July 2005 - Ada_list - University of Waikato Mail Lists

by seanc

> > > The Screen and Media Studies Dept. of the University of Waikato is > planning a conference for graduate and postgraduate students (that is, > Masters and above) to be held in Hamilton in late November or early > December. This will be in the general field of Media and > Communications studies, and we will be inviting students to present > papers based on their research within this, albeit wide, area of > study. This will reflect the many different facets and approaches that > Media and Communications studies offer; textual analysis, discourse > analysis, audience reception, political economy, technology, > marketing, and the list goes on. Further, we wish to include the many > varied types of communication technology within the scope of this > conference. In addition to the ‘traditional’ forms of screen media, > cinema and television, we would include internet, video games, mobile > phones, and any other form of screen communication device not listed > here. > > We would like to invite you to attend this conference so that you may > both present your own work and meet graduate students from all over > the world. Please advise if you may be interested in attending. In > this way, we can begin organizing this, what we think will be an > exciting event. > > Please e-mail me directly with your reply at nbather(a)xtra.co.nz > > Neil Bather > Doctoral Student > Screen and Media Studies Dept > The University of Waikato > Hamilton, New Zealand > > Sean Cubitt • Screen and Media Studies • University of Waikato • Private Bag 3105 • Hamilton • New Zealand • T +64 (0)7 838 4543 • F +64 (0)7 4767 • seanc(a)waikato.ac.nz

15 years, 5 months

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poly (vs apple)

by Douglas Bagnall

Back in March, Melanie Swalwell wrote: [http://list.waikato.ac.nz/pipermail/ada_list/2005-March/000833.html] > I'd be keen to hear some more about the Poly. Have you had any > responses? No. Well, almost none. Mark Williams at the Film Archive has been investigating, and I suspect he is secretly planning an exhibition on the subject. Also, a few weeks ago, I was at the National Library and I looked at 1983 editions of Bits and Bytes magazine. Volume 1, Number 1 has a feature article on the Poly vs Apple controversy. I wrote some notes but have since forgotten their meaning, so the following may be inaccurate. The Poly came out in 1981 or early 1982 and was intended for educational use. Much was made of its facility for networking. It seems that number of Polys could be wired together and kept in sync by the teacher. Although this now sounds pedagogically quaint, a few schools signed up to buy them. In 1983 a networkable Poly cost $8090, but it appears the complete teaching kit ran into the hundreds of thousands. In response to the Poly, Apple reduced the price for schools of an Apple II from $4812 to $1200. Customs decided that Apple was "dumping", which seems to have had a precise technical meaning in those days of import regulation. They imposed a duty of $820, bringing the price up to $2020. Apple changed their price to $2020, rather than pay the duty (Customs could not complain, because their duty was defined as setting the fair price). Money was valuable then. I recall you could get lollies valued at fractions of a cent. $8090 would get you a largish McCahon or a few houses in Wanaka, so even if Apple had stuck to their original price, the Poly may not have taken off. Nevertheless, Polycorp was blaming Apple, Customs, and the Government for their impending failure. By way of comparison, here are prices for other computers advertised in Bits and Bytes, vol 1, nos 1-3 (retail prices, some educational discounts offered but not revealed): ZX81 $199 VIC20 $899 Atari 400 $1295 Atari 800 $2695 Dick Smith 80 $1295 BBC Micro $1595 The Apple II was designed in 1976. It was inferior to the 1982 BBC Micro in every possible regard, despite retailing at three times the price. The IBM PC had been out for a couple of years, and the Mac was due in January 1984. In these circumstances, $1200 actually sounds like a reasonable price for the Apple II, but of course you don't buy from Apple expecting value or quality. The Poly used the 6809 processor. This was an advance on the 6502s and z80s that everyone else used, although it was admired as much for conceptual elegance as increased performance. Unfortunately the 6809 was a year or two late for the 8 bit era, and hence was mainly used in idiosyncratic late machines like the Poly, the Dragon (Welsh) and the Peach (Japanese). Bits and Bytes mentions some system of layered video, allowing graphics and text on the same screen. 21 colours could be used at once, exactly 5 more than was common. Its networking system appears to have involved an ad-hoc protocol over a serial bus. As far as I can tell, the Poly system was technically inferior to ethernet, which had had a decade of development, but was was just then becoming widely available, with the first Apple II ethernet card released in 1982. The reporter didn't seem to understand much about networking. It seems that what the Poly developers really cared about was software, or rather, a particular mode of software use and development that they imagined would suit schools. They thought that, with the Poly, teachers could easily develop teaching software that could be shared between schools. In 1983 only a tiny portion of the curriculum had been Polyised, but they didn't think the rest was far off. Polycorp's mistakes are obvious enough. They wasted effort on irrelevant details, fighting rather than harnessing the flow of commodification. If they had resisted the urge to reinvent hardware and had targeted their software at (say) ethernet connected IBM PCs, they might well have got it into a few more schools, and lasted as a company for a few more years. There is something to be said for waiting until the appropriate technology arrives, rather than trying to force it. I think this is a general and well learnt lesson of the last 25 years, not hindsight specific to Polycorp. Now most people have a sensible, incremental approach to changing the world with computers. For example, Vicki Smith and Karla Ptacek have had school kids collaborating across the world, using generic hardware, operating systems, and network protocols, with only a little bit of specialised (buggy) software. And now there is Skolelinux[1] which perhaps has similar aims to Polycorp, but actually saves schools money relative to the alternatives, by borrowing as much as possible from existing ideas and technology. Apart from Bits and Bytes and Mark Williams, another source of Poly information is http://www.embassy.org.nz/computer/progeni.htm [1]http://www.skolelinux.org/portal/about/what douglas

