Postmodern Images

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The first image I chose is a creation by Barbara Kruger, whose work mainly includes things related to consumerism and feminism. All of her work has a true meaning hidden in them. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as “you”, “your”, “I”, “we”, and “they”, addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, and sexuality. In this case, it directs to consumption. Her works are mainly ethical, social, political, economical and humanistic based. In this particular poster, I like how she has used red, black and white colours. Red is a dominant colour and to promote a message to a large audience, red is a colour that can be very useful. I love how she has combined few images and has created a poster out of it. This particular poster of Barbara Kruger was and is still very famous and popular among audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the second postmodern image I chose, this has a lot of techniques related to photo manipulation which is one of my favorite areas of design to work with. I like how the creator has used multiple images to create a poster. The background seems to be plain and simple which is totally matching with the objects placed on the foreground. This poster has a variety of colors used in it. The combination of different images used to form a poster in this is totally balanced, which gives the poster a refined look.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the third postmodern image I chose, it has a combination of designing techniques like addition of typography, photographs and objects in it. The placement of all the objects seems to be refined. The colors used in this poster give the poster a very bright, colorful and artistic look. In terms of visual mapping, the poster seems to follow the correct visual mapping pattern as the visual mapping starts from the upper right corner and ends smoothly towards the bottom left corner.

This poster could be an example when I create my projects as it has a balanced combination of typography, photographs, colors and other designs.

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kruger-barbara.htm

http://ucresearch.tumblr.com/image/47883063847

Ben Teague – Design and Games 101 (Week 2)

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What does the term avant garde mean?:

From what I learnt in contextual studies when I did games development at college, the term is someone or something that is not accepted as normal. “Avant-garde is originally a French term, meaning in English vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes forward ahead of the rest).” (Tate, 2017)
To me, it seems that people who produced avant garde creations were simple just people creating something knew, and unseen before. This forced a shocked response from people, which then generated this avant garde term from them.

Is it still possible to be truly ‘avant garde’? and if so provide game examples:

In the games industry, I don’t think it is. There is no game anyone can make that will be totally unique. It will always have similar parts to another game, such as and RPG will have the same leveling system, any shooter will have the same gun mechanics, etc. However, I think there are some areas where people can be unique to an extent. Art styles, lore and game mechanics are the biggest three that stand out to me. For example, Doom 2016 plays like any other shooter, however you have to perform finishing moves on the enemies to gain health picks ups, and you have to kill enemies with a chainsaw to gain ammo for your weapons that require no reloading. This added a level of avant garde to the game, as it is something that has never been seen in a shooter before.

Bibliography:

Tate. (2017). Avant-garde – Art Term | Tate. [online] Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/avant-garde [Accessed 6 Dec. 2017].

W5 Human Computer Interaction

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HCI

  1. Select one game of your interest and explain why it has good/bad game UI

Fig1: LeBlanc M. (2014) Twitter

User interface is arguably one of the most important aspects of human computer interaction. Without an interface there would be very little to interact with and so the user’s actions will receive very minimal response if any at all. By this idea every game has some sort of user interface regardless of how simple it still counts. One of my favourite games has a UI that appears anything but simple by first glance but once understood, is one of the most intuitive UI designs I have come across.

Fig2: Messelink R. (2015)

Sid Meier’s Civilisation V is my all-time favourite game and part of a series that I have put easily over 1000 hours into and I would like to think I understand the interface very well. The icons used for each element of the UI make perfect sense once they have been explained. For example the symbol for espionage (top right) looks like the silhouette of a stereotypical spy. This theme is used throughout and symbols always match across assets. Notice the symbol in the top left used to represent a golden age is also used on the tab on the left as the unit selected is a special unit that can begin or extend a golden age. The consistency and logical symbolism of the design is what in my opinion makes it a great UI. Although many feel it is overwhelming to a newcomer I believe it is intuitive and actually simpler to understand than people think.

References

LeBlanc M. (2014) Twitter (https://twitter.com/martinleblanc/status/466638260195041280)

Messelink R. (2015) (http://publichistory.humanities.uva.nl/blog/age-of-empires-in-the-classroom/)

 

2. Discuss how technology augments human abilities. Reflect upon the implications of the future of HCI

The technology of a standard form controller is enough to allow people to play games provided they are capable of holding and interacting with the controller. There is however a small portion of gamers who are unable to do this and for them gaming at the same standard as an able bodied person seems like an impossibility. Thankfully this no longer has to be the case as technology has been adapted to use many different inputs to allow almost anyone to join in and compete. Special effect have been one of the leading teams developing and implementing this technology into people’s homes allowing the disabled to be as capable as the abled.

