M5 BUS ROUTE Assignment

The assignment was to simply take the M5 Bus on Houston and La Guardia to its end stop at George Washington Bridge and back and write a 5 page doc on your impressions and reactions.

So I decided to add some media to it… took some pictures and video while on the bus… wrote down my comments and thoughts throughout the trip… tried to keep track of the bus location to have a sense of speed…

THEN did the same route on my bike… well… ended up not doing the exact same route but close enough… but placed the camera on my bike (yes – with dck tape and a plastic bag under it to act as a cushion) and filmed the whole thing.

Wanted to trace the route with a GPS but it would not pick up the signals from the satelites withing the city…

BUT got my heart rate data.

Now have to figure out how to present all of this using text for the comments, a map with my position, scenes from the bike, and my heart rate in a little graph…

Here are some pics for now…

1. Beggining of the ride – a construction site – NY is being rebuilt!


2. The few passengers going uptown…


3. My annotations…


4. The final stop! The George Washington bridge


5. Final Stop – interesting architecture


6. Final stop 3 – smoke staks

SECOND & THIRD DAY OF CLASSES

WOW!! That is all I can say!

Not necessarily overwhelmed by the amount of information but the QUALITY of information and resources we have available here…

For example – we have access to a 3D PRINTER – that’s right – you send them a 3D model and then you get the actual PHYSICAL object out the next day!! Not to mention the large format high-quality photo printers, full multi-media studios with video and sound editing software and hardware…

So – let’s take it one step at a time:

Wednesday:

Communications Lab

Frank Migliorelli

“Good interactive design is good story telling”

Recommended 2 books:

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” by Marshall McLuhan – “old” book but still very current in its ideas.

“Charles Chaplin – my Auto-biography” – thought it was interesting how the story teller fell in love with technology.

VERY interesting homework – 55 word challenge – have to write a full story with who, what, where, conflict, and resolution in no more than 55 words. This was a “theory” that Steve Moss, the author of “The World’s Shortest Stories: Murder, Love, Horror, Suspense, All This and Much More in the Most Amazing Short Stories Ever Written, Each One Just 55 Words Long” came up with – the least amount of words you can use to write a full story is 55…

Here is mine:

“THE DUTCH IN THAILAND”

TEMPTATION OVERTOOK.

“NO ONE IS WATCHING.”

THE FASCINATING JADE BUDDHA STARED AT HIM FOR ONE YEAR ON HIS DESK.

GUILT OVERTOOK.

“I MUST TAKE IT BACK.”

FOUR MONTHS BY BOAT, TWO WEEKS ON FOOT.

HE PLACED THE BUDHA BACK AND HEARD A MONK SAY:

“GLAD TO SEE YOU AGAIN. YOU’VE CONTEMPLATED AND LEARNED YOUR LESSON!”

55 WORD CHALLENGE BY LUCAS LONGO
BASED ON A TRUE STORY FROM

“THE BUDDHA IN THE JUNGLE” by Kamala Tiyavanicht>

Seems like it will be a pretty cool class where we will look at all kinds of media and how to use them.

On Friday:

Introduction to Computational Media

Shawn Van Every

Basically a programing class with the focus on how to manipulate, create, and automate media… using an open-source program called Processing to start with… seems to be pretty powerfull – wanted to see if I can use it to do my M5 Bus tour presentation – wait for next post 😉

The first exercise was pretty cool… each student drew a picture with a few basic shapes (lines, squares and circles). Then we had to write instructions on how to draw it. Instructions swapped, you had to draw according to the “program” you had – and as homework – had to do the same but using Processing.

Here is my first assignment – pretty basic – “Drawing #2”