R.I.P. Vine

Vine came, it saw and it conquered - and now it has come to the end of its journey. Rest in pieces, good ol' fella.

In January 2013 Vine was released as a platform for six-second-long looping videos for iOS and later for Android, and later it became extremely popular among users. Six seconds doesn't sound like much, but boiiiii let me tell you that's enough to tell quite some stories:

The Vine Story Master is, of course, Thomas Sanders

More drama than most TV series have

Needless to say, Vine also turned out to be the p e r f e c t place for cat videos, song covers, all kinds of weird dance numbers and....pretty much anything you could imagine. Vine allowed people to test their creativity in order to produce six seconds that would leave their mark in history.

Yeeaahhhhhh. Don't ask me why but it's my fave trilogy ever

A week ago (27th Oct) Twitter, which has owned Vine since before it even launched, announced that it will discontinue the application. Old vines will be saved on the website for archiving purposes but new vines can no longer be uploaded which, as expected, caused users and fans alike to freak out.

What it also caused was a worldwide hysteria in the blogging site Tumblr as people started posting and reblogging compilations of their favourite vines to make sure they won't be forgotten or destroyed once Twitter decides to shut down even the Vine archives. Thanks to this turn of events my personal dash has turned into an endless stream of Vines old and new, and following this phenomena has been both extremely entertaining and also a tad tiring, as the grand majority of all posts are now Vines. But at least in most cases they are the golden Vines that will make history.

You may take down Vine but you can never erase their impact on our extremely weird internet culture.

(Just saying that this post is highly biased in Vine quality since of coURSE I'll link my personal favourites but hey, my blog B----) )

(Also I have no idea how to embed from Vine's website so deal with some tumblr embeds)

#vine #mediadiary

The New Age of News

Since traditional TV news are so last season it is now time to take a step towards a new era of news. And this step is the utility of augmented reality in news broadcasting.

The news concept in a nutshell:

• Open TV news from any country.

• Point your special AR glasses (sold in your nearest technology stores) to the screen.

• Get a live translation of the news as an overlay on the screen. Toggle between channels and countries, or find trending topics in multiple news agencies. Integrate a separate Twitter feed of news channels on any flat, blank surface near you. The choice is yours.

• Enjoy your expanded experience of global news.

Initially the focus will be on the most recent breaking news of each country, crossing out the smaller gossip and daily weather - unless it proves to be the top story of the day. And as time passes and the New News take the lead, the scope can be expanded.

And why do we think this would engage the users enough to prompt them to buy the ridiculously expensive AR glasses? Aside from gaining the access to any news in any country without the eternal language barrier, it also offers a chance for the users to learn new languages of their liking. Don't believe that it's possible to learn a language by watching television? Just ask anyone who has watched their fair share of anime and mastered the Japanese language through that and you have your confirmation - all it takes is determination.

Last but not least, as already mentioned before Twitter is a fine platform to be integrated to the augmented reality news stream. To keep users engaged in the action, aside from official news channels's Twitter accounts the feed could also offer a possibility of user produced live streams from concerts, festivals and crime scenes - basically from anywhere where anything happens. In addition to Twitter, also Facebook and Periscope live stream services could be utilized.

So what are you still waiting for? Get your own pair of AR news glasses NOW and enter the future!

#news #concept

Mindtrek 2016

DAY 1

For me the whole Mindtrek adventure so far has been rather a mixed experience. Before the event started I had heard some bits of information here and there and tried to skim through the timetable (very briefly, I mind you) so i didn't really know what to actually expect. Well, except Neil Harbisson and hopefully an insight to his cyborg status which we indeed got. And man, what an insight it was!

Harbisson's keynote presentation was the opening act for the Mindtrek conference and in a relatively short time he went through a lot of things starting from how and why he ever became a cyborg, what it means to be one and what is the future of cyborg enhancements. Completely colour blind Harbisson has been officially recognized as a cyborg since 2004 when he got an antenna planted into his skull, allowing him to receive wavelenghts of different colours as sound frequencies - in other words, musical notes.

Justin Bieber's "Baby" in sound frequency art

I had done research on Harbisson's past earlier so I was already somewhat familiar with his case, and what interested me most in his presentation was his own description of what it means to him to be a cyborg. He gave audio examples on how the notes change when the colour changes and what it means for him to meet new people - with every new encounter he analyses the person by the wavelengths their being emits and creates a personal chime based on that. It's rather fascinating to try and imagine, really. He also made a crucial point about the life long battle of racism: for him, who can't read anything else than the wavelengths emitted by different skin tones, dark and light skin tones are all just different shades of orange. Take notes, bigotry.

He also reflected how many people think that cyborgism makes people more like machines and how it actually makes him more connected to nature than anything else: his antenna resembles those of insects, and after getting it he has felt a deeper connection especially with his cat since now he can sense the same infrared wavelengths cats are able to sense. He also justified his claim by telling about another famous cyborg artist and the Cyborg Foundation co-founder Moon Ribas, whose elbow implant allows her to sense seismic activity all around the world. Cyborg enhancements are developed all the time, like north sensors, and they all intend to bring humanity closer to nature and the senses we don't possess.

