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Another Shot

Posted in bit because, as I whined about, it won't let me do it all at once--keeps saying it's a bad request and giving me error codes. Wouldn't even let me do two at once. Phbttt!

--The Wombat

Final Packet

Paper Dilemas, round 2

I had thought to use something that looked and felt magazine-like at first, but after the newsprint debacle I wasn't going to put anything else that seemed flimsy through the printer. When I went to look at actual printed journals they largely seemed to be on nice thick, good quality white paper anyway. I bought some 67 lb. white paper and printed it on that--both side of the page, then tore the left edges to make it seem as though it had been ripped from the journal. Looks pretty good.

--The Wombat

Illustrations for "article"

Journal Titles, Text for Pt.3

The third part of my packet was meant to be an article in a medical journal. I went digging around on Academic Search Premiere (accessible through SJSU's library portal page with a password) to find a real journal title that seemed likely and discovered that medical journals are completely over my head and really quite dull. But I selected a title to use and got a feel for how my piece should be formatted (headers, titles, etc.).

Here's the text for the fake journal article. I know it's not nearly long or stuffy enough to be a real journal article, but it was the best I could come up with--reading those things was bad enough, nevermind trying to make myself sound like one....

Recent Trends in Treating Musca ridere Infection In Humans

Paul Flight, Julia Pierce, and John Xi

In the twenty years since the initial outbreak of human infection by Musca ridere, popularly known as happy bugs, there has been very little variation in treatment. The accepted protocol, developed by Dr. Steven Kowalski five weeks after the first case was reported using the information in the infamous file that Lt. Col. Donal Molloy leaked to the public revealing the origins of the inexplicable illness, has remained in place because it is effective. The dual level treatment of repeated Dilipsolol injections and controlled application of electro magnetic interference (EMI) to the brain works to attack the larvae on both the biological and the technological level. It takes six days to complete the course of treatment, which must be administered in a hospital, largely due to the infected patient’s reliance on intravenous delivery for nutrition and liquids intake, and the patient has a 95% chance of being completely healed. However, the Kowalski protocol is not without its drawbacks: the CEMII (controlled electro magnetic interference immersion) machines are complicated and costly to maintain; the Dilipsolol causes physical discomfort and has a long list of fairly rare but serious side effects, (six percent of patients, mostly occurring in those below the age of five and above the age of sixty) including permanent blindness and heart complications; the treatment requires a long hospital stay which is often prohibitively expensive for those without health insurance; and it has a 5% mortality rate.

The last three years have seen increased public awareness of the problems posed by the Kowalski protocol, and a corresponding dramatic increase in the amount of funding and research being directed toward finding an improved treatment. This article seeks to examine the three new options that the authors find to be the most promising, discussing their function, merits, and hazards.

The Kowalski protocol is administered when the infection has reached its final stages and the Musca ridere larva is fully grown (fig.1) has taken residence in the hypothalamus portion of the brain. Several of the more serious complications that occur are the result of the larva poisoning or damaging the host’s brain as it dies. Finnish doctors Hinkka and Puustelli have been working on a preventative vaccine that attacks the parasites as they enter the bloodstream as they enter the bloodstream as eggs deposited by the bite of the mature fly (fig.2 &3). The drug, called Metpratenol, works by subtly changing the blood chemistry to be inhospitable to the eggs. As it currently stands it must be repeatedly injected, wearing off after 72 hours and has only proven

Figure 1. Larvae in final stage of growth.

50% effective on the very small sample population it has been tested on, but the concept is

strong. More research is being conducted into ways to make the minor blood chemistry adjustment permanent and a wider pool of clinical trail subjects is being gathered. The Finnish government is funding the research with aid from the drug company Biotie Therapies. The long term effects of changing the make-up of human blood are also a significant concern, and must be careful studied and considered at every step of the process. There has been public opposition to the research in Finland, with detractors making the claim that to change human blood on the molecular level is tampering with what it means to be human and should not be allowed.

Figure 2. Musca ridere eggs amongst red blood cells.

