Math and Art Blog

http://mathartkejiang.blogspot.com/

UN-REALITY

Dangerous Escapee on the Loose

The Muldoon Institute have put out a warrant for any information leading to the recapture of Inmate Jonathan Crawford.

The details of his escape remain confidencial, as does the nature of his incarceration. The most information we could gain was that he is highly dangerous and should not be aproached under any circumstances. This is the first recorded escape in the history of the Muldoon institute, and as such is being taken very seriously. Any information concerning the escape will be treated as sensitive information as it could lead to copy cat escape attempts.

UN-REALITY

Israeli Soldier Details His Five Years in Captivity

Negotiations strained in the East

Looking thin, weary and dazed, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit emerged from more than five years in captivity, surrounded by Hamas militants with black face masks who handed him over to Egyptian mediators, in an exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. New Zealanders have been urged not to travel to the area as it is still a hotbed of military activity.

UN-REALITY

The Perils of Travel

Is the world becoming too dangerous?

With tragedies on the rise, serious concerns are being raised about all forms of international travel. Air and sea transport officials are unable to comment on the nature of the increase of these disasters, however it is predicted that the trend will continue. The main statement for the public is to postpone any international travel. Reseach and development into these events and how to avoid them is costing companies far more than expected. The reaction to this is a drastic increase in all fares, expected to take effect next month.

UN-REALITY

New Zealand Living Standards Better than We Realise

New reports say New Zealand is fast becoming a safe haven from the perils of the world at large.

Events of recent times has led to a common misconception that living standards in New Zealand are slipping. However, compared to other first world countries our global standing is increasing, with rising taxes and living costs crippling the economies of many of the world's superpowers. Therefore, New Zealand is fast being considered a far better place to live than any other.

YOUTHEDESIGNER

YOUTHEDESIGNER Annotated Bibliography

1.“Music generates sounds capes not unlike the topology of a landscape. The CD packaging is a manifestation of Darren’s beautiful textured yet organised sound scape”(Asylum).

2.With the aim to replace the traditional plastic CD cases, Uqam packaging class Elie Monge has created a cd case that is made of recycled and recyclable cardboard. The case comes in a detachable continuous strip that is adaptable to the number of CSs that is going to be packaged. The case is very slim and stylish that many will surely love to carry wherever they maybe. In addition, card boards that are destined to our landfills will dramatically be minimized. With this product, everybody will now have the chance to save the environment without the need to compromise their love for fashion, style, and music ( Uqam ).


3. I designed this concertina cd packaging structure for Sedimental Record's lastest release from the band Area C. The concertina expands to allow easy access to two sleeved discs. The outer cover and sleeves discs. The outer cover and sleeves are all printed letterpress with silver ink from photopolymer plates onto French Paper. Erik Carlson of Area C executed all of the artwork. The edition size is 500 copies. Paper engineering., printing and assembly by Shelter Bookworks (Aym.B, Shelter.B ).


4.Most CD Manufacturing companies accept Custom CD packaging projects. The budget and the turnaround time depend on the availability and the price of the materials used. Some could take a few weeks before reproduction, some could take months. Custom CD packaging is not a very simple project and it requires a lot of research, tinkering and brainstorming by you and the CD Manufacturing company. Like all great things, custom CD packaging requires more patience and creativity (Corey.A).


5.The team at wewow HQ were recently WOWED by sheffield-based band, Hello Dagger's DIY creation! The talented screamo band, who are big supporters of the DIY scene, used 100% recycled, windowed WowWallets to create eye-catching, handmade packaging for their vinyl-look CD. Each package was a unique creation and we loved the personal touch that the band added to each of the eco-friendly CD packages! (Dagger)


References:


Asylum.(2008) Retrieved September 13 from http://www.theasylum.com.sg/v3/ 


Aym.B, Shelter.B (2009) Retrieved September 14 from http://www.shelterbookworks.com/blog/tag/cd-packaging


Corey.A (2011) Retrieved September 14 from http://www.zimbio.com/Jaine+kaif/articles/2sft-5HoXY_/Custom+CD+Packaging+Best+Way+Grab+Attention


Dagger.H (2010) Retrieved September 15 from http://eco-cd-dvd-replication.typepad.com/wewow_industry_experts/2010/08/hello-dagger-diy-cd-packaging.html


Uqam.M ( 2007) Retrieved September 12 from http://www.igreenspot.com/packaging-de-cd-by-elie-monge/

YOUTHEDESIGNER CD Packaging Research

YOUTHEDESIGNER Business Card

My design for the business card.

Conceptual Statement

Our idea of this project was inspired from a famous piano performance called 4'33'' which was played by John Cage in 1952. His idea came from an ancient Chinese book entitled Yi Qing. Because of that book John created the composition 4'33'', and because of his performance, I found a truth that silence is the origin of music.

