#ctech501

[malsbctslam]

WIP of a soccer game I intend to program further. (first breakthrough in understanding the logic in the tool) //need to use comments way more!        Tutors can warn you but experiencing failure really drills it home.

mouse y moves ball vertically as it bounces between goals automatically

programming is helping me see potential in the digital space but also in my own designs. Knowing only manual systems to achieve results limits me, I am seeing possibility of mechatronic applications not only in construction but in products. 

[bctmary]

Week 8

Brainstorming my idea - lo-fi prototype

I chose issue 2 about mental and physical wellbeing issues during lockdown. In all honesty the reason I was pushed towards this idea was the fact that I got sick of seeing the same challenges and being tagged in 25 push ups to raise awareness for mental health - personal opinion but that can cause mental and physical wellbeing issues if someone who gets tagged hurts themselves doing push ups or can't do one and feels more stink about themselves...

So my idea isn't as cool or out of the box as others. I went for something that can support what is already out there and can be used as a resource. It is a platform that educates and shares info about mental and physical wellbeing. Then getting people to get involved. I've learnt from interviewing an Occupational Therapist that asking simple questions can help address whether someone is mentally ok. And during lockdown so many people are so happy to answer questions about themselves and share it so I thought I would jump on that and make some challenges with simple questions that can be shared via social media and you can tag others. Or doing activities with family and friends that will help wellbeing during lockdown. I'm not sure if you can see what I've written but it's something simple which a lot of people can get involved with. I also went a head and did some IG polls which a range of people took part in on what they would do and what they thought some issues where during lockdown and it was very interesting.

Very keen to see what is the result

[plutonicbct]

Week 2 - Week 3

So, what’s happened?

After starting my vlog, only to realise that is is too generic, restarted it. I finished it today and chose to submit it before I regret it and start a third iteration. I put all my all into it and surely I pass. (High hopes)

Meanwhile, the studio mini projects have been quite stressful to make as some members put more time and effort/work into it than others. But that is inevitable with group work, so I let it slide. 

I’ve reflected on how tough it may be to create the work, but the outcome is always worth it!

///

Other than that, just posted before this, I shared some images of the group projects we have made.

We made: A hacked UNO game for the hearing impaired (where you switch the corresponding lights to the deck)

and

A shoebox full of textured items that make a noise per item. e.g a marshmallow is a campfire, pineapple is an ambience noise, sponge is water/rain, etc.

///

[aslanbct-blog]

Sticking with Pois.

We decided our poi prototype and concepts worked very well and we have decided to move forward with it. This concept has two datasets relating to the topic on it. The length of the rope and the size of the head. The length of the rope gets shorter or longer depending on whether the population of Maori that speaks Te Reo Maori gets higher or lower. In most cases, the length of the rope gets shorter as the population that speaks Te Reo slowly gets diluted and lost over the years. The size of the head gets larger or smaller depending on if the Maori population gets larger or smaller. From our datasets, the Maori population starts high and then the population starts to drop throughout the 1800s before picking up again around the 1900s. We chose to use these datasets because its a good way to show how Te Reo Maori is slowly being lost and dying out because the amount of Maori speakers is getting less but the amount of Maori is increasing. We want to show its being lost and that the ratio is getting out of hand and that more Maori should be speaking Te Reo to keep up with the population growth.

[patriciachanbct]

Reflection Day 3: Cards for Play

Today was quite hectic, our group was faced with a dead end that made everyone feel exhausted. We had to start our project up from scratch again so we were discussing concepts and ideas. But that just ended up with everyone feeling upset and not having the positive vibes we had for the last 2 days.

The theme of today’s exercise was STFU (shut the fuck up). I didn’t really get it at first so I was a bit confused. For me, not speaking to anybody and trying to generate ideas was a bit difficult but I could still churn them out, however, they were less interesting. I don’t think I’ll rely on the Mad Scientist activity cause that made me more lost than focused on what we were doing. Afterwards, we later realised that:

Everyone has great ideas, but the loudest person’s idea will be heard the most as they are louder than the quiet people. Quiet people can have great ideas but they can’t share it due to the loud people unintentionally drowning them out.

I still didn’t like the activity though because it was too messy for me to pick ideas out and use them, I just ended up feeling unenthusiastic by the end of it.

Our group was victim to that so when all the loud people (ie. me) had to leave to go to the Mechatronics lab, the quiet people could talk about their concepts and talk about what would and wouldn’t work. We came back to a fantastic and new idea that everyone was excited about again. 

I think this learning curve was really important because if the loud people had kept drowning out the quiet people, I think working on the project would be very difficult. I also talked with a second-year student about the course this morning and they told me Do what you want to do, what you like. 

If you do things because everyone else is doing them then you’ll think it’s extremely tedious and boring. You’ll end up hating everything you do.

I think that this was really important because that really happened to me today. So in the future, I’ll do what I like instead of conforming to do what everyone else is doing.

We changed the location of our wall.