Here in the United States such research has been outlawed under the 2013 AntiGenetic Alteration Bill—ironically it is a bill created in reaction to the initial epidemic of Musca ridere infection that now hampers research into new ways of preventing it.

A second, and less controversial, promising avenue of research is being conducted in Canada by McGill University in Montreal. A group of doctors and scientists have created a stronger variation of the drug Dilipsolol. The new drug, called Trilipsolol only needs to be administered for three day to have the same effect, and the instances of reported muscular discomfort during treatment are greatly reduced.

Figure 3. Egg (enlargement)

However instances of seizures during clinical trials have kept the drug being approved for use and the team is conducting more research into the cause of the side effects.

The most startlingly simple line of research is being conducted here in the United States at Stanford University. Rather than focusing on how to fight the infection after it has already occurred, the Stanford team is focusing their funds and energies into ways to keep the infection from happening at all. Research into chemical insect repellants and devices that could electronically repel or kill the adult fly (fig.4) is underway, although so far very little progress has been made. Figure 4. Adult Mosca ridere.

Yup--messy when pasted in, but all there.

--The Wombat

Newspaper Clipping Text#2

And here's the text for the second "clip":

Local mother arrested for child endangerment

By Will Jones

wjones@mercurynews.com

San Jose Police arrested Lisa Tyler, 41, Tuesday afternoon, responding to a report from neighbors who claimed to have witnessed the mistreatment of children in the Tyler house in the 500 block of Empire.

Upon their arrival police discovered the two children, ages 4 and 6, standing unresponsive in the front yard, clearly infected with the happy bug. Tyler was not at home and the children were taken into protective custody and rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital for treatment. When Tyler returned to the house several hours later she was immediately arrested and charged with children endangerment for having allowed the children to have become grinners and leaving them without supervision.

Tyler confessed to having infected her children purposefully, with the intention of making them more tractable.

“I just wanted them to stay still,” she said, “They never stay still and they never shut up. I just wanted a break.”

Tyler claims to have purchased the adult happy bugs from a dealer on St. James St. that the police closed down two months ago, and to have locked the children in their bedroom with the flies to infect them.

“It was one of the creepier things I’ve seen,” said arresting officer Charles Blake, “I’ve seen hundreds of grinners, but you just don’t expect to see it on tiny little kids—not since the initial outbreak. They just stood there like dolls. I don’t know how a mother could do that to her own children.”

Tyler, a nurse, did feed the children intravenously while they were infected and they are expected to make a full recovery.

Again, not pretty in this format, alas. But readable and that's something....

--The Wombat

Newspaper Clipping Text#1

Here's the text for the first "clipping":

Downtown San Jose

Drug Arrests Two men were arrested Wednesday afternoon when police officers armed with warrants raided a house in the200 block of Saint James Street. James Fraser, 23, and Ray Hunnicut, 27, both residents of the raided house, were charged with drug manufacturing and trafficking. Police seized 56 vials of viable happy bug larvae, six jam jars full of adult bugs, and one gene sequencer and incubator used to grow the insects. Fraser and Hunnicut are being held without bail for the hearing scheduled for Friday morning.

it looks much prettier in a neat, wee column, but I have no idea how how to make my blog do that....

--The Wombat

"Ahhhhhhh!"

That's the sound that could be heard coming from my room after I decided to try putting actual newsprint through my printer for authenticity's sake. It started ok, then promptly made a nasty crunching noise and died. I couldn't just pull the jammed out of the printer because newsprint is fairly delicate and it kept tearing off in wee bits instead of coming out in a sheet as normal paper is wont to do when one tugs on it. So I tore my room apart to find my toolbox that had the fancy screwdriver with the right head for the really weird screws that my printer is held together with and set to work taking the blasted thing apart. I did manage, and it even still worked when I put it back together again (a minor miracle really). The moral of the story is don't put newsprint through your cheap ink jet printer.

In the end I selected (some nicely aged) sheets of off-white/yellowish construction paper instead as my closest match. It's looks pretty good.

--The Wombat

Newspapers smell funny.