In people's normal life there are always many sounds and noises around their home, work unit, and almost everywhere. How many people will spend 5 minutes to appreciate a moment of peace? Many people may think silent music has no meaning, but as a matter of fact all music was born from silence. Through our project, I wanted to take the opportunity to make people find the meaning behind silent music, and also push them to appreciate the silence and peace.

In order to achieve the purpose Jim and I made the decoration with many things. Making people appreciate our silence was the most difficult task because only those people who show enough patience during the performance can be attracted by the silence. Therefore, we created some very special and interesting topics to attract them looking forward to our performance and make them very patient during the performing process. I should say it worked and and it was very successful. I believe our performance on that day was very impressive.

Final performace research

Final performance research John Cage 4 33

Sound One

The first activity is working with a team. The theme of this activity is to find and record any sounds we like and combine them together to make a sound performance. After we've talked with Zoe, we find the main point of this activity is through our project letting people appreciate the sound itself rather than the sound which is created for any purpose.


The idea of our group is giving people different feelings and images through the sound change. Threrefore we have recorded some natural sounds like wind, tree, bird, and sea. We also recorded some sounds which can be easily found in the city such as car, bus engine or the traffic light button. Our recording also included step sound and noises that are made from two things' colliding.

Project One W2

Today we went to a national centre for acoustical services with ISO accreditation in Auckland University. This is the first time I have been able to get so close to those professional equipments. There are two big rooms in the building. One room is very good for sound reflex, and it can create great echolike effect. The other room has a lot of sponge laid inside. That means when people stand inside the room and talk, they will feel so uncomfortable and find it hard to hear their own sounds because this room has very strong sound absorption ability.

Before we went to visit these two rooms, an old doctor has already described how the sounds are produced and how people use their ear to hear sound. He has also talked about the level of the sounds and what the hearing danger is. From that I decide to get rid of some bad habit in the future, for example, hear music through MP3 which sound level will cause hearing damage. I think what I have seen today is more useful than yesterday, and I can't help looking forward to the main part of the new project.

Week 1

Project One W1

Catching sounds around the city was the first thing I did for this new project. We were required to write down what we could hear while we were walking. In normal daily life I actually never try to find any sounds around me because those sounds are very normal, such as sounds made by wind, water, tree or bus and car... 

When I used the pen to record thise sounds I felt so excited at that moment. Then I analysed the feature of each type of sounds and what each kind of sounds was like. This class is quite useful for me to pay attention to something which I do not pay any attention to. The natural sounds are the largest part of what I have neglected in everyday life.

Project 4

This project involves many different skills and technologies. The concept of this product is to enable a person to capture the artistic image of something surrounding him at any place and any time. Our work looks like a fishing rod, and it has a flexible supporting stand which can fix it at any place, or wrap it on his arm.  

In everyday life, everything around us is moving at any time but we do not move. Almost no one realizes that the pedestrians rushing to and from or the dropping leaves are one kind of moving art.

That is the fundamental idea of this product to help people find that every movement in life can become a piece of artistic work. The product is programmed to transfer the moving object captured by the camera in to data, and transfer these data into a picture in a computer.

Imagine someone stops walking and throws this camera out into somewhere like a fishing hook into a river, then the camera will capture data which will become a picture in a computer…isn’t it more exciting than fishing? Fish may look alike, but movements of objects in the world in every second are different!

Music gloves

Project 3

When the weather gets cold enough, people may probably choose to wear gloves to keep their hands warm. However, quite often they may still feel cold in their hands, even through they are wearing gloves. This is simply because when they are wearing gloves they may find no reason to keep moving their hands. In most instances, gloves prevent their hand movements and cause poor blood circulation in their hands, so their hands still feel cold. 

      

The concept of my project is to give people a reason to keep moving their hands when they are wearing gloves. I put a button on each finger of the gloves and each button is connected to the piano keys in the computer. That means if people wear my gloves and press the buttons, sounds will come out of headphones. Through sound synthesis, people wearing my gloves can play piano anywhere, and always keep their hands warm enough in cold weather.

Having finished this project, I find there might be two problems. I have selected ten piano keys for the buttons to be connected to, consequently, my gloves have got too many lines which will hinder the movement of the hands. I think this can be easily solved. What I need to do is to introduce a tandem line to my gloves. Another problem is that some people may feel uncomfortable with the quite a few buttons on their fingers when they take or catch things. For this I would say it does not matter. I can use plastic buttons to replace the metal ones I am using.

Project 3

One

I have read some research which makes me think a lot. My idea is to design a kind of music box which people can wear on hand or head. 

The manDrum: a wearable performance interface 

http://vimeo.com/252439

WUW/sixthsense-a wearable gestural interface 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfV4R4x2SK0

Microsoft Research: The vision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muibPAUvOXk&playnext=1&list=PLF282F7FBBB11F57E

My max/msp lemur sequencer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odw2D7a3lA4 

Two

My idea is to make a pair of gloves which can be used to play piano. What I need to do is firstly to find ten keys on the keyboard. I select the numbers 1 to 10. The reason why I select these numbers is that they can be easily matched to corresponding piano notes.

