Open Sky Part I

Open Sky is a book written by Paul Virilio in 1995 about “information technology and the global media.”  One of my first thoughts of this book is how interesting it is that to be written by an artist who originally trained in stained glass art. With in the first few sections of Part I, it is evident that his experience enabled him to write this book.

His book starts off by talking about the difference between real-space and real time. From what I can understand, real-time is what is currently happening in our technologically advancing world where these technologies are creating a new dimension to life in comparison to real-space, where it literally creates dimension by using infrastructure.

Meeting at a distance is talked about as being in here and there at the same time. This is only conceivable in our time with the type of technologies that have come out even in the past five years. My first thought was how easy it is to be at a job interview that is three states over while being in your own home. Things like Skype or FaceTime have made this distance a possibility.

Virilio talks about and defines the importance of space and time. Space and time are literally being defined by our technology and we are the reason for why it’s almost being warped. FaceTime is a great example of how we are doing this. We are closing the distance and completing other tasks at the same time — it’s truly remarkable when looking even at ten years ago.

“The Elements of User Experience”

Jesse James Garett, writer of the book”The Elements of User Experience”, is one of the founders of Adaptive Path which is a user experience consultancy located in San Francisco. For more information on information architecture resources, you can visit his personal website at www.jjg.net.

For today’s reading, I had to read chapters one and two in his book “The Elements of User Experience”. The first chapter, User Experience and Why It Matter, is all about the importance of user experience in the making of products and why it should NOT be overlooked in production. Garett defines user experience as “the experience the product creates for the people who use it in the real world.”

Before leading into user experience and the web, he talks about the importance of not how the product works and if it works, but how the product actually works from the outside. Like he suggests with the buttons, it makes me wonder how many products that I have had or have that work, but not consistently because of the design.

It’s not the cat’s fault, but the product’s poor design.

User experience on the web, is just as important if not more important that the experience with a product. If someone has good user experience on your site, than that means good business. The content of your site, regardless if you sell anything, is going to get more people to come back to view your site. THIS IS GOOD BUSINESS.

Once you understand the concept of good vs. bad user experience, then you can begin to build a better experience for your users. Chapter 2, Meet the Elements, talking about the decisions that are made in order to make a good user experience. They are as follows:

1. The Surface Plane

2. The Skeleton Plane

3. The Structure Plane

4. The Scope Plane

5. The Strategy Plane

Each of these planes help the website to become the most useful for a user to have that good experience that Garett is talking about and play into all aspects of the design of a good website for users. 

Aesthetics of Editing

Einstein looking at film. I found this picture and it reminded me of what editors/directors might do (except in modern day) in order to tell the story of the movie or TV show.

In Osgood and Hinshaw’s chapter on Visual Storytelling, I literally got a sense of how important treating film and editing like how someone would tell a story. Well duh, is  probably what you are thinking when you think of every movie or TV show that you have ever seen, but I am talking about the cuts and the edits that the director has to make in order to tell that story that we recognize on the big or small screen.

What I enjoyed most about this chapter was the section called ” The Psychology of Editing”. The title may suggest that seems simple enough, but I had never realized how much thought is put into every cut and edit that a director makes while editing. It always just seemed that the script worked itself out and the director cut where he or she wanted to shorten it. A las, this is not the case.

For example, everyone knows about the saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words“, just as these two authors use in this chapter. What this chapter and this section made me think of more specifically is how boring our movies would be without the sounds and the dialogue over the picture. Awful in my opinion, but I guess some had to deal with it at some point!

Osgood and Hinshaw’s goal in this particular section is to portray to the reader just easy it is to change around a shot just by moving the camera to a different angle.
And it’s all truly a way in playing with the viewer’s emotions, deciding what angle or what cut is the most resonating or eye catching with the audience.

The video projects that we are working on now are only five minutes, but the amount of decisions and we have to make as “directors” or editors will either make or break our videos. This is what Osgood and Hinshaw want us to take away from this section; about how crucial these decisions are and who you should be thinking of when making these decisions.

Forces Within the Screen

Written by Zettl, this article focuses on the importance of being able to fit “the event” inside it’s respective screen whether its a television, computer or motion picture screen.

When talking about “Horizontal and Vertical” planes, there is one section that really grabbed my attention; “Tilting the Horizontal Plane”. Why? because he talks about how we can so easily distinguish a straight line versus something that’s crooked. So what happens when you see this picture of this car?

It’s disorienting, isn’t it? I looked at it, and my first reaction was that I tilted my head to “match the tilt”. I reason that I did this subconsciously to try and straighten it even though its physically impossible to do so anymore because the picture has already been taken.

Based on my understanding of the reading, I would say that this tilted horizon is stressed because of the lean towards the camera or, well you as the viewer. This adds an automatic intensity to the picture.

Just look at it compared to this picture of a car where the horizon is straight:

The car is obviously on a track and I am certain that it would probably go just as fast as the one previously mentioned, but there is something that is clearly less intense about the photo and about the car itself. It suddenly makes it obvious as to why add companies use such particular angles when shooting car commercials; they have to get all of that information and feeling within their frame, the screen.

Multimodal Polyphony

Written by Anders Fagerjord, “Multimodal Polyphony” talks about how media has given us the opportunity to combine forms of writing and images all in one place, the internet.

This article examines National Geographic Magazine‘s cover of “The Way West“; a story covered in September, 2000 that was both an online article and a film. The film, is not a standard motion film, but a film of images that come with a story that has been recorded over the images. In this film, Fagerjord talks about how the techniques in this film are writing, images, speech, music and sound effects. All of these together engage the audience with extreme ease

The extreme ease that comes with partaking in such a media, comes with the fact that you dont have to  read anything while listening. It’s simply that the audience has to be watching the pictures and listening at the script that is playing with the images. Static writing is chosen for this type of media for this exact reason

Zen of Listening

You throw a stone into a pond and you’re going to get a ripple effect.

ripple effect

This concept was used by scientists to help people understand how radio waves and signals work. I personally, love this example because it gives everyone a clear image of how exactly something like radio signals operate. Douglas tells us that the stone hits the water   is the same as the radio signal; the ripples are the effect and those represent the radio waves; once the waves (both literally and figuratively, hit the shore that’s the end point or in other words, your radio receiver. Applying this concept with the different concepts of AM and FM radios, helps people try and understand (especially at the time of 1920s through the 1950s and 70s) how word can travel without anything in between visibly connecting the message to the receiver.

The example of the radio and it’s complexities, especially when it was first brought about, is an example of zen listening because it connects people with something that’s not physically there. Listening to the radio is an opportunity for people to connect with themselves or maybe to someone else simply through what is being played on the receiver.

In response to this article, I think it’s interesting how some of the topics that we have discussed prior to this are still applying hear when talking about the radio. The radio was once such a big deal and a way for people to still feel connected. Today, the radio is even beginning to go instinct. At least since I’ve been in college, I have noticed that certain applications such as Spotify have changed the way we listen to music or other things that enhance our feelings.