Google Sketchup Assignment - "Requiem For a Job"

The tableau depicted is the set for a film. The film is entitled Requiem For a Job. The two female figures are in search of a job. They have no heads due to their rampant consumption of reality television. As a result their heads have exploded. Somehow, they manage to survive this, and continue to at least listen to reality television, their only source of schadenfreude entertainment in a world gone wonky. They have gone to the Texarkana Town Hall to apply for government work. They need the money so they can continue to subscribe to cable television which costs $9 million a month. Nona, depicted in a prone position has suddenly died of grief, realizing that employment was something that people were only able to find in a long gone magical time known as the 1990s. The 1990s when work was readily available and employers hadn’t yet thought of making prospective employees take personality profiling tests as a mandatory step of a job application. Helen, however, has lost her mind and is being levitated by the silhouette of a cat. The cat has no actual substance, as she is a figment of Helen’s imagination. Helen has been driven mad by the senselessness of a society that insists on absolute competition at all times. The imagined cat-silhouette (known to his friends as Dave) wishes that Helen would regain her sanity as he has places to go, things to do, and people to see.

Not far from where the cat-silhouette is levitating poor Helen, is a toy car - a Hummer. The toy was discarded by Jeff Vader, a boy who has realized the failure of the adults surrounding him. The boy deduced that since learning about history is the only thing that prevents you from repeating the same mistakes, that surely educated adults have managed this, and reform in all things was just around the corner. Jeff thought again about the people that make the world the way it is and figured out that politicians are the ones who make policy. Since most politicians are university educated, Jeff rejoiced as surely with a working knowledge of history, politicians would avoid the failings of past administrations throughout the passage of time. After doing a bit of research, Jeff realized that politicians do have a thorough knowledge of history, but ignore their responsibility to their constituents, unless fulfilling their responsibility results in their getting re-elected. Jeff, in a despondent fit throws the toy Hummer to the ground, and resolves to become an emancipated minor, the first step in completely rejecting the values system that makes everyone a prisoner to: their car, their insurance, their mortgage, their church, corruption, corporate interests, to their own ambition, the k-12 prison sentence of state provided education which leaves you completely unskilled after 12 years, and to the linear expectations connected to key ages in mass-accepted models of human development.

Fin.

Week #3Questions and Answers

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Week #2 Questions and Answers

After watching tonight's DVD lectures parts one and two please answer the following questions. Post the questions and answers on your individual class blogs and upload a text file of the questions and answers to the week 2 iLearn area for DAI227

Due 2/10/2011



Questions for week 2


Based on the lecture from week



Part one)


1) Why was the period at the turn of the 20th century so important?

The importance of this period was defined by technological advancement that was so rapid that it created a “Shock of the New”. Life for all people in the industrialized world had been suddenly changed several times over, and was never the same afterward. The current relevance of this period is that technological advancements in computing and digital media are being innovated at a torrid pace that is arguably comparable to the turn of the 20th century. (Shock of the Now?)

2) What aspects of the Dada art movement are important from the point of view of the rise of the computers and digital visual media? (for example Marcel Duchamp's "readymades"?)

The Dada movement was unabashedly anti-war. The Dada movement was also responsible for many creations of the absurd. The mass accessibility of the Internet provides ample space for anti-war anti-establishment ideology to flourish. The Internet has many “readymades” within it. One need only go to You Tube to see examples of the ordinary (often extremely and painfully ordinary) elevated to art by the choice of the artist. The Dadaists used art of the absurd to reject not only the blotting out of life on a large scale, but also the ideologies that were the driving force behind World War I. You could make an argument that some of the content on the Internet is a reflexive response to worldwide indifference to death and suffering, and the anticipation of the ultimate loss of privacy to the Cloud. The desire of governments to control the untamed, wild construct that is the Internet is perhaps inspiring a kind of Neo-Dadaism.


3) Name one aspect that links "The Man with a Movie Camera" with digital media according to Lev Manovich (ReadingsB)

Manovich states that “Editing, or montage, is the key twentieth technology for creating fake realities. Theoreticians of cinema have distinguished between many kinds of montage but, for the purposes of sketching the archeology of the technologies of simulation leading to digital compositing, I will distinguish between two basic techniques. The first technique is temporal montage: separate realities form consecutive moments in time. The second technique is montage within a shot. It is the opposite of the first: separate realities form contingent parts of a single image… examples [of montage within a shot] include the
superimposition of a few images and multiple screens used by the avant-garde filmmakers in the 1920’s (for instance, superimposed images in Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera and a three-part screen in Gance Abel’s 1927 Napoléon).”

