Telematic Performance

When we did this first project, i kept all this work in a journal, which was handwritten. So it should be self-explainitory, Enjoy!:

This first page shows the ideas we thought could work, though after discussing them with Mike, we decided on the idea of of transfering an image by it.

Here is how the idea works in princple with explaination behind it:

This is a figure drawing showing the transfer from one person to another.

Next, we needed to decide on an image and here was a list of options:

Here we changed the ideas a little and ideas about costumes:

Here shows a picture of the final image:

We wrote down a storyboard of events, so we all knew exactly what we were doing:

The last page shows how i evaluted our outcome, which i didnt think was a good outcome as people in the group didnt work as hard as others, so brought us down:

Production of the News Report

I decided earlier on that I was going to use Youtube clips as the main base of my news report as in the future, footage will be less polished, faster to view and can be discarded just as easily. Also as the video will be less sophisticated due to the clips, it will give the impression this report can be on the watch itself and that is the way our society is going these days.
First I planned out exactly what I wanted to say in the report, so I wrote a script for it, which can be seen below:

“It has been 10 years since the invention of the world’s first teleportation watch. It invented by a Norwegian company called TeLep in their labs in Oslo. The watch has changed the way we travel and interact in the world. When the watch was first shown, many people thought this technology would not take off, but the critics were proved wrong.

The way in which the watch works is that the user shall select a location by either typing in the co-ordinates or through the user interface, which will show a map of the world that you zoom into and pick your destination, (A bit like Google Earth). Once the location has been confirmed, the user shall press the button on the side and its will active the scan. The watch shall digitally scan your DNA and atomic structure, along with your emotions and memories and store them. Like the wireless technology, the data shall be sent by a digital signal to the required location. There, the watch shall rebuild the atoms back together and download the memories back into the brain, as the brain is made up of electrical messages anyway. Once the download is complete, the user is able to explore their present location.

And to think 10 years ago this is idea was revolutionary, but this is how people travel in today’s society. When the first watches came out it was retailing at around 50,000 pounds a watch. These days they came be purchase for as little as 100 pound. They began to become mainstream about 3 years after the invention, and now have made cars and airplanes, almost obsolete. Though with any new inventions there was some major problems:

The business of monitoring the movement of people as they came in and out of the country was an issue? There would be so coming and going from each country, no one would have a nationality and the population would rapidly change every hour rather than over a decade or so. In order to monitor to the control of people, there could be certain locations i.e. travelports, which are like airports. You would have to be check before travel and only allowed to travel to a location that you would have pre-booked. It would help the environment as there would be less fuel emissions made by transportation. National travel would not require monitoring, as like driving a car, you don’t need anyone’s permission to do that.

When the watches became more mainstream, the increase the crime rates and terrorist actions occurred. This technology made it virtually impossible to catch criminals, as they would constantly move if they felt threaten. Also terrorists were being able to enter a location, plant an explosive and teleport away before they would even be detected in the building. With the crime aspect, the police now are properly have weapons that can trap the criminal in a force field that has be laid for them when they arrive. The travelports have stop people illegally travelling internationally, but houses and buildings were at risk. As well as burglary alarms, people have a focus field that stops unauthorised people teleporting in. In order to do so, you must have the correct ID, which is like a key. Guests would teleport outside the building then personally be invited in. If you were to lose your watch, it would stop working, as each one is program to your genetic make-up of your skin. If you took it off to shower it would not work until you placed it back on your wrist. That would stop people stealing your identity.

One main problem was that some of the watches malfunctioned during teleport. What would happen if the watch malfunctioned? What would people do if they turned up with half their memories missing, or vital atoms that are needed for life? There were different reactions built in to stop this action. If the battery was below the required amount, it would not teleport. If the signal were to become broken, it would be sent to a special area, like a hospital, where all your records are kept. They are update every time you teleport, so you wouldn’t lose any memory nor limb. Once they restored you, the user would be able to move on to their required location.
Telep have become one of the biggest companies in the world, and today they are constantly invention new product for the market and tweaking the original telep watch that made them famous. And who knows what new technology will they invent that might change our society and lives forever.”

Once I had written this, I was able to record me speaking the script. When I first recorded the audio, it was scratchy and un-polished, yet when I recorded a video my voice became clearer. I also kept messing up the script and have to many takes. This part told a lot longer than I anticipated as I thought I could just improvise, but this wasn’t the case.

