Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Screen and I

Today I was posed a question on how my computer screen affects me as type of space. Honestly, my computer screen has a fairly significant affect on my life. Mostly because I'm a gamer and I rely heavily on what my computer screen has to offer. When I'm home, I'm probably in my recliner with my laptop... well on my lap. I use my laptop for new, I use my laptop for gaming and I use my laptop for homework. It's basically my entire functional life, talk about being a cyborg.

I honestly don't find a need for television anymore because anything that can be seen on the television can be seen on the computer screen. Thus, when it comes to space I'd have to say that the computer screen encompasses my world. I, am the mouse cursor and I click what I want to find out more about. If it's homework I generally go towards the applications that allow me to manipulate the screen to create the art needed to pass my classes. Therefore I also call viruses and invasion of supreme privacy. If I ever got a virus, which I take care to not get, my entire lifeline would be shut off... what would I do? Go outside like the normal kids? No thanks. OK, yes that's a bit exaggeration but honestly I don't think we're that far off from being this hooked on computers.

As a language, I'd say it speaks exactly what I need to understand it. It's symbols and visuals allow me to understand what it's sending my way and I interpret it with my brain. The best thing also is that I can view as many things as I want at any time I want.

To go off of the example in class, the screen allows me to hold a book of 300 pages, and view the pages at my leisure and not have to hold the book. I no longer have to manually light the room for my book since the screen is automatically lit.  A great thing too, now, is that if the book had something I couldn't understand, I can simply use my internet browser and search for it's meaning. It brings information straight to my fingertips instead of having to go to an actual library. Not to sound ignorant or ungrateful for libraries, but honestly it would seem that their time is coming to an end for people that don't care about relocating their physical bodies when they can simply search for information on their computers at home.

I honestly feel that I expect everything of my laptop. I want, and use it for everything. To talk to friends, I use facebook or game forums, to learn I use google and to work I use the adobe suite. My computer understands what I'm telling it... so long as I tell it correctly. This kind of goes back to language and how I, not exactly me but, programed my computer to output and input English. Error commands etc are directed towards me in English, but there is also computer language such as java, actionscript, c++ etc. At that point it's taking codes that it already knows to do certain things and processes them the way they were set to be processed. If i use addChild(x) in action script, for example, it's going to go into my action script library and look for the symbol x and then place it on the stage. Why? Because that's what the code is meant to do. If I spelled it wrong, then the code is wrong and doesn't say what I meant at all. That's when it gets tricky, because computers are typically literal. There is no common sense in coding, if I spell addChidl instead, it will give me back an error saying that the code is unrecognized and that I should look over it.

Thus, that is the language developed so that we, humans, can speak to our computers or programs. Creating a new form would be no easy feat as we would have to look at pretty much every aspect needed. Design programs for example have to have thousands if not hundreds of thousands of commands because art and design is meant to be fairly detailed and how else can we be detailed if we don't have various ways to do things.

Eventually things were made easier, for example if you open Flash you can literally click the square tool and place a square on the stage. Before you would have to code the program to have a border appear at the x and y coordinates on the screen as a certain color. This is also what changes laptops from new technology like ipads. Where now instead of a mouse, which sends codes to the computer specifying how the cursor should move, uses heat sensory technology to tell the cursor where to go, or what to click or open on the screen. That conversation is now being done in a different language, a more physical language. Touch vs movement.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Back in Action

Spring break... my last spring break, and what a great one it was. Every day I did something different, with different friends. It was a great week, and I'm sad it had to end... mostly because I had so much work due the week back and I realized I hadn't done anything. That was unfortunate, honestly.

BUT, I'm back in action and catching up on all my work. I've completed some digital works for Funkhouser, one Interactive photogallery... that wont upload to the AFS so I'll have to show him in person... and the other is a video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iamSvUp6_0&feature=youtu.be

Check it out :D

Now to do Electronic writing workshop work.

EDIT: Now completed the workshop.

http://web.njit.edu/~ac247/Eng390/Movement.swf

Enjoy, gave me a laugh it did. I wonder if this hits 2 birds with one stone.. there is some.. interactivity haha

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Second Critique

Forgot to hand this in during class but here it is.


