For my final, big, worth-too-many-marks-to-mess-up, project; I’ve been making my own VOIP application. Like Skype, but for the sake of art. It’s been… tricky. Before I get into it too much though, here’s an MP3 sample of how it sounds.
If you listened to the clip, allow me to translate. I’m saying, “Hello, my name is Simon Grout and this is my project”; followed by some whistling. Obviously. There are two lots of reasons why the audio sounds like this; there are technical reasons and then there are critical / contextual reasons (which sound made up). (more…)
Here’s the animation I did for the narrative module a few weeks ago; this is my first (and most probably last) animation. It’s about a scientist who decides to see what happens if the Schrödinger’s cat experiment is carried out for real:
And so, the last module of the course is finished. Unless you count dissertation as a module. And the final project. But anyway, the last taught module is done!
My space project, titled Helvetica in Space now has it’s own page (which I really, really should test in a browser other than Safari); with a video and everything. And yes, it’s still got capital Rs in it…
He’s a quantum physicist; let’s call him Dr. Ess for now. Dr. Ess is going to help me tell the story of Schrödinger’s cat; a story that — much like the cat — exists in a state of flux until observed.
Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author argues that a text, once separated from its author, has many possible layers and meanings for the reader to extract. You could say that until a text is read, its meaning exists in a state of flux; neither one thing or the other.
I’m working on telling the story of Schrödinger’s cat; trapped in a state of quantum flux inside a box. What will happen? Will the cat live or die? Will Dr. Ess be found out by animal rights activists? These things will remain in a state of flux until the reader does their part, reading the story and collapsing the waveform…
I’ve been using some free software tools (that’s open source, if you’re not keeping up with the lingo) on my eee pc to take apart font files. Or at least, I’ve been trying to. Tonight, I have finally managed it and can proudly present you with the disassembled code to draw a forward slash in Courier face:
Prototype time! You dial a (secret, for now) phone number, and you get to have a somewhat trippy conversation with yourself, across time and space. In case you’re wondering, it sounds a bit like this.
This little doodle shows how the technologies fit together; the arrows represent audio signal. This is mostly for my benefit, so as to avoid those nasty feedback noises.
The point of this prototype is to demonstrate how the ‘gaps’ that technology can introduce form a part of our experiences. By exaggerating the gap — in this case by using GarageBand to introduce a delay to the audio signal — I’m looking to play around in this space in between interface and experience.
The point is not that it’s a good game (it’s not) or that it has amazing graphics (it doesn’t), the point is that everything you see has been drawn and animated in code. It’s object oriented and everything. I even did trigonometry on a rhombus! The flash file below is only 2.6KB, which is very nice.
To play the little game, hold down your mouse button and the triangle will follow the pointer. Eat the ‘food’ and your creature will grow a tail. (more…)
In the middle of making a flash game for the scripting module, and it’s been a little frustrating. At this point, things are going to descend into a fairly massive rant so unless; a) you’re nerdy enough to understand the title to this post or b) you’d like some insight into the mind of someone who’s reasonably nerdy; you might want to give it a miss. You’ve been warned. (more…)
