Iz not cats everywhere?
What is 4chan? 4chan is a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images. 4chan’s collaborative-community format is copied from one of the most popular forums in Japan, Futaba Channel. Different boards are dedicated to different topics, from Japanese anime, manga, and culture to videogames, music, and photography. Users do not need to register a username before participating in the community.
Scrabulous… And Internet Board Games
In a search to find my next travel log, I was directed by a class mate (Sheila Ho) to look into Facebook’s new phenomenon known as Scrabulous. The application is similar to the other hundreds of Facebook ad ons that seem to surface everyday, however, this one comes with a stipulation that the others don’t seem to have. Created in July of 2006 by two brothers from Calcutta, India this online word game is beginning to cause a scene with copyright owners Hasbro and Mattel. The company is asserting that:
had dubbed “Scrabulous” as piracy, threatening legal action against its creators, Calcutta-based brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who also run a software development company. At the time, the companies said they hoped it wouldn’t come to a point where they’d be forced to shut down the game.
The game replicates Scrabble in the traditional sense, its new twist allows players to interact online via e-mail, the Scrabulous site and most notably Facebook all for FREE. Facebook groups that size over 10,000 members have surfaced to ban the termination of the application. My main focus will be on this application and its widening effect.
In this travel log I want to also analyze online board games in general and how companies such as Mattel are beginning to charge fees to play their traditional board games online. This is due in part to the dynamics of the way these games are now played, which is online rather than in person with friends and family. Are these fees being implemented to make up for loss profits due to the internet and developers such as the Agarwalla borthers? If anyone has any suggestions or reactions of where I can take this please do not hesitate to comment; this is a braod over view and still needs to be worked further.
Brief: Third Travelogue – first report
Hi Class,
I hope & believe my absence from today’s class has not stopped you from getting some ‘Free Culture’ today.
For next week I will be back with you in full force, charging directly into the third travelogue. What I want you to do for next week is the following:
- Present your new media environment destination through a post. Include your initial assumptions for the nature of this environment and its culture. Try to define what norms are officially or unofficially defined within this environment and what possible practices might be used to work with or against these practices to learn more about their nature.
- Comment on at least three posts. If you think your post is worth reading, rate it, if you think others are too, rate them too.
Recommended Reading:
- Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue* by Yochai Benkler * Helen Nissenbaum
- The Wealth of Networks – A presentation by Yochai Benkler.
Next Class discussion on CBPP will be lead by Ana & Jill which is required to:
- Read the article and watch the presentation
- Summarize it for us in a nicely accessible post to be published by Sunday, ideally running some threads between them.
- Be prepared to present the articles in class
- Post to del.icio.us some links that expand the discussion either about the text or about key themes in it.
Looking forward to seeing you next week and reading you through the week.
good luck!
Chemistry or Bull?
For my third travelogue, I think it would be quite a fun experience delving into the world of online dating websites. I think eHarmony is too mainstream (and from researches, very extensive in applying and it costs money…boo) so I am going to try Chemistry.com for free and see how it goes. I am interested not in the dating aspect but to see how getting rid of the physical component of forming relationships help or inhibit people from forming connections.
Still very open to ideas on how to approach this travelogue. Any advice (be it funny or serious) is more than welcome!
8-bit Shredding: The World of Chiptunes
 
Brief: Free Media, Free Class & the 2nd & 3rd travelogue
The Second Travelogue
As todays class was burned by ConEd (though 9 of us met and had a good class with some interesting discussion)
- For next week, finish your travelogue. If you are done, focus on the next one, if not, you have an opportunity to further investigate.
- Comment on and rate posts.
The Third Travelogue
while we’re still working on the 2nd, it’s time to start thinking of our 3rd travelogue.
This time we will go on a third travelogue and raise the ante one notch further. While the third travelogue will be similar in approach to the second one, this time you will do more than research, you will become involved, and to a large extent document your own actions within the media environment of your choice. Some of you have started your travelogue with a specific premise and have ended much further from there. This is a good process that we would like to see more in the upcoming travelogue. This time you will navigate your own path through this media environment, attempting through your action, to achieve insights otherwise unavailable to a passive outsider.
For next week:
- Choose a couple of options for a new media environment to explore through your third (more involved) travelogue. Post briefly about your ideas so we might help you decide.
* I permit working in pairs on this one, but this means the expectations from your shared travelogue will be twice as high as we would expect from you individually. - Post 3 comments (or more) to your fellow students posts.
Next Week’s Class – Free Class
Meaning – you are free from my presence but the class goes on as usual. The agenda for next week is:
- Required viewing: Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture†presentation
- Recommended reading: Lawrence Lessig’s “Free Culture†afterword (pp 273-306)
- Discussion of Steal This Film & Taking the You out of YouTube led by Gavriela and of Free Culture / Creative Commons reading / viewing led by Harold and Jakob.
- Selection of a default license to our blog based on discussion in class.
- The first introduction of your 2nd travelogues through the commentator > author procedure.
- Reading together of the brief for the following week which will be published on the blog
Some House Cleaning
- Go through your posts to the blog so far and make sure non of them is filed under the Uncatagorized category. Add tags to your posts for better archiving and make sure your contributions to the blog are satisfactory.
