presentations

I think it is such a fun learning experience whenever we do tech demos and teach each other something we have learned on our own. From Jennings I learned how to mask out a window(s) in Photoshop through which one or multiple videos can play after editing them in Final Cut. Ivan showed us how to apply the effect in Final Cut of desaturating everything in a video except for one or two specific colors, and Sasha introduced us to the Soundbooth program from the Adobe CS5 suite. I presented all that I had been learning about downloading bit torrents, and Ivan even suggested another site for me to look into. The main sites from my tech demo were The Pirate Bay, Utorrent, and (suggested by Ivan) Vuze.

My other presentation was about a theme in digital art not presented in chapter three of the book Digital Art by Christiane Paul. I discovered cyberformance, which is a kind of net art where a group of people gather at an online forum at a specific time to 'act out' a sort of theater script together. Different programs are employed, such as some with avatars and text-to-speech capabilities. An older example from the 90's was the Hamnet Players, started by Stuart Harris, where they used Internet Relay Chat to act out Shakespeare's play Hamlet, followed later by other plays. Other more recent and current cyberformance sites include Avatar Body Collision, Parkbench, and Upstage, which I encourage everyone to check out. I plan on participating myself, so I'll definitely post how it goes!

In other news, I was so happy to discover Maya Deren: Experimental Films is on Netflix! I've been watching it short film at a time and getting super inspired. I love that they're in black and white and how she's the main character in the surreal environments and situations she creates. I've got so much work to do over this weekend, so... I better get back to downloading torrents and getting my new video done!! And I still need to work out the sound too... I'll be using the sound editing freeware Audacity that I will be downloading right now!!