A truly panoramic toast!
Cheers from Inaguma-san and Higuchi-san from Sony, at USC during their short visit.
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November 8, 2003
QRIO
Howard Stringer (Chairman & CEO of Sony Corp. of America) was on PBS today, giving a talk at the LA Town Hall. He displayed Qrio a toddler-sized machine in an aluminium sleeper and a space helmet--can navigate an obstacle course, right itself after a fall, sense heat and surfaces, recognize people through their voice or face, and respond with gestures or words to questions... It dances. It can hold a conversation. And in about a year, humanoid robot Qrio will be knocking on doors, if Sony's plans fall into place.
---- QRIO knows your face. It's equipped with a camera and the ability to analyze the images it sees. It detects faces and identifies who they are. It can even learn the faces of people it just met. And it responds to specific people individually, adding to the fun. In the future, it might be employed along with camera-equipped appliances to provide personalized services to people.
---- QRIO was designed to understand spoken words. The seven microphones in its head identify a person's voice and the direction from which it is speaking, and even pick out the words it says. QRIO can even understand the voices of unidentified speakers. It knows tens of thousands of words already, but can also learn new ones. (I want one!)
(Also interesting, from this other article on Qrio is the description of how Japan, according to Nobuyuki Idei, CEO of Sony, may be coming out of the "big tunnel of recession" mostly because of its shift "from a corporate manufacturing society to a cultural society".)
Stringer's talk today emphasized: the increasing portability, globalization and personalization of media and the access to it. He also had a lot to say about piracy. Couldn't find this talk online, but more on Stringer here - as interviewed for Frontline's great "the monster that ate hollywood" episode.
November 4, 2003
532/4 final:
I just ‘discovered’ an intriguing tool for building ‘interactive/database narratives’: The Korsakow System.
I have only just started looking at this. It seems to be a (simple) system this art student in Berlin wrote in order to make interactive/database narratives, or documentaries as he calls them, (reflection of his content preference, I think, and also on his thoughts on interactivity as applied to storytelling).
Good questions are raised on the website (they hold workshops in order to help attendees answer these, in Europe though):
Theatre:
Theatre and interactive narration raise questions as: how can the performative character of interactive narratives be integrated in a theatrical context? Can we create new interesting positions for the audience? What does it mean to replace a set order of material with a number of possibilities to be chosen from?
Film:
Interactive narration and film workshops look at the role of the audience; what does it mean to have an active user instead of a passive viewer? How do you create tension in a nonlinear narrative? How can you integrate the users' choices in a meaningful way? Interactive narration appears especially relevant for documentary filmmakers because of several reasons: the natural possibility to offer different perspectives [contexts] on the same themes / issues parallel to each other, but also the possibility to allow the viewer to enter an actual discussion with the perspectives of the author.
Radio:
The digitization of radio changes the experience of the listener. Digital radio doesn't consist of a wave modulating the ether, but consists of a file being sent to the listener. This file can be saved and manipulated by the recipient. These characteristics do not only influence the way radio is distributed and allow new ways to collaborate, they also make new exciting forms of storytelling possible.
I am considering giving this a shot – building a database narrative about my travels throughout Spain. It’ll give me a chance to deeply explore the 150+ hours of footage I have on a subject in which I have much invested (so much so that it’s been mostly sitting on my shelf for way too long because I’m afraid of not ‘doing it justice’; its non-fiction, it’s real people’s lives, it demands a high level of responsibility).
However, this may change – I’m also very interested in creating ‘something’ in Processing or Max/Msp/Jitter. It may also be best for me at this point in time, so that I can acquire more experience and see results arise out of my infantile programming.
For instance, I have an idea for a Book:
When the book is open at a certain page, there will be aural ‘narration’ coming out of it: you’ll hear all the words that make up that page (whether that page is one of many that make up one story, or the page contains one complete and self-contained poem, etc.) in a different order (based on yet-to-be-conceived programming parameters, but I know I don’t want it entirely nor precisely random). The rules will attempt to tell this alternate version of what’s written on the page in a way that makes grammatical sense. Additionally, if the user/reader touches (the words on) the page (in certain ways, i.e. if a reader’s fingers scroll the page vertically, horizontally, with a light touch, hard touch) then the narration will also change - in terms of pitch, rhythm, etc. - thus altering the ‘dramatic’ expression and effect of the same words.
Of course, I would start as simply as possible – programming in Max/Msp without the need to expand into figuring out the tangible interface just yet (touch-sensors embedded in a book, etc.). When and if I’m ready to start building the physical part of the piece, I could start out with ‘building’ a book with only one, two pages: a workable prototype that hopefully will convey the main idea of a later and more robust version.
And, btw: would like to contribute to Mike’s and Stephanie’s projects, if contribution is needed and wanted!
November 3, 2003
panoramic narrative
Tatsu and I submitted a proposal for the Tania Trepanier Award competition (sponsored by the Labyrinth Project ) which involves panoramic imagery and "database narrative".
check it out - feedback would be very appreciated.
3D Bibim Bop
(Left eye: Red filter // Right eye: Blue filter)
It seems difficult to do an anaglyph if the shot itself contains a 'drastic' difference between foreground and background: since the foreground and background objects shifted by very different amounts, it's hard to achieve the right alignment.