GOOGLE SketchUp

While using Google Sketchup I created a virtual world composed of buildings from real places, Godzilla, a semi truck, dogs, a jumbo jet and two people. I placed and scaled buildings that I like and have seen photos of, mostly art museums but the SFSU science building was in the 3-D warehouse, so I decided it looked nice under the terror for Godzilla's deadly breath. The buildings were laid out in a way that creates a sense of city square of common area, this is where I would create a virtual film. I also scaled and placed different trees around my landscape in order to a create a more tangible sense of reality.

If I was to create a virtual movie in my scenario, it would start would the DAI 227 class being at a field trip at the SF MOMA, seen as the brick building. We would them put on virtual reality equipment, sensors, headgear/goggles, and go into a dark quiet room where the future events would unfold. We would visit other museums, walk their galleries, see their art in exact quality, we would visit the sphinx in Egypt, even climb it. However when visiting these places, someone malicious hacked into the system and created a virus that looked like Godzilla, and it started destroying all the museums and their digitized art data bases. The 227 class was on the upper garden area at the MOMA, and saw some of this going on so we ran down the stairs on the left side of the building, where Professor Cox wrote a code for a digital jumbo jet. The class filled into the jet and we zapped into the Bahamas, but stilled trapped in virtual reality because the exhibit at the MOMA was destroyed by Godzilla, we slowly attempted to reverse engineer the systems but never succeeded, therefore we stayed living in the virtual Bahamas forever. 

Homework Week 2 DAI 227

1) The beginning of the turn of the century was so important because of the huge advancements made in many different fields such as einstein's theory of relativity and the Wright brothers' first flight. For our concern computers were advancing at a rapid pace, with the transition of lightning fast vacuum tubes and Alan Turing's new vision of programable computers, a vision that completely let the cat out of the bag, because prior to Turning's involvement, computers were seem as machines for number crunching whereas Turning saw computers as machines that could perform any logical function that a man was capable of doing. 

2)  Aspects of the Dada art movement that really stuck with the rise of computers are notions such as cut and paste on the computer. This idea was seen in the work of Marcel Duchamp's "readymades," where Duchamp would take ordinary modern objects of the time and put them into galleries and museums, as if he cut the object out of life and pasted it into a completely different setting. 

3) Lev Manovich describes Vertov's film as a set of databases compiled together and then shown on an interface. This sounds very similar to how a computer works, it has a database (the memory), and it has an interface (the screen), and literally anything can be called onto the interface from the database instantly in an omnipresent fashion whereas analog works strictly in a continuous motion. 

4) Constructivism is the idea that you can create a society or world around yourself.

5)  Manovich the first level is the story of the camera man filming the whole project. The second aspect is the shots of the audience watching the film, and the third level is the screen shots of the different land and cityscapes. 

6) Norbert Weiner developed the idea of cybernetics, an idea where humans and machines exist within a feedback loop.

7) In "Computer Lib" Ted Nelson describes Hypertext as "Non-sequential writing."

8) Transistors were considered impractical in the 1960's because they still needed to be individually wired.

9) The first available computer kit was the altair.

10)  Twenty years from now the average living room is going to look very different especially in terms of digital visual media. The two dimensional interfaces of todays computer will seem ancient as three dimensional interfaces consisting of holographic interfaces will be absolute. These super computers will be able to project films and other types of data onto walls, however most programs will be run in three dimensions. Furthermore books will because interactive, objects such as the kindle and ipad will remain. I believe this because of the way people do research today, if one is reading he/she quickly surfs the web or smartphone when they have a question, therefore if reading was always done digitally, one can do research when stumbling, immediately. The video games these systems can run will be extraordinary as well, games that completely immerse the user's senses in every aspect in order to achieve a higher sense of reality. Perhaps classrooms and professors will be made holographic so students can learn from home or not miss a sick day.