Gesteral Interfaces

Analysis of the research
-where are we looking in the world? How people use MP3 players, how people use their phones and the gestures they use. We also looked at ASL to see what kind of hand gestures already exist.
-why? ASL because it is already a language made out of gestures, and we looked at ipod's and cellphones because that is part of the cultural and social context were looking at.
-what did or can we learn? We learned that ASL has many ways of signing things, that have gestures that relate to what the word means. People like to use just their hands and palms for the gestures. Phones and ipods fit into your palm and people like to use their fingers to work the device so people are used to hand gestures.
-how would classify persona and scenarios that were found?
Phones and ipods are used by everyone these days in everyday contexts. Even people who are not technologically savvy know the general concepts and gestures needed to make the device work.

Our Getures
[play, stop, forward, back, volume up, volume down, mute]
-function: It's all within the palm of the hand, so for play we have a pointed index finger that circles twice, and then for stop we had an idea but then with typical hand activity one would stop your player when you didn't want to the player to stop, so for stop we came up a 2 step motion. To raise and lower the volume one scrolls finger in palm of left hand up or down. To go forward or back one has fingers go from left to right for forward and right to left into the palm of the opposite hand. For mute close the left hand fingers to thumb.
-symbolic? For some of the gestures the scrolling motion reflects the motion of the volume going up and volume being lowered, the play gesture reflects a "com'on" kind of motion. The mute hand gesture reflects the sign language motion for shut down, to close your hand shows that something has stopped, in this instance the sound.
-what persona/scenarios could be used? A person is running, they don't have to press any buttons while running in order to adjust the music on their player, they can quickly make the gestures while moving and it requires less focus and energy than extravagant movements. While riding a bike you don't have to put yourself into danger by fumbling around with an MP3 player.
-how to demonstrate/visualize gestures effectively?(how do u produce something that people can know the gestures, how do u visualize it?)

paper prototype

Our paper Prototype Video!

Data Art Response

The first thing that I'm going to comment on is the format of the article. An unedited word document is not the easiest for reading. It is not that difficult of language which makes the reading easy to follow through. If the language had been more scholarly in such a format the article would have been very difficult to get through.
Is Data-visualization art? data-visualization shows a "fundamental shift from a romantic conception to sublime" I think what Manovich may be trying to say is that graphs and such went from being something of a labor of love to a computer aided form. I wouldn't consider graphs sublime.
There are 4 dimensions to our world, how would one produce more than a 4 dimension image. How does one produce a 4 dimension image? does a 4th dimension mean that something is 3d as well as interactive? does it mean that it is 3d with an interface that a user interacts with?
Computers do offer a lot of options for artists to work with. Not necessarily with creating other media but computers as a subject like we saw in the cube that puts itself up for sale on Ebay. There are endless possibilities when it comes to mapping on a computer, it seems everything could be mapped. And if we map something, do we explain why it was mapped and quantified? or do we simply show it? I think a map and data without a key proves quite useless and cryptic, much like art but considering something maps and data makes it less art and more quantitative, observed and recorded so one should always connect back the data to the content in a clear manner. Manovich discusses this idea, as well as the motivation to connect back and do more than just display. He observes that there is a missing "conceptual elegance", a sense of rhythm,flow and beauty to the mapping work of New Media.
Data work presents many opportunities for an artist to work with and ways to approach such work. Manovich closes with how to portray the human in a world full of data in such work? In a world where we are consistently in connection with New Media and data and cold interfaces, how do we find the life? Where does the human being come into play?

resources for exhibit

http://www.nationsonline.org/bilder/world_outline_map_720.jpg

Exhibiting Objects

a. What is your team's subject matter - what is in the exhibition you're creating? Our subject matter is men's fashion/clothing throughout history

b. What are your design/communication goals?
Our perspective focuses in on how different cultures and time periods have a very different men's clothing then the typical man today. The goal of our exhibit would be to gather most of the men's fashion and clothing items and display them in the one exhibit for the visitor.

c. What is the organizational structure you will use? (geography, date, gender, function, etc?) I think we will organize by ceremonial and everyday then geographic location.

d. What will your kiosk's architecture be? (see this site for examples) And how does it serve your stated goals? Probably the architecture will be a strict hierarchy so one could select from a menu a geographical area and then see the items that are in that time period.

Mining the Museum Response

The exhibit Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore was cutting edge and different than any museum exhibit visitors had ever seen. The exhibit is very interesting and thought provoking. I never really thought about how institutions would be innately racist, that just by presenting the facts without bias that they are not presenting the full story or are missing part of the story like the slaves and African Americans contributions. I think the use of color to correspond to the themes of the rooms. Wilson uses subtle and not so subtle artifacts to raise awareness, reactions and to provoke the visitors. Wilson also deals with how museums present the information and artifacts. If he is drawing attention to how museums are trying to remain biased but are inherently racist, he also draws attention to the displays that museums use, number coding, and glass cases. Wilson curated a thought provoking exhibit about race relations and race in Maryland.

As We May Think Response

As we may think was interesting to read because Bush was talking about technology that could have happened but was surpassed by different technology that I don't think Bush could have even fathomed. I was talking about this with one of my friends in a way, we were discussing how our parents aren't very good at texting or using their cell phones and that led to how they probably couldn't have even thought that someday their kids would be using portable phones that they typed on and that there will be technology we couldn't even fathom when our kids are our age. To go along with that Bush talked about how cameras, film, and the Memex would be smaller and more organized. To think that a computer could be as small as a desk was a big step back in 1945 when computers were the size of a house. Cameras were talked about being as small as a walnut that was worn on the forehead and the photographer would sqeeze a wire to take a picture on film. Cameras that are film I'm not sure got to be as small as the size of a walnut as technology switched from film work and technology to digital. Digital made almost everything automatic. Focus was made automatic, film automatically advanced and developing pictures stepped out of the dark room. Bush has one line that I found really interesting in relation to cameras because it is part of technology today, "Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately" (2.) Bush talked about things that happened and some that didn't because that technology simply wasn't developed. Bush talked about compression as very important when talking about cost for things. Using new technology large objects could be scaled down and that would reduce costs largely. Bush also talked about how technology would function more like a human does, which is the basis of many computer programs today and especially the internet.