Assignment/Project #5: Final Project and Project Proposal
Project Proposal - Due date Thursday Nov. 30 (by email please)
What is the scope of the Final Project?
The Final Project in RTF344M can be either a creative work or a term paper.
A creative work would be a project involving any aspect of digital art and media such as:
- short movie (2-3') with sound produced as a DVD
- audio/music track using extended features of GB3 or other audio software
- interactive web site with your art/photos/movies using any web building tools available to you such as Dreamweaver, iWeb (Apple), Flash, etc.
- design and create a tiny game using readily available software such as Java, Flash
- visualization of a piece of pre-recorded music using WinAMP, Arkaos, or any other free software. This could also be a set of stills animated in iMovie to illustrate/visualize a piece of music of your choice
Term Paper/Web Site
A term paper could be chosen from any of the topics we will have covered this term. The paper should reflect upon Manovich's premises and draw upon other texts and articles to support the materials. Term papers are typically 10 pages including bibliography. In this case you may also make a web-site that is the "paper" to permit extensive use of hyperlinks, images and even sound to illustrate your materials.
Sample topics:
gaming for girls - how has the game industry approached this market? did it work? examples? research on usage?
digital media workstations - show how computers have become to dominate the audio and video production world. how have demands from music/audio/video changed the approach to building and selling computers from the old "spreadsheet tool" to powerful media machines
more topics...
- Producers and Users: the role of software in media/information arts.
- The design and implementation of a large-scale show-control system
- Photorealism in commercial film animation.
- XHTML and XML - formalizing web documents and e-business.
- Open-source and free media software - an annotated resource.
- The phenomenon of massively multi-user gaming -- (or similar title).
More Sample Internet Topics
real time messaging - one of the earliest version of messaging was a UNIX service called "type" that permitted users loged into a unix machine to send typed messages back and forth. The NeXT machine (Jobs) offered a voice version of this. An early form of media-chat was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University called CUseeme that engendered a host of similar services. Since then, numerous forms of real time messaging have emerged ranging from simple text-based chat to video-chat.
Trace the background of real time messaging and explore some of the latest developments in real-time messaging. How do these work? What protocols are utilized for this kind of messaging?
media streaming - some of the first streaming systems were also developed for the NeXT computer - it was possible to set up an "audio server" that could broadcast music/sound over local LAN connections. At present, several versions of media streaming are currently available, the most important being RealOne, Quicktime and Windows Media.
Describe how streaming works and what role it plays as an Internet (web) service. Compare/evaluate Real, Quicktime and Windows Media in terms of the end-user experience and in terms of overall services.
3. blogging - the rise of "personal journals" as "weblogs" or "blogs" from private or even "clubby" to main-stream journalism is one of the latest and hottest elements of the global information society.
What is a blog? How are they created? How do they work? What is the difference between a blog and "threaded email"? Speculate on the relative importance of blogs as an internet phenomenon.
Sample Creative Project using the Web
Some of you have experience with commercial web development tools such as Dreamweaver, Flash, Front Page, etc. You may choose to make a web page using more advanced features of any of these programs.
The content of the page(s) should include commentary on at least the following:
- relationship between graphics design/programming and web development
- impact of browser-related issues - that is, what limitations exist and how are these overcome to ensure that your site will work correctly under IE, Netscape, Firefox, Safari, etc.
The functionality of the page (ie, design elements) should include some or all of the following:
- roll-over or "active" buttons, links, etc.
- pull-down menus
- live regions (such as automatic image-on-image)
- sound or midi embedded
- quicktime or wmp embedded
Project Proposal - Due date Thursday Nov. 30 (by email please)
You must submit a 2-page project proposal. It should be in point form and include
- type of project (creative, term paper)
- title of project
- duration (if audio or video)
- resources - list everything you will need to undertake the project
- describe the contents of the project - general outline, storyboard, etc.
- what do you hope to achieve?
- how does this project reflect the themes of this course?