After the plan and voice were finished, I set about searching the web for the perfect images and pictures that would fit perfectly to the report. It was hard as the really good ones were either copy write on them or you had to pay. Though eventually I managed to find some clips that could be edited and twisted so it relates to my report. There was a really good one for the travelport shot as it was a computer simulation of an airport, which fitted perfectly with the voiceover

I decided to also do a little advert to show how their marketing scheme looked like. I took an existing Nike advert and cut it up so the woman looks like she is teleporting across the screen whilst on the move. I liked the white background too as it had the same visually look as the poster I had created. The advert can be seen from below:



The hardest part for me was getting the sync between the clips and the voiceover just right. In some place it is a bit slow and not fast pace enough. But I believe I had done my best to display this technology in the best light. If I had more time, I would have re-recorded the voiceover and had a greater majority of clips to choose from in the beginning. I have enjoyed this project as it has allowed me to think about how technology could affect our lives and change the way we live. My final outcome can be viewed here:

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=0IR0O1W0

Organising the News Report

I have decided to do a news report, as it is the genre to get across the social aspect of this technology. I watched a couple of ‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’, where they investigate a phenomenon that is current in the news. They don’t have just a presenter; just a voice over and I think that is better because it doesn’t draw your attention away from the images been presented. Here are the following bullet-points explain what the report will include;

• 2/3 minutes in length
• Shall feature a 15/30 clip of an advert
• Voice over commentary
• Starting Titles

But first I need to come upon with a name and proper design for the watch. After playing around on Photoshop, I came up with the company’s name, TeLep. It is a play of the word Teleportation and the name sounds like leap, which is what the watch allows you to do and that is to leap from one place to another. Below shows the watch and Telep’s logo and phrase:

Once I knew the look of the watch and company, I set about storyboarding the report. The report would be broken down into four parts:

1. Advert
The plan is to feature a person running in a park or somewhere, and after hitting the watch they are running across a desert or up a mountain. The end shall be a still image with the watch and the name featuring. It will be quite a simple ad as I believe over complicated ones fail, as people get bored with them. Adverts like the Cadbury’s gorilla campaign became a shame hit, and all that was a gorilla playing drums. I might steal ads from people like Nike and Adidas, as they feature a lot of running and re-edit them into a whole new design.

2. Travelports
It shall show how the world has adapted due to this technology, and that airports have been replaced with travelports. I shall find clips of busy terminals and check-in desks, and show people disappearing as soon as they set through the metal detectors or something similar. It will show how people are now monitoring the flow of travellers entering and leaving the country. Also I will show here street shots of people teleporting in and out of a high street.

3. Crime
This area will be portrayed by video clips of a police raid and the crime been frozen in a bubble to stop them running away. I have got this clip already and when I had a quick go of editing it working quite well. Also a shot of house being protected my anti-teleport device will be a footage of a suburban estate.

4. Malfunctions
In order to show the viewers how the watch works and could malfunction, I will Photoshop some images and place them into the report with a voice over. The voice over will be recorded at the same time as the editing to see how long I need to talk or not talk. Secondly, I will have a shot of the wards that restore people after a watch malfunction in order to discuss that section.

Next I'm going to experiment with the footage and get more approval with my design before i go away for easter to focus on the report.

Research into Teleportation

Here is the research behind my technology, which has helped me to visualise how the product might work:

Definition of teleportation:

“Teleportation is the movement of objects or elementary particles from one place to another, more or less instantaneously, without travelling through space.”

Teleportation has been an idea ever since back at the time of the Bible, for instance, in Acts 8:39-40, after Philip evangelised an Ethiopian official:

"When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea."

Teleportation scenarios

There are several hypothetical methods of transporting matter from place to place without physically travelling the distance. Some are seriously proposed and studied by scientists, while others exist mainly in fiction.

