Clarification for the outsider

Just to clarify, all of the photos posted on this blog were taken and posted by me throughout my semester abroad in Australia during which I studied at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. This blog was posted for a course I was enrolled in called "Creative Interactivity" taught by Jason Nelson. Thank you for viewing my blog.

A Bit Concerned

So I have finished the quilt and have been working diligently on finishing up the assignment, I have to admit I am becoming a bit concerned about getting this assignment finished. It has not been easy considering my flight was actually booked this past weekend home which is a 25 hour expedition. I have been working on the assignment from home, but there have been plenty of distractions. Focusing on school when you have been away for more than 4 months is not easy, but I suppose I will have to adapt to this when I graduate and go into the real world where work assignments will need to trump many everyday activities in order to advance in my career and do well. I know it does not have much to do with this course, but I know Jason is always very concerned about how we are doing in advancing ourselves in the acadamic world as it relates to our future career trajectory. I am going to interview at the District Attorney's office in New Hampshire next week which I am nervous but excited for, I am hoping to get an internship with the Environmental Protectiou Bureau which would be quite exciting. My plan is to get a solid internship and from that to develop good contacts and solid references in the field. If I were to get this internship it would be a big step in my career, although it is a requirement for completing my Justice Studies Major that I participate in an unpaid internship for one semester, 15 hours per week, I think that the DA's office specifically is the best choice. Every state in the US has a District Attorney's Office, because of this, doing solid work for one of them would give one many other opportunities with other DA's Offices or even something less formal, like a non-profit. No matter what I choose for my career, I feel that starting at the Environmental Protection Bureau at the New Hampshire District Attorney's Office is the best start for me. I am extremely excited and I will write back here next week, even if it will not be counted for my grade, and let you know how I did at the interview. Exciting Stuff!!!

The final project is going well, I have two quilt squares left to sew onto the quilt and it will be complete. I just went to UNH this past weekend and did some research on how to set up an event, who the event should appeal to, what type of funding is available, etc. in order to get a better idea of the kind of audience I should be aiming my proposal to. As you can see in the photo, the event went really well, and there were plenty of people affected by it. I wish more people from the class could have made it to the event because it was truly a success if you could have been there. Anyway, it is coming along well. I do have some concerns about the funding for the supplies because it ended up being more expensive than I was expecting it to be, and I am concerned that the housing complex could not fully fund something that cost nearly 100 dollars but they do a lot of other things that are probably just as expensive such as a pancake dinner from ihop, cookie making, and pumpkin carving, other seasonal events as well. I think it will go over well, just working on the finishing touches on the quilt and taking some final photos to put in the final project. I am wondering whether or not the final project needs to be web-based, but I am assuming it probably does. Will check back soon with progress...

Violence Against Women Event

So, I recently held my event at the Griffith University Village, it went amazingly well! I originally only about 8 quilt squares and was not sure if I would even get that amount of people to turn up with such short notice and so close to the exam period. The day of the event I spoke to several people who said they were coming, and I ran out and got 4 more quilt squares and more supplies. So many people turned up, the cup cakes worked out really well, I had some help making them and bringing them to the event at different stages, but I was incredibly please at how well the entire event went. About 30 people came and more boys than I was expecting considering that quilts are not exactly a manly thing. Many people just came to hang out and be part of the atmosphere. By the end of the event, I was thanking people for coming and they were thanking me back saying how much fun they had, that was really nice. I also had one of my roommates taking photos for me and video. Unfortunately the videos did not transfer correctly to my computer and they got deleted in the process, so I lost the videos of the event, but overall it went really well. Very happy with it, and looking forward to putting on another one in the States at my home Uni.

Okay, new idea

Staying on the path of big issues, what if I did something with women's rights, or domestic abuse and assault, rape, sexual harassment, crimes against women. It is a global problem, and these are all issues that concern, well half of the world's population, perhaps a bit more than half. The event could be a gathering of sorts, women and men alike could gather and create something in remembrance or in dedication to or just to represent the women in their lives who have been affected by one of these crimes against women, and then these creations could be displayed for the day, or for a while, or if it were to become something that tours around they could be displayed all along the tour. So, while it is a gathering in order to create something for someone, giving victims of these crimes against women a voice, or some kind of representation, it would also be a displaying of how many other women have gone through this, which would not only show how huge these issues are, how many women are affected by them, but it would also allow the women who were coming to this event because they were affected themselves to not feel so alone, because a lot of times with these events women go through them alone, and they do not tell anyone out of shame, or fear, and so it is largely a lonely experience. And a lot of times, while it is not formal in anyway, being able to be around, see, even talk to women who have gone through the same traumatic experiences, can be somewhat of a therapeutic experience, allows you to realize that this is a global problem, it affects millions, and that you are not alone, allows you to move on. I think this would be positive for the community, for the women in the community, it would certainly create awareness around these topics, and I cannot see any community turning down this sort of event. I will work on the details, but I think this is good, this is good.