I don't usually read them these days--I've never had my own subscription and it's been years since I've had housemates who read the paper. But as two of the three pieces to my final packet were meant to be newspaper clips I went and got a few for reference and now my whole room smells like newspaper ink. Yuck.

I was particularly looking for the police blotter section of the paper--I know the Santa Cruz Sentinel has it, but I didn't come across it in the San Jose Mercury News. I ended up using the physical paper as a formatting template (what should the header look like, where does the date go, what sort of font, how many columns should a small article have, what do the article titles look like--that sort of thing) and going online and doing a google search for "police blotter" to get some content templates (what are the prime vocabulary choices for reporting a drug bust--"seized" is a good one, so was "armed with search warrants"--go figure, what sort of personal information about the criminals is provided, are there pictures, and so on).

My next step was to figure out how to print it out to look like a newpaper, but that was an adventure so it gets its own post.....

--The Wombat

Whoops.

I did the bad blogger thing. I've been keeping research notes, taking pictures, and all that good stuff but I just couldn't seem to make myself put it up online. Part of that it takes so damn long to upload anything to this site, and it seems like half of the time something goes wrong and I have to start over. Let's hope I didn't jinx myself there.....

So I'll start at the beginning with my rough draft/project idea thing (that's the picture up top--it should get bigger/readable when clicked 0n).

--The Wombat

Giant Purple Bug Worm Thing

So here's my 3D model thing. It is meant to be an enlargement (the actual thing being microscopic) of the Happy Bug Larva. My sketches were blue but I liked the purples better when I was looking around in the fabric store so I changed that. When I had sewn the whole thing up it looked like purple sausage links so it was back out to the store to get fabric paints to try to spice it up a little--now it's sort of cute.....oh well. I'm not sure bug larvae should be cute, but as it's meant to be a man-made bug maybe its designers also had art degrees or a weird sense of humor, or something like that. The whole thing took a lot longer than it should have--my sewing machine had a fit and had to be taken apart (I don't think it liked the last move very much) and then it had been a few years since I last sewed anything and I kept forgetting the simple stuff like which dials to adjust and the likes. Then stuffing a narrow tube in segments turned out to be extremely slow going if I didn't want to tear my seams. I did the body shaping by hand sewing/gathering with a fat needle and embroidery thread. I got the lights in ok, and sewed a battery pouch without too much trouble, and I managed not to get the electrical workings wet when I painted. There were originally meant to be model eggs and a fly too--a sort of life-cycle display, but I got sick and that slowed everything down this past week. I did make the eggs and the fly (and some red blood cells to for good measure) out of fimo clay but I fell asleep after I put them in the oven (my evil cold has been sapping my energy all week and I've just wanted to nap-- I never nap--it's weird). They turned black and the house smelled very bad. I got mad and threw them out--I should have taken pictures. But nothing caught fire so that's good, and I decided I'm not allowed to use the oven while under the influence of cold medication anymore......and that is the story of my purple bug larva, which looks pink in these pictures, alas, and is not quite as grand a project as I had hoped . I do like the silly thing though--it'll make a cute toy later.

--The Wombat

Ha!

I recently discovered that my computer has a paint program on it (part of Appleworks, which I've only used for word processing before). It's an Apple program and although it has a different name it works just like the old Paint program on the Mac Classic that my family had when I was 12. I used to love that program--I'd spend hours playing with it and I was actually pretty good at drawing with a mouse. I'm completely out of practice now, and my laptop has no mouse so I drew the ideas here with my trackpad--not easy! It looks like I did it with my right hand if it had been drawn on paper (I'm a southpaw). But it was a trip down memory lane and kind of fun so I'll put it up anyway.....

I want to build the larvae moderately large. I was thinking that paper mache might be the best medium--I could link a succession on little water balloons for the bubbly body and put my paper and goo over them. I've not done paper mache in even longer than I've tried to draw anything on a computer, but I mostly recall what to do. I think. Then I'm thinking I'll put the LED light thingy into it on the body just behind the head, mostly because I made the damn thing so I may as well do something with it. I also want to make a smaller model of the fly--probably out of Fimo clay. I'll put together a couple of eggs as well, and I'll have to play around with materials to get a transparent "membrane". Then I'll want to put the three bits together for a "life cycle of" sort of display. But I don't want it to look like a third grade diorama....I'll have to fuss with it a bit.

