Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is an awesome guy! He is the director of engineering at GOOGLE! The latest search engine website. It has become so much more than that. You have Google as a search engine, but you also have Google mail (gmail), Google docs, google images! So much comes from Google. It is an amazing thing, and probably a very interesting place to work. Kurzweil went to MIT and excelled in his classes. He is responsible for having a computer scan text and read it in many different fonts. He is also responsible for having the computer read out loud to the user to help the blind in using computers. Overall Ray is a pretty cool guy, who has an interesting story. He loves to help out those who have minor disabilities such as blindness, ADD, and dyslexia.

He has gone on to write books about what he believes as a Futurist, and how he feels about people with disabilities and the use of technology to assist them.

Mark J Stock

Mark J Stock is an artist, mostly dealing with digital art. One of his pieces is called the Sprawl. This is an image that is displayed on a grid (just like our assignment for grid art) and it is of a branch sprawled out over the grid. This is an interesting piece because it's as if the two parts do not belong together. The grid is very organized and neat, while the branch that is over it is disorderly and does not fit into the grid very well.

One thing about me is that I am a Math major. Being a math major, you have to like grid and the imaginary planes. I love this stuff. But for me, when I use a grid I use one to make graphs that make sense that have specific points on the grid. However here he uses a grid which is traditionally used to mark specific known points, as a backdrop to a branch.

This is a little odd and out of place, but I like it. :)




The second piece that I want to talk about is called Red Streamlines. This is amazing!! This is all math and I love it. Here he puts together a piece using the inverse square of a function. He puts together a piece that makes sense to me. This is speaking my language. It is something that can be solved and shown again and again. The result will always be the same when using the same functions. That is what I love about math... consistency.

Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Engelbart is an American engineer and inventor. He is interested for human-computer interaction. Engelbart is responsible for the invention of the computer mouse. This is a pretty cool invention seeing as how this makes a lot of computer part accessible. For example, the transition between a type writer and a computer could be argued the invention of the mouse. In the type writer you can write text, but you cannot backspace. You are also unable to clip anywhere in the document to review what you have done. With the mouse, and of course the software of Microsoft, we are now able to type on a computer but have the ability to move the mouse around and view different areas of the computer screen.

War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast

This is the original War of the Worlds radio broadcast and it is amazing. At the time this came out, everyone was stunned. This was first heard in 1938 and produced by Orson Welles. Radio could be heard by anyone who had a radio, was at a diner with a radio, everywhere! People were enthralled with the radio at this time, and so Orson Welles thought that he would recreate the War of the Worlds over the radio and get people to believe that aliens were actually taking over.

Because of this the public freaked out. They thought that World War II was coming and panic flew over the US. This was a big controversial in radio history.

Today radio is such a part of our everyday lives, I sometimes wish that I grew up in the time when people actively sat and listened to the radio. I am a huge fan of the radio (minus all the commercials.) However I really like sitting and listening to the radio. Back in the early days of radio it was mostly used to tell news and talk about current events. Now most of the radio is for music, which I do enjoy, but I would like to know what it felt like to sit down with the family after dinner and listen to the radio to get the local news rather than sit down and turn the TV on.

I'm a bit old fashioned. lol

My Flip Book Animation

My flip book animation was inspired by a simple story. This is the story of a baby caterpillar trying to find his way through life to become a butterfly. Along the way he meets a frog friend and he shows him the way to become a butterfly.

Through the animation, the caterpillar, Cameron, is born, he begins exploring the world. He is then picked up by a bird who is there to help him find his way. The bird brings him to a beautiful land full of nature. Here he finds beautiful flowers and his frog friend, Frank. Cameron and Frank continue into a forest where they find a pond. This pond has lily-pads and they float on them to another land area. Here they find the perfect tree for Cameron to transform into a butterfly.

Once Cameron is a butterfly, he goes to find his friend Frank again. They share over missed times together, and continue the adventure into a cave where the story ends. This ends in this way to give the viewer an imagination of their own, of where the two friends will explore next. :)

Hope you like it!

A Trip To The Moon

A Trip to the Moon was kind of a boring video for me to watch, definitely not one of my favorites. It brought me back to the opera, which isn't that interesting to me. What was interesting about this video was that you could tell that it was from early film because you could see that the colors were all drawn on to the film. You could tell because when changing frames, some of the colors wouldn't match up or be different shades. It didn't bother me that you could tell the different frames and that everything wasn't perfectly colored because I think that it brings character to the film. :)

Singing in the Rain Comparison

Singing in the rain is a song performed by Gene Kelly in the musical Jazz Man. It was originally released in 1929, right after the Great Depression. When people make songs and movies, they usually reflect on what is happening in history during that time period. The original song is a joyous man singing in the rain, happily trotting through the puddles. This is a reflection of the time period. 1929 marked the year that the US finally was out of the Great Depression. This is a period called the "roaring twenties." It makes sense that this song would be recorded in happy spirits.

The movie Clockwork Orange was filmed in 1971. This is a period where everyone is experimenting with drugs and free spirited. The movie is based on a couple of teenagers experimenting with drugs that make them violent. This movie plays the song "signing in the rain" as the teenager is raping a woman. This is completely contradictory to the original song. Here I believe the director let them use this song because it is meant to be a happy song, and in the movie these teenagers are so happy on their drugs and causing trouble. To them they couldn't be happier raping this woman. I think it is meant to cause the viewers a little disgust when they watch this man singing such a happy song, while committing a horrible act.

Theses two differences in the same song, just goes to show the difference movies have during a specific time period.