15 years, 5 months

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Re: [Ada_list] screens + sound visualisation

by Mark Grimshaw

On 29 Jul 2005 at 11:27, luke wrote: > > is this less a problem of sound being visualised within a tool as > spatial, as after all sound is spatial, and more of how the > spatiality is being visualised at present? i read in sue's original > comment the suggestion of new visualisations and interactions with > sound as it is edited. it stumped me because i couldn't think of > what shape this would form. the closest i can imagine is 3d editing > gadgets that use a wand like tool you wave around within an arena, > or medical practises of dicing up a hologram before cutting into a > real aorta. but those models are still problematic, especially given > the outline by douglas, because they're still restricted to defined > spatial parameters which may or may not correspond to some actual > spatial parameters of sound > (a sound spectrum is a parameter after all). > > what i imagine 'spatial editing' to resemble would involve a method > unfamiliar to usual gui interfaces, would probably involve gestures > of some kind. the sound wouldn't be treated as a representation (although > it probably would be) ... but the manipulation would involve moving > sound from one space to another. how we edit and the tools we use > always imprint the work (probably more than we'd ever like to know), > so acknowledging that it would have a parametised outcome, the best > you could hope for was a _new_ outcome. > There are quite a few tools like this which are usually used when designing audio for computer games. An example of an interface for creating/editing this kind of spatial/gestural representation of sound objects is Diesel Studio (free non-commercial download) at http://www.am3d.com The GUIs are usually based on graphics packages (in Diesel's case it looks like any 3D modelling software). I can't remember the earliest example of similar software but they have been around for some time. I do remember using FX systems (Roland something or other) in recording studios about 20 years ago where there was a LCD representation of a room with a small joystick to move a blob representing the position of the sound around that room. Mark. -- Computer Game Audio bibliography: http://shiva.smst.waikato.ac.nz/wikindx3/

15 years, 5 months

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Re: [Ada_list] screens +sound visualisation

by seanc

(mark - you don't appear to be on as sirfragalot) On 29 Jul 2005 at 11:27, luke wrote: > > is this less a problem of sound being visualised within a tool as > spatial, as after all sound is spatial, and more of how the spatiality > is being visualised at present? i read in sue's original comment the > suggestion of new visualisations and interactions with sound as it is > edited. it stumped me because i couldn't think of what shape this > would form. the closest i can imagine is 3d editing gadgets that use a > wand like tool you wave around within an arena, or medical practises > of dicing up a hologram before cutting into a real aorta. but those > models are still problematic, especially given the outline by douglas, > because they're still restricted to defined spatial parameters which > may or may not correspond to some actual spatial parameters of sound > (a sound spectrum is a parameter after all). > > what i imagine 'spatial editing' to resemble would involve a method > unfamiliar to usual gui interfaces, would probably involve gestures of > some kind. the sound wouldn't be treated as a representation (although > it probably would be) ... but the manipulation would involve moving > sound from one space to another. how we edit and the tools we use > always imprint the work (probably more than we'd ever like to know), > so acknowledging that it would have a parametised outcome, the best > you could hope for was a _new_ outcome. > There are quite a few tools like this which are usually used when designing audio for computer games. An example of an interface for creating/editing this kind of spatial/gestural representation of sound objects is Diesel Studio (free non-commercial download) at http://www.am3d.com The GUIs are usually based on graphics packages (in Diesel's case it looks like any 3D modelling software). I can't remember the earliest example of similar software but they have been around for some time. I do remember using FX systems (Roland something or other) in recording studios about 20 years ago now where there was a LCD representation of a room with a small joystick to move a blob representing the position of the sound around that room. Mark. -- Computer Game Audio bibliography: http://shiva.smst.waikato.ac.nz/wikindx3/ > Sean Cubitt • Screen and Media Studies • University of Waikato • Private Bag 3105 • Hamilton • New Zealand • T +64 (0)7 838 4543 • F +64 (0)7 4767 • seanc(a)waikato.ac.nz

