THE AGE OF THE ROBOT digital cultures and technologies post

The age of the robot is here, officials predict that by 2015 every home in Japan will have their own personal robot, we already have an array of pet robots on the market ranging including fur real pets, pleo the dinosaur, robo-dogs, and the paro- a robotic baby harp seal, 200 units were manufactured initially with a retail price of $4,400- they sold out in less than 50 hours.

The paro was designed with the elderly in mind, pertaining to give them comfort and company as many of them suffer from loneliness and depression and are increasing finding themselves in care homes with little company from loved ones. The seals have proved to be a huge success as tests have shown that they decrease stress and loneliness in the elderly by giving them a companion with over 30 A.I sensors and the ability to recognise their masters voice and hand gestures.

The pleo dinosaur pet has over 38 sensors that feed information about cleo's environment to one of 8 processors that can handle a collective 60 million calculations per second! A complex computer programme determines what the dino does next, whether he sneezes, turns he neck 180' to see who's scratching his back or peers over the edge of a table! the possibilities go on.

 Alsok- the worlds second largest security company have even developed a line of robo-cops as a result of Japanese youth shying away from 3k jobs- referring to the Japanese words for labour that is dirty.

The guard robots, one version of which is being used by a client in southern Japan, can detect and thwart intruders using sensors and paint guns. They can also put out fires and spot water leaks.

It is perhaps no surprise that robots would find their first major foothold in Japan. Japanese dolls and toys, including a moving crab using clockwork technology dating to the 1800s, are considered by some to be among the first robots.

Rather than the monstrous Terminators of American movies, robots here are instead seen as gentle, even idealistic creatures epitomised by 'Astroboy', the 1960s Japanese cartoon about an electronic kid with a big heart.

Kazuya Abe, an official at Japans NEDO Institute which co-ordinates national science research and development on robots: 

"People are and will be living alongside robots, which are seen here as more than just machines. This is all about AI [artificial intelligence], this is about the creation of something that is not human, but can be a complement or companion to humans in society. That future is happening here now."

All the robot's I have ever dreamed about are already here! I have been waiting for the day that Robot babysitters become available to the general population, and although my kids will be grown up and married when such a thing happens it is still amazing to know that all these things are happening. The babysitter Robot is called: PaPeRo and can distinguish different children's faces and then has the facility to call their parents in case of emergency.

Just think it is predicted that by 2020 personal robots will no longer be a thing of anime, they'll be here! Imagine, people walking around the street with their robotic personal assistants, no need for a phone anymore, your robot can do all that, you may be able to video call friends just by telling the robot their names who will then find them in your address book or by using some sort of online network in which we may all be on- (every aspect of our lives could be on a sever somewhere- as started by the online software sites) and then as your walking with your robot you can see your friend in a touch screen panel on your robots stomach! (or should i say area that represents a stomach in the human form) your robot can also be equipped with some kind of payment chip so you don't have to have one and it will be more secure on the robot, this means the robot can be scanned when you want to pay for anything, be it food, clothes or train tickets! 

you will be able to store all of your music, photo's and files on the robot, so bye bye I pod! your robot will play music for you through a speaker or you can connect wireless headphones! and there's no need to worry about roads whilst listening to your music as your robot will be your eyes! 

So there is yet another use for him, imagine how handy he/she would come in for the health sector? assuming we will still have blind people in the future, (as there are already technologies in place to return sight using a camera attached to the optic nerve!) the robot can guide them safely over roads and protect them from crack-heads and the like, the same goes for the elderly and infirm, the robot can take them shopping, help them dress, hell they could even hop on the back of him for a ride on experience! the robot can also have a handy storage safe for putting all your valuables and shopping in!

With voice and face recognition your robot will only respond to you and follow your orders! so there's no need for housework, cooking, cleaning, picking the kids up from school, posting mail, etc.

But what does this mean for us? will we become the fat wobbly regressed beings depicted in Disney's Wall E? so absorbed in technology that they were not even aware of walking and dancing? swimming? talking to one another in the real world as a pose to a virtual one? this is more than a strong possibility, as technology advances are we taking a step back? maybe the future will epitomize a matrix style way of living? maybe we will willingly transgress into that virtual state becoming nothing more than a brain in a jar? 

who knows, but i for one can't wait to see robots everywhere and for them to become affordable and accessible for everyone! then the next phase is the question of morality, at what point do we draw the line on using robots as slaves? as they become more advanced and human looking, they can certainly be programmed to seem to think independently and make choices for themselves, Is this how we were created? If we create an uber race of robotic beings that can technically out-live us and rule the world does that make us gods? 

to be discussed further in my next post and how robots can be used in the city of Leeds.

