A Scientist Predicts the Future

The was a really interesting read. Some of the things that were listed are absolutely incredible including the thought that they will soon be able to interact with out genes to let people live longer and cancer soon going to become something like the common cold. The problem though with this type of thing is that the population of the Earth will rise at a rapid pace because far less people will be dying while nothing is done about the birth rate. Something will eventually have to be done about that, maybe not in our lifetime, but still soon. This could mean finding new worlds to live on or inventing ways to combat pollution and resource management. This article also goes along with the sight video where it is actually kind of scary to think of how much the world is going to change.

Sight

This video was a pretty amazing look at what could lie ahead in the future based off a fictional story, but it is also a very terrifying idea to think that it could be a possibility. The technology of the augmentation is incredible, there is no denying that, but turning everything into basically a game makes things very weird. What makes up social interaction completely changes from what we know it to be today. As a person who does not necessarily like change, it is hard to think how much of society would fit in with this sort of thing.

Video Art

Performance Art

Golan Levin

Because I do not have a great understanding of computers or other technology, it was fairly difficult to follow on some of the things that Golan Levin was talking about in his Q/A. That being said, I found it pretty interesting to hear what he had to say about what was to come after Kinect, even if it was a pretty vague and round-about answer to the question. It was also hearing about his thoughts on what a degree is actually worth and I completely agree. In the field that I am going into, Criminal Justice, a degree is worth exactly what he said. It gets you to meet people and learn things that way. Other than that, most things that you would need to know or learn will be on the job.

The actual video and the effect that was done on Golan Levin was very interesting. At some points I just found myself staring at the various patterns that were made and the outlines that could be seen through his face.

Breakdancing

Breakdancing was brought about by the new kinds of music that were coming about. It took an incredible amount of skill in order to do and became a great form of art for people to express themselves.

Beauty in Error

To show "Beauty in Error," we watched the video "I'm not the girl who misses much" by Pipilotti Rist. This is a great example of embracing what is wrong with a video, whether it is messing up a line or the video itself having static or whatever else. This video itself is interesting. The vocals are something that get stuck in your head for no reason, the video is full of lines running through it, Rist is very blurry in the video so that you can not really make out individual features. All the changes throughout the video make it interesting to keep on watching, fast forwarding for different sounds or changing the filter on the camera for different colors.

Sheryl Oring

Sheryl Oring's website is fairly interesting. Looking through her different projects, the political aspect of some of her projects is very interesting, including "I wish to say" and "the birthday project."In, "I wish to say," citizens told Oring what to type out to the President, everything from their thoughts on the War in Iraq to things going on in their lives that they need help with. A couple of interesting ones came from Arizona in 2004 where the citizens said that they have been waiting to get electricity for their entire life and yet they still did not have any in their homes. Other ones such as "writing home" is just incredibly interesting in its own right. What Sheryl Oring does with her typewriter as art pieces is very unique and thoughtful way of getting other people involved in what she does. 

HOWL

HOWL was a poem by Allen Ginsberg. At the time that it was released, it was considered incredibly obscene by the public. This is something that at the time, 1955, was fairly common in all forms of art or entertainment. When I listen to it today, it is hard for me to see how it was considered obscene. Yes there is some vulgar things in it, but this is all things that can be heard in music today or seen on movies and TV. It is just about impossible to find something that is obscene to me. I have seen dead bodies with their head blow off from rifles, so hearing a guy say cock and balls is nothing.

Archetypes

An archetype is a constant idea or symbol that is universally understood. In literature, this would include things such as witches, gods, or kings. This is compared to stereotypes which are born within a society about a group of people. These can be based off of fact, but are not always true. This includes things such as: Asians are smart, black people like fried chicken, Jews are stingy. When the two are compared, archetypes are more for story telling and getting a general idea across to people while stereotypes are more for talking about people and getting a general idea about them.

Xerox

Part of this project was my love for hockey and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The hands in the middle are both my moms hands and my hands, showing the close connection I have with my mother. 

Grid Art

Because of my busy schedule, I chose to do fairly simple image. The image is made of roughly 2500 clear push pins. For my grid, I used chicken wire which I removed before placing everything.

