Friday, October 29, 2004

this sucks

too many thoughts not enough substance.

god im not having a good time with this whole ceramic thing... all my past ideas this idea, there either good ideas but irrelevant to ceramics or stupid ideas that involve ceramic.

I just wanna do something interesting.

Note to self:- mixing "art" with games in my opinion NEVER WORKS!

I should either pick an arty route with substance behind the idea or pick a weak idea that is a least interesting to me.

ideas suck. i just wanna make something, do something, i hate this thinking of ideas thing, ive never been good at it, i just feel like im waisting my time thinking i should be doing. but then again whats the point of making something if theres no point.

Note to self:- bring back mmorpg, remove ceramic life, stupid mengbo.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

We have a go

right the game idea it is.
the project is twofold.

1. finding ceramic information in games, reproducing in life.
2. creating characters from games in life using ceramic, (investigating texture too perhaps?)

woohooo... im excited now.

derek gave me this link to artists pope and guthrie, "The work focuses on the relationships between the physical and the imaginary" nice and relevant. Kinda like alot of the stuff Katerina was talking about (and baudrillard).

Anyhoo, low polygon modelling here i come!

Monday, October 18, 2004

so what about the game idea

Maby that whole idea could be changed to a sculptural thing, same mix and match parts idea but with sculptural pieces? Like really posh lego. Im starting to think of things like russian dolls, like a sort of adult toy... though I used to love them when I was little.

etc.etc. thats the idea... its about creating shapes that have universal connectors, shapes that can be rapidly prototyped, in a game trady way.

I said that about the game idea in an earlier post. How about creating shapes where you can still see the low polygonness... as a feature, ceramics and models of game like characters (in life) are usually created smooth and seamless. not at all like how you create a model in a computer, its all about lines and verteces and unsmoothmess... You have to create low polygon shapes in games to keep the games running fast... They're just textured really well. wouldnt it be funny to see a plate from a game rendered in life... it would look stupid...

hmmm... thinking

how about finding small pieces of "ceremic information" in games... plates mugs... machinery... anything then reproducing that information in a life model. So someone will have created a little model of something unimportant in a game (as perhaps ceramic is unimportant in life) that is supposed to look like it was made out of ceramic... mimicking the real world (poorly?). So then take that model (or rather create one like it) and reproduce the product again in life, as though say a ceramic plate never existed in life and all youve got to go on is the game model.

granted game models are getting alot better nowadays.. but lets see what happens :)

Seriously I hate all my ideas

okay problems setting in now, not liking anything Ive been thinking about... Rapidly running out of time. Damn it. Stupid ceramics, who idea was it to do this brief in the first place... oh, err, right, sorry everyone.

Everyone else has really nice ideas, mine constantly suck. Right Im going to perform a word association thing, I remember it saved me in art foundation.

Im so not an ideas person, I just like making things.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

What exactly is classed as ceramic?

The definition is important because I keep questioning myself as to whether what Im thinking about is actually ceramic or not. So here we go

Any of various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing a nonmetallic mineral, such as clay, at a high temperature.

got it? good

Early vis of a stop

very early visualisation of what im talking about... the final will look nothing like this (itll be made out of ceramics for a start)



this is so going to be relevant, just give me time.

More official blog?

I toyed with the idea of making my blog more official (having seen everyone elses), but I have decided to keep it like this, I never intended for this blog to be a public account of my development or ideas. It has been produced for really my own benefit. My blog is not an account of my working process it is my working process. If I didnt write my ideas and thoughts here, they would be written on scrap pieces of paper and lost.

I thought it was a good idea to say this because after having looked at everyone elses blog I started worrying that I was using this blog wrong. However in the land of blog, I think its impossible to use one wrong.

As it is written so it shall be.

everyones blog

being the incompetent fool that i am I could find no way of putting these links on the left in there own special place until i can here is everyone elses blogs. (in the order on the sheet)

Rob
Ross
Jodie
Jay
Tomoko
Kassra
Simon
Frank
Lampros
Petr
Justin
Tagir
Igor
Iman

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

change of heart

right ive decided now... focus on low lighting level ceramic stuff

buses, bus stops, these are my thoughts progressed from car dash board.

what is el lighting





im getting confused noe as to whether this stuff is even ceramic or not!

metal ceramic lighting electroceramescent... deary me i feel im entering a minefield (its a word doc).

dont lose there main website

lest we forget the possibility of fibre optic concrete.

grrrrr

i still really like my flashlight idea... or my dashboard idea... perhaps low level light in buses?

anywhere that needs low level light...

this so dosnt fulfill the brief

The idea so dosnt fulfill this sentance

"In order to be considered for an award the designs have to demonstrate innovative use of ceramic materials and be manufacturable with existing production techniques."

innovative use of ceramic materials... dont thik so. these little things need to be useful, and fun. (like in galaxies perhaps more useful then fun).

perhaps rather than characters you could make mini pocket knifes and stuff... grrr.. im starting to think of prizes in crackers now.

why are my ideas always so crap.

the idea

right... this is the idea.
I was thinking about the "your own discipline" thing, and started thinking about the "transfer of techniques" and the "material qualities of your own field" bits of the brief.

Still trying to form the idea around games I realised that in the game Im playing the most (Star Wars Galaxies) one of the main professions you can do is crafting. In this you have to find rescources and put them together to create useful items within the game (like clothes, armour weapons, camps, etc.).



