Essays for "We Create Identity" & "Web Technology"

I have completed my essay for We Create Identity, as well as for Web Technology. They both deal with how I experienced the subjects, as well as which decisions I made in the assignments we had to do for these courses. The essays can be found in my online portfolio: here is the "We Create Identity" essay, and here is the "Web Technology" essay.

I'll be back

On Monday the 25th, Anton returned after a two week holiday in Portugal. In the morning, we had to present an almost working version of our interactive video. To some groups this wasn't really a problem, but to others, our group included, this posed a challenge, as there was no Ximpel-app ready to show. Our group had just finished editing, so there was no Ximpel code written yet. As Anton pointed out, this is not a smart strategy to follow, since you don't get the most out of Ximpel by starting late. Instead, it would have been wise to do some tests with Ximpel early on in the project, in order to deliver a professional result in the end. This is indeed the danger of perfectionism: when you wait with providing something presentable until the very end, because you think what you currently have is not good enough, you end up with something that hasn't been tested thoroughly, and hasn't had a lot of feedback.

In the afternoon, we discussed the exhibition on the 29th. After some discussion, we agreed on having one table per group, so that every group could present their own interactive video, with a decoration fitted to the theme of the product. As it turned out though, Inéz and Heleen had already proposed this format, but it turned out to be impossible to set up the event in this way. Due to the fact that Anton made us think that we had some choice in how the exhibition was organised, a lot of negative critique was outed to them. The thing I have learned form this is that it is best to either let a couple of people organise an event, without any interference from anybody outside of that group, or you could be transparent about what choices are being made and for what reason from the very start, adjusting things according to feedback. I think that for a study like CreaTe, the last method is preferable, because profiling ourselves is one of the things we have to learn.

The exhibit itself was, in retrospect, a success, since everybody got the chance to show their work, and people didn't loose their attention, since changing groups every half hour kept things fresh. After our demonstration, I was fairly happy with the end result, as the audience seemed to have fun with our product.

I'm fishing in the rain...

Today we filmed the fisherman scene for our interactive video. In this scene, a fisherman will argue that the lake he is fishing in should be enlarged by removing the barrier in it, allowing for more water and oxygen, with more fish in the lake as a result, because he hardly catches fish nowadays.

Since none of our group members had fishing equipment readily available, we asked Jelle Galgenbeld, who is in the Alien Invasion group, to bring his fishing gear and pretend to be fishing in the lake. Having somebody from another group in our video is actually an advantage, as there are now more unique characters in the video and the viewer will be less confused as to which actor represents which character. The weather today was overcast and drizzly, but this might actually add to the dramatic qualities of this scene.

In the first take Jelle only presented his arguments to the main viewer, but we thought that this version lacked action. To improve this, we asked him to start the scene by casting his fishing rod, followed by his arguments in favor of removing the barrier restricting the lake. You can see how our project is coming along on our website under "project progress".

"Let It Be"

On Wednesday we have started filming our "problem areas". The first problem area in which we filmed was the reed land. On this reed land there are puddles of water. As a result, it becomes problematic to maneuver harvesting machines on the land, making farming on this ground economically nonviable. Another problem this poses is that harvesting is not thorough enough, causing some crops to keep on growing, which results in overgrown land. To solve all those problems the farmer who works on this lands wants to remove all the puddles of water from the land.

Another point of view is provided by the hippie, who wants nature to follow its own course. The hippie states that, by removing the water, the flowers will not be able to survive, and the birds won't be able to drink water on the land anymore, thus decreasing the bird population.

To make abundantly clear that the person maintaining the land is a (real) farmer, we have dressed Alina in a stereotypical way, with an apron, a fork in her hand and a straw in her mouth. Another element which we thought is typical to farmers is talking indistinctly. So in the final video she will just mumble and occasionally utter a comprehensible word. To convey her actual message, we will use subtitles.

Our hippie will also be represented in a stereotypical fashion, having a "let it be" attitude, as well as repeatedly making the peace sign during her appearance. We also have a shot of her just naively hopping around, although we do not know whether it will end up in the final product. You can follow our project progress here.

Creating the trailer

This weekend I have created the trailer for our interactive video, which you can find on YouTube. This trailer has a couple of goals. Firstly, it has to make the viewer interested in the concept of our interactive video. Secondly, it should show a piece of the content we have filmed so far. Thirdly, it mustn't spoil too much of the story, because otherwise the viewer has no reason (or less reason) to watch/play the interactive video.