--The Wombat

Brain Parasites!

I found this quick video clip earlier this morning--I want my insect to look mostly like this, but it need to have a bit more of a recognizable head. And since it's at least part man-made maybe it will be a more interesting color....

VIDEO!

--The Wombat

LEDs and Solder

Right--so here's last week's project, uploaded a tad late as I feel as though I've been living in my car or at work for the last five days. Blah.

But here it is--note my lovely soldering ; ) I have a feeling the lumps weren't meant to be quite so big. But hey--it works. It's like sewing. I can make clothes, just don't turn them inside-out and look at the seems and everything's fine....

More later.

--The Wombat

Fake Blog

This is my brief narrative that is due today for the first part of project four. It's meant to read like somebody else's blog entry in the not too distant future (what's a score here and there, right?).

October 26th, 2022

Howdy Readers,

So today’s the day. After weeks of media hype we’ve finally reached the 20th anniversary of the strange plague that the pundits at the time dubbed “the people who grinned themselves to death”. For those of you who have been living under a rock lately (or who are just too young to remember) I’ll provide a quick recap:

On October 23rd 2012 two local hopitals here in San Jose reported one case each brought in through the E.R. of a strange sort of catatonia. The victims were largely nonresponsive, they would not speak, showed no signs of understanding when spoken to, and would only change position when physically moved, and most disturbingly, their faces were frozen in huge, happy grins. Doctors at each hospital were stumped, but not yet alarmed, as there was no reason to believe they were looking at anything than an isolated case of mental breakdown of some sort. The following day brought no new cases and nothing more was thought about it until the morning of the 25th when 14 more cases were brought into ERs around the city by frightened family members and the medical professionals began to realize that they were looking a new sort of epidemic. The number a victims rose steadily as the day progressed, maxing out emergency services capability to care for them. The CDC was called in to help contain the situation, although by this time reports were coming in of similar occurances in other places around the country. The true horror of the situation however didn’t hit until twenty years ago today, when San Jose awoke to discover that 40% of its population had become what would soon be known as “grinners”. The unaffected few could wander the streets passing crowds of people who had just stopped going about their business whereever they happened to be and were just standing there grinnning manically at nothing. They were completely nonresponsive, they could be posed like dolls, they were breathing, their hearts were pumping, but nothing else was happening. They would not eat or drink unless fed by I.V. in the overloaded hospitals and it wasn’t long before people began to die.

At the time no one knew what was going on--it was sudden and terrifiying and a complete mystery. It would be five weeks before doctors and scientists were able to discover the cause anf the cure, and when the knowledge was given to the public the riots began. The grinners had been infected with happy bugs--the cyborg product of a secret military project meant to be used to incapacitate enemy soldiers and populations for easier conquest. The tiny little bugs were partially mechanical--tiny nanorobots married to living insect tissue in the lab. The insects, controlled by HI-MEMS technolgy, outwardly appear no diffent than your average gadfly but when they bite they leave the host infected with microscopic cyborg parasites that make their way to the victims brain, attaching themselves to the the hypothalamus where they release their chemical load directly into the pleasure center of the brain, leaving the victim tractible and helpless. Learning that it was our own goverment that had, albiet accidentally, set this horror on its citizens was the last straw and the violence that followed was almost as devatating to the population as the infestation itself.

Nearly everyone lost people they loved in that month twenty years ago, and nobody who lived through the experience can ever look at a grinning face in quite the same way.

There are programs and memorials throughout the nation tonight, and I’m planning to attend the vigil being held at City Hall to remember the dead.

The End.

That's how it stands at the moment--I may well feel compelled to fuss with it some more as the project moves along as I've never been very good at leaving well enough alone....

--The Wombat

Still more research....

