Texts

OVE PROJECT 3 Sketch 3

Sketch 3:

You are walking some where but can’t stay on your feet. You have hallucinations that a girl is walking towards you in the dark. You can’t see her face but it seems like you know who she is. Eventually you collapse.

Shoots of the street was filmed by myself on Lt Latrobe St and the ones showing skyline from a lane way was filmed on Union Ln, accompanied by Angus Ward in 2014.
Shoots of a girl walking in a park was filmed at MCG, staring Penny Wang, Castiel and her stayed on the phone for directions and Gary was guarding during the shoot.
Background music: ‘L490′ by Thirty Seconds to Mars, from album ‘This Is War’.

Inspired by the jump-cuts and flashing shoots during the entire opening sequence of ‘Hurricane’.

OVE PROJECT 3 Sketch 2

It starts from Sketch 2. There was a sketch 1 but I have taken it down.

You are at the station, tired, unclear about the time of the day, looking at the person waiting for a train that goes to the opposite direction. Is that just one man at the station at for the whole time? Are they different men? Is there a girl standing there looking at you? Or there isn’t anyone at all?

Filmed at Jolimont – MCG Station with my friend Castiel Cheng, Penny Wang and Gary Peng. Castiel and Gary were on the platform opposite to me and Penny, Castiel stayed at under the light as the person in frame and Gary was guarding as well as keeping continuity, Penny was at the same role as Gary while I was filming. Penny took the camera while I stood on the other side to be filmed.

Inspired by the Paris underground scene shown at the opening of ‘Hurricane’.

Week 6 OVE Project 3 Progress

POOR.

I remember I concluded at the Project Two presentation that “I don’t want to do experiment in games again”. I thought about (and still have been seeking) another online video experiment to work on but I am currently stuck at the middle of nowhere.

“Online video” as a subject is still very broad, especially I am the only person working alone in the course, I don’t really know who to talk to – of course I can email my tutor, but my ideas pop-up and just get denied immediately, they don’t even seem to be able to connect with each other and let me at least, make something that looks like I have done some work.

Here is a list of things I have thought of:

Vines;
Memes: films, trending topics, celebrities, GIF;
GIF: emoji, memes, parodies;
Parodies: adaptations – memes, films, games, music videos;
Music videos: trending topics, current affairs, sexism, gangster culture, race, tribute;

OVE PROJECT TWO – Presentation

In Project One case study I was looking at GTA Online multiplayer gameplay on Xbox One, in this project I’m analysing interactive activities in GTA Online multiplayer gameplay on PS4, showing activities between players to players and broadcasting players to audiences, and audiences to audiences.

Online video multiplayer gameplay can be created either in a private party (an individual game room created by a host and invited friends only, which does not affect or be affected by anyone else playing the same game online), or as pubic in two different ways: form a crew and play online while being opened to the public (therefore anyone else playing online at the same time and interact or disturb your actions), and turn on gameplay broadcast so that audiences that are not playing games can watch your crew’s gameplay even interact with you by commenting at real time.

In sketch one I recorded my character being physically contacted by another player. In this particular case physical contact means a player engages with another player without messaging, audio chatting or in game invitations.

In sketch two I recorded an audio sequence of a publicly formed party I happened to catch on my headphones when I was not participating in any activities. Normally I can talk to them and then get myself involved in their gameplay, however, since I connected a sound recorder between my controller and my headsets the microphone was somehow disabled and they were not able to receive my audio at all.

In sketch three I recorded my own gameplay broadcast when I participated in an online bike race. However during this particular broadcast no one was watching therefore expected interactive activities were not shown.This sketch was filmed on a DSLR since the built in video recording feature in PS4 only records the gameplay itself rather than the whole interface that shows comments and audiences. Audio of the player is only recorded when the sharing setting is open to public and the party of player (if any) have their audio sharing open to public as well.

In sketch four I filmed a player broadcasts his GTA Online mission with his crew and answers to incoming comments from audiences at the same time. This sketch shows the view from the audiences, when an audience chooses to interact with the player only (enter full screen which would not show other players comments, the player still gets your comment but might not answer to you), or participate with other audiences (watch the broadcast and read comments from other at the same time, you have the option to follow/join existing topic and may get direct respond from the player) in this case, the player respond to comment: “11pm in AUS”. This sketch was also filmed by a DSLR since PS4 does not record gameplay broadcasts from audiences’ devices.

Want All-in-one?

 

There has been debates between Facebook and Twitter. Most of the social network users have Facebook accounts but a lot of them are not on Twitter. Facebook seems to be the social network that almost have everything: text, images, videos, subscriptions, sharing, liking, comments, adding friends, games, apps, messaging, events, etc. . Compared with Twitter, it’s much more flexible and convenient. But what it is only (or mostly) for something personal – unless, an official page of an organization, education institute, or a company.

LinkedIn, how ever, is a professional social network. It’s all about your experience in education and work force. Perhaps the only two things that seem to be personal is that you can connect with your friends and you can import your information through your Facebook account.

Twitter is much more limited, compared with Facebook. The 140 words limit is of course its characteristics and will certainly remain as it is. What you can do with a Twitter account are Twitting (text), uploading images, sharing (almost anything) and following other users, and also, you can connect your account with your Facebook account and your twits will be posted on your Timeline on your behalf.

