Projects 1 and 2 videos by Eric Levine

Here is a video of my Project 2 title Turntable Improv.




Here is a video of my Project 1 called From A To D.

3D filming

Avatar has changed the way sci-fi films are created. James Cameroon posponed the making of Avatar due to the lack of technology available to create what he had planned. For years himself and his colleague's development a new 3D camera.

The picture above is that camera. It was based around how the human eyes work. Originally 3D pictures where filmed using two camera's placed at an angle to one another and then the two images where imposed over one another. However the outcome was often crude and didn't really draw the viewer in.

James Cameron changed 3D filming by developing a camera that had the two lenses positioned next to one another, like a pair of eyes. The lenses where positioned with one slightly infront of the other and the images where transmitted from the camera to a super-computer that would then render the images, giving a 3D film.

The development of this technology now means that tv shows, sports events, concerts etc. can now be broadcast in 3D around the world and viewed at 3D cinema screens and soon t.v's in your own room.

Art in Virtual Worlds

This week we'll take a look at and, if you want, go into the virtual world Second Life to see the kinds of immersive, interactive virtual art that can be made and experienced there. Today, I'll give you an overview of SL and virtual subjectivity (which has been the main topic I've been exploring through machinima, virtual art, and writing), and tomorrow you'll have the opportunity to learn how to build a 3d sculpture in SL in a workshop session, and then we'll visit some art installations.

Here are some screen shots of the new Welcome Island where you can learn the 6 most essential things you'll need to get around in SL.

Internet Dating

With more and more advances in the field of social networking, it would only be natural that internet dating would become more and more popular. According to projected numbers, Americans will spend $932 million dollars on internet dating services. The stigmatism formerly associated with internet dating is no longer there and it is now seen as a legitmate way to meet the love of your life. While there are plenty of success stories with dating services, there is a long list of problems with concept as a whole.

1. Since people normally engage in several emails back and forth before they actually meet, it is very easy to lie and keep a lie going without getting caught. People create multiple personalities online and are easily able to scam others on the site. A recent study showed that women assume a false degree of safety with internet dating that can lead to some horrific situations.

2. These sites can be very unbalanced gender wise with males usually dominating the playign field. A balance in age can also be a problems as many of the women who use these sites can be older.

3. Gays and transgender people have accused several sites of discrimination. Most site's profile builders do not have ways to indicate bisexuality, homosexuality, or transgenderism.

4. Problems with these sites often go unreported due to feelings of humiliation. Many terrible acts of sexual violence and rape go unreported from internet dating users. People are too embarrassed to admit what happened and will not make a report on their abuse. Not all sites do background checks on their users, and sexual predators are still able to get by these securities.

5. Users will still appear on a site even if they have no accessed their account for years, making it appear that more people are using the site than what is actually going on.

With the busy lifestyles that many people lead, it can be hard to find time to find love. Internet dating is supposed to be the answer to this so that you can "date" from your home without having to go out. The emailing process is designed so that you can quickly find matches and not waste your time with people that you know you will not get along with. While these are all good ideas for our modern world, I do not think that internet dating is a valid replacement for acutal in person dating. People decide if they are attracted to someone within the first 5 minutes of talking to them in person. No matter how many emails you send to someone, you never know if you will actually be attracted to them. Pharamones are a very important part of human attraction, and without really encountering them from another person, you will never know if there is a true sexual attraction with someone.

3DTV

Starting in June 2010, DirecTV will premiere four channels dedicated to 3D programming. They will include ESPN 3D, a 3D-only channel called N3D, a 3D pay-per view channel, and a 3D DirecTV on Demand. ESPN 3D is a free upgrade for ESPN-subscribing DirecTV members, while the rest of the channels are free upgrades for all DirecTV subscribers.

Discovery Channel has also announced plans to launch a 3D channel in 2011, as a cooperation with IMAX and Sony.

The world's fascination with 3D stems from our want to have fiction be as realistic as possible, thus allowing us to believe it. The technology has been around for over 50 years and shows no signs of slowing, only growth.

The fact that two 3D movies were on the list of Best Picture nominations at the 2009 Academy Awards shows that it is becoming more and more mainstream to have 3D in our everyday life. Why wouldn't the next step be the screen in each of our homes?

In the future, I could likely see all channels broadcasting in 3D, as long as they find a technology to allow us not to wear those stupid looking glasses.

Ten Questions to Ask about Technology

Here are Ten Questions (ok there are more, because some questions are kind of nested) to ask about a new technology tool that help us think about it in its wider cultural context. I am working off of, as usual, Cultural Studies founder Stuart Hall's idea of the circuit of culture, in which production, consumption, regulation, representation, and identity are all mutually informing. When we combine this with the historical trajectory perspective I am always harping on--which puts any given cultural text (game, device, app, film, dvd menu, etc) in a lineage of antecedents, looks for its peak if it has had it yet, and then speculates wildly on what might come next--we will always have a lot to talk about when we talk about any new aspect of technology, beyond the thumbs up/thumbs down reaction from which we might start and then come back to at the end, perhaps more thoughtfully.

Ten questions to ask about a new technology:

1) What is its purpose?

2) What was its analog, if there was one? How does a mediated, digital, or networked version of the tool or technique change it?

3) Who uses it? How? When? Where? Why? Does the use change over time? Do different users use it differently?

4) How does a user learn how to use it?

5) Who makes it? Who profits? How?

6) How is it regulated?

7) How does it spread?

8) Does it create or fill a need?

9) What is the interface? Is it also an object? Or a practice? Both? (think cell phone)

10) How does the user change the technology as he or she uses it? (mods and hacks and appropriations) How does the technology change the user? How does it become part of a person's sense of self?

The Wikinovel - Collaborative Fiction

THE WIKINOVEL..

... offers a way for people from all over the world to interact within the experience of collaborative literature. Users, with or without literary training/knowledge, may create a work of literature (be it fiction, poetry, etc) with other users in an organized, online environment.

The first organized attempt at writing a collaborative wikinovel was sponsored by Penguin Publishing and De Montfort University and was called A Million Penguins. The final product was not considered to be a novel and the experience was eventually regarded as an interesting interaction/performance rather than anything that could produce a good resulting product. Whether the concept of a wikinovel will be able to produce well respected literature or not remains to be seen.

Here are some links to collaborative literature websites...

Wikinovel

Make Literature

WikiStory

Fabulate

... and for more INFO