Graduation! Results:

Well I have finally graduated!

My final score was a 2:1 (Second class upper division)

I now finally have a BA.

For information on how to get a copy of my dissertation click here.

For Any further work please go to my Other Blog. 

Stage One Overall Results

Here are the results for BA (Hons) Media Arts Stage One. The modules that give a percentage mark have their percentage and the pass/fail modules have either a pass or fail: 

MEDI 114:  69%

MEDI 116:  61%

MEDI 117:  64%

MEDI 118:  58%

MEDI 119:  55%

MEDI 126:  60%

MEDI 127:  PASS

All of these modules are a pass grade. :)

MEDI 116 (Website Headache)

Ok so I have spent a large chunk of today trying to fix all the problems with the website. So far;

• All the pages now link up.
• There are no more white lines everywhere on the site.
• The minor issues with layout have been fixed

This still leaves me with a credits page to do. Also I need to find a page or link I can put the one good sound file we have so that it adds to effect and also a way of finding out how to embed it.

I'm really running out of time for this project and I still don't think its up to my usual standards but I suppose it will have to do...

MEDI 116 (Dartmoor Website Ramblings)

We have the basic structure for the website pretty much nailed down now. It is arty with photography and video and also audio blended with poetry and some storytelling.

It has a very branch like structure to it following the kind of optional story telling theme. I am hoping to have some easter eggs so it is an experiance that lasts longer for the user.

Its pretty hard going since we don't have that much coding experiance between us all. Also I have had to resize a lot of images so far and we have had a lot of teething problems with technology not talking to other technology.

Hopefully it will all pull together and have good cohesion and provide an intresting interactive experiance.

MEDI 116 (Dartmoor Poem)

 I wrote a poem that could be used for our Dartmoor project:

The standing stones are watchful on the hill.
Casting shadows to the valley bellow,
The long sung magic whispers through the grass,
Along the wind and in the streams,
Winding forever out into endless green.

-Nights

MEDI 116 (Dartmoor Ramblings)

So after two days intence photo shoots, video capture and audio gathering our group have a tone of data and so far no concrete idea of how exactly to present it.

We all went up together to the moors and then wandered off with different devices in different directions sometimes swapping and changing as we bumped into eachouther again. I got some very good shots on the digital camera the first day and on the the SLR the secound day.

I think all in all we may have at least 1000 photos to pic from and I shall be uploading all those I personally took to my flickr account as soon as they can be uploaded.

The fact we have a lot of photos as well as some film and some sound bites does lead me to think that constructing some kind of story through the use of both wirtten and adio poems or prose would be good. If we can in some way make the pictures interactive and maybe have them either generate a sound, a spoken story or a film clip would be good.

I am sort of back on the database cinema idea agian. I just hope my coding skills are up to scratch.

MEDI 116 (Website Initial Ideas)

In our group we came up with a lot of ideas for spaces we could represent on the web. They ranged from very obscure things such as the back of a sofa to more ordinary things like towns and places.

After doing a mind map:

 
We narrowed it down to three ideas we liked most:

Dartmoor:  

• Journey through Dartmoor 
• Places
• Poems
  
• Ghost stories
• Painting
• GPS
• Google Maps
• Audio and visual story telling
  

Sofa:  

• Whats in the back of it?
• Real and imagined objects; keys, change, remote, little men, fluff, cats, Jesus etc.  
  
• Dark material and textures
• Flash based animations
  
• Sounds
• Writing
• Audio and visual story telling

Clock:  

• Moving clock
• Inner mechanisums
  
• Revolutions of gogs bring up text
• Animated menu
• Artistic
• Original poetry
• How government manipulates peoples thought (propaganda)
• Actual space is time - paradox
• Steampunk in feel.
  

In the end we went with Dartmoor!

• Choose river or forest area & take pictures.
• Possibly do a lot of different areas or focus on smaller areas.
• Dartmoor as whole?
• Google maps
• GPS
  
• Photographs
• Video footage.
  
• Sound recording; rivers, wind, crunching leaves, nature sounds etc all on location.
  
• Animation - Still in keeping with the site so maybe photo based.
  

We have chosen to take an arty stance on it, maybe including poetry and image or narrative of some sort. Our main idea is to gather as much raw data of the place as we can and then see what bits we think are worth compiling into the experiance. 

I have a friend that is in love with the place and I know he has written some good poetry about it that could be good to include. I also personally am very taken with the notion of emulating something a little like Lev Manovich's data base cinema as that is something that I find interesting.  I also in terms of sound like the idea of The Tonematrix from 'aM laboratoy' and think that maybe we could do something similar with a map being the grid or possibly pictures of Dartmoor. It is a really cool toy but may be a bit complex. 

I would like the website to be interactive and have a wide range of media types including sounds, image (still and/or moving) and text. To fully capture the essence of a place and display it in a 2D setting I personally feel there has to be a wide range of information.