......which must be getting quite dull to read about if you're not the doing it. Sorry. I found another place that I had been compiling notes over the weekend. The Stickies program seems to work just like little scraps of paper--I put them everywhere all over the desktop and then can't read the damn things anyway. Ah well.

Here--I'll post a link to something visually interesting to combat the boredom. I'm not sure that these are actually useful, but they were fun to look at:

http://cyanatrendland.com/2009/03/03/cyborg-bugs/

Here's another cyborg bug as government project link (HI-MEMS seems to be the official keyword--should be helpful for both more research and sounding official when I start the actual writeup):

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/for-years-now-p/

Brain pleasure center stuff, some more useful than others:

http://health.howstuffworks.com/brain-during-orgasm2.htm

http://www.indiana.edu/~engs/rbook/drug.html

http://www.geocities.com/hhugs2001/roleofhyp.htm

Plus, ideas cont.:

I think the cyborg bug parasite would have to go through stages--the bug itself flies, stings humans to leave it's "eggs" behind, those hatch and move to the hypothalamus perhaps, stimulating the brains mood centers as they grow (what do they get in returns--anything? they are man made so I guess it's not a requirement, they could just be weapon-like...), then do they leave the host somehow? Collect information?

--The Wombat

Oops!

I forgot to put these in my last post--I got grossed out by the parasite links and it just slipped my mind....

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=368

Interesting article with parasite information in general.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17895-freeflying-cyborg-insects-steered-from-a-distance.html

Cyborg bugs!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/125107/an_army_of_cyborg_bugs.html

Military uses of cyborg bugs (and isn't it scary that when I go research the bizzare, outlandish made up idea for a storyline for class I promptly discover that somebody wants to actually try it--don't these people read science fiction? Bad idea!!!!)

There. That was all of the reading I've done so far that I remembered to save the links for.

--The Wombat

Wee Research

I've gone back to my earlier posts as a starting place. I had been researching nanotechnology, especially as it could be applied to medicine, as a possible movie topic but then my group veered off in another direction and I was left with an unused idea. I want to flesh it out here for this project.

My overall idea is a research project gone wrong (probably government or military)in which microscopic nano-cyborg bugs were designed to infiltrate human hosts and release some sort of pleasure-inducing drug/hormone into the brain on command to render the host harmless/docile/tractable/catatonic. They get out of hand (as is wont to happen in this sort of tale), there is an initial mass epidemic of "the people who grinned themselves to death" (and yes, that does come from a Housemartins song--I like British pop from the '80s, what can I say). It was controlled/comtained (how? must work out), and now is a much smaller ongoing problem--people on street corners purposely getting high by infecting themselves with the bugs, accidental infection a common hazard, so on. I need good information on nanotech, drug delivery systems, cyborg (living tissue/machine mixes), parasites that can affect the brain, and a few other weird topics.

Here's some of what I have so far:

Nanotech in medicine/drug delivery:

http://www.technologyreview.com/biztech/19784/

http://www.nsti.org/Nanotech2009/program/medical_biotech.html#TU82.5

Brain Parasites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis

http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXVI4/brainworms.html

http://animal.discovery.com/videos/monsters-inside-me-schistosomiasis-aka-snail-fever.html

And just as a side note--research brain parasites is disgusting. Really, really, disgusting. Especially the pictures...ew!!!!!

Right. That's all for now. I'm off to find less stomach turning things to read now.

--The Wombat

Next!

We got our assignment briefing for the next project (the first part anyway--it looks like we'll get more as we go along) and I'm actually quite excited about it. I get to make up stories and build a funny bug thing, play with a soldering iron (I'll most likely burn my hands--I have every other time I've used the damn thing, but somehow that's part of the fun....), and take pictures of it all. What's not to like?

This first bit is the research and early development part of the deal. I want to go back to my early interests in the class and see if I can't work out a nifty way to tie nanotechnology into this. I'm initially thinking microscopic critters that can invade a body, but I need to go do the actual research to help me nail it down a bit.

I'll back soon(ish) with more!

