#ctec609

[natpeabct]

pri ori tize

Animation takes ages! Who knew? Considering how far away deadline is, it’s unrealistic to animate the full thing. So, instead I’m going to have to get thrifty about what visuals I use and find ways to deliver similar visuals in a much tighter time frame.

I made a trembling headline to open with on Adobe Animate, but realistically the time I put into this when compared to how far away hand-in is and how long it’s on screen for - yeah... no more of that. 

[calsbctthingy]

CTEC609 TCCP Final Submission References

Milewski, B. (2017, December). The British School of User Interface. Retrieved from Reliable Software: https://web.archive.org/web/20171226152845/relisoft.com/Science/ui/index.htm

University of California Research. (2016). How to design doors to be less confusing. Retrieved from University of California Research: https://ucresearch.tumblr.com/post/140750207994/how-to-design-doors-to-be-less-confusing-youve

Healey, C. (2020, September). Resonate (Audio File).

[jrtataut]

Technology, Culture and Creative Practice Blog 4

1. What areas in your field of interest or usage in regards to technology, that you can identify potential current or future ethical or design bias issues? (identify at least one) 

The video games industry

2. What are those issues specifically?

ZT Online was a game released in 2007 that used loot boxes as a way to guarantee monetisation when piracy and going to internet cafes prevented players from not buying the games for themselves (Newman n.d). This proved to be extremely effective for them, at one point raking in over US$15 million in one month (Koo 2007). More and more video game companies have included loot boxes as a form of reliable in-game monetisation.

Loot boxes are bought using money and usually sell the chance of receiving one or more highly prized items. The catch is that the chance to get these items is very low and the majority of the time players will receive ‘common’ items that are of little to no benefit. It’s completely randomised. In New Zealand, loot boxes do not meet the definition of gambling in the Gambling Act but they share the same elements that make gambling so addicting. What makes matters more concerning is that loot boxes can be found in games that have children as their main audience.

A game design philosophy that is often paired with loot boxes is “Pay-to-Win”. This intentionally makes a video game’s difficulty harder or progress slower in order to incentivise players to purchase items that give an edge over competition or accelerate progress. In the case of a teenager having spent over $3000 in one of their games, EA had this to say:

“...Fifa Ultimate Team can be played without spending any money and that purchases are entirely optional.” (Andrews & Hannah 2020)

But they actively encourage people to with how they design their game - you have a clear disadvantage when facing against players that have better players and to get those players you can only purchase them in loot boxes.

I would say that the problem lies within how game designers and corporations like EA begin making their game with making more money off of players at the cost of fun.

Research:

Koo, S. (2007) The China Angle: Wii Piracy, World Of Warcraft Beaten? Retrieved from: https://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13369  Date Accessed: 26/08/2020

Newman, J. (n.d)  How Loot Boxes Led to Never-Ending Games (And Always-Paying Players) Retrieved from: https://web.archive.org/web/20171114193808/http://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/loot-boxes-never-ending-games-and-always-paying-players-w511655

Andrew, J., Hannah, F. (July 9 2020) Loot boxes: I blew my university savings gaming on Fifa Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53337020

[natjoofficial]

Not late at all week 4 cultural technology homework

1. What areas in your field of interest or usage in regards to technology, that you can identify potential current or future ethical or design bias issues?

(identify at least one)

3D modeling and animation:

With so many advancements in realistic animating, Mocapture, Photogametery it might be possible to fully synthesis someone’s actions. We’re already seeing this happen in Disney films, eg Princess Leia. Her actor, Carrie Fisher, died in 2016, but her voice and face has reappeared, pasted onto another actor’s face, postmortem. There was a huge discussion of ethics made by the wider public at the time, but it’s seemingly been forgotten about.

