Wanna watch a root canal operation?

Looks like every possible procedure in almost every profession will eventually be filmed and placed online. People inevitably want to know more about what goes on.

This enterprising dentist has live demos of root canal, crowning, denture and air abrasion techniques on his web site, he spent a few thousand dollars, hired professionals to shoot the procedures, and apparently more and more patients have been coming to have their teeth done by him after watching his videos. Knowledge and increased disclosure do inspire confidence!

http://www.dentalcomfortzone.com/techniques.asp

Thesis Project Weekend 11/3-4

Nov 3rd, 9 am - 2 pm
Nov 4th, 10 am - 5 pm

The IML will host a weekend "boot camp" for senior Honors students to work on their thesis projects. There will be help with and access to:

- Video Editing
- VoiceOver (w/Pro Tools)
- Dreamweaver
- Second Life
- Flash (custom with Dave Lopez--must arrange ahead)
- Sophie
- Feedback
- Camaraderie
- Commiseration

Come before the Homecoming Game Sat and/or all day Sunday and build your shell. This is a good time after mid terms and before finals. Lunch will be served. Both labs will be open and tech staff will be standing by.

For more info contact Virginia Kuhn (vkuhn@cinema.usc.edu)

Sweet Interactive Sketch Site

Hey guys...

I know this doesn't really have anything to do with our class, but I thought it is a great example of what the internet and user interaction can come up with. See for yourself:

http://www.zefrank.com

See ya in class!

Olivia

Rachel Kerry Story Board Movie

Here is the youtube of the storyboard I showed everyone last week.

Comments?

The Right One

21st Century Students

This is a new video from the creator of The Machine is Using Us:

Second Life project (machinima)

Check out this machinima of the Second Life event held on IML's island last month. It may be a way for a few of you to represent your projects (or a portion thereof).

Vectors: Objects of Media

This project, designed by Amelie Hastie and Raegan Kelly, is an interesting take on the multimedia experience. Conceptually it is multiple projects in one; a group of scholars produced their own “biography” of a material object, and then connected that object with a theme they wished to explore within their specific field – for example, an embroidered condom represents the marginalization of Asian gay men and their subsequent attempts to stand out. The project engaged the viewer by allowing him/her to pick an individual approach to the content. It explains in the beginning pages that the project is intended to be similar to a conversation rather than essay-istic. Like a conversation, the viewer is able to veer off on tangents (or longer explanations of a particular object).You can wander through the projects in any way you choose, however, whether by the objects themselves, their histories, or their scholarly reflections; or, one can choose to go through each project one at a time. What is unique is that all these exploration options are present on the screen at the same time, allowing the user to have their own experiences with the projects and not just a linear, text-based experience. The navigation of the project works well with the design of the
project itself. The main objects that appear in the design are circles and pluses. When moving between narratives you are able to move right, left, up and down... much like a plus (+) sign. Yet like a circle, the ever changing content keeps the viewer interested and eventually takes him/her full circle through the entire discussion, but is not so rigid as to make the user feel trapped in the project. We particularly liked the use of color to identify each narrative. Although the navigation became complicated at times, color identification for each subject was incredibly useful.

As the project’s introduction states, this technique allows each essay and its related object to “represent multiple threads of an exchange,” and as “segments of a broader, collective conversation.” We thought the project was engaging and seemingly random at times, mirroring a real-life conversation. Pictures for each topic was the closest the viewer was able to get to each physical object. Each object was mentioned as a starting off point to a later discussion of another related subject. It was effective in producing a very non-linear reading and learning process. At the end of the experience, we felt that we were looking at objects around me in a more global sense, so I felt that the project was not only effective in establishing the sense of a conversation but also in promoting this scholarly exchange in the users’ own settings.

Vectors: Dead Reckoning

by Sonia and Tiffany

Caren Kaplan and Reagan Kelly’s Dead Reckoning is a very innovative project which details the historical significance of visual perspectives in military operation and their impact on visual culture. The project chooses four topical areas, Perspective, Chronophotography, Edge Detection, and Targeting. Within each segment, the user performs simple tasks, such as dragging an airplane across the screen or zooming in on an aerial photograph from World War II. The task, however rudimentary, serves as a visual introduction to aerial perspectives. During this process, text boxes appear with more detailed information about the action the viewer is performing. By allowing the viewer to virtually experience the perspective before reading about it, the viewer can contextualize the subject matter. Furthermore, Dead Reckoning rewards the user for interacting with the interface, displaying additional information as the user moves the airplane across the screen and succeeds in effectively engaging the user’s attention.

The multimedia aspect of Dead Reckoning is highly visually stimulating, using floating text boxes as yet another medium to communicate their controlling idea. The text boxes appear in sometimes rapid succession, obscuring one another and blocking the line of sight of the viewer. This forces the audience to manipulate the text boxes so that they can comprehend the screen layout, which speaks directly to their idea of visual perspectives. The only flaw in this setup is that some of the text boxes which are obscured cannot be brought forward, thus making it difficult for the viewer to fully experience all of the text and image.

The information presented within the text is not only about the history of perspectives and vision, but also about the application of these concepts to specific historical situations, such as Hiroshima and Desert Storm. While the material presented shows a wealth of research and effort, the diversity of the material seems to confuse the main idea of the project. The supposed topic is aerial perception and construction of targets, but these ideas are interspersed with portrait-like stories and other pointed political statements which, though of interest, serve to distract the viewer from the main thesis. Nevertheless, Kaplan and Kelly ultimately present a thoughtful and engaging experience for learning about the multiple portrayals of visual perspective through the context of military operations.