--The Wombat

Final Product

Well, tomorrow is the due date and I think our movie is as done as we can make it. It's posted on youtube for mass viewing (I've sent the link to my brother so he can have fun making fun of me for it--what are siblings for?) here.

The film quality goes down a lot in the posting, but the larger file size version we'll be playing in class tomorrow is much nicer. I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone else has come up with--some of the bits and pieces I saw around the classroom the last few weeks looked pretty neat.

I am looking forward to moving on to the next project--building funny little bugs sounds much more my cup of tea. I like actually manually making things.

--The Wombat

Actual Editing

Editing, Day Two:

Ahhh!!! Time consuming! And complicated. I've spent huge portions of class today trying to get two tiny little things done. I did eventually manage to record and transfer the audio clips we needed (after using three computers, two people--Stella and me--and a thumbdrive and a whole lot of shuffling about) and I figured out how to download a youtube video and import it into iMovie '09 to edit out the part we needed, slow it down, and then export it to feed it to Nick's laptop so it could be spliced into the rest of the movie. Blah.

Here's the link for the nifty video download/conversion site--easy as pie!

And our elevator now sings old Scottish ballads. Kinda fun.

--The Wombat

Editing Video Woes

We did more filming before the week was out (and I didn't remember to bring my camera for stills, but as I was crawling around on the floor and stuff, I wouldn't have been able to take pictures anyway), and now it's time to think about editing.

I had started to watch the lynda.com videos for imovie, but then I realized that they were for imovie'06 and the computers in the lab have imovie'09 on them and they don't look at all the same, so videos telling me where to find things in one seem pretty useless for the other. It looks like our class lynda.com membership only lets us watch the particular videos listed for our course so I couldn't get any of the '09 tutorials to play. But Apple's website has a handful of online tutorials--just getting the general idea sort of things, which is just the right speed for me. I also just poked around on Google for any other tutorials and checked those out. This one wasn't bad. There are heaps of them on youtube, most of which seem to be made by wee little boys--it kinda cute. I liked this one and this one. I think I remeber what I watched, and I'll find out tomorrow in class (I've discovered that my computer won't accept any relatively recent version of imovie--its video card is too old? The message that popped up when I tried to install it from my ilife CD said something to that extent).


--The Wombat

Filming!

Well, we filmed today. We had a good, long block of time and we actually got quite a lot done--we did most of the work for three sketches. Filming in a public elevator was a bit trying--for some odd reason other people kept wanting to get in.....go figure. But I think it's going to look good--the fisheye lens (Monday's forgotten equipment) really makes the scene look appropriately weird. We did the ATM shoot next (again--too many darned people!). It took a while to work out the logistics of camera placement, and we ended up doing something a bit different than we originally thought, but it came together and we had fun (we got to spray Stella in the face with a squirt bottle and scramble madly on the ground for cash!). We left campus for the automatic windows shoot and used Nick's (very large--I really had to climb in) truck. We managed not to actually cut my head off (yay!) and discovered that corn syrup blood is very goopy and messy. And people on the street look at you funny when you're hanging out of a truck window making weird noises.

We had been talking about perhaps splicing some footage from some other source of an ATM spitting cash, and I found a clip from the first source I could name (I know it's a common routine--I've seen it lots in movies and TV programs, I just couldn't tell you what most of them were, so that's not much help):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U8U7j23YjI&feature=related

There are a few more shooting get-togethers planned before Monday, I shall try to remember to bring a still camera along for the next one so that I can post visuals....

--The Wombat

More Storyboard (Opening Title, Last sketch-let)

More Storyboard (TV)

More Storyboard (ATM)

More Storyboard (GPS)

Here's the board for the GPS sketch.

Must remember to blog.

Must remember to blog. Must remember to blog.....

Maybe if I type it over and over again, like writing lines in school, it'll stick. This blog reminds me of long division in the third grade--it's not actually all that difficult once I just sit down and make myself do but I have a major mental grudge against the idea of it. That goes for digital art in general for me--I just don't like using computers. I'll have to get past that. Must remember to blog!

