Showing only Notes + Links tagged television
Andra pointed me to this video of a paper-like computer from the sci-fi show Caprica…the Hearst Skiff is getting closer but still no cigar.
See also: Mark Coleran, designer of fantasy user interfaces.
And: I was catching up on 30 Rock tonight, which is (strangely enough?) promotionally furnished by Apple, and I noticed a few design problems. The iMac that Kenneth and Jack are snooping around on has horribly faked interfaces for Photo Booth and iCal.
Also: the iMacs have a webcam built invisibly into the display, hidden behind the glass. However, subtle design does not equal comedic effect, so in the show this computer with a beautifully integrated webcam has a big, clunky prop webcam hanging off the top of it.
Needless to say I was amused and horrified by these design changes. I’m surprised that with their freakish level of control over user experience and image Apple didn’t ask the producers to change these.
I started watching The Up Series a few days ago with some friends and so far I’m through 21 Up. This series is more addictive than reality TV, in spite of being way less junky. Also, it’s available for streaming from Netflix.
The Up Series is a series of documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child’s social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen as he can get to participate. Filming for the next installment in the series, 56 Up, is expected in late 2011 or early 2012. (via Up Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Marina Abramović’s 2009 piece The Kitchen I—Homage to Saint Therese
More-interesting-than-you-might-think musings on performance art by James Franco, yes the one that was in Spiderman:
I was instructed to kiss a napkin that had been printed with a square of gold powder that would transfer to my face before eating the dessert. This way the dessert would pass through a golden gateway before it was ingested. I did as told, then suggested to the chef that it needed more chili. Was this art?
As Ms. Abramović told me over our dessert tasting, performance art is all about context. “If you bake some bread in a museum space it becomes art, but if you do it at home you’re a baker.” Likewise, when I wear green makeup and fly across a rooftop in “Spider-Man 3,” I’m working as an actor, but were I to do the same thing on the subway platform, a host of possibilities would open up. Playing the Green Goblin in the subway would no longer be about creating the illusion that I am flying. It would be about inserting myself in a familiar space in such a way that it becomes stranger than fiction, along the lines of what I’m doing on “General Hospital.”
He seems to be teasing that if anything in the right context can be art, can his performance as an artist on the soap opera General Hospital be some kind of meta-art? I’m almost inclined to say no, but sure, whatever.
James Franco on General Hospital and Performance Art - WSJ.com
Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch - NYTimes.com →
This wonderful article by Michael Pollan on the state of food in America today & the legacy of Julia Child inspires me to cook more.
I grew up in a chaotic household. Television ordered my attention and gave it flow. Family life couldn’t. This is one reason I study media.An intense, but very interesting tweet from Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism @ NYU. I feel like this is true for lots of children. It is very interesting in general to think about how and why TV holds attention.
Imagine Greater. The brand evolution of Syfy (the soon-to-be-former SciFi Channel) takes another leap forward in this playful video tour of their House of Imagination.
When the SciFi network announced it was rebranding as Syfy, pretty much everyone in the world who wasn’t involved with the change thought it was a bogus idea. However, I actually like this new-and-expensive-looking-subtly-a-promotion video for the new brand. I am starting to see this working alright.
(via bauldoff)
Oops: Colbert wins NASA space station name contest
WASHINGTON – NASA’s online contest to name a new room at the international space station went awry. Comedian Stephen Colbert won.
The name “Colbert” beat out NASA’s four suggested options in the space agency’s effort to have the public help name the addition. The new room will be launched later this year.
NASA’s mistake was allowing write-ins. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report” to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That clobbered Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday.
NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name. Agency spokesman John Yembrick said NASA will decide in April, but will give top vote-getters “the most consideration.”
Just finished the final episode of Arrested Development, which I’ve seen before but started to re-watch when I was really sick with a cold and had nothing to do. Definitely one of the funniest TV shows ever. Brilliant writing, brilliant acting, and most of all brilliant characters. The rumor that there is a movie in development makes me very, very happy.
Hilarious Reality TV Cliche: I’m Not Here to Make Friends!
(via kottke)
Giving up being liked is the ultimate public sacrifice.
Marginal Revolution: Good sentences
From the comments: “This is also the driver behind the tragedy of Michael Scott from The Office. His craving for people to like him supersedes all other concerns: job, love, money - and ironically ends up making him unlikeable.”
Gut Memories : The Frontal CortexThis suggests that visual information can be encoded accurately even when one is not paying attention to it -something which has been demonstrated before - and also leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that retrieval of a memory is actually enhanced one’s attention is diverted during encoding of that memory.
Got that kids? So the next time you’re trying to remember something - like chemistry equations or state capitals - do your brain a favor and distract it. (I always told my mom that it was okay to do homework in front of the television - now I have empirical proof, just 15 years too late.) In the book, I give a related example that also demonstrates the power of implicit memory:
MacGyver Meets MacGruber on Saturday Night Live For Pepsi - Adrants
“So these aren’t Super Bowl ads but they are probably better than most of what we’ll see during the game…These Saturday Night Live skits are funny and the do a great job illustrating the increasing insanity of product placement.”
I agree, these were better than SNL last night.
The Frontal Cortex : Unstructured PlayTeresa Belton, a research associate at East Anglia University in England, first got interested in daydreaming while reading a collection of stories written by children in elementary school. Although Belton encouraged the students to write about whatever they wanted, she was startled by just how uninspired most of the stories were.
“The tales tended to be very tedious and unimaginative,” Belton says, “as if the children were stuck with this very restricted way of thinking. Even when they were encouraged to think creatively, they didn’t really know how.”
After monitoring the daily schedule of the children for several months, Belton came to the conclusion that their lack of imagination was, at least in part, caused by the absence of “empty time,” or periods without any activity or sensory stimulation. She noticed that as soon as these children got even a little bit bored, they simply turned on the television: the moving images kept their minds occupied. “It was a very automatic reaction,” she says. “Television was what they did when they didn’t know what else to do.”
The problem with this habit, Belton says, is that it kept the kids from daydreaming. Because the children were rarely bored - at least, when a television was nearby - they never learned how to use their own imagination as a form of entertainment. “The capacity to daydream enables a person to fill empty time with an enjoyable activity that can be carried on anywhere,” Belton says. “But that’s a skill that requires real practice. Too many kids never get the practice.”
