1. A) select one example to outline the key concepts of human-computer interaction. Reflect upon the role of the “human”, the “computer” and the “interaction”.

The scientific calculator and user, interact through the user giving the calculator an input in return for an output. The calculator has an interface where the values of the user’s inputs are displayed. Buttons on the calculator indicate that user should press these to solve mathematics on the interface provided. The buttons on scientific calculators are comprehensible to the user as they display standard mathematical symbols. When these buttons are pressed by the human, the calculator registers the value of the button as a code it understands.The calculator will then will display image of the pressed button on the interface for the human to see their input. The layout of the buttons on the calculator separate numbers, functions and symbols in order to be accessible and support the user’s needs efficiently. The scientific calculator’s layout is optimized to cater for different levels of mathematics. Symbols such as minus, plus, times, divide are grouped together as these are commonly used symbols to calculate simple maths. Symbols such as sin, Cos,Tan and pi are grouped together as these are used to solve more advanced mathematics. This layout allows inexperienced and advanced users of the calculator to operate it at ease.   

For the appropriation task I wanted to take this sinister looking drawing and include words that could truly lift this drawing to new atmospheric heights, by including the lettering found on ordinary playing cards around the globe. The typographical face is such a common thing that by introducing it to my own work and appropriating as such, it lends it’s meaning to my work and allows my own to grow from it’s archaic themes. I have included the two images, one quite obviously being the Joker from a deck of cards, whereas the other is a drawing i’ve done which includes the signature ‘JOKER’ lettering.

While appropriation in art has been around for ages, it began to gain popularity in the 20th century. Most notably with “Dada” artists like Marcel Duchamp, who championed the art of the “ready mades”. Andy Warhol continued the tradition of appropriation, but the times were changing, and borrowing images to create new ones became more controversial with the onset of consumerism.

Consumerism is the bane of society, it’s most probable everyone has owned such deck of cards in there existence, so it could certainly be said that by appropriating these ready made exerts into my own work that I’d be relinquished of my newly produced work immediately. I think that by indoctrinating such work into my own, it adds to the overall quality and due to it being so commonly found it’s therefore directly in our mass consciousness.

Revolver Gallery. 2017. Andy Warhol and the Art of Appropriation. [ONLINE] Available at: http://revolverwarholgallery.com/andy-warhol-art-appropriation/. [Accessed 06 December 2017].

Reflective statement

After having completed the 6 tasks, I have learnt much about how I approach questions and my thinking process.

Something I realised almost straight away was that I have too much of a reliance on using my own knowledge to answer questions. I examples I wanted to include were all experiences of my own, which I now realise is quite a narrow-minded approach to answering a task. I believe I amended this when answering the question “Is it still possible to be truly Avant Garde?”, in which I used the book “How Game Move Us” by Katherine Isbister to research potential games that showed evidence of innovation and original ideas. It was through her analysis of Waco Resurrection that I chose that particular game, as she mentions that it “exposes the potential of games to reopen problematic cultural episodes, towards deeper understanding and continuing conversation.”. Through this experience I better see the importance of research, as it better helped to bolster my argument.

A positive experience I gained from the tasks was looking deeper into the games I already play, and through questioning elements of these games I discovered things about them I had never thought about. For example, researching about the UI of Hearthstone, specifically from Derek Satamoto’s talk at GDC 2015 made me see the game for the first time as a designer, not a player. Understanding how important UI is to make a smooth and enjoyable experience for the player has made me question design choices more often when playing games, and has already impacted my thought process for the current HitchBrick project. As the designer of the team, I have considered carefully every aspect of the UI, designing it in such a way as to not break the player’s immersion from the game, and to make it as accessible and easy to figure out as possible.

Another example that made me look deeper was analysing the AI for the guards in Dishonored. From reading “Human Behaviour Modelling in Games using Agents” by Susantha Andradi, Asoka Karunananda, and Romesh Ranawana, I learned about how incorporating real human behaviour into NPCs can create more immersive and engaging experiences. Transferring that knowledge to Dishonored made me see flaws in the AI I had never considered before, for example, the lack of variety of personalities between guards.

After reflecting back on my work, an improvement I could make for the future would be to give more evidence to back up my arguments. I feel that for many points I’ve made, they are simply backed up by my own opinion, which is not optimal for a thorough investigation into these tasks. Next time I will find more sources that either agree with my arguments or offer a different insight, which I could make judgements on.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022036/Hearthstone-How-to-Create-an

Click to access 3408E0314005.pdf

Over the course of the past few weeks of researching different topics and creating a blog in response to questions asked of me, I’ve learnt a great deal and had my perspective changed on quite a few issues. Looking back to the question about should emotive modelling be included for NPC’s, I realise I found myself struggling quite a lot. It wasn’t just a matter of difficulty understanding the question as it turned out to be an issue of whether or not it is suitable and how specific people would view it. I began by trying to research behaviour modelling and how that linked to emotive modelling but felt like I was getting nowhere. It was quite difficult to find information on at first as I found that I was being too specific with my searches. This is when I decided to change my research method and search for any work related to AI and emotions.

