FIRST POST! : Interferance

Hi, My names Oliver and i am starting this blog for as a piece of work from the grand old university of hertfrodshire. every week i will post some information based on my "Media, Histories & culture" class and discuss in ways that at the moment arnt apparent to me. unfortunatly i am a week behind in uploading this, because of difficulty using the site and keeping my infomarion, so there will be a few posts this week based on my notes.

Our first lesson was about Interferance and Interaction. and the process model of communication.

This model basically shows how things are observered or processed and then how they are interpreted and reacted too. if you imagine that point A is you and B is another person, if you say "hello" to them, then your medium is speech, as speech is just a combination of sounds and mouth movments its a encoded language, then it is taken and interperted by the other person, assuming they speak the same language as you it would properally be understood. this model also works for drawing ( your drawing being the language and a pencil as the medium and then the reciver interprets it) finally the "noise" around the model is repersenting any outside force that could disturb the interaction, like background noise in a conversation. Any other interactive task where it is viewed by somone also works in this way. This type of thing happens everyday and i doubt most people have thought of it in this way. it helps thinking about it as a Animator, because the puplic will be my audience and i will have to think of ways to interpret my idea to them through colors and characters. 

Adding to this is the information, there are 2 types or information:
redunantancy
entropy

redundant information is predictable, while entropic information is unpredicatable. so an example of this would be seeing a friend in the street... the predictable process would be a greeting, such as a wave sent by them and recieved by you. while a entropic communication would be if they punched you in the face, because it would be unexpected from your friend. for a good animation, i would go by the words of shannon & wheaver who suggest that a healthy balance is equal amounts of both. this would make a animation very familiar to a viewer to draw them in or make them relate to the character, but on its own can seem to boring, if you add in equal amounts of unpredictability it becomes alot more interesting. an example of this would be in Pixars "UP" .
The premise is very entropic, it is after all the idea of a old man, travelling with his floating house to a made up location, and thne incountering many strange things, like a batallion of talking dogs led by a man, and also a giant colorful bird, most things tha i doubt anyone has seen in a day to day life.

this is then equaled out with redundant information, this movie is quite inbalanced with unpredictability but there is still some predictability in the movie, the main predictable information i would say i are the characters, how the old man is a typical old man (not liking children, being very cranky and even down to the physical side of the character with the arched back) and the typical boy scout (always wanting to help, and quite hyperactive). the only other predictable points are in the first scene of the movie showing how he and his wife grew up and did the typical couply thing, until her death.               http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYmGt7RnTlI
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 The final bit on this lecture was predictability and unpredictability in a little more detail, if you drew a scale of with "redundant" written on the left and "entropic" on the right, you can chart how predictable a action or animation is. now i will give examples of animations which can fit on this scale in many ways, these are all really based on mainly on the stlye used.

the first animation i looked at is salad fingers.

which has no real narrative or follow through in story, its more just a compilation of events following each other, on a scale this would be quite etropic, because at random moments things you wouldnt expect happen, like salad fingers talking in a diffrent language, the backwards music also adds to this feeling of being on the edge of your seat, wondering what will come next. although there are still elements of predictability from situations, like salad fingers luring the little boy into his oven, the way he says it and the music make it feel like somthing sinister is afoot.

while on the oppersite end of the scale, is somthing like "sleeping beauty" by disney, who is know as being quite hyper realistic animations espically the very traiditional animations they have made. becuase of how real the characters look and the amount of detail into familliar structures it would be seen as quite predictable of them doing the same actions leading to a simular action, while also being very porportionally correct.













A very nice piece of animation to mention would be Jan Svanmajers "darkness light darkness" which was shown to us in class. this is a very surreal piece of animation and quite stylised, which would put it very high on the unpredictable scale. he really personifys parts of the human body very well giving them a life of there own which is not usually seen, and in some areas hyper realistic like with the detail on the tounge and brains.

but again these shapes of hands, eyes and feet are all familliar to us, so its not as unpredictable.



another animtion, this one made by ryan woodward tittled "thoughts of you", a very beatiful piece very simular to darness light darkness with the amount of unpredictability. the characters are very stylised but at points there movments because very unpredictable with stretching limbs and turning into water, but at the end of the day they are still human shaped and this is very predictable to us with what movments are possible and which arnt.






And finally a piece by ryan larkin called street musique. this piece is extremly trippy and unpredictable, as it has alot of unnatural creatures and shapes that are very dynamic and can morph into somthing completly diffrent, the unpredictability of all of this is very effective espically with the amount of diffrent media he has used to portray it. defintly one of the most unpredictable pieces i have menitioned so far.




of corse stating what piece is more predictable is from the viewers point of view but this is my point of view on the pieces.

this can really help my animation, so i know where to draw the line at too unpredictable or too realistic and boring.