Brain Storm

I am playing around with ideas in my head about this final project we are doing. I would like to do something big, larger than life. I would like to address a larger-than-life issue in a creative way and create some sort of event or proposal for an event that would open people's eyes to issues. One thing about events like this is they actually have to be worth while for people to go to, you can plan the most elaborate, meaningful event but if no one participates than no one was affected by it, and it was merely a waste of time and resources for all parties. So, addressing big issues in a fun or exciting or interesting way.

My first ideas were as follows;

-global warming

-world hunger

Now I will elaborate:

-global warming - many people are skeptical this is occuring, not because of factual evidence but because of the placement of doubt by certain parties who have an interest in the continued use of fossil fuels, mainly oil. Some people I have encountered do not believe it could occur because nature is much too powerful, the world too large, to be truly changed and affected by the actions of people, its inhabitants. Many events have been done in order to show the photos of the melting ice-caps, however I feel that paints a grim picture and, quite frankly, it has been done. My event for this topic would serve to highlight the power that people actually do have in changing and affecting the environment. The power of human impact if you will. This could be demonstrated by maybe filming a scene at a beach, or some place like this where each person who walked by would simply place a rock in a small stream, or take one shovel full of sand and move it to a different location, and at the end of this, perhaps the small stream would be averted, surely disturbed, and the shovel fulls of sand would certainly create a hole in one location and a large pile in the other, depending on the traffic on the beach. I abandoned this idea because I am not sure I could get a beach to agree to this, and also because of the drought issues and such.

-world hunger - in order to create increased awareness of world hunger, I thought I could take small object, perhaps a ritz cracker, or an oreo, or a grape, and to ask a fairly large group of people to split this small piece of sustinance between them. This could be repeated with slightly larger food objects like a graham cracker or larger baked good of some kind, or watermelon slice, even something as large as a watermellon providing a massive group with just a knife and having them split it between them. The point of this activity could be one of several things, at the end of the exercize everyone could be asked to imagine if what they had in their hand was the only sustinance they were going to have for a day, a week, maybe longer. Interview could be conducted after with each person asking why they chose the size of item they did, and if they could go back would they change the size in any way and why. It could also point to which cultures took larger pieces than others if it were a multicultural group, also the sizes they took if they were told that what they took had to last them a day or a year. I think that would not only be eye opening for the participants and on-lookers, but it would also be somewhat of a social experiment, revealing the tendencies of certain cultures and just people in general in their interest of self-preservation, and perhaps how they react when they step into the shoes of someone who struggles to find enough to survive.

My topic for the hypertext essay

I have decided that I will be doing my hypertext on spandex, I will be arguing in the positive for spandex, I feel I need more materials in order to work exactly what the argument will be and the supporting facts but I think I am going to go with the idea Jason came up with in class to post the esssay around the web in different context and media forms creating a trail of essay. Some of my ideas for the actual argument are as follows:

-all future clothing should be made of spandex
-spandex is the best material ever created
-everyone should be required to wear spandex clothing
-spandex is just better

let me know what you think or any other suggestions would be lovely.

Cheers! -Alex

Creating "Bathroom Graffiti"

One of the problems I had in developing this project was going from idea to screen. I felt that I had more ideas than I had capability to create them with the software and publish them to the web. This was quite a frustrating problem and I felt that everything I was able to do took atleast 5 times as long to do as it would if I knew the software. One of the problems with this is, I knew that I would be graded along side people who knew the software we were working with and next to theirs, mine might seem as if I spent about 5 minutes on the thing when it actually took me quite a while. Also, I learned the value of gathered material in this project, realizing that it takes a lot of patience and time to find all of the material you need to create a web-based interactive creation. This made me think of art as much as a lifestyle as a major or career. I also found that flash had a lot more capabilities in creating exciting interactive pieces while it was also more technical and difficult to figure out, and with the different versions some of the tutorials I read would leave me stranded because the menus had changed from their version to the trial version I had and I did not know where to find what I needed to find. Also, taking the html or flash documents off of websites and trying to manipulate them to fit into my interactive project was a lot more difficult than it looked at first, that lead me to a lot of dead-ends as well. In the end I felt mostly disappointed, I had a lot of ideas that surpassed my skills, I felt a lot like someone just learning a language, or perhaps how a child feels when they are just learning to speak, they may have all of these elaborate ideas or things they want to express with very few words to work with, a trapped feeling to a point.