Right--that said, we got off to a rocky start with the filming this week. We had a plan, we had props, but come Monday we were short a person, a piece of equipment, an essential prop or two, and a location (being repaired--figures). In other words, we didn't get very much done. Alas. But we're meeting up before class today to get an early start and we have plenty of time blocked out outside of class for the rest of the week and weekend so we should be just fine on time.

We're going to be working on three of the shorter sketches today--elevator, ATM, and car window. I've got a heap of props piled up front of my door to haul off with me--a big clock with hands we can turn, some clean trash, ingredients for fake blood, stuff to clean up after fake blood (which I have a feeling is going to be harder than we think). I'm a bit nervous about the whole thing--filming and acting (and let's not even think about editing quite yet...), but it'll work out.

--The Wombat

Sketch 3

The Blackmail Sketch. Be nice to your computer or else....

Sketch 2

The above is the Self Defense sketch--a.k.a. Death By Automatic Window.

Final Storyboard 1

Our video is a series of sketches bound together to look like an old monster movie--"When Technology Attacks!"--complete with the dramatic music and the dripping letters font.

This is the board for the Mad Elevator Sketch.

--The Wombat

More Video Research

So now that we've narrowed our topic down, most of my earlier research is inapplicable. What I really think I need to be looking into now is AI (artificial intelligence), since our series of sketches revolves around the idea that the everyday technologies that we interact with have their own conciousness or sentience. We as humans want to make machines that can do things on their own to make our lives easier, but the more complex and effective they become, the more likely we are to fear them. I want to look at our ideas about AI, both realistic and fantastic.

The first thing I think about when I think about machines that can think is Isaac Asimov--more specifically his three laws of robotics. I'm posting the Wikipedia link giving a good overview of his concept here. They reveal something important about what we as humans want out of technology--servants that can't complain and can't hurt us. If we were to give the things we use everyday the ability to "think" so that they could interact with us, it would be a bit like making slaves. It's not unreasonable to imagine that things that we created to think the way we do might grow to be unsatisfied with that role and revolt.

Here is a link to a nice FAQ sort of thing regarding AI today--what it is, what it might be used for, and so on:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/whatisai/

Here are the results of an informal survey (on somebody else's blog) regarding the fear of intelligent machines, and the dialogue in the comments afterwards is pretty interesting:

http://www.thinkartificial.org/web/the-fear-of-intelligent-machines-survey-results/

And lastly for now, here is an essay about human fear of intelligent machines in literature which I thought was interesting.

More later.

--The Wombat

Storyboarding: The (Very) Rough Drafts

Our group has narrowed our video topic down to everyday technology going bad as a result of (somehow) having a mind of its own. We want to put together a series of small sketches of varying length and complexity, but all dealing with the same overarching topic.

We went home from our last group meeting with the assignment of roughly sketching out our best ideas and putting the storyboards up here on our blogs. I don't have a scanner and tried to just photograph them with varying results......

The three sketches I've come up with are "Self Defense", in which a poor, abused car fights back via automatic window; "Elevator Music", in which an elevator traps its victims between floors and drives them mad with awful musical selections; and "Blackmail" in which a computer gets what it wants by threatening to send its owner's scandalous vacation pictures to all and sundry unless.....

--The Wombat

Video Brainstorming

We got our third assignment for ART 74 on Monday--we're to get into small groups (done) and make a 2-4 minute movie with the the general theme of technology gone wrong.

My group decided we'd all spend a day or two making list of things that we thought would be interesting and doing a bit of research on our favorites. We're all going to post our research links on our blogs so we can easily show them to each other in class today. Hopefully we'll be able to narrow down our focus and pick a topic.....

The three things that I think are most interesting as possible video topics (trying to keep in mind the actual feasibility of filming said ideas) are:

Nanotechnology, as applied to medicine--the idea of tiny little machines running around inside of our bloodstreams has so many possibilities, some wonderful and some horrible. It is a field that is being actively researched and developed--ittty bitty robots altering our bodies may not be that far off in the future.

One of the things I found was speculating about nanotech being used to rewrite DNA and reverse aging--sounds impossible, but could make for a great tech gone wrong video....

