Auckland War Memorial Museum: Cenotaph Database
"Search for biographical and service details for over 115,000 New Zealand service men and women from the 19th century till today and especially from World War One and World War Two."
(Auckland War Memorial Museum)
Fig.1 [3] Portrait, WW2, soldier standing in front of jeep, wooden hut, cigarette in hand, wearing beret. Godfrey Perkins 20/641254 at Mizuba 1946.
Fig.2 [4] Group soldiers, Perenchies, Germany. Wilfred B Quennell 1st row standing 4th from left, scanned from copy of original.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
An interactive system defines a virtual space
"An interactive system defines a virtual space, whether the system’s interface provides access to the inhospitable planet of Stroggos or the Microsoft Windows desktop. Users of both these systems interact with a place, one created by a computer and in which users and computational agents carry out their individual and collective activities. The intuitive and often-discussed benefit of a well-designed interface metaphor is that it allows users to carry over conventions from their 'real' experience when performing tasks within the interface world.
Another key and often unarticulated value of an interface arises from the interface’s mimetic quality. While mimesis is often discussed by narrative theorists as a contrast to diegesis, distinguishing the concepts of showing versus telling (Aristotle), my emphasis here is to distinguish between an artifact that is intended to be an imitation of something, but is not really that thing and an artifact that is intended to be mistaken as that thing. An example of the former case would be a film of a fictional account of the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy. An example of the later might be a virtual reality system displaying photo-realistic graphical images of a physical space. D-Days stories like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan are, in some ways, imitations, and so are more mimetic than VR systems whose design is intended to '...produce synthetic images visually and measurably indistinguishable from real world images.' (Greenberg 1999)(pg. 45)."
(R. Michael Young, 1999)
Greenberg, D. P. 1999. 'A framework for realistic image synthesis'. Communications of the ACM 42(8):45-53.
1). R. Michael Young (1999). 'Notes on the Use of Plan Structures in the Creation of Interactive Plot', Papers from the 1999 Fall Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Symposium
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Walt Disney and the Art of WWII Propaganda
"During World War II, Disney's provided some political education for Americans at home -- and for soldiers on the front, too. 'Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi' appeared in movie theaters in 1943. The tone of the movie was serious, and it didn't feature the likes of Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. Instead, it used impressive images to describe how children in Nazi Germany were raised to hate and to participate in the war effort -- and how little blonde Hans' only purpose in life was to die on the front."
(Sven Stillich, 2009)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Spomenik: monumental geometry echoing the shapes of flowers, crystals, and macro-views of viruses or DNA
"During the 1960s and 70s, thousands of monuments commemorating the Second World War - called 'Spomeniks' - were built throughout the former Yugoslavia; striking monumental sculptures, with an angular geometry echoing the shapes of flowers, crystals, and macro-views of viruses or DNA."
(Photo-Eye via Amazon.com)
Jan Kempenaers (2010). 'Spomenik', Roma Publications
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Virtual Heritage: The Guns of Motutapu
"The largest virtual heritage project completed in NZ is the 20 minute 3D film 'The Guns of Motutapu'. It is a story about Motutapu Island and NZ's most important WWII gun battery at the time of an anticipated Japanese attack. As one of the largest 3D heritage projects of its type in the world, it features an intensely detailed simulation of a 6' MK21 counter bombardment battery firing into the Hauraki Gulf. One lucky aspect of the project is that Major Derek Thorburn, who came to Motutapu in 1942 and rose to become commander of the guns, acted as a technical advisor to the project. As an actual eye witness to the history, he worked with the 3D artists to achieve a level of visual accuracy that was in danger of being lost forever. The film has proven hugely effective as a fund raising tool for the Motutapu Restoration Trust and its efforts to restore the island. As a result of this success the trust again contracted with 4D Canvas and a second Motutapu film has just been released."
(Chris Keenan , 12.5.2006)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