2. What are those issues specifically?

Make a Fake Model of someone and using it to falsify evidence. An example could be the AI someone has built to sound a lot like Donald Trump (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFHyzuqjaok )

[icantplaythis-bct]

Culture and Creative Practice Week 12

This week I have finally recorded and finished the video for the summative. It was harder than I expected to get in front of the microphone and read out my script without stuttering. I have tried commentary from the past when I tried creating Youtube commentary videos while in high school, but it was a completely different experience. In those past videos, I was a reactionary commentator, which is a lot easier for me to do than plan and read. Since I get stressed out in social situations, I have to calm myself down to prevent myself from stuttering and getting words mixed up, which doesn’t happen when I'm flowing with the situation like in reactionary commentary. I also didn’t like making a video instead of doing a speech, as i find it easier to get it done in a single take than to perfect and spend huge amounts of time listening to my own voice. I think I did a good job on it but due to stress and other classes I couldn’t invest enough time on visual as I would have liked. But I think I did a good job on the script and was able to share my thinking and research effectively.

Video: https://youtu.be/0a1hEfnFVEE

[mikatccp]

Video Progress

I am making my video in Premiere Pro and it took a while but after I understood how to use it things started moving along a lot quicker. My topic is social media and for the film I was going to have the opposite such as the outdoors and park to show the things that are missed out on when you’re too busy scrolling through your phone. Instead I decided to change it and have some film while also having a bit of animation. I did this by recoding myself drawing and sped it up to fit the video. There is no additional sound included as I ran out of time and also I wasn’t sure what kind of sound would best suit my video. 

[nate-gibson]

CTEC609 Summative

My summative project is based around Virtual Reality which discussed through my second year semester one project ‘The Intern’.

I split my script into 8 sections:

What is this project? (project theme). Why VR? (Why VR was a good choice for my project). Cultural Context (VR’s history). Instrumental vs Intrinsic (Examples showing how VR represents these notions). Potential (Potential for the tech). Exploitation (Potential ethical issue 1). Scamming (Potential ethical issue 2). Over-reliance (Potential ethical issue 3). I used the recommended directives in the week-7 slide show to determine these sections within my script.

Script

Using my formative script and feedback I proceeded to write my summative script, going through several drafts aiming at reducing my word count to less than 800 as anymore would risk exceeding the time limit.

I then went and sourced the videos and images I planned to use in this project. Then within the script using green text I described what videos/Images I want to have with each talking point.

Recording

I spent far longer than I should’ve trying to record myself reading out the script, and due to the recordings being almost unintelligible I got my girlfriend to record it instead.

Editing

The last part of the video was editing together the audio clips, videos and images. I have had some experience with editing in my motion capture minor so I was familiar with the software (I am using the VSDC video editor). I added fade in and outs between clips/images where I felt the change was to abrupt and for the rest just kept it normal. I only kept in the audio for ‘The Intern’ and reaction clips as they were the only clips that's audio was useful in proving what my script was stating.

Video and Image sources in summative video by order of appearance:

1.) Putting on VR video

2.) ‘The Intern’ video

3.) Palmer Luckey image

4.) Mark Zuckerburg image

5.) PS4 with VR image

6.) Google cardboard image

7.) Samsung gear VR image

8.) Game image

9.) Subnautica image

10.) Police VR training video

11.) Healthcare VR training video

12.) Artist VR video

13.) VR sculpting video

14.) Computer image

15.) Smart phone image

16.) Console image

17.) VR evolution image

18.) Hands shaking image

19.) Wayne’s World advertisement video

20.) Ready Player One video

[711bel]

Taking charge - Week 9

With the amount of interruptions going on especially on my end, I decided to actually take lead and draft up the timeline and list the tasks that need to be done by the week. 

I kept the tasks vague enough that the other team members have freedom within the set task to choose their own interpretation of it. What I mainly did for that day specifically was just to weigh out our options as well as just to think up of alternatives for the project going forward as I expect more interruptions. 

This is what I got to before I eventually realized that it would be more time efficient if I just did this in to our PDF, which Tre had already been working on and had done a considerable amount of work. 

Collaboratively we got half the PDF submission finished now just on to adding pictures and citing sources, as well as general tidying up. 

