Flash in The Can Talk

Last Week, Simon Conlin from Flash in the Can came to speak to our class. While the slogan on the website reads "Inspire, Educate, Challenge", our talk focused on only one thing: Inspire. While I really enjoyed hearing about what creative and interesting things other flash guru's are doing, I was a little disappointed that we did not learn anything specifically about Flash in the Can. Simon left me no choice but to google FITC and learn about it on my own! It's too bad, I believe the festival itself would have been a point of interest to many people in the class.

For anyone interested here's a littlebit about FITC. 'FITC is a Canadian company that produces design and technology events. Established in 2002 the company has held successful events across both Canada and the United States and is expanding overseas. Events are held in: Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Chicago, and Hollywood. The FITC name was derived from the first show that was produced in 2002 called ‘Flash in the Can’ -- a reference to Adobe’s (previously Macromedia’s) Flash software, and CAN taken from Canada. This inaugural event focused strictly on Flash, but the scope of future events has broadened with the explosion of interactive media to include all platforms including mobile, installations, motion graphics and games. ' For more information see their website.

From an artist's perspective, I did enjoy his presentation of the interactive video work by Zack Booth Simpson. It reminded me that IMM can be art for art's sake in addition to its obvious commercial uses. The strange thing is that when I was in art school, I wanted to design. Now that I am in a design program I miss art! While I could make some of my projects conceptual art pieces, I doubt very much that they would be strong portfolio pieces the end. Such is the constant struggle an artist has between making a living and making art.

One of the coolest things Simon showed us was Adobe's interactive billboard. What a great new way to advertise! The Adobe billboard basically created itself as people walked by it. The graphics that emerged were fantastic. The motion and sudden appearance of these images captivated the passerby's. Amazingly, people danced with it, played with it and just enjoyed it! I would love to make something of that caliber!

Simon also mentioned that IMM can be thought of as an art movement. He's right. It's as fresh as cubism was in the early 20th century but with out the hatred and backlash from society. We are lucky to be entering this field while it is still relatively new. A decade from now I doubt we IMM designers will be able to enthral and engage an audience the way it does now. Even today in it's infancy, I feel like IMM design is getting a little repetitive. Evidence of this can be seen in the exhibits of this year's Nuit Blanche. How many times must we superimpose audience images onto a rare or fantastical background? I left Nuit Blanche feeling that IMM designers need some new ideas, some creative ideas! Speaking of the festival, how do artists apply for the event? I can't seem to source this information on the net. Wouldn't it be fantastic if some of the IMM graduates' art were accepted into the festival next year?

Reinventing Rainbows

Talk about pioneering! What Radiohead is doing with their new album Rainbows is crazy, revolutionary and ridiculously inspiring. Eliminating the record label and self releasing/selling via the internet (for now anyways)?! Letting the fan/downloader decide how much to pay?!! Woahhhh! I'm sure the record labels must be hating it, same with i tunes. I wouldn't be surprised if they made more money distributing the album this way than they would have with a traditional release. What this could mean for the way music is distributed and sold.....

Yeah! A wickedly unique and unconventional idea! Although I believe I do smell some crafty guerilla advertising at work, unintentional or not....

A fascinating gesture...

Today we had a presentation from Vincent of Gesture Tek. I was immediately fascinated that this groundbreaking technology originally started out as a kind of personal project of Vincent's. His background as a musician, dancer and juggler inspired him to create a unique experience through the simple idea of evoking music through movement. He developed the gesture technology in order to play virtual instruments, create visuals and jam with a band. I find it amazing that an invention that was initially created for artistic and entertainment purposes has transitioned into such an important and forward thinking technology.

I'm sure that we would all agree, the most fun application that we witnessed was the virtual game. All it takes is a few seconds of standing in front of a video camera and magically we are immersed into the game itself, appearing as a character on the tv screen! With a swoop of a hand, I was shooting targets, with two swoops I was flying through the air like a superhero! I can't wait for this technology to hit the mainstream. It might just make a gamer out of me! With Sony and Microsoft already licensing this technology, hopefully I won't have too long to wait. Wii anyone?

