Wired NextFest

I browsed through wirednextfest.com today and came across several interesting articles. Although not as significant as some of the others, the article on a game called "Brainball" aroused my interest. It is a game where a ball is put in the middle of a table, and two people wear headbands that measure stress level. The ball is connected to the headbands, and whoever is calmer, wins, as the ball rolls towards the player with more stress. I just find this fascinating because it goes against one of the principal rules of games - excitement and fun.

Another article I stumbled upon was one about a car powered by man-power. A four-seated, semi-electrical (for when you don't want to do anything) car, will be unveiled on Earth Day of 2009. Apparently, this car only needs the power of its passengers to push and pull a rowing-like thing to make the car accelerate. However, it does not specify what happens when less than four people are in the car, as we all know people tend to drive alone much of the time.

Overall, I find the site to be interesting. I will definitely check up on the site every now and then, as it has a Popular Science (magazine) feel to it. Most, if not all, of the articles on the site were new to me, and I most likely would never have known about any of them (excluding the more important ones as the man-powered car) if I had not read it on the site.

Flip Book

Creating a flip-book animation for this class was a very fun activity. I had never before done something like this, and became truly engrossed in my work as it progressed. Each time I picked up the book and pencil, I had a new idea about where I wanted to take the picture story. This created a story that was all over the place, but that just made me love it even more. I spent a good amount of time completing the project, but it was definitely worth it. I plan on scanning each page onto my computer and compiling an animation via flash.

Learning about opera

These past few weeks we have been learning about opera and how it has influenced modern media. We watched several operas and learned the different techniques brought to the table by several writers. The lighting effects, combined with sound and acting, provides an insight into how people are influenced and why we like certain things in our entertainment today. For instance, without the introduction of music into movies and television, they would be a lot more bland. Opera, having been the medium in which this technique was formed, has provided a huge leap in the entertainment time line.

First real week of class

This week, we learned about the basics of what we are going to be doing throughout the semester, and to be honest it is not what I thought it was going to be. This is a good thing, however, as what I learned we were going to do seems very interesting. After that, we learned how the Baroque period influenced modern technology with the introduction of opera. While opera may not seem to be a huge contributor to modern media, the collaboration of different areas such as lighting, music, singing, costumes, setting, etc. were never before put together in such a fashion previously. The fundamentals of opera alone set the baseline for average movies and television programs.