I would hope that in the future this technology and HCI as a whole continues to develop as I believe it could have a huge benefit in other fields. I think that the augmentation of human ability is something that has not been explored enough yet to understand what it could become but I hope to see more of it and I think it will have a long and interesting future

 

References

Special effect: https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/who-we-helped , https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/what-we-do

 

 

Week 6 – Artificial Intelligence

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A) Behavioural modelling is an important part of NPC development for games. Should emotive modelling be part of that development?

Player behavioural modelling is of increasing importance in modern video games (Recent advances in machine learning and game playing). The main reason for this is the fact that the artificial intelligence’s (AI) purpose is to entertain the player, rather than defeat him (Opponent modelling and commercial games). I believe that the more realistic a video game is, the better the game experience is.

Player modelling has many roles in a video game (Opponent modelling and commercial games). In the companion role, the game AI must behave accordingly to the expectations of the human player. For example, if the human player wants to hide, the NPC must act accordingly. Otherwise, the human player won’t be pleased. In the coach role, the game AI monitors closely the behaviour of the human player, and dependent on the goal of the game redirects the player’s focus, or encourages a certain course of action. In the opponent role, the game AI must be able to match the playing skills of the human player, and respond adequately to the player’s playing style. I believe that these goals can be easily achieved without emotive modelling, but I think that the emotive modelling would only make a game more interesting and entertaining. For instance, when a player is in danger of dying because of low energy, there may be a compassionate NPC who would donate him some food so that the main character doesn’t die. I, personally, would be really thankful.

The Walking Dead, 2010 – Emotional Video Games

B) A lot of people are scared by the prospective of AI. What do you think would be the ramifications of us achieving true “strong” AI?

The true ‘strong’ AI’s goal is to develop artificial intelligence to the point where the machine’s intellectual capability is functionally equal to a human’s (A Holistic Approach to AI). I believe that the humanity has come a long way. From the human discovery of fire, we can now fly to the moon and back. Despite the fact that there are now decades since people try to achieve ‘strong’ AI, I do think that the humankind will be capable to finally achieve it (maybe in a thousand years, but it will). I took more than 2 million years after the discovery of fire to invent a light bulb, after all.

If ‘strong’ AI will be achieved, I think that robots will eventually bring both advantages and disadvantages in our lives. No doubt the life is much easier than how it was 10 years ago due technology, but many jobs have already been replaced by computers or machines, leaving people without a sustainable income; and this is only a common example today. Achieving ‘strong’ AI, I think that from a certain point, robots may be somehow able to further develop themselves. At that point, the human race will officially be inferior technology. My only wish is that robots will be smart enough to help the world instead of destroying it, as people do, but I don’t know to what extent this would be possible, since the fact that in the end, they learn from us.

References:

  1. FĂŒrnkranz J.- Recent advances in machine learning and game playing – ÖGAI-Journal, 26 (2) (2007).
  2. Van den Herik H.J., Donkers H.H.L.M., Spronck P.H.M. – Opponent modelling and commercial games – G. Kendall, S. Lucas (Eds.), Proceedings of the IEEE 2005 Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games (CIG’05), IEEE Press, Piscataway, New York, USA (2005).

 

External Links:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875952111000486#b0035

http://ethicapublishing.com/ethical/3CH12.pdf

https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~arihuang/academic/research/strongai3.html

 

 

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

 

It is difficult to decide whether copyright makes our life easier or more complicated. Technically without it people would have an access to the endless library of ideas, references and sounds so creating art would be easier than ever before. On the other hand would the terms “artist” or “creator” exist anymore?

Personally I think that the world without copyright would look much more interesting than now. Of course it does not define it as an unnecessary law. If there was no guarantee that artworks cannot be stolen we can only assume that artists would pay more attention to make their works more outstanding and individualistic to prevent being personised. Perspective of being defended restricts creators to choose the border constituted by the law as the final point in copying others.

The other reason why copyright limits us is no possibility to improve already existing ideas by people who do not owe them but could possibly make some positive corrections. On the other hand the worst thing that every creator can imagine is modification of their work into something they did not mean and copyright can effectively prevent it.