My plan is to design such a pair of gloves. For them to look good, I am going to connect 1 to 4 and 9 to the buttons on the left hand, 5 to 8 and 0 on the right hand.

Three Because I have never done soldering before, it took me a very long time to get used to it. Each button needs two lines to connect. That makes me find a problem: there are too many lines here. I think I will improve my project later.

Four 

Max/Msp patch.

When people press a button, the 'key' command can give a number. 

The selected numbers are connected with keys of a piano and make sounds.

Five

I have bought two pairs of gloves. The black one is the main body of my project. All buttons are going to be pasted on each fingers. The white gloves are use to fix the lines and prevent damage to the electronic circuit.

Wolf's last stand

Project 2

In this project I was the main character Wolf. The film was about Wolf's final job where he carried out a homicide task and finally died in the forest. The role of Wolf was defined as a man with silence and being a little bit cool. During the acting process, the first thing I thought about was how to make the character more real .As the main actor, I played the killer who was very calm and very good at martial arts. Wolf was going to kill three different persons Pig 1, Pig 2 and Pig 3. 

When killing Pig 1, Wolf used Chinese Kung Fu to counter boxing. My role in this part was not only an actor but also an action adviser. I taught my team member how to punch and kick, and how to fall down on the ground and keep safe during the fight. I tried my best to make the fight more real and more sensible. I think the only imperfection of the part is that I changed the design of actions for so many times that the filming had to last longer.

The other two parts are sword fight and gun fight. Apart from designing the actions and movements and acting, I tried to inform the camera person of the right places that he should stand in so that he was able to catch the image and take closeup shots better. In both parts, the range of our movement was too wide for the camera person to know the best perspective, therefore, I informed him of the details of our next actions and movements.

After filming, I participated in the editing of the footage although i was not quite familiar with those many video editing programmes. However, I was very satisfied with the excellent movie poster and DVD cover of which I was the sole designer.

 

Overall this project went smoothly and I leaned a lot from it. What I think I can improve in the future is that I can work out a more detailed plan for actions and movements in order to save time for filming. Also, I need to become proficient in various editing softwares to avoid vanishing of my inspirations.

Project 2 Analysis

The Wolf's Last Stand is the name of the film of my group. The story of the film is quite simple, that is, the killer Wolf was carrying out a task to kill three persons who are called Pig 1, Pig 2 and Pig 3 respectively. In this film we want to make our main character a strong man who is highly proficient in martial art, sword and firearms. Therefore, we need to create many scenes of fight to show the audience that Wolf is exactly the same figure as we planned for. 

This first key shot is the fight between Wolf and Pig 1, Chinese Kung Fu versus boxing. We planned very carefully for this shot because we wanted to catch audience's attention in the very beginning of the film. We chose the tall and big Kallum as Pig 1 who fought and was killed in fight sequence one. This created a strong visual impact on audience in that they would be amazed at how the short, small, barefisted Wolf defeated and killed Pig One who was much taller and bigger. The film photograph above shows the dramatic contrast between the two body figures. Furthermore, there was a stark contrast between the punch speed and brute force of Wolf and Pig One, which should also arouse much interest among audience.

The second key shot was in the middle of fight sequnce two where Wolf killed Pig 2 with sword. As shown in the film photograph (right), the painting on the wall featured a kind of ferocious animal which human call wolf, in front of which stood the main character. This scene perfectly illustrated the character of the killer. The shot also highlighted Wolf's courage and spirit of fair play. After thinking for a second, Wolf put down the gun which he had already held in hand and took the sword. At this moment, the audience may change their stereotype about a killer and begin to like his character. This is what we wanted to achieve.

The third key shot was taken to present a tense atmosphere. To reinforce this effect, we used the drab colors which are usually used in horror movies. The shot itself described the whole process of sword fight which was very short. The scene showed Wolf killed Pig Two in no seconds, which seemed to be a mystery in the audience eyes.   

Gun fight in the forest is the fourth key shot in our film. The photograph shows how Wolf attracted Pig 3 and his partners into the forest. There are 3 reasons why we chose forest to film. Firstly, forest can give audience a different visual sensation. Since the previous two fight sequences both happened under the moonlight, it would be exciting for the audience to see the sun rose amidst the forest. Secondly, it helped the audience to understand the logical sequence of the story, i.e. from mid night to morning on a same day. Thirdly, forest is a good venue for the main character to exercise his intelligence. When Wolf found that there were too many armed people and that he was not able to kill all of them before he was killed, he smartly isolated those people and killed them one by one.

The last key shot is the death of Wolf. The closeup shot vividly presented another commendable side of the killer's character, tough, persevering and indomitable. After he was shot by Pig 3, Wolf still wanted to accomplish his task. Furthermore, the scene was actually touching to some extent. Having fulfilled his task, the killer looked up at the sky and the music of his hometown came up. Audience may have a mixed feeling about the end of the story.