Anyhow, here are a couple of started links regarding the subject:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7288426.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3920685.stm

And a really long link to a google book that I'll shorten by doing this.

Next up on my list is robots/androids--human looking and acting machines. Japan has been doing a lot of work in this field with some amazing results. I think it would make a good video because people can be used as our props and there is a whole lot to explore--benefits, dangers, ethics, etc.

Here are my robot links:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,279383,00.html

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.bbd53bd17a5713678ea8bea533d92910.1bc1&show_article=1

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2008-03-01-robots_N.htm

http://paro.jp/english/index.html

Definitely watch these two videos of the robot baby:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE2VCwYDjx0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyIHzCsbA_w

Lastly, I love the idea of the everyday stuff that we surround ourselves with getting a little bit more complicated and developing personalities of their own. I mean who doesn't argue with their computer, yell at their microwave, curse at their VCR, etc.? Now what if they talked back? Wouln't that be fun to watch?

I had been thinking it would be fun to do a scene in which a toaster was arguing with its human--turns out it has already been done (and in a Red Dwarf episode I've somehow never seen too!). But this is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZslRQvv5zM

http://www.the4cs.com/~corin/cse477/toaster/FAQ.shtml

Right, that's all for now folks,

--The Wombat

It begins....

Welcome to the witterings of a wee wombat. As wombats lack opposable thumbs and have difficulty typing, we are not traditionally associated with blogging. However, this particular wombat wants an art degree and therefore must do its best to muddle through a Digital Media Art class. Said class requires said blog and here we are......

The blog itself is actually the second class project, to be added to throughout the term. The first entry is meant to display the first class project--a bit of internet research meant to expose our general interests to our instructor. It was aptly enough entitled Expose Yourself (yes, it’s funny--now pull your mind out of the gutter and keep reading).

Part one of the project asked that we select our favorite Media Art project from the following list and give a brief explanation of what we liked about it:

https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/marktribe/new+media+art

I was most drawn to a project entitled Pedestrian by artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar in which a tiny black and white urban world with tiny people is projected down onto the floor of a gallery, scurrying about their business amongst the feet of the viewers. The still image provided strongly resembled the works of any of several famous photographers and the write-up states that this was intentional. The movements of the animated figures was carefully researched using models in special motion suits reminiscent of Marey’s and Muybridge’s motion studies in the late 1800’s. It’s just a charming idea--a tiny little animated city swarming about your feet, looking like Modernist photographs and moving as realistically as possible. However, I do wonder what happens if they are stepped upon....

https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Paul+Kaiser+and+Shelley+Eshkar

Part two of the project called for three things:

a) A news article reflecting a concern that we have about today’s social environment:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/31/online.internet.therapy.cbt/index.html

I chose this CNN feature about online psychotherapy on the basis that it instantly provoked me to a strong negative reaction. I do not care for the idea of online health care--especially for mental health. Isn’t the whole point of therapy that one talks to somebody about their issues? Our society seems to have this need to put everything online--banks, retail stores, public services, customer service, school, anything and everything. It strikes me as dehumanizing somehow.....or at the very least horribly impersonal.

b) A You Tube video that we found to be shocking or fascinating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glUnzzoFUxg

Watching this creepy Japanese robot crawl across the floor was definitely fascinating, in a morbid sort of way. Throw in the artist in the nurse’s outfit, the maintenance hatch/butt, and the confused little Australian boys and we’ve got a winner....what a great piece of performance art.

c) A piece of technology being developed for the future that caught our eye:

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?Search=parviz&articleid=39094

These little contact lenses look just like something out of any number of my favorite science fiction movies, tv shows, and books. The idea of granting humans super-human vision through the use of technology (and tiny, unobtrusive technology at that) is highly appealing. I like it when I see fictional devices becoming reality--now if only they could start perfecting the holodeck....

Overall, my selections exposed an interest in “People, illusion, online life, scale, mechanised people, future super human components” to my teacher. We'll see where these interests take me over the course of the semester.

--The Wombat