Productive??? day...

26.06. 2011
Now I "just" have to get my minigame running :(


26.06.2011
And there it is :)
My essay: (without the pictures, sorry for that)
If you want to see the version with pictures use:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16449983/HFAP_porposal.pages

How to make a game out of media overload


Media overload is a big topic nowadays, but how to make a game out of something that surrounds us unknowingly?

The first thought is to google media overload, and you can find 23.700.000 results in 0.17 seconds, as you can see when you search for media overload, you get media overload, the next filtering idea google gives you is „media overload bad for kids“. Ok so how to make a game out of something that is bad for kids.

One problem is to visualize media overload, if you search for media overload pictures at google, you can find 2.260.000 results in about 0.05 seconds. Here are some of them:

[1]

[2]

Both are a nice way to visualize media overload, but maybe not the best way to do so, if you want to make a game or an installation out of it.
If you want to visualize something you should know what exactly you want to display. Then what is media overload?
If you search for a definition what media overload is, you get following result:
information overload
Definition
Noun
having too much information to process
"DAVID AYLWIN, founder and managing director [of the Training Association], said: “With the huge explosion in emails and web pages, the average number of hours people spend having to read in a day is between four and seven. People are suffering from information overload. They need to update the reading skills they were taught when they were five”." [Mary Morgan The Daily Mail]
[4]

As a result, media overload is information overload, ok the how to display information overload?
Then the next idea, was to do it in the was matrix does it already, so people are used to it.

[3]

If you want to read more about the actual idea, please visit the other proposal I already wrote for our group:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16449983/HFAP-porposal.pdf

Now I will tell you something about another idea we had and why we will not do it this way:

Make it portable!

One sketch I made, the idea was, not to use a tent and one umbrella, but 2 umbrellas, one must be very big, and the other one is a child's umbrella. If you put one minibeamer in the small umbrella to display the filtered data and about 3 bigger beamer in the big umbrella, to display the data information, you can make out idea portable.
Around the big umbrella there would be semitransparent fabric, so you can read the information, that is displayed on the fabric and it would also display it on your surrounding, so you have the feeling, that it really rains information. By using an accelerometer, we can track the movement of the umbrella and the displayed information will be changed.
But we abolished this idea, because the beamer will the umbrella become very weighty and so we would need a portable under-construction like this, but bigger:


[5]


And then it isn´t that portable and comfortable at all.

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you did enjoy it.


References
[1]http://markfaul.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/managing-social-media-overload/
[2]http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-43170475/stock-photo-purple-media-overload-with-a-multimedia-abstract.html
[3]http://www.softsia.com/Matrix-Mania-download-w42z.htm
[4]http://www.mediadictionary.com/definition/information-overload.html
[5]http://www.otwolf.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/leichtgewichtrollator.jpg


26.06.2011

 Juhu the next essay to write :)
My topic will be how to make a game out of media overload, I will post it here in a while.
I "already" did upload my portfolio, please use following link:
http://sabrinastocker.chaos-seite.de/portfolio/assignments.html
and please be not disapointed, because I didn´t manage it to make a new portfolio right now,
this will be one of my task for the summer "holidays".


13.06.2011

I started to make my new portfolio, beause my old one did not look very good...
But getting a new webspace is not that easy...
If you do not have a credit card or paypal...
And how to use a check????
I nerver saw one in real life... Just in movies....

So I will start writing my essay now...


And there it is: (with pictures: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16449983/Essay%20Sabrina%20Stocker.pdf )


The little prince goes nano

Who is the little prince

The little prince is the main character of „The little prince“ from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
In general the story is about the little prince from the asteroid B 612, who is traveling to different planets, where he meets different kind of people. On his traveling, he met a king, a vain man, a drinker, a businessman, a lamp lighter and a geographer, who are displayed like a stereotype.
The little prince shows up the all their mistakes and realized that you have to think by heart.
In the story he also travels to earth, where he crossed the narrator´s way, who explained a lot to the little prince and the little prince became more and more clever, but he never forgot to think by heart.
So the book really has a philosophical background and not only a kid´s book, as a child you do not understand everything in detail and every time your read it, you get thought-provoking impulses. This could be one reason, why it was translated into more than 100 languages, so it is known all over the world.

What the project is about

We decided to make an overall story, that connects all the subsenarios.
And what would be nicer then making all the subsenarios as a own small planet, it´s nearly like the nanolab itself, because you have to complete every subsenario before you can do the next step.
That was quite good for the task devision, we are with six people, so we decided that everyone should make his own planet. But just giving the subsenarios a planet is not enough, somebody should explain what this subsenario is about, so we implement the characters.
By giving everybody the possibility to design the planet in the way they want to, the end-result became more creative and individual then by using just one concept and design, the only one, who did not have the chance to do something individual was Raphael, because he made the little prince and to connect the book with our story, the little prince need to look the way he does in the book. 
But having world´s with characters is not good enough, so we made an introduction story, a homepage to be represented all over the world and I drew a little comic, that you can have the feeling of the book, you can travel around and get explanations about what you are seeing, so you are the little prince, stupid in the beginning but clever in the end.

But why did we choose the little prince as a character?

Maybe you think we choose the little prince as a character, because he is so cute. Perhaps it´s a nice add-on, but the reason, why we did choose the little prince is, that the visitors of the nanolab are like him. Most of them maybe know about the money the nanolab costs each day, but they do not know what happens in there, in detail. So they can get the informations on a lower level, on a level they can understand. That´s the way somebody would explain it to the little prince. Some of the visitors will know a lot about the nanolab in the end, but in the beginning, they all are like the little prince, just not that cute...
Moreover if you use a nerd as your leading character, there are a lot of difficulties. Did you ever try to follow a nerd, when he is talking about his department? For sure, for nerds it is easy to listen to nerds, but if you have no idea about what he is talking about... It´s not funny to listen to them...
But also the other way round, it´s really hard to find explanations, and worlds for what you are talking about, if yours audience is full of idiots. Like: “In the nanolab we are producing chips“ “Oh nice, I love chips, what flavors do you produce“ Ok most of the visitors will know what kind of chips are made in the nanolab, but maybe just most of them.
Additional if you want to use nerd as your main character, you don´t need to make a 3D model of him, there are more then enough nerds in the nanolab, just ask one of them to explain you something about the subsenarios and for sure, the little prince is really good looking...
And last but not least, using a cute character to explain something is a effective concept.

Stupid people....

I went to the road traffic licensing department in Siegburg...
To ask if I could make my driving license in Gronau...

Do you know this kind of people, who you look at and you know
they are stupid?

So... after long discussions I should prove her that I´m a student
(and for sure a studentpass is not good enough - but where for is
it, when it´s not there to prove that you are a student...)

And.... I should prove her that Gronau is the next city in germany,
when you come from Enschede...
How to prove that? Fuck the hell... Use google maps...
So my answer was: I´m sorry I do not have a map with me...

What is the impact of....

I started using google, when I was 12.
In my study, google is indispensable, because you have to learn 

nearly everything yourself.

Together with youtube, google means knowledge, power and for

me personally it´s impossible to live one day without it.
Once and a while, I wished to be a millionaire, 

so I could just work for fun.
All in all, google provides me an opportunity to get knowledge 

about every topic I´m interested in, to find places I have never

been before, ect. Google has a tool for every problem,

so in a while it will govern the hole world.