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I will not update this one any more. See you on the other site!

For Communications Lab final, we are assigned to make over a project which we feel unfinished in the past semester. For last stop motion homework, I mistakenly chose subway station for shooting, where tripod is forbidden, and the outcome was inevitably unsatisfying.

So this time, I stayed in my apartment, set up tripod, self-photographed aided by the remote control feature in Canon’s EOS Utility. Have you found a hand hidden? That’s because it is clicking wireless mouse to open the shutter.

The storyline is the interaction between real me and the duplication in the video. It comes from my concern about the mirror world when I was a child. What is he doing when I am not look at him? Does he wear a pajama trousers when I have a jeans on? Like some news anchors wear short pants under the table when they have suits above. Besides, since we are in 21st century, I upgraded the mirror to video in monitor.

For post-production, I mainly retouched and composed every single frame in Photoshop, and imported them in Final Cut Pro to make a sequential video. The retouching is not very difficult for each frame since I shot with tripod and the backgrounds are perfectly matched. But it would be completely frustrating when you are dealing with hundreds of them. I reduced the frame number from 400 to 104 after a painful decision. That’s why it looks a little choppy. Well, it is STOP MOTION anyways.

When I read Norman’s “Emotion & Design”, his attitude towards the “Impossible Teapot” arises my interests. Why people willing to buy things that not react perfectly to satisfy the them. So I choose to observe the jellyfish display in New York Aquarium. It does not quite qualify the topic at first glance if you routinely constrain interactive technology in artificial objects only. But this natural jellyfish display does involve a lot of subtle but indispensable technologies: the lightening, the environment sound, the appearance of the aquarium and feeding methods, of course. They all effects on the whole experience to the tourists.

I’ve been to aquarium in China about eight years ago. The construction is huge and modern. Fishes are feed in a giant glass aquarium. What the tourists need to do is standing on an airport-like walking escalator and looking up to the transparent dome. Thus, it is quite a refreshment when I went to New York Aquarium seeing the traditional but considerate, subtle but touching settings.

The general process for people visit this room is, slowing down their steps when firstly get into the room, then probably standing a while watching the big picture of the display in distance, after that, geting close to the display and trying to watch the jellyfishes’ details. I will explain them step by step as follows.

First thing is the dark lightening in the room. It brings a mysterious atmosphere to the audience like movie theater does and flushes away former experience.

Second thing is the deep blue background lightening. Contrast with the dark environment, it easily attracts user’s eyeballs to the 8″x16″ glowing rectangle on the wall. Considering the big size of the display, audience can only get the whole picture in distance. Additionally, the gentle and slow sound which perhaps from deep ocean may be also influential for the short pause.

Thirdly, when people getting close to the display, their reactions vary. Someone stood still, watched peacefully,while some other even adhered his face on the glass in order to get a clear view. Someone came in couple looked at the jellyfishes while splitting a part of attention to fluttered with each other, some other came with their kids, pointed through the glass tried to teach some oceanology. Someone take photo in front of the display, someone take photo constantly on the jellyfishes only. As we know, a live creations have their own reaction mechanism than artificial one do. They response to people’s input, but are not manipulated. On the other hand, jellyfish moves slowly and randomly. The viewer tried to influence on them by knocking, flashing or moving. Nothing responses directly, but when one little jellyfish approaching you, it make you kind of believe it might know what you are doing, and that gives you some extra joy.

Recently, I’ve been interested in the beauty of water. So I went to New York Aquarium today for my Physical Computing observation homework, although our team hasn’t decide the topic yet.

At there, I observed the audience’s interaction with the display, which I will cover in the next post. Besides, I also watched the water itself closely in different aspects.

The following photo is a sequential record of wave’s movement. It starts merely from nothing, then increases in size, transformed into different shapes(e.g. squirrel, fish, swimmer), and vanished like never happened before. That’s one important feature makes water so fascinating: amorphousness.


The following photo shows another feature of water: refraction. Watching through water leads to a completely different world in visual.


Furthermore, when light meets water, refraction becomes the catalyst that make the result more magical.


Water can be harmonious. A deep blue water in silence makes people feel peaceful. There is nowhere else can breed such elegant creation: jellyfish.


Water can also be powerful. This photo taken under man-made waterfall through glass shows the overwhelming power and speed.


This exploration about water is pretty fruitful. I will take those elements into account if I have chance to do related project in the future.

Have to say something for my previous no-blog-update time.

Few weeks ago, I complained with my friend Jim who is a software developer that I always find someone else use a similar WordPress theme with me after spending hours on “customizing” an existing one. He replied, “Why not make your own one? You are a designer.” I did it obediently.

The theme’s inspiration comes from a picture taken in Saint Cruz by myself. Inevitably, I learned some basic PHP skills, which is the most time consuming part, to make the PNG mockup live in browser. In the meanwhile, I suspended the blog updating since my eccentric preference, which I need to apologize. The theme is still has some defects and incompleteness. But I will keep refining it while posting homework documentation here.

Why those reminds me the story that Steve Jobs asked Paul Rand to design an exquisite logo for his charity foundation and did nothing after then? Hope I will not follow his step.

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