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From Sean I found out about the Parrot AR.Drone which has to be the coolest iPhone accessory around. You control a drone over wifi and see through it’s camera on your iPhone. They apparently have gaming modes where you can duel layered bots or other drones. I can’t help thinking this is too cool to be real. See their video channel on YouTube.
Gizmodo has a short article on Ridiculous User Interfaces In Film, and the Man Who Designs Them. The article showcases graphic designs by Mark Coleran who did work for movies like Mission Impossible 3, Mr & Mrs Smith, and Children of Men. There is a screen reel that summarizes his work and he responds here in his blog. Thanks to Stan for this.
Thanks to twitter I’ve discovered the future of robots and they are tweenbots. The tweenbots is a playful project by Kacie Kinzer who let loose simple rolling bots with a flag that identified where they were going. She then videotaped people helping the little robot on its way.
Thanks to Jason I discovered an interesting collection of animated poetry that plays with type by David Jhave Johnston. See glia — neuronal jelly with network sauce — 2009.. In theory you can embed the animated poems in things, but it didn’t work in this blog. Perhaps they are best seen in glia.
One feature of Johnston’s work is how he plays with type using, among other technologies, Mr. Softie from Obx Labs.
We got the Big See project working in the cave at U Alberta. The Big See software has various 3D modes so it can be displayed for viewing in a CAVE.
Technically Personal posted a very useful list of 15 Stunning Augmented Reality Apps for the iPhone. This includes Layar which is now available for the iPhone (see image above.) These AR apps make it possible to start developing AR games.
Thanks to Sean for this.
Stephen Ramsay sent me one of my first Python programs that I wrote in response to his telling me about Perl poems. No doubt I was also influenced by Jerry McGann and his ideas on deformation.
#!/usr/bin/python
import random
def Random_Means(Words):
return random.randrange(len(Words))
How_Much = ["How much", "All", "Some", "Every", "The", "No"]
Of_What = ["interpretation", "rhetoric", "fiction", "fabrication",
"deformation","representation"]
Could_Be = ["could be", "was", "is", "will be", "would be"]
At_End = [".", "!", "?"]
All = Of_What[Random_Means(Of_What)]
Interpretation = Could_Be[Random_Means(Could_Be)]
Is = How_Much[Random_Means(How_Much)]
Just = Of_What[Random_Means(Of_What)]
Deformation = At_End[Random_Means(At_End)]
print Is + " " + All + " " + Interpretation + " " + Just + Deformation #?
This playful exercise then led to Untitled #4 which led to our dialogue with the same name which led to the Animation!
Back to Pontypool, the semiotic zombie movie that has infected me. The image above is of the poster for the missing cat Honey that seems to have something to do with the start of the semiotic infection. The movie starts with Grant Mazzy’s voice over the radio talking about,
Mrs French’s cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. Have you seen Honey? Well, we have all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody, until last Thursday morning when Miss Collettepiscine … (drove off the bridge to avoid the cat)
He goes on to pun on “Pontypool” (the name of the town the movie takes place in), Miss Collettepiscine’s name (French for “panty-pool”), and the local name of the bridge she drove off. He keeps repeating variations of Pontypool a hint at the language virus to come.
As for the language virus, I replayed parts of the movie where they talk about it. At about 58 minutes in they hear the character Ken clearly get infected and begin to repeat himself as they talk on the cellphone. Dr. Mendez concludes, “That’s it, he is gone. He is just a crude radio signal, seeking.” A little later Mendez gets it and proposes,
Mendez: No … it can’t be, it can’t be. It’s viral, that much is clear. But not of the blood, not of the air, not on or even in our bodies. It is here.
Grant: Where?
Mendez: It is in words. Not all words, not all speaking, but in some. Some words are infected. And it spreads out when the contaminated word is spoken. Ohhhh. We are witnessing the emergence of a new arrangement for life … and our language is its host. It could have sprung spontaneously out of a perception. If it found its way into language it could leap into reality itself, changing everything. It may be boundless. It may be a God bug.
Grant: OK, Dr. Mendez. Look, I don’t even believe in UFOs, so I … I’ve got to stop you there with that God bug thing.
Mendez: Well that is very sensible because UFOs don’t exist. But I assure you, there is a monster loose and it is bouncing through our language, frantically trying to keep its host alive.
Grant: Is this transmission itself … um …
Mendez: No, no, no, no. If the bug enters us, it does not enter by making contact with our eardrum. It enters us when we hear the word and we understand it. Understand?
It is when the word is understood that the virus takes hold. And it copies itself in our understanding.
Grant: Should we be … talking about this?
Sydney: What are we talking about?
Grant: Should we be talking at all?
Mendez: Well, to be safe, no, probably not. Talking is risky, and well, talk radio is high risk. And so … we should stop.
Grant: But, we need to tell people about this. People need to know. We have to get this out.
Mendez: Well it’s your call Mr Mazzy. But let’s just hope that your getting out there doesn’t destroy your world.
As one thoughtful review essay points out, Pontypool is not the first to play with the meme of information viruses that can infect us. Snow Crash, the Stephenson novel which features a language-virus, even appears in the movie.
Pontypool itself is infectious, morphing from form to form. Sequels are threatened. The book, Pontypool Changes Everything, which starts with a character who keeps Ovid’s Metamorphoses in his, led to the movie which led to the radio play which was created by re-editing the movie audio (and it apparently has a different ending with “paper”.)
Stan pointed me to a neat circular visualization tool, Circos – visualize genomes and genomic data. As the site title says, Circos is for visualizing genomic information, but the circular model strikes me a applicable to other domains. In fact, Camilo Arango in Computing Science, just defended a MSc thesis on a Course Browser design that uses a circular design to show requisites between courses. While the circular design is attractive, I wonder if it is misleading for linear information, like a text, if one wraps the text around the edge of the circle, the way TextArc does.
The Circos site has an interesting slide show on visualizing quantitative information by Martin Krzywinski that starts with Tufte and then shows different genomic visualization models leading up to Circos.
Shannon pointed me to The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic band from the 80s that was one of the entertainments at Showbiz Pizza. Rock-afire Explosion has been resurrected by a fan and one of the original creators of Creative Engineering who are programming tunes and uploading video to YouTube. See, for example, Madonna’s 4 Minutes. They take bids on New Shows to Program at a strange and not very clear site. If you bid high enough and it isn’t “dirty” they will program the animatronic band to do a song you want. (Would they do Plato’s dialogues?)
I cannot begin to describe how strangely captivating this all is. Perhaps the documentary made about it (see Rockafiremovie.com) captures the passion. Or, for a computing perspective, see the clip about Programming the Rock-afire Explosion.
Whatever happened to animatronics? Will it make a comeback now that we all carry around smartphones that can control things?