I found that the answer I gave in response to the question was pretty open about how I would personally consider emotion modelling in NPC’s for games. I found that the longer I researched into the topic the more fascinating it became and was very interested in the stories of how developers had input emotion into some characters.

By changing how I researched I found that I could get to my answer a lot easier as I was thrown down a path which led to different perceptions that I may have never even considered. This broader view on the situation really helped me to see that by changing the nature of the question slightly whilst researching, we can still come to a conclusion for our original question that was put before us. I know now that in future when i am researching, I will adopt this new method of distorting the question to gain different perspectives on how the question can be answered. So i am sure this will affect all future work.

Another example of my overall experiences with this module is how I took to completing the first question pair. I chose to look into Dieter Ram’s 10 Principles of good design because it interested me that these 10 principles still help guide creators in developing new items for consumers. It baffled me at first and I was confused on how I would visualise these principles in a relevant way. I mentioned in the blog post about how these principles don’t just apply to physical items such as radios but how they also apply to digital work such as websites. “Dieter Rams 10 principles aren’t just applied to physical objects though. Looking at a toaster you know what you’re doing, and this should be the same for a webpage.” This really fascinated me as it gave me an insight into how web developers have to consider so many different possibilities when creating a new website.

Overall I would say that through the module my research methods have slightly changed for the better and will help me to improve upon my work in the future and assist me when I’m feeling stuck on a particular topic.

Firstly, we’re on the verge of becoming swallowed up by our own greed and consumerist attitudes. Rubbish, is a major problem in todays society, the whole reuse, recycle and reduce headline has been well overspent. On the horizon, is a wave of trash that we will eventually consume us all.

It is therefore essential for us to develop a means of using trash as a way of symbolising our own consumerist attitudes. My practice, would involve building sculptures/installations from our own trash, which would allow us on a more personal level to understand just how much we use as a group or as an individual. We must consume less and live more! By taking all this trash, it is highly likely we could build from this a detailed image, which when produced would not only highlight our own downfalls, but on a wider scale, on an international level.

It’s a way of taking junk and creating a process which responds to our consumerist ideology, now this could be done as a community project, you could accumulate a months worth of trash and allow everyone to take part in creating a tall sculpture of a human being standing tall. As the light breaks, a shadow could be cast, now this could show how we’re being progressive in such dire times, but it also leaves room for us to question exactly what sort of future we want to have as the human species moves forward into climatic times.

What do you see as the positives and negatives around copyright?

The main purpose of copyright law is to protect new creative works from being duplicated without permission. One of the main strengths of this is that any published creative work is automatically protected, with no registration of the work needed for this to happen. Copyrights also give creators the exclusive right to profit from their work, which can really help musicians, artists and writers for example. Also, breaches of copyright are usually dealt with in a very straightforward manner, as only the burden of proof that copyright was infringed needs to been shown, as opposed to proof beyond a reasonable doubt that is needed in criminal proceedings.

However, there are negatives about the system. While in one aspect creativity is encouraged, as creators know their works are protected, in another aspect creativity is restricted, as profit cannot be made from a work that derives something from another. What makes this worse is how vague copyright law can be, especially in terms of fair use, which includes using someone else’s work for commentary, criticism or reporting. This is a fairly large problem on YouTube as each case is interpreted different; there are no set rules. One huge example is a channel called H3H3 Productions, a channel consisting mainly of commentary on other videos. In one video they parody and criticise a video from another YouTuber, something many would assume is under fair use. However, the owner of the original video filed a lawsuit against them, accusing them of reproducing too much of the original video, which led to H3H3 having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the case, not to mention the emotional stress they must have been going through. While they did end up winning the lawsuit, the ambiguity of copyright law meant the process was long, painful and uncertain, and could have been avoided if there were set rules on fair use.

Is it possible to make anything new?

Absolutely, although that does not mean it isn’t a challenge to make something new. Recent indie games show that it is very possible to come up with successful new ideas, such as Undertale, a pixel game created by Toby Fox in 2015.

Undertale is not your typical RPG; it constantly surprises you with quirky mechanics such as the battle system, in which you move a dot around a playing area to avoid enemy attacks. The mercy feature is similarly fresh, as you don’t get a reward for not killing enemies, while in games like Bioshock for example, there is much to gain from saving the Little Sisters. In Undertale, you can choose not to kill anyone simply because it is the right thing to do. Undertale is an example of a game that takes influences from other games but uses them to create fresh and inventive ideas. This means that you don’t need to necessarily copy other works to create something new; you can always take influences from them to create your own.

British Library (n.d.).Fair use copyright explained. Retrieved from British Library:  https://www.bl.uk/business-and-ip-centre/articles/fair-use-copyright-explained

Schnotz, W. (n.d). Pros & Cons of Copyright Laws. Retrieved from Az Central: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-5170.html

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/pros-cons-copyright-laws-52554.html

https://kotaku.com/h3h3-productions-win-lawsuit-against-youtuber-they-paro-1798386207

https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/3wpnd6/what_makes_undertales_mercy_mechanic_unique/?st=javearup&sh=bb0ce03d

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/180989-undertale/72981369/839030619

Image 1: http://www.finearttips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/copyright-.png