[trethomas-bct]

1st Assignment - Creative Object

The object that I have selected that expresses my creative self is my subaru impreza, I have picked this object as it represents my minimalist thinking as the body of the car is quite elegant and simplistic.

The exterior and interior of the car is always clean which expresses the OCD side of me as I like things in the right place and clean.

I also like being in trend with fashion and cars but also different at the same time, this is represented by my car being in trend but also different as there aren’t many pearl white imprezas.

People’s opinion:

The car reflects his personality - he is presentable 

[amandabct]

March 6 : Anthropocene

Humanity's entire life support system depends on the well-being of all the species living on earth and the environment in which they co-exist in. So for my soundscape, I took the contrasting of living and nonliving, static and dynamic things to create a piece that reflects the good and bad within our developing environment. I used “natural” sounds such as water and trees to reflect the pureness and natural stillness of the world. And “artificial” sounds such as the vacuum cleaner, the elevator button, and the printer to reflect man-made technologies and the noise within our growing society. The invention of artificial technologies as simple as a vacuum cleaner have increased convenience to mankind but have also created a noise polluted space. The low to the high pitch of my recording demonstrates how living in an environment so reliant on technology we have lost the ability to distinguish the base (the low pitch) of our environment due to the increase in noise. The high pitch, however, reflects the growing future of our environment populated with robots. The soundscape has a beep all the way through as a replica of a heart beating showing that with the overuse of technology human life will be no more due to artificial intelligence.

[naniblog-aut]

Signal Archived

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185595791458/apple-think-different

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185594812778/after-researching-about-personal-virtualhttps://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/184884253543/signalling

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185303229528/researching-and-going-through-possible-outcomes

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185244675198/signal-create-anything

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185395580418/researching-about-personal-assistants

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185399478793

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185593988873/sketching-design-logo-and-name

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185594417318/why-a-personal-assistant

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185595512203/accountability-or-assertiveness

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185599288048/we-began-falling-off-track-as-a-result-of-not

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185599635913/a-circle

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185599837478/logo-and-how-it-affects-the-actual-device

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185600200313/weeks-before-deadline

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185622091428/accountability-or-assertiveness

https://naniblog-aut.tumblr.com/post/185621914048/the-final

[roxyallnutt]

rediscovering our purpose 8/3

The main aim of our project is discovering curiosity in ourselves by taking risks and experiencing new environments. To achieve our objective, we are using a spontaneous adventure game for like minded strangers.

Our purpose is to create an experience which brings fellowship among people to grow relationships by taking them to new places. A quote that I found inspired a large basis of our refining. There are no strangers here; only friends you haven't yet met. - William Butler Yeats   We are going to achieve this through a card experience which involves users to take risk and use the cards as a tool/opportunity to create new adventures and new friendships.

As the game is targeted to solo travellers today, we also discussed how we plan to visit backpackers in Auckland to test the experience and receive influential feedback. After the first user testings we did yesterday we found that the game can work and with improvements to the prototype we should be able to see the game in new light. Tim and I made a plan to assign jobs to each person to meet a goal that we set for Wednesday. On Wednesday we plan to do further user testing within the class and then with solo backpacker travellers in Auckland City. We decided that by Wednesday we wanted to have one set of cards printed with QR codes attached. We also needed the Facebook sites to be up and running so that when we do test in the public the user will be able to experience the QR in action. We also wanted to have a logo complete by Wednesday as well.

Design Logo / Facebook Cover - Patrik Category Cards front + back - Roxy Activity Cards with locations finalised - Tim

Logistics Research on activities + QR codes - Shel Facebook sites for all activities - Nani Quotes and summaries of each category - Mae

[malsbctslam]

As per what I was discussing in class about climate change. Any fact that says one way or another does not remove the responsibility of cleaning up our own impact on this planet. 

is has links to all the reference material that you can check out.

[bctmary]

This weeks lectures have been very productive and given us info that can help us structure our creativity and make the most of the resources around us. After our ctech501 lecture I have dived deeper into researching and interviewing. It was great to have the speaker on Wednesday go through in depth interviewing techniques and broadening who you are asking and the following questions. 

I have gone and interviewed, created polls via social media and I have gathered a lot of info but also insight. If anything this tells me that the theme I am choosing is a good one and there are many techniques and ways that I can get across my idea. The challenge I am now facing is now writing out the idea but also making sure that this idea is valid. By the time this project is due we most-likely will be out of covid-19 so developing something that can be used regardless of the situation. I have interviewed someone from Active Health and gathered a lot of info that I know will make a difference and change perspectives if more people read it. I am looking forward to the following weeks. I would say I am at the end of the Divergent Stage and heading into the Emergent Stage where I am examining my info and exploring ways of using it.

