Advisory: This Ain't Disney! (2)

My first impression of Blood Tea and Red String for the title itself, has already created thoughts in my head that it would involve a lot of things being stained blood red. When I watched the trailer, the music was kind of freaky, it had me think that something may jump out at me at anytime, similar to one of those screamers on the Internet that leave you shaken up. The cake in the beginning may seem harmless at first, but soon after there's a clip of mice pouring blood tea for one another and drinking it. Later on a group of hairy creatures are playing Cat's Cradle, seems like a friendly game but the scene quickly changes and becomes twisted once again focusing on the red eyed mice. The mice remind me of vampires since they always seem to be portrayed in dark rooms(never outside) and drink a blood red liquid. Later on in the trailer, it appears that there are other creatures including a spider going after a single doll or image of a girl. In the description of the film and further into the trailer I am assuming that the various creatures steal this doll from one another. The doll never seems to be shared among the difference species, telling me that there's some sort of greed and conflict among them. I myself wouldn't want to watch this film because I dislike horror movies(they keep me up at night). I find the trailer images quite powerful, since they still linger in my thoughts, I may even have trouble sleeping tonight. I think the creator of the trailer is very good at disrupting my expectations of the film. Through quick transition of images, the trailer causes me to think one way and suddenly shatters that impression and creates a new one leaving me to wonder what the film is all about.

Media Mashup

Everyday life I am constantly bombarded by hybrid technoloy. The hybrid car has been advertised over and over again in ads and contests. Recently my sister got a cell phone. I myself don't want one since I have no use for one. My sister uses the cell phone more as a MP3 player and camera rather than a phone. Sometimes it makes me wonder if they should still be called cell phones. I myself have become a victim to hybridity, I use my computer for pretty much everything (entertainment, work, agenda, letter writing, etc...). It's probably almost impossible to find something in our world that is no longer a hybrid. Even non-hybrid cars are still a hybrid in a different sense. Some cars even come with DVD entertainment systems. Hybridity is a good thing I guess. As the standard of life increases, people begin to have more, "wants". At least by hybriding, we can save a lot of room.

Technology+Art=?

Catts and Zurr's BioArt when I first heard and saw their "Victimless Meat" I was shocked. When I think about the word, "Biotechnology" the first thing that pops into mind would be science. What we human beings learn from collecting data and observing from scientific experiments are later put into use to improve the quality of life and the efficiency of work by various engineers. For the Catts and Zurr's Victimless Meat, I believe it has the potential to help find a cure for various diseases livestock may encounter on farms without the sacrifice of the animal. Rather than testing chemicals or injecting viruses into animals, scientists could use these petri dish grown tissues of the animal to test the effects. Biotechnology as an art involves human beings screwing around with lives and putting them up for display serving no other purpose than to entertain the public. For example, I myself find this ridiculous, a dead rat's brain neurones send signals to the machine that draws and is labeled as art. I believe biotechnology as an art is not such a great idea. It's pretty scary to imagine that one day someone might get curious and hook up a dead human brain instead of a rat's to see what kind of "art" would be produced.

Web 2.0 is You

Web 2.0 forces us to rethink ourselves. The web allows us to link to other people, and obtain vast amounts of information in a matter of seconds as technology continues to improve. Although not everything on the web is all bright and sunny. On the web, behind a computer we are able to become a completely different person, because we can manipulate data such as text, images, and sound through software. No one else aside from close friends will know our true identities. Our ability to manipulate information about ourselves if we choose allow us to assume false identities and force images of our alter egos on others lurking on the web who happen to stumble across our blog/facebook. I myself wouldn't be able to converse with another person with the same style of written text within this blog. I am able to rethink, edit, and republish this blog over and over again covering most of my mistakes and masking my true character, if I tried reading what ever I typed here, I'd probably stumble over my words a few times. I've probably edited this blog several times before you dropped by and began reading. On the computer I tend to type quite a bit(unless it's for homework). This might make others view me as a talkative person, in fact I am not, I'm very quite and don't like talking a lot. Sometimes we may get lost in our alter egos and associate them with real life. It maybe good such as gaining self confidence or bad such as being lost in a fantasy world.

Advisory: This Ain't Disney!

Though some animation purist say that computer animation like that of Pixar is cold and too rendered, I would have to disagree. Quite some time ago when I was bored and channel surfing I came across a television program describing the process and effort put into creating Pixar's Monster Inc. The blue monster (I can't recall his name) had each and every individual hair on his body rendered and programmed to interact with its surroundings to make it more realistic. When I took a look at the the creature, it was extremely hairy telling me that there was a lot of effort and time put into it, I am surprised that the animation artist didn't rip out his own hair. Each and every hair on this creature is able to interact with the environment where ever this monster was placed in, every individual hair was alive along with this monster, which I find shocking that some artist consider this cold animation. Traditional hand drawn animation is very time consuming. Animators must redraw characters over and over again ever so slightly altering little bits and pieces to get something to move, some hand drawn animations I've watch just get lazy and reuse the same scene over and over again as a filler. Traditional hand drawn animation have also been improved using computer technology. Probably two or three years ago Disney had improved traditional hand drawn animations such as Snow White and Cinderella using computer technology to improve colour and quality of these animations. Editing these old animations is similar to creating 3D animations, you're both using the computer and hand drawn images as a base for the animations. I would much better prefer computer animation over hand drawn animations. If you can produce the same work faster and maybe even better, why not?

Are Wii the Children of the Revolution?

Some people say that the Nintendo Wii’s ability to “democratize gaming for people of all ages and abilities is revolutionary. I am a bit undecided if this statement is a true technological advancement or just hype. I have yet to try out the Nintendo Wii myself but from what I’ve heard it is very unique and most people I’ve spoke about the Wii describe it as a very fun gaming console. As a technological advancement, I believe is somewhat true. From the rumours of people destroying their Nintendo Wii controllers and televisions, the Wii sounds as if it require a lot of full body movement, therefore being the healthiest of the next generation console systems. The Wii provides its user exercise and may help prevent some obesity in children.

Although, lately I recieved a bit of info from a friend about the Nintendo Wii's controller. He defined gaming as a way kick back and relax since it's entertainment one shouldn't be producing so much effort for fun after a long day's work. The Nintendo Wii doesn't allow this kind of relaxation. Most likely, after working or studing you are going to be exausted and want to get your mind off work or studing, the Nintendo Wii is not exactly something you want to be playing since you wouldn't have a lot of energy left to operate it. If you have energy, I believe it would be much healthier to go outside instead of being cooped up in your home and playing the Nintendo Wii. The Wii could also be just hype because its unique controller is different than the traditional button mashing controllers of other consoles.