Immerse Yourself in the Word – Interactive News Paper

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I and my partner first came up with the idea to adopt sound effects from war and the purpose is to promote peace. We thought about the ways in which we can carry out the sound and what content are we adapting to make the project more interactive. I proposed that we can mimic a newspaper from the time period of war. We choose the Pacific war between the U.S. and Japan, specifically the war of Iwo Jima which happened around the same month in 1945. We did some research on this topic and found this newspaper from the NYT that we can pick out content from. Also, we did some research on the weaponry that is being used during that period such as the gun, artillery, battleship, etc. Moreover, we picked out the sound that can create an atmosphere based on certain text for the readers. For example, the word Tokyo will make the sound of typical Tokyo street sound from the old time: the people speaking, the light rail, and so on.  

The layout of the newspaper was designed with HTML and CSS. We thought that it would be a better option since it provides a flexible design than let say an image as a whole.

For the interaction part, we were deciding between a click or hover function to enact the sound. We picked the hover function as it is more obvious for the users to experience. In order to do that we used the following code which assign a text with the function in javascript with onmouseenter for hover or onclick.

for click At times, the overall sound can be chaotic so we added a stop. During the processing of sound editing, we used sony vegas pro to put multiple sound effects together to make up a scene for an image these individuals sound effects are used in each text throughout the section. You can see the image as a shortcut to the sound that fits the best to the atmosphere of that story. We did record several sound effects on our own such as the clock ticking, the distance explosion by tapping a wooden table and so on. 

We realized at the end and after the feedback during the presentation that we had a lot of potentials to improve such as adding more feedback for the user while a certain sound is playing. For example, we can have text being highlighted for doing certain movement when the sound is triggered by it. Furthermore, the placement of the stop button wasn’t the best it could have been placed or done in a more convenient way. 

Joy Garnett painted the artwork Molotov Man based on a photograph that Susan Meiselas had taken Pablo Arauz, who was taken part in the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. When Garnett presented the work in an exhibition, she was hit with a potential lawsuit from Meiselas’ lawyer. Garnett believes that the Molotov Man had become a cultural symbol that should be appreciate by all, while Meiselas argues it is being taken credit of. 

The claiming of Arauz’s image as a form of exclusive intellectual property just seems ridiculous to me.  By threatening to sue Garnett, Meiselas was not so much protecting the context of Arauz’s of struggle in so much as protecting her own economic interests in the form of her claim to the intellectual property.  Molotov Man, in becoming an icon, belongs to everyone and no one, meaning it should not be privatized 

I think such practice can be an argument between plagiarism or inspiration. Many artists, including content makers and students like me, don’t start from anything. They thought they are simply taking inspiration from others but in the end, they are copying. People tend to be influenced by history, people, surroundings, etc. What is suppose to plagiarism in the art might be different. For example, artists might have found impressionism, feelings, and so on. In the field of computer science, influences could be seen as risks of hacking. In the field of literature, similarities in ideas are simply seen as plagiarism.

The ecstasy of influence: A plagiarism demonstrates the author’s views on adopting ideas and how people view such practice as plagiarism or not. He argues that sharing ideas and getting influences somewhat promote creativeness and generate productivity. He says, “Finding one’s voice isn’t just an emptying and purifying oneself of the words of others but an adopting and embracing of filiations, communities, and discourses.” I agree with his argument on embracing adaptation which carries the legacy of such creation from an artist. In fact, humans develop further to the next step as they get inspirations from each other. 

If I can remember correctly, this should be my first time ever listening to a podcast and till the end. Audio median such as podcast like this one tells the story that makes our brain more sensitive to sound. This sensitivity allows us to understand the story in a different way compared to visual. Since we are more sensitive to sound, we tend to create this blurred image in our brain that matches with the sound from the podcast and we can actually feel the sound wave in our body. It simply creates our own visual and more imagination for the listener when visual is left out as the median. 

The composition of the podcast was really effective. It uses different sound effects to signal certain scenes such as someone existing the dialogue or the change in scene. I think having a lack of vision will make it less distracting for the user and it might help people to understand better.

DETECTIVE PIKACHU

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The comic will be based on an upcoming 2019 science fiction action comedy mystery film called “Detective Pikachu” directed by Rob Letterman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dan Hernandez, Benji Samit, and Derek Connolly, from a story by Hernandez, Samit, and Nicole Perlman, based on the 2016 video game Detective Pikachu. The film is an American and Japanese joint venture produced by Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, and The Pokémon Company, in association with Toho Co., Ltd. It is the first live-action/animated film in the Pokémon franchise and represents a separate continuity from the mainline video games and anime series. Its original plot is about a young man who joins forces with Detective Pikachu to unravel the mystery behind his father’s disappearance. Chasing clues through the streets of Ryme City, the dynamic duo soon discover a devious plot that poses a threat to the Pokémon universe.

Our comic will take a twist and the story will be original. This story will be my own little addition to the whole Detective Pikachu plot which will eventually lead to the partnership between Lucy, our own protagonist, and Pikachu in search of Harry, Lucy’s father. It is about their curiosity about the mysterious event happening at an abandoned apartment complex. There, they will investigate what really happened. Is it a ghost or is it pokemon? You’ll find out yourself. 

Development 

Our team’s initial thought is to create something unique. Seeming the work from the past, we found a lot of use of buttons, we decided to minimize the use of it and came after the scroll style. The comic will feature container boxes that will host one theme with a background. The dialogue will past by as you scroll. I think this will make it feel more like a physical comic where you have to flip through as to scroll through in the web. In term of work, Milly is in charge of drawing the visual and I worked on web development. During the development, I have created several demo pages. All of them are work in progress as I’m waiting for the visual to be completed by my partner. In the comic, I have incorporated an online font for my title. Also,  blinking arrows and text to make it more stand out for the user to see and experience. There are several challenges that I faced such as the background for the scene in each container is not staying where they are and they will jump while scrolling. I fixed that problem by making the height of the container bigger. It seems this problem only exist in chrome and not safari so I don’t know what the exact problem of it. The next problem is I wanted my page to stay put after the user past a container.  Since this is too complicated for me to do, I seek professor Moon for help. But I didn’t use this at the end since I want to do the same function multiple time with boolean but it didn’t work out. The most difficult thing about this project and any other is communication between team members. There is some obstacle between communication among us. It is a minor problem but having this fixed will get our project to a higher level. 

Conclusion

Overall, I would say that this problem is 80-90% finished as I initially expected. I could of use more interaction such as audio and more pop up visual effects. But again, I want this to be simple and minimal. This problem concept itself might be complicated and my partner had expressed its complexity. We could of use a much easier concept to do. I could have planned this more effectively in the progress of the development.