Emak-Bakia

After watching this video, I can honestly say that I do not get it. All it seems to be is a bunch of random different videos put together to make one longer video, added with random music. It makes not sense. To me, it seems to be put together very incoherently or with out any purpose. I am sure that is not the way it was done, but it would have to be explained to me what is going on. This whole genre of art is confusing as to what it all is and why it came to be. While I am not trying to argue that it is not art, it is not any sort of art that I care for.

Steve Jobs 2005 Standford Commencement Address

Steve Jobs was a very inspiring man. His message of never giving up and living your life to its utmost possibility. Those people in life who have become successful were not ones who sat around and did nothing. Instead they were the ones who worked hard at what they loved to do and made sure that they would flourish. This can really be seen with Steve Jobs life and how he approached it. Everything from his founding of Apple even though he never graduated college to him being fired years later when the company no longer thought that his visions were in the companies best interest. He always continued on doing what he loved and trying to be successful and it worked out. This video is very inspiring for all people to watch, especially younger people who still have their entire lives to live and make an impact on society.

Wage War - "The Aftermath" (Official Lyric Video)

This is a lyric video that a friend of mine was hired to make for the band Wage War. He creates album art, logo designs, and videos for all sorts of music, though hard rock/metal is what he specializes in. He also just created a new Facebook page where he will put up more of his work, linked below.

Blind Cat Studios

Speaking of Turing Machine...

This is a song of the same name by the band, Traverser.

Alan Turing

Alan Turing is the man who came up with the idea of the "Turing Machine" which is the basis for the modern day computer. This machine had limitless memory and a scanner that could go through all the memory, reading what it went through and then come up with new information based off of that. It could decipher code and write its own program, which was the first time that it had been mentioned that machines could have some sort of intelligence. During WWII, Turing was part of the team that made "Colossus"which was a machine that was built to crack the Germans radio communications without them knowing that the code had been cracked. This was a very basic computer that had 1600 vacuum tubes, no internally stored programs, and was not a general purpose machine. Every time the machine was used for a new task, the wiring had to be switched out by hand. From there, many people started using programs from Turing to make there own computers. Turing's next accomplishment though was making high speed memory for computers. All of this work by Alan Turing led to what we now have in the modern day computer. Without him, we would not have computers as we know them today or we would not have the advanced computers that we have.

History of the Battery

The modern day battery is based off of the work of Alessandro Volta who invented the voltaic pile in 1800, which he made based on work from Luigi Galvani. The voltaic pile was made from discs of zinc and copper which had pieces of cardboard soaked in brine put in between the metals. This was able to produce an electrical current that was steady and reliable. Daniel Cell invented a longer lasting battery in 1836 that was used to power things such as telephones and telegraphs. In 1859, the first rechargeable battery was made which is what modern day car batteries are based off of. 1866 brought in the first battery that was able to be transported. Before this, batteries were considered wet cell batteries because the materials were not sealed tight. The dry cell battery was able to completely seal the materials and made batteries more what they are like today. 1881 brought in the use of a negative and positive side to the batteries but 1901 brought around Thomas Edison who created a battery that is used today, a positive side made from nickelic oxide and a negative side made from iron. This was called an alkaline storage battery.

War of the Worlds

This was a very interesting broadcast. When it was first aired over the radio, it started a panic for people who did not understand that it was just a story being told or for those who may have tuned in late. And I can see why they may have felt that way. While I was listening to the recording, I was working on some homework. At times, I was not quite paying attention so I would forget that I was listening to a story and not what it actually sounded like which was reporters talking about what they were seeing. After a second I would remember but it definitely shows how well the story telling was from Orson Welles. It was also good that there was no video to go along with because a video would have made it very easy to tell that it was fake. It shows how prevalent the radio was back then when that was the type of show that was on and the quality of it.

Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick was a revolutionary writer that completely changed the face of science fiction to what it has become today. He started writing when the ideas he was writing about were supposed to be perfect. While the movies were made after Philip had started writing his books, Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey are examples of what everyone thought of technology, space travel, and overall the future. Robots were subservient to intelligent, living life forms and worked perfectly doing whatever their jobs were. Space travel was fast, comfortable, and easy. Philip made everything abnormal, everything had flaws, one would even question free will. Prior to Philip K. Dick, the Minority Report would have been just about stopping crime before it happened, not about the corruption that came from using the precogs. We would not have movies scifi movies such as Judge Dredd and the Matrix which are heavily influenced by his work.