Panorama Ephemera - Reviewed by Olivia and Beth

Plants to food to compost to soil to plants to food. Oceans to vapor to clouds to rain to rivers to oceans and back again. Ideas to pictures and sounds and words then to books and movies and music and then to shelves. There they lie, unseen, unheard, and unused.
– Rick Prelinger

In 2004, Rick Prelinger wrote and directed the feature film Panorama Ephemera, a “collage” of ephemeral films produced in the United States of the 1920s through 1970s that uses images both familiar and mythical to depict the fears and hopes of the American populace during these times. His contribution to the Vectors Journal is an extension of this film that serves to further explain his theories and reasons for archiving ephemeral films. On the one hand, this project is a straightforward intellectual piece that directs the user to Prelinger’s three main topical considerations. The first is his declared project Manifesto where Prelinger flatly declares the work of the archivist as a modern savior to an overpopulated and over stimulated popular culture. The second aspect of his project, where the most substance lies, is in the delineation of the four aspects of archiving ephemeral films. Here he delineates the events in media history that have dictated the career of the ephemeral archivist. And, lastly, Prelinger concludes his work with a short essay describing and defending the role of the archivist as a position perpetuating and expanding the possibilities of art. On the other hand, Prelinger moves away from a completely argumentative thesis with his chronological exploration of significant events in his life alongside advancements in his archiving of ephemeral films. The juxtaposition of this element with a non-linear collage of ephemeral films from the feature film Panorama Ephemera serves well to lay out the various aspects of Prelinger’s interests and theories in a comprehensive study of the ephemeral archivist.

Vectors Project "Malperception"

Perry Hoberman & Donald Hoffman's project "Malperception" explores the way in which the human brain constructs reality based on data collected by sensing organs, and that while sometimes wrong takes are caused by failure to collect information about reality, quite often malperception occurs during the brain's translation of that information.

This controlling idea is apparent in an engaging and pedagogical context. The research is clearly extensive and the multimedia format allows each phenomenon to be divulged in its own respective manner.

The web exhibition is proportional to the project in that one can easily jump around from a static menu bar. Each link leads to a considerable amount of textual information that has been boiled down from its original state and broken up into short paragraphs and surrounded by images that keep it from feeling uninviting or daunting.

Overall the project does a great job at taking a large amount of information and making it easily browsed and digested. The one problem is that its supplemental interactive Shockwave demonstrations of the malperception principles being discussed are incompatible with new Mac computers running on Intel chipsets until Adobe updates the old macromedia plugins or Mac updates its OS.

- Dustin, Alexis, Xing

"Virtual Vaudeville" Vectors Close Reading

By Ashley Hsieh, Rachel Kerry, and Matt Gerhardt

“Virtual Vaudeville” is a Vectors project by David Saltz, which tries to recreate the experience of historical vaudeville theater. The project is pedagogical, teaching laymen what vaudeville is, and introducing key vaudeville figures. Additionally, the project is experiential. “Virtual Vaudeville” recreates famous acts by Frank Bush in 3-D animation and allows the viewer to change audience perspectives. There are a variety of vantage points, including that of the performer. Additionally, the project includes a dialogue box with interesting facts about the performance.
The principle failure of the project is that the viewer does not feel connected to the performance. Because animation is used primarily to create a fantastical world, the audience is drawn in as a spectator, but not as a participating member. The viewer is never actively engaged in the 3-D performance recreation. Perhaps if it were done in live action, the project could be more compelling. Also, we believe that making the laughter surround-sound would be beneficial. With laughter coming from all around, the viewer will experience a more organic project (instead of the current artificial, laughter).
The project is set up for easy navigation by the viewer, but the program is not. The Performance Viewer cannot be viewed on a Mac. The viewer can watch the recreations as a QuickTime movie, but the experiential aspect and scholarly asides are lost.
The project is very interesting and makes a good point for the scholarly uses of video game design, etc. However, with a more user-friendly platform and a stronger attempt at viewer connection (perhaps an actual plot leading up to and after the performance, or an interactive game element) the project would be more engaging.

Article on MSN: Online community Second Life becomes venue for recruiting, interviewing

From the article:
A few major companies have begun experimenting with this virtual world as an additional tool to find employees. In May TMP Worldwide, a recruiting firm, hosted its first virtual job fair called Network in World on Second Life.

“To date, more than 1,800 candidates have either registered for a NiW job fair and then applied for open positions, or have expressed interest in a position and then left their contact details for employers,” says Russell Miyaki, a vice president of the recruiting firm, adding that about 214 interviews have taken place and about four people have gotten jobs as a result.

Companies that have interviewed candidates at the virtual job fairs included Sodexho, the food management company that hired Giordano, as well as Microsoft and Verizon, among others.

"Competition on a global scale is forcing companies to look at innovative ways of both marketing and recruiting,” says Andrew Mallon, executive director of the Social Research Foundation, a consumer research firm that conducts opinion polls of Second Life members.

“Some industries will have a greater advantage or relevance in a virtual world like Second Life." he says. "For example, a high-tech recruiter in a virtual interview gets to see the initiative and interactive skills that job candidate put into creating the look of their avatar. But candidates should study the company in advance and come to the interview knowing what value they can bring to the employer. Following that standard rule still is a big plus. Then, instead of the old ‘Dress for Success,’ an avatar must ‘Impress for Success.’”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20588553/