I have to admit, I am a big fan of the floor. The Gesture FX ground floor enticed me to dance, swim, even clean (sneaky Ford and Epson, very sneaky!) Anissa and I felt that it should be in a dance club and seriously, it really should be. Vincent mentioned that it has been implemented in this fashion in clubs in Japan. As Japan is my vacation dream spot, I vow to one day find this Gesture FX ground floor club and try it out! Who wouldn't love it?
Looks like someone else thought this was a good idea a few years ago ....Siggraph 1998

The Gestpoint technology is another application that I am really excited about. As a sufferer of carpal tunnel syndrome for more than 5 years now I see this as a way to escape the keyboard and mouse at some point down the road. Although to truly find release from these binds I think that voice recognition software would have to further develop as well. Perhaps with both of these technologies working together in the mainstream...?

One of the most talked about gesture based technologies right now is Microsoft Surface. A fantastic interactive table that allows multitouch input for navigation, gaming, displays and much more. I wonder how many people know that this technology was pioneered by Gesture Tek with their Illuminate table. It is not quite fair that Microsoft is getting all the credit now is it?

I am not sure how the next multimedia pioneering presentation can compare to this. The possibilites of gesture technology are fascinating and endless. Who knows, maybe we will live the lives of the futuristic characters from Minority Report very soon.


Other interesting links: Gesture Bar, Gesture Phone

Visualization Studio

Finally, our first multimedia pioneering talk with Song Ho Ahn of the Visualization Studio. The small research studio is a mostly government funded operation that develops applications for e-learning, medical, engineering and scientific research.

The first thing presented to us was an e-learning application made for the police department. I was excited to see that this application was developed in Flash and xml as this is exactly the kind of thing that we will be learning. While not all of the elements of this application are considered to be "pioneering" techniques, I was still fascinated by the capabilities of flash which I feel I have yet to really discover.

I enjoyed the 3-D animations that had been developed in Ogre and I am eager to look into this program a bit more. An example of this software was used in animations created for a government website called Canadian Mysteries in History. Unfortunately, the actual animation as seen on the web is quite poor in resolution and doesn't quite have the same visual effect.

The "F.A.C.E." image recognition application was pretty interesting. Image recognition is still a developing field with many possibilities. Seems to be quite a hot topic these days, interesting to many people in our class. It still seems a bit sci-fi to me right now but I am sure the future will bring it along. For more information on this check out the many, many listings on you tube.

I love the Immersion Studios interactive movie experience. Three screens with 3 projectors, audience interaction through tablet pc's, and branched video. Too bad it wasn't functioning properly but I think we all got the idea. Unfortunately for the public this type of experience is presently too costly to produce and will not be available to us any time soon. Looks like the companies that specialize in this just can't stay afloat.

There were a couple of terms floating around during the presentation that I have heard of in the last few weeks but still have no idea of their meaning or context. I'm going to take this opportunity to clarify a couple of these...

API- Application programming interface- is a source code interface that a computer application, operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by a computer program ahhh thank you wikipidia!

Flex- Ok, this word comes up often when I am googlying Actionscript 3.0 but was also mentioned by the Visualization developer, lets see... according to adobe "Adobe® Flex™ 2 is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). Flex enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems."
-doesen't that just sound like a miracle? How do we use it? Will it really help us with our internet lives?

Other interesting links- Visual recognition through a cell phone?
Face recognition software as a password

Until the next blog....

Finally Clarity!

I can't believe it! I am finally "getting" actionscript 3! Phew! I feel like I have conquered dyslexia!

Brave New World

How truly strange it is to be suddenly projected into studentdom! Just last week I was earning an income, hating my uninspiring job and keeping up with the Jones'. This week I am penniless, happy as a kid in a candy store and actually encouraged to create and think. Did I do the right thing? How will I survive for 8 months without money? Honestly, I don't know. However, I get up every morning thrilled to go to my new job. How many people can say that?