15 years, 5 months

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ubuntu linux

by Sonja van Kerkhoff

kia ora koutou, I asked Julian about Ubuntu and this is his response, perhaps also of interest for you'll. hei konei ra, sonja > Ubuntu is a project by the company Canonical, headed by Mark > Shuttleworth, a multi-billionaire 'philanthropist' focussed on > disenfranchising developing countries from american software monopolists > like Apple and M$. the slogan is "Linux for Human Beings". > > he does alot of work in Africa and South America in this area. > Ubuntu is free of charge and has some of the best Linux developers > working on the distribution. > > Ubuntu has alot of integrity in the Free Software community for it's > rigid policies on using only non-patented, GPL (General Public License) code > in it's distribution. it has a very clean desktop and is very easy to > administer. on request he ships Ubuntu CD's without cost - he has shipped around a million so far and many times that have been downloaded freely. > > most importantly Ubuntu is built upon Debian Linux, it takes all the > bleeding edge packages and makes them stable for release every six > months. upgrades can be done frequently (if desired) and thus very > current software can be used (from a pool of around 16000 packages). > > on both the level of the desktop design and it's approach to bleeding > edge software it is quite an innovator. Ubuntu runs on PowerPC machines > (macs), AMD64 and standard Intel machines. people used to OS9 or OSX > will feel quite at home with the layout of the desktop. > > the community is huge and the documentation is free and of a high > quality. the online community is very helpful and geared toward > new users. realtime support can be gained quickly - especially in > IRC. > > it is possible to buy HP laptops with Ubuntu already installed, however > the install itself takes around 25 minutes and while not GUI is pretty > accessible to new users (about 10 questions). > > http://ubuntulinux.org > > julian > > -- > _ _ _ > ___ ___| |___ __| |_ _ __ __ _ _ _| |__ ___ > (_-</ -_) / -_) _| _| '_ \/ _` | '_| / /(_-< > /__/\___|_\___\__|\__| .__/\__,_|_| |_\_\/__/ > |_http://selectparks.net > > Artist in Residence IT University of Copenhagen > Department of Digital Aesthetics and Communication > Rued Langgaards Vej 7 > DK-2300 København S > http://game.itu.dk

15 years, 6 months

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Re: Linux in NZ schools

by vickismith＠paradise.net.nz

the move is aimed at offering a subsidised 'choice' - it would be ideal if they subsidised technical staff - it seems so many of the smaller schools rely heavily on interested or motivated teachers [and sometimes students] there is a push by ministry to have schools operate electronically especially the administration of student data - the buzz word is interoperability and eventually web based solutions there is some cool stuff too - especially around what they term 'the 21st century learner', libraries and information literacy ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Vicki Smith ICT Learning Facilitator WestNet Email: vickismith(a)paradise.net.nz Cell: 021 778 067 http://www.westnet.school.nz http://www.avatarbodycollision.org http://www.upstage.org.nz ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

15 years, 6 months

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RE: [SPAM] - Re: [Ada_list] SCANZ extension of deadline - Email found in subject

by Ian Clothier

sweet as Ian M Clothier ________________________________ From: adam [mailto:adam@xs4all.nl] Sent: Wed 20/07/2005 9:18 p.m. To: Aotearoa Digital Arts Subject: [SPAM] - Re: [Ada_list] SCANZ extension of deadline - Email found in subject hey! i am in zagreb now...is it ok to send the CV tomorrow? adam On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Clothieri wrote: > Hi, > > To all those who have not yet expressed interest in SCANZ, the date for > registrations of interest has been extended to Monday 25th July, 4pm. > > To register, please go to http://www.witt.ac.nz/Content/sub/100005460.aspx > And download the registration of interest form. Complete the form and send > it and a cv/bio/resume to scanz(a)witt.ac.nz > > Cheers > > Ian Clothier > SCANZ Project Team > > > > This communication - including any attachments - may contain legally privileged information, and is confidential to the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient you should delete the communication and contact the sender immediately. If you have received this e-mail in error, you must not read, copy, disseminate, distribute or otherwise use or disclose any part of this communication, or any information on matters or persons to which it refers. WITT reserves the right to monitor all e-mail communications sent through its network. > > > _______________________________________________ > Ada_list mailing list > Ada_list(a)list.waikato.ac.nz > http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/ada_list > > Adam Hyde ~/.lv r a d i o q u a l i a http://www.radioqualia.net Free as in 'media' contact: email : adam(a)xs4all.nl _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list Ada_list(a)list.waikato.ac.nz http://list.waikato.ac.nz/mailman/listinfo/ada_list