[I think Manovich would appreciate that I used cut & paste to answer this question. Please allow me to add my own comparison. My comparison of Vertov’s film and digital media might not have the polish of post-doctoral academia, but I would like to essay a try.]

In my opinion, the great connection between Man With a Movie Camera and digital media is the use and editing/re-ordering of databases. Vertov filmed all the subjects he wanted to and stored the film clips in a database that was later re-arranged/edited by his partner Svilova. This is essentially the concept that is at the fundament of digital media. Data of any sort from a common database can be re-ordered and/or re-arranged to suit the user.

4) What was 'constructivism'?

Constructivism is defined by the World English Dictionary as “a movement in abstract art evolved in Russia after World War I, primarily by Naum Gabo, which explored the use of movement and machine-age materials in sculpture and had considerable influence on modern art and architecture”


5) Read pages VI (6) to XXII (22) of "The Language of New Media" in ReadingsB:


What does Lev Manovich suggest are the 'three levels' of "The Man with a Movie Camera"?

Manovich suggests that “Just as new media objects contain a hierarchy of levels (interface — content; operating system — application; Web page — HTML code; high-level programming language — assembly language — machine language), Vertov's film consists of at least three levels. One level is the story of a cameraman filming material for the film. The second level is the shots of an audience watching the finished film in a movie theater. The third level is this film, which consists from footage recorded in Moscow, Kiev and Riga and is arranged according to a progression of one day: waking up — work — leisure activities. If this third level is a text, the other two can be thought of as its meta-texts.”


6) Who first developed the idea of "Cybernetics"?

American mathematician Norbert Wiener developed the idea of Cybernetics.


7) In "Computer Lib" Ted Nelson describes Hypertext as "Non ___________" writing (fill in the blank)

Nelson described Hypertext as non-sequential writing.

8) (Lecture) why were transistors, even though 100 times smaller than vacuum tubes considered impractical for building computers in the 1960s?

The existing hardware simply wasn’t built to utilize transistors. In order to use transistors, hardware manufacturers would have had to “re-invent the wheel”.

9) What was the name of the first commercially available computer (kit)?

The Altair 8800 was the first commercially available computer.


10) Write a paragraph: In your own words: What are things going to look like in 20 years from now in the average living room in terms of digital visual media? What types of digital media will your kids be using around 2030?

My first thought is that I would hesitate to predict how much will change in our consumption of digital media 20 years hence. In 1993, twenty years ago: Apple Computer had just stopped selling the Apple IIe (CPU: Motorola 6502@1.023 MHz, RAM: 64 KB expandable to 1 MB.) and had moved on to the Macintosh LC (CPU: varying versions of the Motorola 68020, 68030, and 68040 chip, @ clock speeds varying from 16-33 MHz, and RAM: 2-68 MB). In 1993 Motorola and IBM created the Power PC 601 CPU (@50-80 MHz). Computers running Windows in 1993 were doing so on boards powered by the Intel Pentium CPU (60-66 MHz), or by the IBM POWER2 (@55-71.5 MHz). In stark relief: The fastest single-CPU Apple that is commercially available is the Mac Pro Server running on an Intel Xeon “Nehalem” quad-core @2.8 GHz with 8GB of RAM. Windows machines in 2011 have a variant of the Intel Core i7 CPU at the heart of the motherboard ( Such as the “Sandy Bridge” model running @1.6-3.4 GHz). The safe prediction for computing in 2031 is that computers will be that much again faster as our current models are to the ones in 1993. Perhaps the 2031 computers will open up a greater speed gap than the one between current models and computers from 1993. Who can safely say? In terms of consumer electronics, I predict that the home theater will still be the center of living room entertainment, save one thing - I believe that computers will replace the television. TV circa 2031 may be computers with (likely giant-sized, like the wall screens in Fahrenheit 451) HD or 3DHD monitors. This will be accompanied by innovations in sound. Perhaps technology will evolve to the point where we can watch a film and set one volume expecting to be able to clearly hear dialogue at one volume without then being deafened by the special effects and soundtrack. One day we may develop the technology to have advertisements that aren’t twenty times louder than the regular programming. Video gaming will probably (and sadly) succeed in its goal to blur the line between game and reality. This will likely introduce a new array of social problems, and mental health issues. This will be accomplished by streamlining the immersive virtual reality experience, perhaps aided by advanced holographic displays using three dimensions. Portable gaming devices will become more powerful and less expensive. The trend in miniaturization in consumer electronics will presumably continue and produce a new and hyper-advanced array of portable wireless devices. There may be options for wetware augmentation in 2031, but I don’t know that I’d care to live in such a world. Ultimately the quality and type of digital media devices available to consumers in 2031 will be dictated by the perception of how much money there is to be made in making said devices available. Technology is quickly made obsolete changing from year to year in its fast fashion. Greed is forever.

email me with the answer to question 10 - dcoxdai227@gmail.com

Week #1 Questions and Answers

1) What was unique about Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, compared to his original Difference Engine?