Inherent interactive places

Upon reading this suggestion for a blog the first thing that popped into my head was a vending machine, I think vending machine interactions are some of the most interesting interactions that take place in a public realm. Sure it seems simplistic but if you have ever sat and watched the stories unwravel between people and vending machines, it can be quite comical and sometimes insightful. Take for instance, just yesterday I was on a 10 minute break during a long class, one of the most crowded times at the vending machine I am pretty sure, and I walk into a scene that was quite uncomfortable to be honest. There were two guys there, one of them with his arms wrapped around the vending machine shaking and wrestling with it, the other kicking the front of it and giving instruction to the shaker, and of course, there was the bag of chips stuck at the top of the machine outside of the coils, but it was not coming down, and on the side of the vending machine, feeling just as awkward as I was I think, was another guy waiting to use the devil machine as was I. So we faced a sort of strange interaction, one with these guys, once they stopped shaking the machine, and another with the machine, should we choose the type of chips he chose to get his down and possibly get our own stuck in the same way he did? Or should we ignore his blatant struggle and choose something else to be on the safe side. In the end, neither of us chose the type of chips he had chosen, and he and his friend wondered back to class chipless. From this I have decided that people and vending machines in general have the most dysfunctional relationship to one another of all modern technology. Isn't there a better way?

Week 2 Rocking Response

So, my blog is a bit late but in my defense I have been feeling quite under the weather lately and my flat mates can vouch for that. Last week's assignment, well. I thought it was a good exercise, I actually surprised myself with how much I had to say about brown garden mulch, it did not necessarily inspire me to create an extensive project surrounding brown garden mulch, although that is somewhat what we have been required to do, but I think it did get the creative wheels turning. Also, I believe I have changed my idea for the first project, it came to me on a toilet, peculiar I know, but you will understand when I reveal the idea I am about to tell you. So, I think I will center my project around bathroom graffiti, it came to me at a club in Surfer's this past weekend after Race Day, so it may have been a slightly intoxicated decision. However, I feel it has "heaps" of potential. It is sort of like the taxi idea, in that people enter a space and interact with it, however instead of a conversation it is a voluntary interation, everyone does not interact with the bathroom stall, but for some reason some of its' guests decide to make their mark, whether temporarily or otherwise in that space. I think this is interesting and I think with a few more creative bursts I might be able to come to some overarching conclusions about society according to who and what people write in bathroom stalls. I am not sure exactly what the narratives will be like, but I plan on doing enough research to come across plenty of real-life potentials and then add a fictional aspect.

As far as my project about the brown garden mulch. I would create a web of linked websites in which the audience could interact with the narrative I have created and my thought process by clicking from idea to idea and association to association essentially experiencing the process along with me. I would begin the project with a photo of brown garden mulch which would lead the audience member to a page with photos or links associated with the five branches, for example for my father I would have a photo of my father, for trees I would have a photo of trees, and so on, and for home I would have sayings with links to the page associated with home tagged to the word "home" in each of the short poetic sayings. Then I would have a train of the random ideas, with perhaps hand drawn photos, videos, cool interactive graphics, etc. I will have to expand on this at some other time that I am feeling more creative, but I think this is going somewhere beautiful yet mysterious at the same time. If only I had more html skills..

LG15

My research on the LonelyGirl15 phenomenon began very basically, look up the videos that she posted on youtube.com, watch them, and comment at will. However, what I came to find was much more complex than I was originally expecting. I found a video of the actor who played Lonely Girl or Bee and her interview on CNN which was interesting, I also stumbled upon quite a bit of negative reactionary from lots of (assumed) dedicated viewers who came to realize that the LG15 phenomenon was not truly organic. Comments like "thanks for wasting my time" and "Fake!!" were everywhere. I eventually did find the LG15 videos I was looking for originally which had some interesting commentary attached as well:

"You're Hot"
"You're not 16 or your friend Daniel would've done you on that bed already"
"fuck off"

I also found links to the LG15.com webside with updated "episodes" and info on the "series". Amongst the LG15 videos on youtube.com there were also mock videos posted of the series either making fun or praising, it was difficult to tell. Strange people.

I was surprised at the massive outcry of disappointment and anger of so many people when they discovered it was not real. I guess because it was not clearly "defined" as staged it was not "okay" that it turned out to be.


Mediums for an Interactive Narrative Online:

-Picture album or series of photos (click for next photo, leave comments, etc.)
-Adventure Games (Journey tells Narrative while viewer has to navigate the game to get the rest of the story) ex. addictinggames.com -- Sorority Panty Raid (Perverted and a little weird but good game if you like mazes, etc.)


My IDEAS for a narrative:

A Photo or series of photos or scenes with things to click on to navigate narrative, links, etc.

-American experience living with Aussies, or coming to Australia--Documentary type of narrative in which I document not my own life but the situation that the "American" that gets placed with my Aussie roommates gets put into every semester, video clips, photos, blogs, etc. or a Journal/photo/video documentary of living Aussie as an American.

-How people take photos -- what different people think is picture worthy, what they choose to capture and not to capture, etc. Could be interactive by showing a scene and having someone take a photo of what they find significant.

-Dream World--needs to be thought out further but I am picturing either different dreams I have had or different dreams that are popular with people or a narrative with different choices to be made by the viewer in order to form a dream that they have had or something of that sort, and find out the supposed meaning according to different sources at the end.