15 years, 6 months

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SCANZ extension of deadline

by Clothieri

Hi, To all those who have not yet expressed interest in SCANZ, the date for registrations of interest has been extended to Monday 25th July, 4pm. To register, please go to http://www.witt.ac.nz/Content/sub/100005460.aspx And download the registration of interest form. Complete the form and send it and a cv/bio/resume to scanz(a)witt.ac.nz Cheers Ian Clothier SCANZ Project Team This communication - including any attachments - may contain legally privileged information, and is confidential to the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient you should delete the communication and contact the sender immediately. If you have received this e-mail in error, you must not read, copy, disseminate, distribute or otherwise use or disclose any part of this communication, or any information on matters or persons to which it refers. WITT reserves the right to monitor all e-mail communications sent through its network.

15 years, 6 months

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channel4 games competition

by Sonja van Kerkhoff

channel 4 games competition http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/games/game-guru.html deadline is either 6 oct or 6 nov, (probably nov) 2005. hei konei ra, Sonja + + + + + + + + + + www.sonjavank.com

15 years, 6 months

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Douglas Bagnall / film-making robot & Alex Montieth / Invisible Cities - St.Paul St. Gallery

by luke

From: Heather Galbraith <heather.galbraith(a)aut.ac.nz> Subject: Exhibition openings 19 & 21 July at St. Paul St., AUT You are Warmly invited to two exhibition openings at st. Paul St. next week: Fleur Palmer / Diffusion Gallery 2 Opening 5.30-7.00 pm Tuesday 19 July 2005 exhibition continues until 29 July Douglas Bagnall / film-making robot Alex Montieth / Invisible Cities Gallery 1 Opening 5.30-7.30 pm Thursday 21 July 2005 exhibition continues until 19 August Two gallery-based installations of digital works exploring how we visually navigate cities (both real and imagined). Road movies are seductive largely because they invite us journey away from our everyday existence. But what is revealed when we are asked train our sights closer to home? How do we see and image the city and suburban streets where we live and work? Douglas Bagnall has made a Film-making Robot which charts the repeated, everyday routes of inner city buses. The 'body' of Douglas Bagnall's film-making robot sits in the gallery. The 'eyes' of the robot are cameras attached to the front of Stagecoach buses who, when passing near wireless internet communication nodes in the central city upload video footage taken around the city. These are relayed to the 'body' and from there the robot selects and edits excerpts according to specific programmed visual criteria. In the gallery you can see both the edited films and the process of the robot 'dreaming'; processing the video inputs, regarding them and reaching decisions on their merit. At the beginning of the project the footage will be predominantly of Wellington, with more and more Auckland footage being added. Douglas Bagnall is based in Wellington. For more information about this and other projects go to http://halo.gen.nz. Film-making Robot was first seen as part of Telecom Prospect 2004 / New Art New Zealand and was presented by City Gallery Wellington in partnership with the New Zealand Film Archive. The Auckland presentation of Film-making Robot is supported by Stagecoach New Zealand and Reach Wireless. Alex Monteith's Invisible Cities emerges from a conflation of two 'found' structural sources; Italo Cavino's book 'Invisible Cities' and the Alta Vista internet search engine. Two projections in the space make visible a perpetual search for images - one using the nouns in Calvino's text , the other a list of objects and materials present in the gallery space. Calvino's 'Invisible Cities' is an extraordinary book written in the early 1970s where Marco Polo recounts tales of his travels to fifty-five cities to an ageing world-weary Kublai Khan. The accounts are evocative and fantastic and the reader is left to wonder whether the cities actually represent different aspects of a single city, different internal experiences of place, or something else entirely. Invisible Cities was first seen at The Physics Room in Christchurch and as an on-line project at Window. The searching software for Alex Montieth's work was authored by Sean Kerr. For more information please go to http://www.physicsroom.org.nz/space/2004/monteith/ or http://www.window.auckland.ac.nz/archive/0410Invisible/default.php. Alex Monteith is an experimental film-maker based in Auckland. Her first feature length film Chapter and Verse has just premiered at Telecom New Zealand Film Festivals in Auckland and Wellington. Heather Galbraith St. Paul St. Gallery Director School of Art & Design Auckland University of Technology Level 1, 34 St. Paul Street Central Auckland Telephone: 64 9 9219999 extn. 8313 Facsimile: 64 9 9219916 www.stpaulst.aut.ac.nz Postal address: School of Art and Design, AUT Private Bag 92006 Auckland 1020 New Zealand/Aotearoa Galleries open 10-5 Tues-Fri, 12-4 Saturday. Closed Sunday, Monday & public holidays. Current exhibition: Gallery 2 Sugar/Sue Gallager + Try Hard/Elvon Young and Davor Popadich Until 15 July

15 years, 6 months

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Ada_list July 2005