I started to think about how you get the rescources to craft with... you can source them yourself, tarde with others, or buy with others. I realised its a very similar process to trading cards.

however in Galaxies your trading more useful things than cards, you trading the ability to create useful items in the game. I thought about cards like pokemon where 1 card will be more powerful than another. Just as in galaxies where some rescources are of a better quality than others (the maximum being 1000). Also some rescources (like cards) are rare.

this is good i thought to myself lots of game thinking, these are the processes contained within the game (the techniques) and in a very literal way in Galaxies the quality of your materials is extremely important. I then thought of the game you play as a kid when your bored where one person draws a head, the next person draws a torso down to the belly button, the next person draws to the knees, then the next draws the rest.

Similarities abound, (and bearing in mind my want to create characters) the idea is this...
v.small parts (ceramic, nice looking), character creating parts, heads torsos etc.
made for a more adult market (just like galaxies, and all role playing games)
fit them together to make complete characters... trade, buy, to create the actual fitting characters. some rare... perhaps the Galaxies animals? each like pokemon (and indeed galaxies) would have a certain degree of power, stronger and weaker than others.

etc.etc. thats the idea... its about creating shapes that have universal connectors, shapes that can be rapidly prototyped, in a game trady way.

the end... now off to think some more.

Monday, October 11, 2004

Revelation!!!!

got it...

just a few words so i dont forget (all will become clear in next post)

galaxies... crafting... rescources... animals... ceramic parts... trading parts... put stuff together... rare items...

spider legs and nuna heads.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

F**k thermo paint, heat sensing ceramics and input devices

These ideas arent going anywhere. Im going to think of something completely different with ceramic now... I just cant progress this train of thought any more, my sketchbook has like 4 pages of crap on it... each going nowhere.

you must go full circle to find the truth.

more thinking

a good site with links about smart materials

an designer using heat sensitive materials, if you have a look around on his website hes done quite a few heat sensitive things, I assume hes used themocromatic paint.

okay okay enough of the colour changing thing, what happened to the metaflesh game pod. A bit anti-vr really but never mind :)

why are we thinking so electrically why not mechanically, big water wheels and stuff... Lets leave advanced ceramics behind!

so... an input device that leaves a heat trail of how you have used it. You can track your movements due to the heat patterns...

input devices

still thinking about the whole game input device thing...

a nice little article

interesting... but the ceramic material should dictate the device... if you know what I mean, you cant just say lets make an input device... you need to be able to say wow ceramic can do this really well... hey, you could make a computer input device with that!

I keep thinking of like stroking a ceramic sculpture... for input. It reminds me a little of eXistenZ (the film) it was crazy, that alegra geller had a crazy animal (kinda sick really) that would interface with a human, you would stroke it and stuff... it would properly connect too... through a hole in their backs.

a little article

A good essay about "organic" human computer interfaces.

give it a thought and make it so okay im going off track now... but theres one little sentance peeking out of this, and thats the bit about wearable computers... did you know you can get ceramic material for clothes...

so... back to where we were a sculptural interface device?... kay first problem I can see with that is how would the ceramic know where you were touching... its clever but not that clever is it? ceramic is very heat sensitive can register minute temperature change.
apparently ceramics can register the temperature change when someone enters a room so yeah... it can register minute temperature change (this also lists many other ceramic properties).

electronic ceramics in everyday life

the more I look the more complicated all the advanced ceramic properties become... Ive been seeing crazy formulas for like an hour now... I need some kind of ceramics expert to tell me if it would be possible to control a computer (in any basic way) through touching a ceramic plate.

I think its somehow possible using some kind of grid or pyroelectric cermaic stuff... but this kind of ceramic generates electricity (i think?) surely then people would electorcute themselves?

I saw an interesting light in the last link... a ceramic light.. maby a light could be powered by just by holding it... a kind of automatic flashlight (though granted, I doubt anywhere near enough light would be generated for a flashlight purpose)... interesting thought though.

again not hugely relevant to myself, but military uses for advanced ceramics

hey about that electoluminescent lighting, hows about dashboards in cars... nice. In fact anything that needs to be stong and emit low-level light at night. Hmm... Im starting ti like this light idea :)

well there goes the car idea , I knew it was too good an idea not to have been thought of before! but the flashlight... can heat really transfer to electricity... (thinking if it can work with solar to leccy why not heat!)

I wonder what those heat reactive t-shirts from ages ago were made with?... the one that changed colour with heat (or was it sweat?)

you know what it doesnt really matter if heat can generate electricity... it can certainly turn electricity on... you know complete a circuit. The heat from someones hand could act as a trigger to acitvate a circuit (a low powered one as ceramic can conduct leccy and again we dont want people hurting themelves).

I suddenly had a vision of the film "Pitch Black" at the end theyre in a cave and only because there in complete darkness can they see the little animals that glow in the dark... they put a load of them in a jar and use them as a light. Okay not hugely relevant, but I thought of it because I was holding a pound coin in my hand trying to heat it up and thinking wouldnt it be cool if when I opened my hand it was lit up... okay had a vision of "Lord of the Rings" then yet another heat to light material.

heat reactive clothing, heat reactive mugs... by the way a company called delirium make heat reactive clothing... but there website dosnt work, however Ive found that such clothing uses thermochromatic dye, hmmm... thermochromatic paint.... how about glaze?

Im drawing at straws here, Im going to take a break.