Kenneth Leung

"#51 -Attention and Sex" is an insightful little essay by Scott Berkun that I wanted to share about how dividing our attention over so many different things does us a disservice. I can't deny how relevant his point is to the field of interactive media and our program. There are so many things that call for our attention within this program and within the medium that we risk losing the "depth of experience" in our attempts to consume it all. I'm not saying that the interactive medium inherently causes us to divide our attention, nor am I saying that we cannot have a meaningful experience through the interactive medium. But there is a great temptation to try and take in all in at once everything that is wild and new and get lost in the process. This essay helped remind me what I was looking for in the first place.

Posted by Ken Leung at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The idea of DARPA seriously exploring augmented human cognition both intrigued me and disturbed me. Alex's 20 minute DARPA film reminded me too much of films like,"Minority Report," "The Matrix," and "Ghost in the Shell."

All these film are my favorite simply because they begged the philosophical question of "What is man's relationship to technology?" and "Where are the paths of man and machine destined?"

Will technology be a conspiracy of faceless overlords?

Will technology be simple extensions of our abilities and nature?

Will we merge with technology to form a new state of existence?

Before I saw Alex's film I was really anxious to see how the film would attack these questions. After watching the film I was somewhat disappointed to see that DARPA felt that the future of man-machine interface was new window resize functions that use mental stress as input. I guess a mind-controlled UI would be somewhat better than dragging your mouse to the corner and resizing the window by hand. But, then again, this crack squad of commando nerds don't have time for such trivialities. I probably should also be relieve that DARPA doesn't have any plans to stick us with USB ports in our necks (i.e. Matrix) or above our tail bones(i.e. eXisTenz). I mean who really wants another hole to worry about.

If anyone else is interested in the destiny of man and machine check this link out:
technological singularity

Posted by Ken Leung at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah there is a strange irony in having school work that involves playing video games. Such that when I feel the urge to procrastinate I can no longer resort to playing games to avoid school work as I did in high school. No, by giving some real purpose to my play, play has degraded to work. Ironic. So now I've to resorted to doing something even less productive like house chores. Yeah nothing takes my mind off playing video games like cleaning the dishes and vacuuming the floor. But even that last for so long. So when I need to take my mind off of taking out the trash, I switch to something even more pointless. Blogging. :P

Seriously, though, the course work here has been pretty intense compared to my undergrad experience at UCSD. And I was doing a BS in Computer Science there. But all the course work at CNTV has been pretty exciting. I feel I must be in the right place if what drives me is my personal standard for excellence rather than just the letter grade. Yes, school so far has been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. But beyond all the fun and games, I've gotten the most satisfaction learning to craft an experience and having the chance to stretch my creativity. I also feel that it is a privilege to be around people who are passionate about games, films, and innovation.

I've already finished my first exercise film. And I feel it went OK. But with my next assignment, I'm have a hard time coming up with a character. I would have thought this was easy since I always did character designs when I was a kid. However, those designs were always so superficial. I could come up with the look of a character but their personality and history was something I never really considered. Creating a character with depth isn't easy.

Anyways, (sigh) back to playing games. Well at least my apartments and clothes are clean.

Posted by Ken Leung at 2:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)