To accomplish these goals, I first had to select some content from the things we have filmed so far. I thought that the scene of the "Farmville-freak" playing Farmville like an addict was the most useful scene for showcasing our progress so far, as well as the scene that is most suited to present our concept, so I decided to use that. I edited the video in such a way, that the viewer notices that the freak is passing a lot of time playing Farmville - you see the camera zoom in on a clock indicating that the time is 12:43 at the start of the gaming session and zooming out from a clock showing that the time is 19:43 at the end of the gaming session - and that he is only interested in his game, therefore ignoring the mess in his room - the fact that he throws the cans on the floor is emphasised by the close-up and tracking of one falling can afterwards.

After I had edited the video, I complemented the action with a bit of text. I wanted a minimum amount of text before the video content, otherwise the viewer is confronted with a lot of words without any action and loses interest. So the only text you see before some action takes place is the name of our group, followed by the text "Thousands of people are addicted to video games..." After that, the scene of the freak follows. Hopefully, this will grab peoples attention and make them want to see more. Of course they won't see more in the trailer, but instead they will just see text highlighting the story of our interactive video: "What happens when they get in touch with Nature?", followed by some information about the video: the title, The Fairytale of the Farmville-freak in the Peculiar Park, and when it will be available (unfortunately we couldn't be more specific than "soon").

In the end I had to put some music behind the trailer. This proved to be the most difficult part, because on the one hand, I wanted the trailer to show a part of our actual interactive video, which meant I had to use the Farmville Theme Song during the gaming session of the freak, but on the other hand I wanted a very coherent video, which means only using one piece of music during the whole trailer. I uploaded both versions, so that the other members of the group could decide, and in the end we took the version with the Farmville music.

Status updates!

On Saturday (25/09/2010) we got an email from A. Eliens, who told us that he had written something about everybody's performance over the last couple of weeks. Eager for feedback, I checked my status update.

First of all, it turns out that he is pleased with my blog so far: "excellent blog, extensive, well written, and informative, with sharp observations." Thank you for that, Mr. Eliens. I always thought that the majority of the blogs are stupid, because they just aren't very well written or interesting to people who do not directly know the person writing it. Because of this, I always do my utmost to write in a way that is interesting not only to me, but also to everybody doing this programme or thinking about doing it, and perhaps even to people not really interested in Creative Technology at all.

Secondly, he thinks that I should talk more in class: "good presence, but could/should speak out more!?" I have to agree with the fact that I haven't spoken up a lot in class until now. For me it always takes a while to get comfortable with speaking up in front of people, but as you get to know them better, it becomes a lot easier. So I hope that at the end of this course this remark will be a little more positive, and I will keep updating the blog as frequent as I did over the last weeks.

"My wife bought an iPad, and I love it"

Today's lesson started with a confession from our We Create Identity teacher: "My wife bought an iPad, and I love it". After this confession and some warm-up videos, it was time for each group to present the concept of their interactive video. We were the first to present the concept behind our interactive video, you can see the presentation here. I was intrigued by the wide variety of concepts that were presented today, although it turned out that we were not the only one using the lazy gamer nerd as a starting point for the video, as Reality Interacts Gaming (awesome concept by the way) uses the same starting point for their video. I'm really looking forward to all the interactive videos that will be produced!

In the afternoon everybody had to tell the audience (individually) about his or her role in the process of making the interactive video. My role is mainly maintaining the website, which of course you can find here, and I have also made the trailer for today's presentation, which I will discuss in another blog post. When everybody was telling about their role in the project, it became clear to me that a lot of people hadn't started with Ximpel yet, either because they thought it was too difficult or because they didn't invest time in it yet. Unfortunately, our group is also guilty of this, but I hope that problem will be solved by the end of the week, as Tom said he will look into it. The fact that people had trouble was confirmed by the question of Sven at the end of the lesson, who just bluntly asked "How do you start using Ximpel?". I hope that everybody will get Ximpel working in the end, because it is a shame to see all those great ideas hindered by some technical nuisances.

Shooting in the mud

On Wednesday we filmed the second scene for our interactive video. The main character cycles to the park, falls into the mud, meets the Park Manager and hears about the problems in the park. We also tried to film the prologue with the "unknown evil force" in daylight, but in the end we decided that it will probably work better when shot in the dark, because that gives a much scarier atmosphere. Last but not least, we have picked a name for our video and our group. The video is called "The fairytale of the farmville-freak in the peculiar park" and it is produced by "La Rev Film", which is an anagram for Farmville. You can watch our project progress here.

Recording the first scene

Today we finally got to shoot our first scene for the We Create Identity project. Everybody had really been looking forward to starting with the actual filming instead of just sitting down to brainstorm and design the scenes.

