top design companies in 2008 for their visually appealing flash graphics and creative design work. The company uses a variety of techniques such as motion tweening, video editing, Photoshop, illustrator and visual appealing interactive work. I am sure it very challenging for the design to to implement different interactive media to help illustrate their clients goals. However the company seems to overcome these challenges and create visual stunning design work.