Pylones Gifts Story Boards

Here are some story boards for the flash animation I am going to be making, (god help me I still can't use flash) for Pylones gifts. I thought of a Russian Doll effect, Dancing around the screen, Items being grouped into "gangs" and then competing to be the best, eating each other, diving into a basket and then the idea of them being a christmas present that explodes and adds color to the scene before hiding in the present again before being spotted by a human.

The slogan would be something along the lines of: "Pylones- Bringing Christmas to life" as I chose to look at this more from an advertising point of view.

(this is ridiculous, I have been uploading 3 small images for 20 minutes now, and this happened last time I tried to upload, it's an absolute joke, how I am supposed to keep up with my blog if I can't even upload? arrrrrrghhhhhh!!!!!curses curses curses!!!) (this is pathetic, i thought macs were better than pc's? I had this Bull**** with my pc, now the mac too!? it's been nearly half an hour now and i want to smash everything in my sight!) ah F*** this, I can't upload my F****** images, I give up! what a F***** waste of valuable time! I could have done loads of stuff instead of wasting my time on this piece of S***. I bet if i go out and leave this on like this they still won't have flippin up-loaded! I spent over a grand on this macbook WTF!!! arggggghhhh!!!!

OMG they just appeared! about F***** time!

Animation- New and Old

We were asked to look at some animation as part of our animation brief, something historical and something contemporary that has perhaps inspired us for our current brief? 

The first thing that comes to mind is Satoshi Kon's 2006 Paprika, I have blogged about this before, however thought I would mention it again as it was the first thing that sprang to mind when I got this brief. I have chosen to base my flash animation on Pylones gifts, which are quirky household items and more that have been personified to the point where it is not clear what they actually are. I decided to use this to my advantage and have the items as characters in a short animation, that way I  could give them more of a "story" as such, as there is not really alot you can do with toasters and umbrellas in terms of a narrative. well you could if you have some sick animation skills, I seem to recall pixar or one of those companies actually made a short movie about a toaster, but that's them and this is me! someone who can barely use flash! Anyway back to paprika, It is Satoshi Kon's 4th movie following in the success of perfect blue, millenium actress and tokyo godfathers and Is based on an invention known as the DC mini in which a user can penetrate another's dream as a result of a revolutionary new form of psychotherapy. Paprika is the alter ego of a doctor atsuko chiba, created to provide dream therapy illegally to her patients. I can't really explain the film in any more detail as it just goes completely crazy and it takes a couple of watches to fully "get" it, but visually the film is stunning as with all his works, and has a focus on the delicacy of the human mind as with all his features including the spectacular series paranoia agent.

The music for the film is what stuck in my head above all else accompanied by the crazy dream like imagery, particularly the parade scene which although colorful and child-like in essence has an underlying horror type feel that seems to stick in your head. The scene show's inanimate objects and cultural icons along with musical instroment playing animals marching in a parade.

For a historical piece I have chosen to look at Jan Svanmajer's ALICE which scared the S***

Out of me when I saw it as a child! I'd never seen stop motion animation before and just that alone freaked

me out, the awkward and un-natural way in which the rabbit moved alongside his and other objects in the

films hideous appearance was enough to scare me half to death! well it can't have scared me that much

as I still watched the whole thing, I think it just freaked me out a bit and I watched it for curiosity more than

anything else, It was a big step from the usual disney and cuddley teddys that I had to see this grotesque

rabbit and old antique furniture and knick knacks, It was like nothing i had seen before and It made me feel

cold.

It still does, I can't stand it in truth, but I can now appreciate what he has done for the world of animation,

some of his works are amazing such as one I watched the other day called dimensions of dialogue, although

gross and not one bit visually pleasing I found it very creative and resourceful and found myself admiring

the sheer volume of thought and effort that must have to go into his works.

so here is a clip from Alice as my historical piece below:

F-L-A-S-H!

For the past 2 weeks we have been looking at flash animation, although i must admit i am still completely in the dark about it, I have cs4 at home wheras we are using cs3 at school which doesn't help as the overall layout/look is quite different. I think i shall revert back to cs3 until i get the hang of it! 

So i feel very behind the rest of the group, as I still haven't come to grips with the software. If only we were given handouts to accompany the session, then i wouldn't need to spend so much time trying to take notes! I could do the work and forget about the notes! this is how it was done last year, (or the year before?) when we were inducted into photoshop- we were all given detailed step by step handouts that covered everything we were doing in that session!