[foxyorston]

CTEC609 Final Video Script and Resources

VR is a form of entertainment technology that simulates a real life experience through the user’s senses, most commonly visual and auditory. The immersive environment can be built to be similar to the physical world or it can be wildly exaggerated and rooted in fantasy, providing the users with an experience not normally possible in the real world. VR has its roots in popular science fiction stories dating all the way back to the ‘golden age’ of sci-fi novels in the 1950s. It has always been one of those ‘futuristic’ technologies popularised in pop culture, seen as state of the art and almost impossible.

Despite the term becoming popular in the 1980s, it was largely a conceptual idea until 2010, with the invention of the first prototype of the Oculus Rift. Despite only being capable of rotational tracking, it provided users with an experience that had not been seen in the public sector before. This initial concept laid the groundwork for hundreds of VR tech based companies to spring up in the last decade. VR was developed as a tool to envelop the user’s senses and expand their experience in an artificial world. VR can be beneficial, providing immersive environments to train surgeons, and first responders by putting them into simulated environments to train, as well as many other uses. It could be argued that VR is a largely instrumental piece of technology, simply allowing the user to interact with a virtual world in a deeper way. However I believe VR has more intrinsic functions. The technology can change the way we see our own world, especially when combined with its cousin Augmented Reality. Virtual Reality is at its core the next step in how humans use technology to alter the world we see we perceive in order to suit ourselves. We have moved from building cities and physical environments into building our own virtual ones where we are capable of creating and doing anything.

However, despite providing a wonderful and out-of-this-world experience, VR can also be problematic and dangerous. 

Vr could result in obsession and addiction. The ability to withdraw into a separate and unique world that provides experiences unable to be found anywhere else could lead to users losing touch with actual reality. The strong sense of scene in VR and incredibly detailed role playing/story experiences can lead to addiction, especially in teenagers and younger children. This can be seen through common addictions amongst younger generations to movies, games, TV/Electronic screens and even online gambling websites.

Alongside this, VR opens the doorway for businesses to explore a new form of digital advertising/marketing. Compared to traditional advertisements, tv ads and movie previews, VR is a far more powerful tool when it comes to influencing people’s perceptions and reality. This could also lead to a stronger “brainwashing” effect. Users who are drawn into a false reality where every aspect of their senses is being controlled by the VR provider can easily be misled. Already advertisers use digital ‘nudging’ to draw the consumer’s eyes to what they want them to see on a webpage or app screen. This is used to great effect in targeted advertising. The potential for VR tech to be abused in a similar way is alarming, and could have adverse effects.

Images used in Video:

https://miro.medium.com/max/1686/1*CaVlkopX7pNkT6t7vQhKXg.png

https://singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/man-using-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-convergence-Peter-Diamandis-shutterstock-1342435892.jpg

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SecZP1eKL.jpg

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/49/a4/f349a4b65ac95a34717ef1dabf936566.jpg

https://exvr.center/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/38974684_378684776070796_2601013970911363072_n-1.jpg

https://cbi-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Chart-Final.png

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/magazine/rights-exempt/2019/04/future-cities/future-cities-shanghai-yanan-expressway.adapt.1900.1.jpg

https://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/27145954/thumb/12.jpg

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1200/1*gQVf0RpFjaYfS7GJJtuzQg.jpeg

https://miro.medium.com/max/12000/1*fjsQpIJtKIFJStyzdwrXgw.jpeg

https://miro.medium.com/max/10944/1*EYv8hdLqXMvY7P5NzkHT-g.jpeg

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/567069c3d82d5e5d015ccbac/1505605890120-WW77LGNQ6QBPDPFHJVOZ/Screen+Shot+2017-09-16+at+7.42.44+PM.png?content-type=image%2Fpng

Sound used in Video:

https://youtu.be/bZr89T3jp-Q?list=PLwJjxqYuirCLkq42mGw4XKGQlpZSfxsYd

[samvea]

Summative CTEC609 Directory

Blog posts

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/627549761380204544/auckland-art-gallery

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/627550782919786496/tautai-gallery

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/627551416562679808/internot-of-things

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/627554153189736448/ethics-vrs-technology

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/627637757479698432/formative-assesment

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/631850527640141824/dialog-for-my-video

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/631850444350750720/final-project-for-ctec609

https://samvea.tumblr.com/post/631850624671203328/sources-for-my-video

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uxz6mejrDw

[natpeabct]

All done! References are in the description. 