My Journey Through Video Chatting
I began my voyage as a means to look deeper into video chatting and how it ultimately can influence or have an emotional impact on our relationships. Through the past couple weeks I have explored different portals and outlets for people to stay ‘connected’ and talk amongst family and friends all around the world. As we plow forward into the closing decade of the new millenum the name of the game has not changed- communication is what drives this global market. More and more we are becoming a globalized, miniature world and why not reap its benifts! In order to determine how video chatting really can be emotionally charged I went ahead and asked my cousin a few questions about its appeal and advantages. When I asked my cousin shai what he thought about video chatting and its advantages- he said this: “I think it is great it keeps us in touch like we never have before, for example you and I. I think it is at a middle place where it can pick up and be big or just follow along all the other technologies in the industry.” (Although I put him in quotes I tried my best to get it word for word, + he is not American.)
I then asked my parents who are not the most computer savvy folks what they thought of video chat as a means to keep in touch. Basically, the whole idea freaked them out – they did not like the idea of people in their ‘bedrooms.’ Which is a point worth mentioning, when we video chat it is usually in a personal space of some sort, such as a bedroom or house- it can often feel intrusive when people just pop up on your screen. I read an article about a company based here in America called OoVoo that is built on the idea of video chatting as a means to increase relationships and keep in touch.
I am constantly video chatting with friends and family and I find it very appeasing. To play the devils advocate a bit, one can argue that video chat can lead to less physical interaction- or that it devalues face-to face interactions and could, potentially, threaten that how we see one another in the flesh. Although this is a bit far fetched I have heard the claim. There are hundreds of sights and services aimed at encouraging video chatting- but for now it seems instant messaging is the preferred method.
Jobx, is a new company offering clips of candidates for possible employers. just another example of how this technology is being used abroad.
Broadcast Your Life.
This is the mission statement from a new company named ‘Flixwagon’ that was established in 2007.
Our Vision
At Flixwagon, our vision is to bring innovation into the way people connect to each other and share their experiences. With Flixwagon you can broadcast your life LIVE! and keep close to your friends and family. All from the comfort of your mobile phone to whomever you wish to around the globe.
I came across this new technology while researching different companies in online video chatting. What Flixwagon ultimately offers is the ability to broadcast yourself ‘live’ at all times to the world. It can be thought of as a reversed ‘Truman Show.’ The site which is similar to Youtube offers a simple interface for accessing videos that are produced from cell phones. Once on the site you are able to scroll through hundreds of videos. Categorized by type and date, it seems easy enough to scroll through the different videos without any problems. You are able to rate the video right on the screen and all the product information that Youtube offers is available as well (Such as description, video controls, publisher and viewed counts). I have noticed that most videos range about a minute or so I assume this is due to phones limited storage capacity, however, I also saw a difference in the content of videos. As oppose to other sites such as Youtube and Myspace that have a variety of videos on a plethora of issues, Flizwagon’s material seems to be a lot more personal and subject. Here is an example of one of the videos off the site:
As you can see the content is a lot more personalized and aimed toward a different audience, an audience of amateurs or just people trying to keep in touch. Tying this back to my original travel logs of video chatting, flixwagon allows you to stay in though with friends and family all across the world, live, from anywhere with an internet connection. Although this tool is still in its beta stage, investors feel very confident about its potential in the phone market. As cell phones move closer to becoming integrated mini computers; tools such as these allow individuals the ultimate experience of logging your life for others to see, it is like reality t.v. on steroids. I don’t see this website really taking off in the same direction as youtube and other video sites have although it is interesting to see where this all goes. When I was in Hong Kong a couple years ago I saw a couple locals speaking to each other via video chat, since then I knew this phone technology was available but this integrate the internet to reach a greater audience. One of the partners in this venture is based in Tel-Aviv, an Israeli telecommunication company looking to get a foot in the door to what can be the next internet boom. It seems people are becoming more comfortable with ‘broadcasting’ their lives, and this just proves that point even further. It holds some advantages in keeping in touch with people over long distances however, it seems the content is limited by technology. As the company states its “a tool for people to connect” identical to my use with video chat. I am curious to see where this goes and how people will respond to it.
Interactive Art Installations
I have tried to tackle a subject that has a variety of applications and implications. The Make Controller is just one of many microcontrollers that enable physical computing and Max/msp is just one software program that can be used to communicate with it. Furthermore, i/o boards don’t only apply to making art, although they do enable a new relationship for viewing and interacting with art. Physical computing has been subsumed into an active discourse on installation and interactive art and art environments. There are a number of institutions dedicated to technological art, two very prominent ones are Ars Electronica in Linz and Eyebeam here in New York.
One recent project that I’ve found particularly interesting is Camille Utterback’s work “Abundance” (2007).
“Abundance is a temporary public installation commissioned for the City of San Jose, California by ZER01 – the Art and Technology Network. At night, Abundace transforms the city hall plaza into an interactive social space. A video camera mounted on the City Hall captures the movements of people in the plaza below. A dynamic animation generated in response to this movement is projected onto the 3-story cylindrical rotunda… As participants walk through the plaza they locate their brightly colored silhouette in the projection above. Pedestrian trajectories are inscribed to the background of the piece, while web-like patterns emanate from clusters of people. Movements and paths through the plaza become part of a collective visual record, and transform the building into a playful and dynamic canvas. All the visual elements in the projection result from people’s movements through the space. ”
Another interesting example is Thermoesthesia, by Japanese artists Kumiko Kushiyama, Toshiie Kitazawa, Shinji Sasada, and Mototsugu Tamura from the 2006 Ars Electronica show
These are both technologically complex installations, but the principles of generative and interactive art are the same. Physical computing changes the way that we interface with art and electronics. Our bodies and activity are what activate and create the art, transcending the archetypical passive viewing experience and ultimately how we define art. It becomes more than just a visual experience. New technologies enable artists to seamlessly incorporate sound, touch, smell, etc. to create complete sensory environments.