Oh well, I wish i'd applied to be student rep now cause these are the sort of things i would be asking for cause I feel it would benefit the whole group, and it makes sense to have notes as reference, I hate being the only one taking notes also cause it makes me feel as though I am the thickest one who can't process data in my head so has to take notes! 

anyway i just wanted to post some animations I have been looking at which were doing primarily using flash.

this first one is a students first attempt at flash, I think it's prety cool! 

In this one below, which is another student animation, I like the way 

he/she has used transparency in the opening shot of the bushes parting 

and in the end where you see the gunslinger fade.

This last one here is from an animated show called "Broken Saints" which started

out as an internet series about the inter-twining and revolving lives of 4 people,

the series became so popular that the creators were given backing to have the entire

show recreated on dvd, they stuck to using flash but have tweaked the show here

and there.

The show has now won the sundance film festival award and is over 5 hours long.

500 word summery on Subliminal Seduction (although i have gone over again despite being asleep at the time)

I wrote this at 4am this morning and was actually physically falling asleep as I wrote it! so I hope that it makes sense!

Subliminal messages in advertising took place over 2 key periods, the first in the late 50’s focusing on James Vicarys claims that he had inserted split-second “invisible messages” into films telling people to “buy popcorn” and “drink coke”.

This was discussed in the book: “Hidden persuaders” by Vance Packard (1957) in which he talked of a new jersey cinema that played split second clips to customers urging them to purchase branded goods.

These images cannot be seen by the naked eye but are supposedly taken in by your subconscious mind and then later transferred to your conscious mind- making you want to do these things or consume goods.

Vicary fed the press with information about how he had influenced movie goers with his subliminal techniques and just to add credibility to his claims he citied studies that verified his claims that subliminal advertising had increased popcorn sales by 57.5% and coke cola sales by 18.1%.

Packard focused on industrial psychology being used to manipulate the general public into wanting to buy things.

This caused a negative stir among the masses, cold-war era consumers feared this “new” brainwashing and mind-controlling technique, Newsday called it: “The most alarming invention since the atom bomb”, The national association of radio and television broadcasters banned the use of subliminals by it’s members and the NY senate unanimously passed a bill outlawing the technique.

 

All of this media attention only served to confirm that subliminal messages not only existed but that they were a powerful and dangerous tool, It also served to make Vicary a very rich man, and far from shunning the controversial new practice corporations clamored for his services.

Movie theaters, TV and radio stations began trying out subliminals, running subliminal slots and sub-audible radio time, where they would charge for “soundless” slots for their “hidden” messages to be embedded into peoples brains.

However the media eventually became suspicious of subliminal persuasion tactics and as a result the FCC held an official demonstration in 1958 limited to government officials and the press.

The phrase “eat popcorn” was flashed at 5 second intervals during a TV programme, however afterwards no-one found themselves to be craving popcorn, needless to say, James Vicary eventually shut his business down, “subliminal projection company” in June of 1958, later admitting in an interview that he had fabricated the whole thing to boost business.

Little did he know that that “fabrication” would become the pre-cursor to a much-debated controversial subject that would be around for years to come, especially in education institutions.

Wilson Bryan Key rekindled the frenzy that was “subliminal advertising” in the 1970’s with his book: “subliminal seduction” which unlike Packard’s book, which concentrated more on industrialism (and was backed up with industry sources),  Key ignored the industry and went on to claim that pretty much every ad out there for liquor, cigarettes and other such everyday items was riddled with hidden imagery such as skulls, sexual imagery and donkeys that he believed had the power to invoke emotion and cause consumers to buy things because they were subconsciously being told to.

Keys belief was that the general public could not see these messages as every element of these ads had been carefully selected with a certain banality to ensure that they could not be seen for what they really were.

Again there was a media frenzy of religious and political speakers striking out against this “subliminal conspiracy”, legislations were put in place to try and prevent subliminal selling.

One of the things that came out of this was the surge of subliminal self-help tapes ranging from “acne aides” to “parenting help”, even prisons were using them to try and change the ways of their criminals!

In subliminal seduction Key discusses the hidden messages in various ads and their effects and goes on to say that the only way you can protect yourself from this type of mind invasion is to learn how to decode them for Key believed that the only way for them to be effective was if the viewer was consciously unaware of them.

However Moore disagrees and argues that subliminal stimuli are often so weak that they are not noticed by observers and that if they are- they are nullified by all the other stronger stimuli present at the same time” I have to agree with Moores statement, I find it absurd that a weak image that cannot be seen or processed by your conscious mind can have that much of an effect.