Important issue about copyright is also finances. It seems impossible to be a full-time artist in the world where such laws are not instituted. Although Thus Höffner made comparison of publishing data in XIX United Kingdom and Germany where copyright didn’t exist that days and it turned out that more books were published and read in Germany.

It is a tough question if there is more good or bad things about copyright because it raises as well economic, cultural and ethical questions. We will probably never know how contemporary art or inventions would look like without copyright as every attempt of removing this law would even destroy the market.

 

Is is possible to make anything new?

 

In the age of internet and globalization it may seems that we have already seen everything and nothing can surprise us anymore. Even if we come up with an astonishing brand new idea there is always something behind it.

In general people’s creations cannot be made from nothing because it is not the way how human imagination works. “We are able to create new things as the brain takes familiar pieces and assembles them in new ways, similar to how a collage is made from fragments of photos”. It means that there are thousands of neurons in human brain encoding various characteristic of objects we’ve already seen. We can combine them together in infinite amount of ways and that is how our ideas originate.

If every idea is just a mixture of things which existed before is it even possible to create something new? The answer for the question depends on what is the definition of something ”new” for us.

If we assume that “new” idea is based on the past experiences but links them in a completely unexpected way,  it relates to a lot of creations then. It brings to mind a circle because every new invention stems from the previous one.

A good example of art based on the past can be found in Picasso’s painting. His version of Diego Velázquez’s painting “Las Meninas” is at the same time a copy of the famous masterpiece and something entirely new because cubism style applied in this work was not known before Picasso.

Las Meninas (left: Diego VelĂĄzquez, 1656, right: Pablo Picasso, 1957)

It shows that basing on the past is generally the only way of creating something which seems to be new. To be precise I would rather say “unexpected” because that is the shortest definition of something new.

references:

http://www.medicaldaily.com/how-imagination-works-human-brain-creative-thinking-allows-neurons-work-406628

https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/copyrighthttps://www.quora.com/Why-is-copyright-good

http://www.bbc.co.uk/copyrightaware/what-is

https://theconversation.com/why-cash-and-copyright-are-bad-news-for-creativity-34696

W4 the history of indie

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  1. Why could you say that the “Indie” game scene is not a new thing and explain, give examples?

The term ‘Indie’ refers simply to something that is independently developed. It is typically used in association with music but has more recently been related to games. Although the term is only now getting more use, the ‘indie’ games have still been around from the very beginning the only difference being that the original ‘indie’ games were ‘indie’ in a far more literal sense whereas recently the term has also been used to somewhat refer to a style of game as well. Following that ‘indie’ is simply independently developed, the entire gaming industry started with an indie game. Tennis for two is widely recognised as the first ever video game. Developed in 1958 on the oscilloscope, the game is a representation of tennis played by turning a knob to angle the ‘racket’ and pressing a button to hit the ‘ball’ over the net. Its creation is credited solely to nuclear physicist William Higinbotham and by that statement it can be defined as an indie game. Following that: Spacewar, the first computer game originally developed by Steve Russell, a student at MIT; and Computer space, the first commercially sold coin operated video game by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, are both by definition ‘Indie’. In fact the first notable game that wouldn’t be considered ‘indie’ was pong by Atari incorporated in 1972. It is worth noting that Spacewar and computer space were both later published by other companies but it is the original development of the game that I am referring to as ‘indie’

References

(n.d.) the first video game? Brookhaven national laboratory. Available at: https://www.bnl.gov/about/history/firstvideo.php

Bellis M. (2017) The History of Spacewar. Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-spacewar-1992412

Modine A. (2008) Before Pong, there was Computer Space. Available at: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/13/tob_computer_space/

2.Has the term indie become meaningless?

After writing the answer to question A. yes it has. I’m not sure it’s even a word anymore. Joking aside I don’t think it ever had a meaning to lose besides its literal definition and that can’t change and even in severe overuse it can’t lose meaning. I think what is now defined as indie is exactly what indie is and always has been, small independent teams or individuals creating without the support of any larger external companies. The part of indie that may have been lost over the years is how big a team can be before it’s not indie anymore and I honestly don’t know that an answer even exists, the line between indie and small company is discernible only by legality and that slightly defeats the term indie as some individuals have created companies to deal with monetary issues but are still a lone developer and should still be considered indie. To sum up this mess of an answer it has a single definition, albeit a loose one, and hasn’t really had or lost any other meaning.

