Wrangler: Blue Bell Spring/Summer 2010 Website
"The Blue Bell website featuring Tony Ward in an interactive undressing is exciting and ingenious.
You can control the legendary model’s every move, right down to stripping off his shirt. Using digital film and cinematic special effects to achieve an incomparable level of user interface."
(AJANAKU:Marco, 9 February 2010, http://www.ajanaku.nl/wrangler-blue-bell-springsummer-2010-website/)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Twitter Blog: Think Globally, Tweet Locally
"In August [2009] we announced that we were working on a new API that would provide developers with the ability to geotag tweets. Today, the Geotagging API is officially available.
This release is unique in that it's API-only which means you won't see any changes on twitter.com, yet. Instead, Twitter applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro and others are already supporting this new functionality (go try them out now!) in interesting ways that include geotagging your tweets and displaying the location from where a tweet was posted. The added information provides valuable context when reading your friends tweets and allows you to better focus in on local conversations. Now you can find out what live music is playing right now in your neighborhood or what people visiting Checkpoint Charlie are saying today about the anniversary of the Berlin Wall. These are only the beginning and we are really looking forward to seeing the creative uses emerge from the developer community.
It's important to note geotagging is disabled by default for all users which means you will need to opt-in in order to use it. To activate the new geotagging functionality, go to your Settings page and click 'Enable Geotagging'."
(Twitter.com, 19 November 2009)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Aesthetics of Displays: how the split screen remediates other media
"Pillow Talk embeds the split screen in intricate ways in the narrative of the film. In total, the film has ten split-screen scenes that are unevenly distributed over the length of the film. Two thirds of the split-screen scenes are in the first act of the film, while none are in the last act. Far from being coincidental or arbitrary, this uneven distribution functions as a play of foreshadowing and allusion as it provides the couple with a shared (virtual) space before they actually share a (physical) space. Therefore, the device fulfils a double narrative purpose: on the one hand, this technique has an economic function as it enables the film to refrain from clumsy and complicated parallel editing patterns, presenting two separate images in one frame. On the other hand, and this is more important, the spectator can already witness how well the couple fits together as the halves of the split screen correspond to each other in terms of colour, mise-en-scene, montage and internal movement. The spectator sees already the shared communal space, while the narrative has to work through the intricate plot movements in order to get rid of such an unclassical device as the split screen. ...
All split-screen scenes in Pillow Talk are telephone scenes, echoing, as argued, the basic properties of the telephone conversation. The paradoxical tension between distance and proximity, between absence and presence is overcome in one scene in particular when the physical division and acoustic closeness are confused as touch complements the visual and aural situation. The split screen shows the protagonists lying in their respective bath tubs, the woman on the left and the man on the right (this placement is consistent throughout the movie) - mise-en-scene, lighting and colour all work to downplay the visual distinction between the two separate images - as if they were in the same bath together (fig. 1). When Brad gently strokes the wall with his toes at the exact point where Jan has put her foot, she pulls it back as though she has been tickled by him (fig. 2). Even though physically impossible (Jan and Brad are in distant places and only talk on the phone), the separating wall becomes semi-permeable. This incident literalises the strange configuration in which the division is at the same time visibly present (both images are in the same frame), yet also visibly negated (we know that we are watching two separate images)."
(Malte Hagener, 24 December 2008 )
Journal of Entertainment Media (ISSN:1447-4905)
Fig. 1&2. Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959). Image Source: DVD Universal 2003.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Interstitial Space Helmet
"Traditionally employed in long distance broadcast interactions, cameras and screens may be considered as an extrovert media. The interstitial space helmet is conceived as a tool for exploring the consequences of applying this media in a more introverted or local experience, providing an alta-vista on our camera/screen-mediated existence.
It is becoming increasingly possible that the need for physical presence is diminishing as our interactions and relationships are being provided for by screen and camera based media. With anything up to 8 hours a day spent at our computer terminals and another three or four spent gazing at our televisions not being considered unusual.
Whilst the screen and camera provide an adequate conduit for many forms of interaction, their capacity for altering or even cheating reality has to be acknowledged hence their success in suspending our disbelief in film, advertising and propaganda broadcasts. Our screen-based interactions are not necessarily a seamless conduit and as such are open to a multitude of tweaks, filters and varying degrees of adjustment."
(Auger-Loizeau)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