In the 1990’s subliminals had returned but this time were known as a pulse or a visual drumbeat, the 80’s saw subliminals become a marketing gimmick and now we have to wonder just why they are in ads? My guess is just to keep the “idea” going and for a bit of fun, I certainly don’t think that this subject should be taken too seriously and I seriously doubt that subliminals work, possibly in a lab, strapped to a chair with nothing else to see but subliminals, but not in the real world where we are faced with daily distractions and a richness of visual information at the ready.

Notes to accompany video project

Notes and Storyboards to accompany "how to" project

second life, third life, 4th life??

We had a stab at second life last week, (I was supposed to write about it then) and as we are meant to write our thoughts about it well here i am writing this post!

I wasn't sure what to write, It looked ok, having played alot of 360 games lately such as dead space, bioshock, assasins creed etc i struggled to find it interesting visually, but the concept behind the whole 2nd life thing is "interesting" I haven't really gotten into it in enough depth to give a full evaluation, I played around with it briefly last year and after meeting a series of virtual chav's, (yes they exist here too!) and some annoying naked women who were going around performing sexual acts and strip-dancing, (yes they can do that too) I just thought to myself, "what the hell I am doing here?" and decided to stick with the real world, plus my home PC at the time was absolute garbage, (smashing it up a few months ago felt so good in such a bad way) which does not help! If your going to go on it make sure your on a decent machine!! not a garbage toaster like i was on! I don't know much about specs! The cool thing about 2nd life is that you can fly and teleport from place to place, but so far i've not found anything interesting that i would want to spend time looking at.

Customizing your avatar is fun, and you could easily spend hours faffing about it! I chose a basic avatar this time as last time I used second life i remember actually spending hours on this aspect! It's funny for me, how "exposed" you feel say for example if you took your avatars clothes off, stupid i know, but that avatar is representing you and i feel that some users could become totally sucked in to the place and just practically live there, after all you can build houses, sell cars and work! 

when I was there the first time, there was a group of people i was talking to, some of them were giving me gifts, such as better hair, shoes etc which i thought was very nice of them, hell that doesn't happen in the real world! then a girl there took her clothes off and started erm spinning her "tassled tits" to put it frank! then she said she was off to work in this strip club(!) and who was coming to watch, a few of the guys there went with her and apparently they would have to pay real money to get in! I just thought the whole thing rather bizarre! I also went for a ride in someones car which was quite cool and the car could fly, so this person was in effect controlling my avatar which was pretty neat, I didn't have to hold down a shift key for example to stay in the car and we were talking along the way!

There's obviously alot more to 2nd life than meets the eye, and i think as technology advances it will become even better and of course everyone will have it as they do a mobile phone! or it could be that it will always just be an online virtual community such as facebook that some people will use and others won't, i mean alot of people, mainly the older generation are just starting to "get" using a computer and the internet, so will they absolutely hate 2nd life? or will they prefer the whole 3d environment aspect? one of the main things with it is that it just comes across as a game, so gamers will adapt to it straight away, whereas non-gamers will be drawn to the colourful environments and themes of escapism.

Speaking of games I was just playing the first silent hill game made in 1999 for the playstation that i paid £15 for on E-bay! I won't be playing anymore of it simply because the controls have advanced so much now that it's too frustrating to return to the old ways! I did this with the earlier resident evil games and a few others, paying a fortune to get them all, (as they are now advertised as "rare classics") but now they're just sat there, there's no way I'm going to play them cause i just find the controls so annoying! but i guess i just have them for collection sake.

Anyway I got to the part where you chase the girl into an alley way? go through the metal gate that says dogs beware? then they've done some really cool stuff with the camera angles and mood, so they have this creepy music and the camera keeps changing, (these are set cameras) so one minute it's behind you, then it's above you, or below your feet etc and your cutting from one scene to the next, as you journey through this strange angular alleyway, (it took me ages to get through it this time round, walking into walls, instead of turning left as I walk, the character just stops moving and turns to the left!) on one part the camera shakes as your coming around the corner which I thought was mega cool,  It reminded me of a more recent title for the 360: "Alone in the dark" in which alot of inventive camera angles are used and as rubble and stuff is dropping alot as you play there is the camera shake thing too, (this game was highly frustrating due to awkward controls, but look at how bad they were back in the 90's! and we managed fine then, I could easily fly through such games but now due to the advances in controls it's almost impossible to step back and why would you want to?) then you get to the scary part in which you see a skinned corpse hanging on a railing then you are attacked and killed by 2 dwarf like obscenities.