W3 Skill Stamina Luck

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  1. Select one example to outline the key concepts of the interactive narrative genre?

Interactive narratives are to me one of the most interesting and enjoyable forms of storytelling. They provide a world and a concept and allow the consumer to experience it how they see fit while still maintaining some level of plot. I think Telltale games are one of the best at creating interactive narratives and have produced one of my personal favourites ‘tales from the borderlands’. Creating an immersive experience is hugely important in interactive storytelling and Telltale games are very effective when it comes to this. The heavy decision making aspect of the game makes the player feel like they have a certain higher level of control and with this sense of control there is also a feeling that the characters depend on you which is all important for player immersion. TFTB is a favourite of mine particularly because of the characters. I think their diversity and individuality was amazing and it was honestly one of the reasons I came back to the game several times over. The overarching story is also important in interactive narratives as it is the point that every decision or action deviates from and it is the focus that drives the player and pushes the game on even following ‘wrong’ decisions. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how you play the game as the story will still be there and the choices will eventually lead you back to the main path. This is something that I don’t like to observe as it means I can usually predict what kind of ending I’m likely to get but it is fundamental in an interactive narrative to avoid complete deviation and potentially becoming an open RPG.

2. Does the interactive narrative still have a role to play in video games today? Give exemplary examples?

I believe that yes it d oes. The development of interactive narrative has pushed the concept of story driven gaming to a new level and has allowed more creative minds to enter the field and present their stories. Zork, although not the first, was one of the most notable in beginning the movement of interactive narrative. Its command line was capable of understanding sentences however the input had to be very specific so offered very minimal choice. Much further down the line games such as Heavy Rain, D4, The Walking Dead, and the Stanley Parable started to be created and shared.

Heavy Rain (2010)

Zork (1980)

Thanks to many years of advancing technology the games have a considerably improved interface, graphics, and story and draw a much greater level of interest in comparison to Zork. Interactive narratives now are significantly more advanced than what they used to be and I expect with the development of new technology they will become even more intricate and hopefully allow more creativity within the gaming industry as a whole not just this genre specifically.

Task 12

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Andy Warhol

‘Marylin Diptych’

1962

Acrylic paint on canvas

2054 x 1448 x 20 mm each panel

Andy Warhols ‘Marylin Monroe’ works are incredibly well known, and it could be argued that they are the face of Pop Art. However, what some people do not know is the sheer scale of the work. More often than not, they are displayed with other very similar works (depicting Monroe), which only adds to the overall size. Warhol created the prints in the years following Monroes death, due to s a substance overdose, throughout Warhol’s work we can see two strong themes; death and the celebrity sect. Here we have an interesting union of the two, the repetition enhances the idea of over publicized and fame while the black fading signifies death. The strong colours and vibrant face on the left contrasts heavily with the distorted monochrome features on the right. If we take the space between the two as ‘death’ (and read from left to right) then the fading of the face could be suggesting that the world is going to forget Monroe. The scale of the work puts the themes right in the viewers face, to the extent of unavoidability. This again hints at the idea of fame, it is a large inescapable object that draws you in with its clean vibrant colours, and could almost be seen as advertising. So if we were to shrink the image down to a quarter of the size, 513.5 x 362 x 5 mm, we have a very different piece. We would still have the same themes of course, but we would look at them in a completely different light, firstly, and most obviously, it would be altogether subtler. The themes wouldn’t be screaming and shouting for attention. For me this is a large part of the work, so to take its size would in effect be taking its message.

 

Bibliography:

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/warhol-marilyn-diptych-t03093

Task 11: Summarise your blog and reflect on what you have learned from the process.

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Writing this blog has played an essential role in my understanding of the wider context of art. It has stretched me and encouraged me to do extra research which does not directly link to my studio practice. I have found the tasks interesting and varied. The blog is a great opportunity to push myself to think more about what goes on in the world of art and in the past related to areas that I wouldn’t normally think to investigate. I have broadened my understanding of the history of art, of contemporary artists, of different art movements and institutions and of critical discussions surrounding art. I’ve been encouraged to consider different ways of making art outside of my usual practice and I think it has been a valuable addition to my art education.