1. One proposed means of teleportation is the transmission of data which is used to precisely reconstruct an object or organism at its destination. The use of this form of teleportation as a means of transport for humans still has considerable unresolved technical and philosophical issues, such as exactly how to record the human body, particularly the brain, with sufficient accuracy and also be able to reconstruct it, and whether destroying a human in one place and recreating a copy elsewhere would provide a sufficient experience of continuity of existence.
2. Dimensional teleportation is a mechanism often shown in fictional works, particularly in fantasy and comic books. It involves the subject exiting one physical universe or plane of existence, then re-entering it at a different location. This method is rarely seriously considered by the scientific community, as the currently predominant theories about parallel universes assume that physical travel is not possible between them.
3. Another form of teleportation common in science fiction (and seen in The Culture and The Terminator series of films) sends the subject through a wormhole or similar phenomenon, allowing transit faster than light while avoiding the problems posed by the uncertainty principle and potential signal interference. In both of the examples above, this form of teleportation is known as "Displacement" or "Topological shortcut" , which implies that this kind of teleportation may be similar in mechanism to time travel.

In the infamous Star Trek series, they sold teleportation to the masses as they showed people teleporting from one location to another by a machine called a transporter. This was basically a platform that the characters stood on, while Scotty adjusted switches on the transporter room control boards. The transporter machine then locked onto each atom of each person on the platform, and used a transporter carrier wave to transmit those molecules to wherever the crew wanted to go.

This way is what scientist call biodigital cloning and this theory means tele-travelers would have to die, in a sense. Their original mind and body would no longer exist. Instead, their atomic structure would be recreated in another location, and digitization would recreate the travelers' memories, emotions, hopes and dreams. So the travelers would still exist, but they would do so in a new body, of the same atomic structure as the original body, programmed with the same information.

After research into the field of teleportation I now have greater knowledge into this technology, thus my realisation shall be more realistic.

Breakdown of how the watch will work

1. The user shall select a location by either typing in the co-ordinates or through the user interface, which will show a map of the world that you zoom into and pick your destination. (A bit like Google Earth)
2. Once the location has been confirmed, the user shall press the button on the side and its will active the scan.
3. The watch shall digitally scan your DNA and atomic structure, along with your emotions and memories and store them.
4. Like the wireless technology, the data shall be sent by a digital signal to the required location.
5. There, the watch shall rebuild the atoms back together and download the memories back into the brain, as the brain is made up of electrical messages anyway.
6. Once the download is complete, the user is able to explore their present location.

Below are drawings of how I envision the watch to look:

PICTURES

The problems with the technology

After looking at how the technology will function, I am now concerned with what the social repercussion of this watch would do and how it would affect our society. Firstly I looked at the problems that could occur.

• How would you able to monitor the movement of people? There would be coming and going from each country, no one would have a nationality and the population would rapidly change every hour rather than over a decade or so.
• Would this increase the crime rates and further aid terrorist? This technology would make it virtually impossible to catch criminals, as they would constantly move if they felt threaten. Also terrorists would be able to enter a location, plant an explosive and teleport away before they would even be detected in the building.
• What would happen if the watch malfunctioned? What would people do if they turned up with half their memories missing, or vital atoms that are needed for life?

Solutions to Teleportation Problems

When I worked out what would cause the biggest problems with this technology, I set about thinking how governments would solve these disadvantages.

• In order to monitor to the control of people, there could be certain locations i.e. travelports, which are like airports. You would have to be check before travel and only allowed to travel to a location that you would have pre-booked. It would help the environment as there would be less fuel emissions made by transportation. National travel would not require monitoring, as like driving a car, you don’t need anyone’s permission to do that.
• With the crime aspect, the police would properly have weapons that could trap the criminal in a force field that has be laid for them when they arrive. The travelports would stop people illegally travelling internationally, but houses and buildings are at risk. As well as burglary alarms, there would have to have a focus field that stops unauthorised people teleporting in. In order to do so, you must have the correct ID, which is like a key. Guests would teleport outside the building then personally be invited in. If you were to lose your watch, it would stop working, as each one is program to your genetic make-up of your skin. If you took it off to shower it would not work until you placed it back on your wrist. That would stop people stealing your identity.
• If the watch were to malfunction, there would be different reactions. If the battery was below the required amount, it would not teleport. If the signal were to become broken, it would be sent to a special area, like a hospital, where all your records are kept. They are update every time you teleport, so you wouldn’t lose any memory nor limb. Once they restored you, the user would be able to move on to their required location.

It seems from looking into the pros and cons that this technology will turn people into data files rather than human, which is an interesting concept. The watch itself is basically uploading the user ready for sending and it is downloaded at the other side, like an email or document. Next I shall look into how to best visualise this idea i.e. advert or news report.