Playing a while ago i felt no emotion whatsoever, I just thought the music was cool, and was more aware of the technological aspect of the game than anything else- absorbed in the game? no. When I played this back in 1999-2000 I remember being shit scared at this part! and when seeing the skinned body being shocked at it's grotesqueness! but looking at it now it was just a pixelated blob with angular edges and no detail! In bioshock all the dead bodies stay on the floor and you can kick them and they'll flop around, or you can shoot them in the face or set them on fire and throw them at things, (not that i enjoy that kind of thing...ok i do but that's the whole point of a game! lol) anyway my point, (I'm not sure that i even have one or what I'm talking about anymore) Is just how fast technology grows, that was made just before the millenium, a year later the PS2 arrives with games such as timesplitters, final fantasy, tombraider and then pushing the playstation to it's limit with the stunning "shadow of the collossus" and the visually breathtaking okami, (following in the footsteps of cartoonish style zelda- windwakers for the gamecube but adding a japanese scroll painting style of art) and then of course 2006 sees the release of the current range of games consoles, such as the x box 360, the wii and the playstation 3 introducing online and vicarious gaming. So Imagine what will be out there in the next 10 years! (que all the sci-fi films) anyway I'm going to close here, I've been rambling on for far too long! 

500 word individual evaluation

I started this project by generating some visual idea's in my sketchbook for a possible how to video. I wanted to go with something interesting, maybe even a bit bizare, I had some idea's along the lines of how to catch an alien,  how to annoy a cat, how to be a samurai etc. I decided to go with how to loose weight, thinking of those silly weight loss adverts on the shopping channels as my inspiration. However as i went along the darkness crept in as usual and i ended up making the whole thing a little dark, and during the animatics it got a little abstract toward the end so i aimed to try and keep it simple for the live-version.

I started by creating storyboards, scanning them into photoshop and then piecing them together as an animatic using Final cut pro.

This gave me more confidence in using final cut and proved to be crucial to my overall work during this brief.

The first half of the brief was to create the animatic which realisticley can be done in a day, I think i did get the first one done in that time but then instead of moving onto the live-video i wanted to do the animatic again not happy with it's visual style after seeing some of my colleagues work.

For me i'm glad i did this, because i'm much happier with the second animatic, although the key element in it was the sound which is the same in both, the visuals are more pleasing and have a more professional look as a pose to the scruffy and random images used in the first animatic.

For the second half of the brief, making the live-video i feel i could have done alot better but am still happy with the outcome due to the sound and editing involved. This was alot harder than it needed to be due to the amount of footage i had recorded, for example, I had hoped to film each scene individually from different angles, and then they would be edited together to form the full film. however my partner in this case was not the most patient of people and being the actress in the video also i found difficult to direct them, finding that they would go straight into the next scene without pausing, therfore some scenes did roll on when i would have preferred them to be individual.

I had forgotten most of the settings on the camera by the time it came to filming, but to be fair i was only talked through this once before and did not get the opportunity to take notes.

This resulted in some very poor quality shots in some cases- especially with lighting as i did not know which setting to put the camera on and because i had limited time with actors i just had to film whilst they were available.

for example the scene where the postman is delivering a package, that was a random person i saw outside and asked them to do the part, i didn't have time to get the lighting right or anything as they literally had to stop what they were doing and play a part in my film for 2 minutes, i could not ask them to do it again and again so i had to use the first and only shot, i also missed them knocking on the door as i should have hit record some seconds before the knock! 

I enjoyed the editing process, i found it very redeeming as i felt the footage could have been better i tried to make up for this by putting as much time and effort as i could into editing the clips to go with the sound, and trying to make them flow a bit better.

One scene worth mention was the eating scene at the start, when filming i had a fit of the giggles, and could not stop laughing, we tried this scene 5 times then the actress lost patience and refused to do it again, as a result of my laughing of course the camera was shaking and kept getting put down as i just couldn't film at one point for laughing. during editing i had to pick out all the bits that seemed "sturdy" and put them together, i like the overall effect this has given, as it starts with her eating on the beat of the music and each eating clip comes in and out with the sound.

I am happy with it as a piece of experimental student work definitely, as i feel i did the best i could with what i had and my time-limitations plus the fact i started the course late and didn't have a partner, as a professional piece of work- no, it would need to be alot better, but i feel i could easily achieve higher standards if i were to do this type of work again which no doubt we will be!

If and when i do this kind of work again i will plan a work-flow and make sure i get the shots/footage i want as this is vital for later editing!