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For the stereo geeks, shifting to 3-D in the home, 3Ality Digital will be shooting the
"Live With Regis & Kelly" 3-D Halloween show today as an anaglyph
NTSC broadcast. 3Ality COO and CTO Howard Postley said that this will
be a four-camera shoot, making a total of eight cameras. The 3-D
broadcast will air with the involvement of Walgreens, where viewers
can pick up a pair of 3-D glasses to view the episode.
Interdisciplinary is often taken to mean putting a scientist, an artist, and an engineer in the same room and having them produce something "unique" and special that neither could produce on their own.
There are a handful of people who can transcend disciplines and create things that stretch the envelope of possibility, probably because they have the skills that the instrumental disciplines by themselves offer. They are the multiple, simultaneous, self-collaborating artist-designer-engineer-scientist-creatives — all in one. Hyphenated, like multiple simultaneous social identities. They are tricky to describe, or pin-down. Their bios are difficult to write in 25 words and still feel that you've got even a little bit of coverage. They have no particular "home", but can occupy different communities, slip over to other communities, turn on a dime and talk the talk of different communities of practice with authority and fluidity. And their only illegitimacy comes from the fact that they often piss off the rock-headed, old-school disciplinarians who can't see the virtue in multiple perspectives. Or who can't get the fact that they can't play by the disciplinary rules.
Anyone who has multiple simultaneous social identities of a different sort knows what I mean. You can't fill out forms that ask you to say what your race is. Or your gender. Or you get in trouble because, once, you identified as white. And now you identify as black or "other." There are similar "framework" problems with being multidisciplinary. Not at all the same social worlds problems, but the same issues associated with trying to find safe places to do what you do, or be who you've become.
My opinion is that that notion has always been compelling, but terribly naive and awkward. Getting everyone together in one room and able to spend enough time together to understand the perspective of the other's discipline may be a start. But, honestly? I think it's absolutely vital — a requirement — that you practice the other disciplines that contribute to the project. Which takes time. And will. Not to mention, well..discipline to become a designer, or chemist, or engineer, or cultural theorist, or whatever. And I think it's more than just learning how to program a microcontroller or reading de Certeau or taking a workshop. It may not be popular to think this way, but it takes time. You have to invest that time if you expect to acquire "perspective" from the practices of other disciplines. And once you've done that, and transcended disciplines, you come to a unique, individual perspective from which unique, potentially fantastic things can be created. Even if just by yourself. It's more than an artist learning to program a computer. Or a scientist learning to understand how knowledge circulates from a social science perspective. You have to "become" and spend time as a practitioner of the "practices" that you want to inform how you do what you do.
Merely teaching programming for writers may be a start, but you end up with a writer who can program, which is not quite someone transcending disciplines to create extra special things.
October 22 — GPS Drawing
Instructor: Professor Julian Bleecker
Using a GPS, you will learn how to collect track logs, extract the data from the GPS, and show that data on Google Earth. We will go over the fundamentals of global positioning systems, simple utilities to manage GPS data, and Google Earth. GPS devices supplied. LImited to 10 students. Email on or after October 15 to sign up.
The Monday Workshops @ IMD are a series of weekly short topic workshop on tools, skills and techniques for interactive media. The workshops are designed to be intensive and hands-on introductions to a variety of topics — to get you over that initial, sometimes daunting learning curve that many interactive media tools and techniques present.
Instructor: Professor Julian Bleecker
In this workshop we will go over the fundamentals of Processing, the award-winning Java-based graphical programming environment. By the end of the workshop you will be able to create computational, interactive media using the Processing. There will be a brief introduction to object-oriented programming, the fundamentals of the Processing environment, and simple exercises to flex our new skills. Requires a laptop. Limited to 10 students. Email the instructor on or after October 8 to sign up.
October 8 — Stereo 3D
Instructor: Professor Perry Hoberman
A stereoscopic image is a kind of hallucination, existing somewhere between two and three dimensions, and the effective use of stereo requires a thorough understanding of its techniques and methods. Learn the basic principles of binocular vision as well as the various available methods for creating and displaying stereoscopic images.
Email phoberman at cinema dot usc dot edu to sign up!
The Monday Workshops @ IMD are a series of weekly short topic workshop on tools, skills and techniques for interactive media. The workshops are designed to be intensive and hands-on introductions to a variety of topics — to get you over that initial, sometimes daunting learning curve that many interactive media tools and techniques present.
As always, the current line up of workshops can be found on the IMD Wiki, here:
http://interactive.usc.edu/wiki/index.php/Fall_2007_Monday_Interactive_Media_Division_Workshops