Discussions about the assignment

When i was first given this assignment, i didnt understand it much. I didnt get what interventions meant nor even how to start going about this project. Thought after one of the lecture, i began to understand what was being asked of me. I have to produce either a news report or an advert for a new invention or gadget. Yet rather than trying to create the product, its about the social effects and impact on the public.


After discussing it with Mike and agreeing that my idea has scope, I decided that my idea shall be a Teleportation Watch. The idea is that the user selects the destination on the dial, hit the side button and then they shall be modularly transports to the desired place. Next I need to research for teleportation, and the problems and benefits of the technology.

Here is a video about the movie Jumper which is all about teleportation, and the science behind it:

Asssignment 3- Interventions

Here is the brief for this next assignment:

“Give me another 24 hours, and I'll give you a machine which no none will be able to tell from a human being.” Rotwang, Metropolis, 1926.

“In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.”Marshall McLuhan 1964.

“We are at the farthest point of time!... Why look behind us when we should be crashing down the doors of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are now living in the absolute since we have created eternal omnipresent speed.”F.T. Marinetti. 1909

The Interstices Project requires you to explore, analyse and design an ‘interface’. The outcome of this activity will be to develop a ‘representation’ of a specific future, contemporary or redundant technology operating in a social environment. This representation may take the form of an T.V./multimedia ‘advert’ or sales promotion for the ‘product/activity’, a short documentary about the ‘product/activity’ (e.g. News footage/report), a simulation that provides a real experience of the ‘product/activity’.

There are many possibilities, however your project must be based on an extrapolation of current technology/social practice/cultural phenomena/documented hypothesis, and not just whimsical speculation, i.e. the end of Western Civilisation following a bacterial infection which turns out to be microscopic Chinese following the self-miniaturisation of the entire Chinese population.... (see “Slapstick or Lonesome no more’ Kurt Vonnegut)...

Requirements:A: Design documentation and output of negotiated process.

The Process of Creating The Final Idea

We started off with filming about an hour's worth of footage, from the comfort of Hayley's car, and the shot the journey from each other of the doors. We had 3 night shots on the same night at 3 different doors and 2 day shots. Once we had the footage we began to plan the layout and scenes for the video.

This is the plan for the first idea, it came from us deciding that we are going to map Drake Circus as a living organism. I thought about having a shot of someone breathing and overlay the doors over the lungs. Below is a sketch about we envisoned it:

Eventually when i came to do this scene, i found on Windows Movie Maker an effect that just showed the lines of the shot. So i saved that and overlaid the video in Adobe Premiere Pro, which i used for all my editing of the final film.

The second idea was to do a shot which showed the 3 doors running simultanously in a grid as if to monitor them like a CCTV camera. They would running at different speeds depending to how many people passed through them. Like in breathing, the faster you breathe, the more air particles move in and out of your lungs. Here is a drawing of the idea:

Finally i planned out a storyboard for the video and all the different shots i would need and what order too. I couldnt do the flash animation with air particles moving in and through the center, as i dont have enough training in this field. Somethings changed like i added the scene with the figures were had recorded on to a shot, as i felt it should the volume of people passing through, in hindsight i should have maybe left it out.

Below are the photoshop images i created to feature in the video. The title sequence was to show a parallel between drake circus and the human lung. The map was created from the map on the drake circus website, but i removed all the icons and symbols. Thus now only shows the entrances, which were the most important part.

As i had all the better video editing software, Hayley let me edit the film over christmas. OMG the trouble i had with that. First my camcorder didnt have a firewire cable with it, so we had to go buy one. Then it was the wrong one, so we took it back only to discover my laptop doesnt have a firewire port. So we ordered a card to plug into it, but that turned out to be the wrong size. In the end i used the house computer, which had one and then transfered them across! This took all of boxing day!!! Here is the final video ready to show:

On the day of the presentation, Hayley didnt show up and so i had to present by myself :( I wasn't too happy so i wait till last as all my group would have gone! Mike gave quite positive comments about it, seeing as he was quite blunt and harsh about the other ones that i thought were better than mine. The only problem is that i didnt have a final image as the conclusion to the project, as the video itself was more a presentation of ideas. So if i had to chose one from the collection it would be the line video of the doors overlayed with the breathing chest.

Overall i enjoyed the project and it had so much scope. I just wish hayley had stayed on to the end of the course.