In the first scene, a boy, or a girl, depending on the choice of the viewer, is sitting in front of the computer, and passes many hours there playing Farmville, striving to get the highscore. When the main character reaches the second position on the Farmville score chart, he or she gets a message from the Park Manager, asking for help. But since the main character is obsessed with and addicted to Farmville, he refuses to help the Park Manager out and decides to keep on playing instead. Unfortunately for the main character, right at that moment the Farmville server breaks down, which is coincidentally located in the park. The first scene ends with the main character furiously biking towards the park.

As luck would have it, I ended up being the male main character for this scene, and I had a great time thinking of ways to make the main character that much more emotional and interesting. Due to our approach to script writing, the scene we filmed was not fully fleshed out before we started filming, but it got additions or alterations on every take based on the quality of the take before. When we were all happy with the end result of one shot, we moved on to the next one.

At the end of the day I think I can say that all of us were pretty happy with the outcome of the first scene, and I am really looking forward to shooting the next scene on Wednesday. You can see how far we have proceeded with our project here.

CreaTe meets...

Today we got the chance to meet some people from the industry. Each professional told about his experiences in the field and how they could be relevant to us. The point of this meeting was getting acquainted with some people who work in the industry, in order for us to set up projects in the future that are both interesting and relevant to society, with their help. You can see the list of speakers here.

After this our teacher told us about the goals for the We Create Identity course, and that he doesn't like to have strict assignments, but rather wants us to use our own initiative and creativity to create something original and worthwhile. He then proceeded to ask whether we had all designed a logo for our groups and whether everybody had read the Ximpel documentation, and both of these questions were answered negatively. For our group the reason for not designing a logo was that we consider a name and a logo as a last-touch element, something you only create when you know what your final product is like and when you are ready to present it to the world. Maybe we should learn to be more like (proud) artists, and put our identity on our ideas, even when they are not finished yet. As to not reading the Ximpel documentation, this is due to the fact that the website http://create.eliens.net is not really the epitome of user-friendly and logical website design in terms of being easy to navigate. It is sometimes really difficult to find the exact content you where looking for in this maze of links. A suggestion from my side would be to use a sidebar for easy navigation, just like on the Google site. Another reason for not reading the documentation is the fact that we were focusing on using YouTube with annotations instead of Ximpel for our interactive video. In this way, the interactivity can be designed in a visual / what-you-see-is-what-you-get way instead of by typing code.

In the afternoon we had a so-called open podium where everybody is allowed to freely express his or her ideas. The problem was that nobody had prepared anything to talk about, so most people wondered what to say once they were asked to get up on the stage. I think it is easier to speak to a crowd when you have gotten a topic beforehand, so that you can look up information regarding that subject, and thus are able to speak in an informed way. Nevertheless, it was interesting to experience that out of nowhere, a discussion about the amount of friends people have listed on Facebook arose. It was also interesting to hear everybody's opinion on the Creative Technology programme so far, and everybody seemed to agree that we had a little too much Technodrama's in the Introduction to Computer Science course.

The script for our interactive video

During this week we have completed the first part of the script for our interactive video. We have decided that the video will not be too serious, but more like a comedy. Since nature is a seen as a serious topic, we try to keep the viewer entertained by being a little silly about it. An example of this is the first time you meet the park manager. He will say to you: "I'll be back", and after that, you will get asked whether he will really return or not.

Another thing we want to achieve with the video is a sense of immersion, so that it doesn't feel like another person is making the choices in the story, but it is really you who decides. We do this by offering the viewer the choice between being a boy or a girl right at the start of the video, and also by (hopefully) filming most of it from a first-person perspective. Our script can be seen here.

The story in 12 steps

On Monday we started with some video clips on editing. The message was that editing is what makes or brakes a video. It is the editing which gives a movie a certain atmosphere. An example was the Americans taking down the statue of Saddam Hussein. Due to the close-up shots of cheering people, the viewer perceives that the Iraqi people are very happy with this "act of liberation". When wide-angle shots would have been used for this news item instead, the viewer would have gotten a totally different impression, because most of the people watching the action weren't cheering at all, just watching silently. This proves how strong editing is, and how big the influence of the media is.

In the afternoon we had to present our story in a 12-step format, our version can be found here. This provided everybody with a different way of looking at their own story and theme. We all learned a lot from the way the different groups tackled the assignment, as well as how they presented themselves. One group had one or two members read from the computer screen, while the others just stood there. Another group just told their story, without really sticking to the 12-step format. Some groups had all people telling some steps, while others even used a powerpoint presentation to bring their ideas across. We decided to let everyone in the group present a few steps, with Isa introducing our group and the characters in the story. We decided against using a powerpoint presentation, because we didn't have enough time to create a suitable presentation, and Eliens had told us that he thought it wasn't really necessary to use one anyway.