Angel Cruz
Dr. Klobucar
Electronic Writing Workshop
3-5-12
Anthony Misistia’s eGnoetry
Anthony discussed in his blog assignment entry that he hates and loves eGnoetry equally. The mix of randomly generating lines as well as the ability to change or alter certain words in the piece seems to be a bit much for Anthony to handle, at least to begin with. Once he got accustomed to the program he felt that he was no longer butchering the original authors work, but making his own electronic version of it. His latest dabble with eGnoetry produced this:
And
farther
whiles I refuse
‘but heavens would wish to take
place.
I saw this remark and alligators sunned themselves.
          Based on the grammar from the given work, you can tell that the work is generated. The actual algorithm in the generator itself is a mystery to me, but for some reason it decided to give him this stanza with a very little amount of words. I feel that this aids in the poems ability to provide a subtle but precise answer. It’s because of the final product, the two sentences, that the poem becomes a kind of conversation with the reader.
The first sentence is speaking of an event that wishes to occur, the heavens taking place, and then the fact that the remark itself made alligators sun themselves. It’s an interesting affect because personally, I know alligators sunbathe to increase their body heat since they can’t directly control their temperature. Anthony must have chosen the words to change in order to make two sentences that at least slightly make sense. What we get then, is a reason for the alligators to go and sunbathe.
The first sentence ends up sounding like someone, the narrator, is refusing the heavens from taking place even though they wish to. It’s an interesting affect especially if you at least know some religion. You know that god created the heavens and that only he should really have control over it, and now this narrator is speaking about refusing their existence and honestly that would give me chills. It would seem that this has also caused some type of decrease in the alligator’s body heat. At least that’s what I make of the lines.
He didn’t really mention how many times he clicked to change the words, or which words were changed so I can’t really say how much of the originally “random,” generated, poem he changed. Personally, I felt he could change maybe two more words to better the sentence. Those words, in my opinion, would be “whiles” and         “ ‘but.” They just annoy me, as the reader because they are grammatically incorrect and since I know about the program and his ability to change it, I just kind of hoped he would have.
As far as patterns, I can’t really say I see any. Again, this goes back to not knowing the algorithm in which the generator produces poems. Even when I created my own using this generator, it came up with a random number of lines and words in each line as well.
The piece itself works fairly well, as I mentioned before. The fact that it has two sentences makes it a sort of cause and effect situation. It may also just be that the second line is so powerful and grammatically correct, that it completes the poem. I personally really like it, and what makes this even better is the fact that I know no one else could randomly generate the same poem. Or at least they’d really have to try hard and figure out what he did to get what he got.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Crit number 2

Just finished up a crit on Anthony Misistia's most recent piece. Was an interesting poem. I really liked the second sentence of his poem because I feel that it made the poem make sense. I like what he did in that respect . I felt he could have changed a few things, but maybe i'm missing something he did on purpose. Good night all.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Missing in Action

As you may have noticed, I've been missing for the past week, and let me tell you I do have a reason. I'm in this semesters musical at NJIT: Cabaret.

I encourage you all to come and view me as well as the rest of the cast perform tonight, through Sunday.

http://www.facebook.com/events/329534743756251/

That's the facebook event.

This is the flyer.


Generated Poetry: Is there a purpose?

Generated poetry has to be one of the most controversial types of poetry around, especially to people that don't really understand or view digital pieces often. I know when I first started my college life, and started taking all these philosophical and creative classes, I thought that if I didn't have all the control over my own work, it wasn't mine. However, that soon changed when I realized that ownership over something doesn't really mean all that much. Ideas aren't really NEW, is what I'm trying to say. Most things today are recycled ideas that differ slightly from something someone has already done. Sure there may be some cases where the scenario is completely new, but think about it... so much time has passed and so many people have lived and died that it is probably near impossible to do something that will completely drop everyone's jaws.

This is where I believe generated poetry is strongest. Generated poetry uses words that we are accustomed to, sometimes with algorithms we are accustomed to and generates lines or stanzas for our amusement. Personally,  I use this type of poetry for inspiration. I try to make sense of the nonsensical. Every action provides an emotion, whether it be confused, agitated or apathetic, there is an emotion. I generally use what comes to me and create my own poetry.

It's a really good process to use when you're either in some form of writers block or just aren't feeling all too creative on a cloudy day. Generated poetry is what the user makes it; some use it completely for artistic and abstract books, while others (like me) use it for inspiration. We have to view it as a tool in life, as many things are, and use it accordingly.

For my first generated poem I used eGnoetry. It was a fun little generator that had it's own word base and a few tabs that allowed for alteration of the generated text. There were 4 variables that affected the poem. The refreshing of the page for a random first poem, the clicking of "regenerate poem," clicking to change the form of the form of the poem and clicking to change the model the generator already had. I chose to use 4 numbers then, to tell me how many times to click each one.

Since this is project 3, I chose to refresh the page 3 times.
My favorite number is 12, so I added the digits, 1 + 2 and got 3. This gave me 3 clicks for regenerating.
This is Com 390, so I added 2+9 and got 12 for the form clicks.
Then my birthday, 10/10/1990 which added to 21 clicks on model.

I felt that by adding my won algorithm that related to me, it made the produced poem more related to me than otherwise.

Personal Click Algorithm: 3-3-12-21


I received this poem which ended up being pretty decent.--------------------->


After that, I decided to experiment with single words in the poem. Clicking them to replace them with another word in the word base it had and have it altar the meaning of the poem. My final creation is also displayed. ---------------------->









The very nature that the poems are generated from a robot allows the poem to be something we aren't used to. The grammar is sometimes too perfect that it doesn't make sense. What I mean is the sentence structures may make perfect sense, nouns with pronouns and adjectives etc, but the sentence may make no sense at all because the generator doesn't know how the nouns react to each other on a real life scale. But I don't find this bad. Why does poetry have to be realistic... I find this type of poetry to be a type of fictional story telling, just how dragons are real in certain books, this type of grammar is real in this type of poetry.