I’m quite happy with the end result. I feel that I’ve barely scratched the surface of Language as a technology really. It’s such a huge topic because language really is everything. But that being said, I feel I’ve covered some important points and done it all in a style and tone that is accessible for young people. 

[calsbctthingy]

(1) Given this image was taken at an event in North Korea, I feel it speaks to a culture of uniformity expected within the republic. Everyone must conform to what’s expected in terms of dress code, hair styles, job-norms... It also speaks to the propaganda spread by the country in regards to their wealth stature - The country likes to perceive itself and wealthy and plentiful however in reality, if you’re not living in the capital, Pyongyang, you’re working in the smaller districts in labour jobs (Life in Pyongyang is generally by invitation only so if you’re not asked to live there, you may not do so). The image shows a large crowd of people holding coloured paper while a group marches ahead of them in some sort of performance which is most likely in celebration of the current leader and those leaders who have passed.

(2) Architecture is apparent in this image as the design of the complex where this is taken would have had to take into account the number of people who can sit in and also perform at any given time. Paper is used to display the image of the gun. Fashion design (Might be used very loosely) to design the uniforms the performers are wearing. Propaganda is most likely at the fore front of this image.

(3) Dance, Marching, Music, Singing(?), Uhhh Paper Flipping

[jrtataut]

Tech, Culture and Creative Practice Blog 3

1. Body: Name an IoT product you might design, its purpose, what it's connection to IoT represents

A device that can track differences in muscle growth and sends the data to an app on your phone. This will grant the wearer better information on how their regimen is affecting their body so they can adapt for the better. A side effect of this app is a solid statistic of how much muscle mass a person has which can be compared among peers and perhaps even used to predict chances of success in a fight.

2. Smart Home: Name an IoT product you might design, its purpose, what it's connection to IoT represents

A music system that plays music based on the weather and what task I’m currently doing. This will highlight usually boring events in the home such as getting ready in the morning, washing dishes, and just life around the home in general. This data however does require what exact tasks are being done by the people in the house so their actions can be tracked and used for malicious purposes.

3. Smart City: Name an example of IoT used in the public realm, its purpose and what its connection to IoT represents

A parking meter box which allows people to buy parking tickets. It allows the use of debit/credit cards so people don’t have to carry coins around. Being connected to the internet allows for easy management and the processing of payments online however some machines remove the coin option entirely which effectively stops people that don’t have cards from using the parking.

[natjoofficial]

 Got to do this before I forget again

1.What is the cultural context of this work? 

This took me a bit long to figure out but this is apparently something to do with space (had to look in the manual to figure it out)

2.What technologies are apparent in the image? 

Glow in the dark and  r o p e

3.What creative practices can you name in the context of this work?

Rope tying, optical allignment

1.What is the cultural context of this work?

Me and a few friends were looking at this for a small while trying to figure out what it was meant to mean. The closest we came was how draining work can be.

Turns out it’s about the troubles and harshness of reality to being of being an indigenous woman in colonised land.

I’m all chill with it, but it just seems very oddly specific to that certain demographic. That’s the conclusion we ended up coming too. 

2.What technologies are apparent in the image?

Weaving

3.What creative practices can you name in the context of this work? 

Also Weaving

1.What is the cultural context of this work? 

A sense of nostolgia, a cultural look back at NZ in the 70′s-90′s

2.What technologies are apparent in the image? 

Camera, photoshop most likely

3.What creative practices can you name in the context of this work? 

Photography, editing

[icantplaythis-bct]

Culture and Creative Practice Week 7

[mikatccp]

Future Thinking - Foods