Art and Media

Bill began the lecture this week by stating that technology progresses in a linear fashion, whereas art progresses in a non-linear fashion. This is because new media doesn’t necessarily mean better art. I strongly agree with this because my work I’d say is not influenced by technology in any way I create art because I want to, not because technology has created something new I have to incorporate into my work. I use specific materials, technologies and processes specific to what I’m making, not the other way around. I believe that technology can influence art, but it’s not always the case. Software can only go so far, to create CGI characters, for example.  There must come a point where the ability to create realistic characters in CGI end, whereby they look 100% realistic.  However, the perception of what is photo realistic, I believe, may change slightly over time. Our perception of what is realistic constantly changes because of new media. As I have found, realism plays a big part in the debate between technology and art. I think this will play a large part in my future career as a modelmaker, because I will not be fulfilling my ideas but creating models set to  a brief and initial idea that’s not my own.  

Animation

Animation, is in other terms, cartoon physics. It has only been around for the past 15 years, surprisingly, and relates well to model making. Animation in practice, I guess, is just movement (changing the form of a character). It relates to model making in many ways. Through stop motion, animatronics and puppets. Stop motion is the illusion of movement, whereas puppets are moved by another and animatronics are self moving. These 3 areas are something that really interests me. I love, for example, Aardman, the creators of Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep etc. They use stop motion animation and movable puppets (models). My favourite Aardman programme has to be Rex the Runt, however. I believe it’s amazing. I really like the materiality of the plasticine models and how you can tell there not real. It makes it more charming, I think. This is one of the first episodes I found on YouTube. I expect I’ll be watching more of these in my spare time now I have reminded myself of them.

Violence and Media

In the seminar this week we talked about genre markers. Various signs, e.g. objects, characters, materials, authenticity, that correspond to a certain film genre. Violence was the theme this week, so that is what we focused on. Violence, is said to be, the depiction of physical acts and there consequences. It’s not always necessarily graphically destructive. For example, in Action Hero Films, there is always an absence of violence portrayed by the hero and he never gets severely hurt as he can always recover. This is an example of a genre marker.

We then all got into groups and Alan gave us four different characters from different genres to design a dagger for; Pantomime Villain, Spy Hero, Cowboy Good Guy and Sci-fi Bandit. My favourite was the Spy Hero...

It had to be disguised, so we decided on the good old pen. It’s small and sly, and something you would expect, yet does the job just as well. It’s shiny and expensive looking.

We also set up a brief outline of a scene, which the dagger could be used in. We thought that the scene would be set in a crowed space, with the spy acting like everybody else, going unnoticed. He would have the pen in his jacket pocket and would slyly get his pen/dagger out and stab a passerby, without attracting any attention. He then slips away without anybody noticing, until it’s too late. The Spy Hero would be long gone.  

Sci-Fi Genre

Bill began the lecture last week with the topic of death masks. A death mask is a wax or plaster cast made of a person’s face following death, which clearly has a relationship with the person that died. He suggested that all photos are reminiscent of death masks. A moment captured in time, never to be recreated again. I can see how people are haunted by the thought that that moment is frozen forever in time. Digital cameras seem to break down the relationship between the photo and the actual moment.

This made me think about all the photos I have taken through the years and all those moments frozen in time. It is quite spooky when you think about it. It’s strange how photos make you remember things so vividly, like they happened just yesterday. It really makes me want to travel back in time and relive those moments again. If only!

After contemplating this for a while I decided to log back on to my old myspace page... oh dear. I used to think I was so cool!

It made me remember so many things and was quite nice in a way.

Although this blog ended up being nothing to do with science fiction, I think it has been one of my favorites to write!

New Media

New media is a condition we all have to respond to. There is always a constant stream of new media evolving every day. Although there is a pressure surrounding it, because there is always something better around the corner, you can do anything you want with it. It’s exciting to live in a world like this. Everybody now has a mobile phone with a camera as standard, a few years ago that wouldn’t have been the case. I expect that in a couple of years time everybody’s phone will have internet access as standard too.

In the lecture Bill then went on to talk about the comparison of new media in video games and films. Films evolved over time by creating suspense and using different angled shots to make them more entertaining and personal to the viewer. Video games, on the other hand still have a fundamental problem with them. There is only two types of game that work, one that that is a repetitive addictive game and the other that is a narrative. The problem with a repetitive game is that it is all game play, whereas a narrative has limited game play and no replay value. Although video games need a solution, it cannot be a similar solution to films because you can’t interact with a film, that is what gives it more power. A game, I think, would be best if it was just like a film but you have the ability to interact with it, sort of like the Sims?