The Difference Engine was only capable of performing addition by the method of differences. The Analytical Engine was meant to be a multi-purpose computing machine, with its application decided by it’s user. Also, the Difference Engine was a series of sprocket wheels turned by cranks, where as the Analytical Engine was to be programmable through the use of punch cards inspired by the Jacquard Loom.

2) What role did Ada Lovelace play in the development of the Analytical Engine?

Countess Ada Lovelace essentially designed the “software” that would be meant to run Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She is widely considered the first computer programmer.

3) How was the ENIAC computer reprogrammed?

The ENIAC was reprogrammed by an exhaustive process of setting up to 6000 switches, and re-plugging hundreds of cables, all accomplished by manual human labor.

4) Name an innovation that helped make programming faster post ENIAC (see ep. 2)

The development of the EDSAC by Maurice Williams at Cambridge University. The EDSAC could store it’s programming. This made it so that the exhaustive efforts required to program the computer would only have to be done once and stored, rather than constantly having to reset switches and re-plug cables as the programmers of the ENIAC had to.

5) What is it about binary counting that makes it so well suited to computers?

As the Binary system only includes two numbers, 1 and 0, they can easily be represented by a two position switch. Switch on = 1 and switch off = 0.

6) In what ways did UNIVAC influence the portrayal of computers in popular culture in the 1950s? Give an example. (see ep. 2)

UNIVAC’s successful prediction of the 1952 American presidential election, and the subsequent publicity from media outlets firmly cemented the computer into the popular culture of not only America, but also the world. Media outlets printed varying headlines along the lines of ‘Machine Outsmarts Man’.

One example of UNIVAC’s newfound fame portrayed in popular culture was a Looney Tunes feature depicting Porky Pig and Daffy Duck feeding a set of punch sheet instructions into a player piano bearing the UNIVAC logo.

7) Codebreaking required the automatic manipulation of symbols to unscramble messages during WWII. What was the name of the rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park in England that unscrambled Nazi codes.

The rudimentary computer at Bletchley Park used to unscramble Nazi codes was called Enigma.

8) Alan Turing who understood the implications of such machines later went on to describe them as __________ machines.

Turing referred to computers as “computing machines”.

General Questions:

Write two paragraphs for each:

9) Describe when you first used computers and what types of tasks you performed on them.

Although I used calculators in the early 1970’s, the first true computer I used was a Commodore PET computer during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I don’t remember whether that was in Junior High School, High School, or both. I cannot remember what specific model number that we used (Maybe CBM 4016), only that the machine had a built in keyboard and monitor with monochrome display (usually green). Our High School’s computer lab eventually added some Apple II+ computers, and one state-of-the-art Commodore 64. Programs were either written in BASIC, or loaded via cassette tape.

Scholarly tasks associated with using the computers were learning how to write simple programs in BASIC, such as how to randomly generate a number, or how to write a program that would ask for a student’s age and name or some other such information. Someone designed a computer dating program at our High School that measured compatibility through the answers to a long series of questions. Needless to say, Anne Marie Festa wasn’t at all impressed that the computer declared us compatible. We were also allowed to load simple games and play them, though I can’t think of the names of any of those games now.

10) How restricted do you think computers are in terms of what they can do compared to how they are most often used?

I think the discrepancy between what computers are capable of, and how they are most often used is quite vast. I think this is why so many “Black Hats” create “Zombie Armies” out of legions of other people’s computers. Such an army of enslaved computers could be quite powerful indeed as demonstrated by the gravity of recent denial-of-service attacks against various upper-echelon web domains.

How restricted computers are relative to what they are capable of resides in the expertise and ambition of their users. I remember watching a television program on the Science Network about the potential threat of advanced artificial intelligences rebelling against their human masters, and hypothetical responses to such a takeover attempt. It seemed unthinkable and at best unlikely event at first. Gradually the idea became a bit less farfetched to me and creepiness began to set in.