Most groups created a linear story especially for the 12-step format, based on their theme. We, on the other hand, used our story as a basis for this format and added some things where necessary. This resulted in some steps of the 12-step format being rather vague, because the actual end result (the interactive video) isn't linear, as opposed to the 12-step format. For example, the 7th step, approach to inmost cave, was the 1st choice in our interactive video. When we got comments on the fact that we didn't come up with a linear story for the 12-step format, but used our interactive video as a basis instead, Eliens remarked that if someone was to judge whether we completed the assignment satisfactorily or not, it would be him, and he said that our approach was also OK. He also liked the fact that we combined the virtual world (farmville) with the real world (the server of farmville is located in the park).

This example proves that the Creative Technology is set up in a way that doesn't limit people in the way they cope with the provided assignments, but instead stimulates them to approach a problem in their own way. The result of this is that everyone will handle an assignment in a different way, giving material for a discussion on which way works best, and what can be learned from others.

The start of our "We Create Identity" project

Today we had our second lesson of We Create Identity. The morning session started with some videos about creative projects (a guy walking trough the USA showed as a timelapse, lampposts displaying art on the road and a game trailer for example) to get our creative juices flowing; a kind of warm-up. After that it was time to get down to business. We were told that we had choose a theme for the upcoming project: creating an interactive video. Besides that, we also had to figure out what our skills are. We would have to  present our theme and skill(s) in the afternoon in a 20 second pitch.

Excited by the prospect of starting a project but slightly nervous about the 20 second talk I came to the afternoon session. We were told that we had 5 minutes to investigate which people had chosen the same theme.  This resulted in people sitting together as groups for the project, making it useless to give a presentation in which you have to "sell yourself". The teacher cleverly adapted the assignment by giving us a choice between presenting yourself, your theme and your skills or presenting your theme as a group. Everybody chose to present as a group in the end. It is interesting to experience what it is like to have to come up with a presentation about your group in less than five minutes. Due to the on-the-fly nature of the presentations, content and structure varied greatly. Some people only introduced themselves and told us what their skills are, whilst others had a more or less fleshed out idea about how to complete the project. Others cleverly used their minute of fame to recruit people with a skill that nobody in their current group had.

I teamed up with Tom van den Berg, Isabel Pfab & Alina Rommerskirch, and we have chosen the theme "nature". We want to explore a moral dilemma: should you let nature be for its own good but with disadvantages to humanity or should you alter the course of nature in a way beneficial to us, but with negative effects on nature itself? The webpage for the project can be found here.

First post, first day of CreaTe

Today was the first day of the Creative Technology programme. We started with the course "We Create Identity", which is divided into a lecture class and a collaborative / interactive class.

In the morning we had the lecture part. As the teacher of the course himself admitted later on, the course is pretty vague. He showed us some videos on an experiment from the New York Times in which people have to "disconnect" themselves for a few days: they have to take a break from using social media / technology, such as Facebook, Twitter, cell phones and email. He didn't tell us what we had to do with the information we gained from watching these videos, but I think the message is that it is sometimes necessary to take a step back and look at what the influences of these new technologies are. While there are no doubt a lot of advantages to using all these new forms of communication, there are also some disadvantages. One problem with constantly having to stay connected to the digital world is that it takes up a lot of time and distracts us from the things we are working on (e.g. our jobs). Moreover, because most digital "connected" devices have clocks, a constant air of urgency is created. So by not using these devices for a while the subjects got calmer and more aware of the real world around them. One of the subjects even described not bringing a phone along for two days as "a little adventurous and spontaneous". While this might seem to be a bit of an exaggeration, it illustrates the grip social media have on our lives.

The afternoon was spend in the Smart XP lab, in which the teacher elaborated a little on his presentation in the morning, after which it was time for us to come to the front and tell each other about our dreams in 20 seconds. Although 20 second may seem like a very short period of time, most people including myself were struggling to fill the time. The problem for me was that it is very difficult to just stand up and talk about your dreams when you don't have a strictly defined idea of what they are exactly and what is relevant to the audience. I think this exercise helps getting you comfortable with presenting your ideas and coming up with them on the spot.

At the end of the day it wasn't exactly clear what lessons we had to learn from all this but I think the main goal of today was to give everyone some food for thought and to set a creative mood.

Up tomorrow: Graphic design, for which you have to bring a photograph that means a lot to you.