Speaking about Twitter, Sina Weibo is not to be left out. Launched in late 2009 as a micro blogging website, Weibo has wiped Mainland China, HongKong, Macau and Taiwan, and its registered users has reached 300 million in 2012. It started with functions similar to Twitter, but also with animated emotion icons, videos linked from Youku, 56, Tudou and other video sharing websites available in Mainland China, and the website was at first introduced with two versions : Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Sina had developed a series of functions which attracts most of the social network users to choose Weibo. And in 2013, Weibo is now available in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (HK), Traditional Chinese (TW) and English. V-disk is something unique on Weibo, it allows users to storage and share large files. Location sharing is enabled in late 2011. Chatting is open to users like what we can see on Facebook, along with tools for them to transfer files and sending voice messages when using Weibo App on smart phones.

The 140 words limit is no longer the limitation of posting, with the “blog” tool (known as “long micro-blog”) allows users to type a post as long as they want and it will be transformed into an image that contains the text, which will be the form of how the post will present. Combination of pictures is also not the only way for users to upload multiple images, Weibo has now allowed them to upload several images individually in the same post.

Group pages are available in Weibo as well, with little similarity as Facebook Groups. Users ca choose whether their posts can be visible to everyone or only within the group. Privacy settings are remarkable on Weibo, though users can’t decide whether they allow everyone to follow them (of course, this is a sami-Twitter platform, not Facebook), but they can set up who can view their posts through the privacy setting when editing their posts individually. And if you don’t want people to know that they are following a particular person, they can choose “secret following”.

What Weibo don’t have, is the availability for its users to communicate around the world. Yes, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are blocked in Mainland China, which has been the biggest barrier for Weibo to go global for real. But in terms of functioning, it seemed to be the social network that almost had everything.

New mainstream?

I started using SMS when I was in primary school, I was using my parents’ mobile phones and their phones were still with blue/green screens or the those very tiny color screens, and they didn’t have a camera. Then when I was in junior high school, my classmates had mobile phones with bigger color screens and cameras, some of their screen can even turn 360 degrees so that they can take photos of themselves without help from others. We were still using SMS at that time, but we started using MMS. Apart from communicating through our phones, PC chatting applications like MSM, ICQ and of course, QQ were very popular as well (and QQ is still very popular in 2013).

We were using those tools simply for chatting, especially QQ, who expected that Tencent, the developer of QQ, launched Qzone, QQmail, QQ Storm Download and a series of applications and softwares so soon, almost as the same speed as the development of mobile phone systems – Symbian, Java, Windows, OS, Android, iOS. Popularity of chatting and social network applications for mobile phones rose along with the development of PC chatting tools and social network and it keeps increasing that applications like Whatsapp, Viber, Line, KakaoTalk seemed to be somehow replacing SMS, MMS and even phone calls. Do you still use SMS more than chatting applications?

Tencent launched their voice messaging application WeChat in 2011 and it wiped not only China but also other countries like India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia ever since. Different from Siri, WeChat does not turn your voice to text and send it out, but refer to how Talkbox works, it records your voice of the message from the sender and sends it to the receiver – your contact who had been added as your friend. Soon after that, more functions were developed and users can not only text or voice message each other but also share photos, contacts and locations. Now in 2013, users can search other users around them using “look around” which uses GPS to locate smart phones, search for strangers by shaking their phones, ad contacts by scanning a QR code, share status and photos on “Moments” (similar to Facebook Timeline), and more. WeChat now has launched different versions in 19 languages included Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Bahasa (Indonesia and Melayu), Korean, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, and more. According to Tencent, registered users in Mainland China has reached 300 million and  70 million users overseas.

Tencent wants to cash in on WeChat popularity

Reading 02.1 Ward.M

The reading about Design Fiction is easy to understand as since the language is plain and it doesn’t have a lot of academic terms. But it’s difficult for me somehow since I had no idea about what DF means and I had to search for that first. Unlike what I expected, what I saw from the internet are even harder to understand.

For example, this is what I found on Quora by Joshua Glen Tanenbaum, a PhD candidate in games and narrative:

“The term “Design Fiction” as I understand it was coined by Nokia researcher, and Near Future Laboratory co-founder Julian Bleecker in a presentation given at the Engage Design conference in 2008.  Bleecker’s talk was given in response to an infamous unpublished paper by Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell entitled Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing.  The term has also been used by science fiction author and futurist Bruce Sterling in a number of talks, and in an ACM Interactions article entitled Design Fiction. ” 

I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to say due to my limited English ability, until I saw another sentence he wrote:

“Design Fiction uses fictional scenarios to envision and explain possible futures for design. ”

So, back to the reading for of the course. Matthew Ward discussed the practice of DF as pedagogic and here’s is how I tried to summarise it. The role of fiction in design is creative (of course), and we create stories ideologically and based on the real world. We pick up ideas and brainstorm based on the world we live in and what happen (happens, or happened) in our lives, we use them as our starting point and we create stories. DF is the ground where we have our experiment and we think during the process of the experience. Therefore DF is based on real life, but beyond it.

 

“What is design fiction?” Tanenbaum. T G

Ward,, Matthew. “Design Fiction as Pedagogic Practice.” Medium. Web. 29 July 2013. (PDF)