[plutonicbct]

What’s happened in the past 2 weeks

[aslanbct-blog]

Pois For The Revival Of Te Reo Maori

This is the Final look at our Pois. This will be presented to the class. Each Poi represents a set year in the history of New Zealand and Maori. The size of the head is determined by the size of the population at the time, the length of the rope resembles the percentage of the population that speak Te Reo Maori and the colors on the rope are determined by the different ethnic groups in New Zealand at the set times. The goal of our project is to bring awareness about how Te Reo Maori and just the Maori culture in general, is slowly fading and dying away and we as a country and population need to embrace the native culture to New Zealand so we can keep it alive and strong.

[mel-bct]

Letting my creativeness come out onto paper #monkeyking

[trethomas-bct]

Initial Themes and Ideas

With the ideal themes that we wanted to achieve within this project of ‘space’ and ‘sound’ Ashton and tim had an original idea before creating our group of an interactive photo, within a photo frame. Their initial idea being a photo from WW2 – within a concentration camp with both Jews and Nazi’s. The whole idea is that when someone came into contact with the photo it would produce different sounds being gunshots or laughter depending on where you interacted with the photo.  

But as that idea was really dark and due to this did not what to go anything further with the idea, we started thinking more environmental, being to address a problem – spread awareness.

This came about ideas about projected three different time periods weather it was to show a happy family looking from the outside and then showing that it’s actually an abusive family when no one is looking, and that their can be abuse in a family, but no one knows because they can act normal. Or an environmental idea of showing three time periods past, present, future and showing what man kind has done to nature and our environment since we have been there, projecting this through animations.  

[karia-technologies-blog]

Final Script writeup with references. The cost of Problem Solving

Intro

Black-background with white text: 2048

Scene cut

Int -hallway/ bathroom we see a student in red uniform and a backpack over one shoulder enter the hallway door and head onward the bathroom. She struggles with the door before entering. We see her in front of a bathroom sink go to wash her face and eyes. She rubs her eyes intently and dries her facing, and does a double take picker up her bag again. We see her exit the doorway and see her vision start to fail as she heads to exit the hallway. Background noise: Uso to Honto (Masaru, 2015)

 Interlude: Black background with white writing: 2049

Int. news room

We see a young white male wearing a checkered shirt and a blazer sitting in front of the table. There is a headline with a grey background titled Pollution – Blindness is solved. There Is a large desk in front of the news anchor which he thumps before he begins to speak

News anchor: In a new development, the government is currently negotiating with a new cybernetics company. The company claims to be to be able to solve the blindness epidemic with cheap affordable cybernetic eye implants. This comes as a damning report shows increased toxicity has been found yet another of the city’s water supplies. Federal Officials are claiming however that water treatment plants will filter out the contamination and there should be no reason for concern. The source of the toxicity has been speculated to be an e-waste factory, however the corporate owners of the factory blame a nearby landfill site. now onto sport where the whatever team beat whatever another team. (scene fade)

 Interlude: Black background with white writing: 2050

Ext. Courtyard

We see the student from earlier standing still in an outdoor environment. The student opens her eyes to reveal a blue left eye which is zoomed in on. The eye seems technological.  The student is seen placing a box labeled medical E-Waste with a biohazard logo into a recycling bin, its doesn’t quiet go in all the way.  

During this scene the following sound track is played The Way – Zack Hemsey (Hemsey, 2011)

 Int. workshop

We cut to an industrial area like a workshop and a presented with a factory manager. The factory manager is wear a red hard hat, facemask, and a yellow high visibility vest. Next to him is the presenter from earlier who is also hold a box labeled bio-hazard medical e-waste biohazard and medical E-Waste. In front of them there is a table with an extractor fan and several other tools such as welders lay in proximity.  

 Interviewer – I’m standing with the e-waste factory manager of the federal e-waste center. Now, you receive lots of these boxes, what do you do with them.

 Factory manager: yeah … receive heaps these boxes every day we chuck them into these massive liquid vats. After that we just empty the vat and collect the metal left behind. It’s a very effective and easy process, our company is very happy with our performance.

 Interlude: stock footage begins to play of various scenes of e-waste building up and polluted water ways. This includes mass burning of materials and people using sticks to help them get around in smog filled environments. Scenes also including direct dumping of pollutants into water sources.

This footage eventually fade and the following text appears in white on a black background.

 E-waste is an issue that results from dangerous components that are in consumer electronics. With planned obsolescence as a means to increase the recurrence of customer’s e-waste is becoming a larger and larger issue. (United-Nations, 2016)

 After several seconds, more white text appears below it.

There are however profitable ways to recycle or re-obtained these dangerous components which are often quite rare. However, cost minimizing results for better profits, irrespective of the humanitarian and environmental impacts.

 During this time, including the stock footage the following soundtrack is been played Time by Hans Zimmer (Zimmer, 2010)

Credits

   Bibliography  

Hemsey, Z. (2011). The Way.

Masaru, Y. (2015). Uso to Honto. Japan.

United-Nations (Director). (2016). China:  Streamlining Electronic Waste [Motion Picture].

Zimmer, H. (2010). Time.