Links for Wed's 13th

Graphics at Leeds Met
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Ideas
Amazon Tags

Musicovery

ColrPickr

Cover Pop

Technical

Processing

Flickr API

Basic scripts

User Age

36 Photos

monkey_bananas

William Latham

This was an odd discovery. I attend a lecture as part of BAF Game a few weeks ago, I was taking students from Shipley so wasn't sure what the lecture was on. This was shortly after talking to Ian about Richard Dawkins, memes etc. So it was a surprise to hear him discuss a lot of the issues that I had been thinking about and reading about. What was also interesting was seeing the work he'd done with genetic programmes, something Dawkin had started to work on. I also find the fact he'd started as a fine artist and moved into computers/new technology interesting as I had started as a painter/sculptor and am moving into web based work. The other surprise was to find out after the lecture that he is currently a professor at the Leeds Met. So I intend to try and contact him at some point.

Link to an online copy of the lecture

Musicovery, Amazon Tags

A couple of interesting web tools, which after having tried a bit of PHP coding I have better understanding of how they work.

Musicovery is similar to LastFm/ Pandora. It groups artists, songs genres and interestingly mood. (Dark, positive, calm etc) I also like the interface design to this site which is more sprawling, messy and less static than LastFM/Pandora. It's an interesting approach to break away from a standard list format.

Amazon Tags is program created in Processing. It's a simple idea, take the 1000 most popular Amazon tags, create a tag cloud and animate it. What I like about it is the 3D'ness of it, the sense of movement, these products are always selling so why not reflect that in the site design in some way other than numbers/sales figures. I also like the fact the size of the tags alters depending on how often they have been tagged. Again it would be possible to create something similar with tagged images on the University site.

PHP, Flickr, tests

So I've been trying to get an idea of how PHP, Flickr, API coding might work, As I mentioned Flickr allows people access to their codes, photos etc through API kits. There are also a lot of third party applications that give you coding options. So over the last week I've started to test these out.

After a lot of cursing and swearing I managed to get this simple program to work
Form script
It's a very basic script but the point is it allows users to submit a query and get a response. The theory is from there why not ask a question and the response be a series of images.

So that's the next step. After a lot more cursing and swearing I got a basic script up and running that shows a users last 36 photos. This is a example of how that could work. Again it is very simple script, but it took a lot of work to get it to work.
Users Last Photos
The problem with this script at the moment is it can only find my last 36 photos. Other peoples usernames don't work yet. So I will need to tweak the code to fix that.

The theory behind all this is that for the website thing I'm developing the PHP coding will gather images in specified way. For example a users last 36 images, date they were added or a tagged name for an image. Then another program such as Processing or Flash will allow you to start moving and re-adjusting the webpages.

What will be interesting will be developing ways for people to search for images. It would be good to avoid the usual ways that people find images. The ColrPickr is an intersting approach to this problem. Actauly a simple starting point may be to use the traditional search mthods and start adding visual elmnts through a programme such as Processing.

Teaching at Shipley

I posted this on the Shipley College website after a lot of moaning by tutors about students wasting time on MSN, flash games, Facebook, Meebo. It relates in particular to discussions I've had with Aiden and Ian and other tutors at Shipley College about how courses should be structured, what lessons should cover and how teaching can/should be delivered. It's an odd feature of the courses I teach on (E-Media, Games Development) that they have been set up and housed in the Business/IT sector within the college. When in fact the skills needed for the courses are traditional art and design skills.

As some one who teaches on the BTEC National and First Games Development course I've found some of the comments very interesting. Bear in mind the Games development courses are fairly new/experimental courses and the way they are taught and run are a very different compared to a traditional maths or IT lesson. But certainly from my point of view it is no longer a matter of students playing on the odd flash game or using MSN, it is a whole change in technology/ culture/society and as a lecturer you should respond to that in some way. A lot of the programs the students are using are great teaching aids.

I've had students use YouTube to look at old black and white horror movies, obscure Russian horror films, Japanese animation. These are things they'd never get to see in every day life and it's all free and available online, so why not use it. I've had other students who've taken 15mintues out of the lesson to make a Flash animation and upload it to YouTube. Is that a waste of their time? They're being creative, working independently, learning software but it could easily be classed as messing about or wasting time. I have another student who was basing a game on War of the Worlds and only ever seen the recent remake. So you use Wikipedia and YouTube to show him it was originally a book, then a radio program and then a 1950s film now he's hooked on the original idea and couldn't care about the remake.

Yes there will be students who sit on MySpace all morning but banning these programs is not the answer. I would also challenge the notion that children today are unable to focus on more than one thing at a time. There is a generation of kids who can quite happily listen to their Ipod, check their e-mail and get on with their work. Yes there should be clear structure and boundaries in the lessons but teachers should also take an active interest in the software students are using and rather than dismiss it as kids wasting time or messing about, see how they could use it to their advantage.

This link my be of some interest to you

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/about_us/index.htm

Notes from tutorial with Ian

How does this software work
PHP, Java, Flash etc
How far do I get involved with coding/programming
Design, sketch, rough build pass it on
Using technology
Youth of today
education
Current structure of art/design courses
Cross over points- my role as a media/art/IT/ lecturer
How do you incorporate this new technology
Already being used by students (YouTube, Wiki, MySpace, Meebo)
Speed of how this is picked up YouTube 18months, already a fixture with students
What is learning, particularly within art, design, media
Is it still necessary to divide structure courses in a traditional way
Again how do you avoid things just becoming a big mess
Example students making 10minute Flash animations, uploaded and on YouTube within 20mins. Independent learning, software, experiment
Ease of use, barrirers to learning
Future Lab
How much freedom are you given within a course structure
Further education versus Higher Education
Purpose of Further education
Games Development- stuck in the middle not art, not design, not IT. Where does it fit in, does it fit in. Does it need to fit in.
Second Life- promotional tool.
Ready made audiences, outside feedback.
To do: start using ideas from Flickr hacks> my own work (return to archive idea)
move onto a MA Design/Fine Art version of site with searchable, movable elements.
Six students as test
Whole university