To be honest, I could go on and on about his presentation because goddammit it was fascinating, especially for a person with rather strong synesthesia (seeing numbers, words, sounds etc. as colours), but I'd rather not let this post turn into an essay so, just. Yeah. Harbisson's presentation was very interesting also entertaining! And it was definitely the highlight of the day.

Which brings me to the rest of the conference day #1. Oh, boy, where do I start. First of all, as a graphic designer who's very passionate about design I must, must, must have a say about the official information brochure they gave out to the visitors. It was an A+ example of how a pretty design really means nothing if the user experience is not taken into count. What the brochure had was neat and clean design on good quality paper that was nice to hold. What the brochure didn't have was information, period. No information on where the keynote presentations were held (in the timetable it seemed like they happened in all the rooms, simultaneously. Now that's some proper future technology I'd say), no further information on what the programs were going to include (which led to many bad decisions) and last but not least - programs marked with To Be Announced.

...When? Next Saturday? Cool, thanks mate!

An accurate depiction of how I felt with the brochure

I'm being slightly salty and maybe a tad unfair here but come on, I've seen years' worth of completely voluntary-work produced anime convention brochures that have had all the necessary information, down to the age, height and hair colour of each panelist (that was a joke). And they also have been rather pleasing to look at.

After Harbisson's groundbreaking start the rest of the program was rather mild, even a letdown at some cases. Due to not having a clue what the lectures and presentations were actually going to be about I ended up mostly choosing the ones that didn't give me anything at all and missing the ones that actually were interesting. Gotta say, if I had been forced to pay that 50€ myself I would've been close to demanding it back. Some single lectures on design fiction and Vapourware or user interface and navigating drones through gestures were interesting to listen to, but they were just a few in the armful of lectures. I turned in halfway through the presentation on cybersecurity and privacy which proved quite entertaining to follow, especially since the presenter ended up giving stand-up comedy with his Amazon Echo voice command speaker, but due to his constant offensive remarks especially on women I was left with a rather bad aftertaste. Oh well.

Despite all the salt I still wouldn't say I regret going to Mindtrek. I rather enjoyed the conference itself as it was a different way to hang around as a group and get insights into new technologies. I just didn't get much out academically of the lectures which...might have been the point. So hopes up for day #2 I guess!

Games. Just games. (But what about games?) Shh, only games now.

DAY 2

In contrast to the highly reaction-provoking (both positive and negative) first day of Mindtrek, the second day was interesting but rather constant. After discovering that the Mindtrek website did indeed include further information about the lectures- just in a very, very un-mobile friendly way- I could now plan my schedule much better and surprise, surprise - it worked out. I found my way to the lectures that would hopefully give me something interesting and in most cases it did indeed. I say in most cases since still some lectures gave me nothing but a bunch of new doodles in my sketchbook (I'm looking at you, HCI Visualization and Animations).

SADLY, as I found out shortly after the conference, the shitton of notes I took during the second day had not saved to my phone and instead was all gone like they never existed. Poof. Had I not trusted the impeccable technology but instead taken out my good old sketchbook I would still have them all but nah, now nothing remains. Blah blah that's it about crying over spilled milk, what I want to say is that due to this reason my breakdown of the second day will be short and way less detailed since god knows my memory can't handle everything I went to see during the second day.

For me, the most interesting lectures and presentations offered during the second day were those concerning virtual reality and augmented reality. I found the morning presentation by Dr. Maria del Carmen Gil Ortega and the later presentations about Sayduck, Arilyn AR and Delta Cygni Labs especially interesting as they introduced me the ways AR and VR are utilized that I have not thought of.

Dr. Gil Ortega's presentation explained the advantages of VR in educational purposes and especially in exchange preparation. Gil Ortega's institution has been using virtual worlds in order to prepare their students for a year long exchange periods by giving them a chance to explore the living environment, culture and language of their target country, made more immersive with the help of VR. I personally found this fascinating and definitely beneficial as roughly a year ago I myself went on exchange to a completely new country with no prior experience in anything else but the basic everyday use of the language. I'm positive that the initial culture shock would definitely have been lesser if I had had the chance to prepare myself for the practicalities of the new city. And indeed, Gil Ortega explained that these virtual experiences had proven to notably boost both the students' language skills and their confidence in contrast to traditional teaching methods. Man, if only I had had the chance to utilize this before my own exchange!

Exploring the target country by virtual travelling - how cool is that?!

The other topic that really caught my interest was augmented reality and its appliances in regular everyday situations. Niklas Slotte, CEO of Sayduck, explained the way his application changes customer experience in furniture shopping: with the Sayduck app users can place different furniture of their choosing in their very own household to help decide whether it would fit or not. All you need is the app, a camera smart phone and and augmented reality view and voila, no more ill-fitting sofas! Even though I was highly curious in the application I was left wondering -and the same question got asked and answered too- would the app really be reliable, as the newest feature introduced the possibility to fit the furniture in your room without having to determine the scale first by calibrating the camera with a certain size magazine? Slotte's answer to the question was that indeed, now the calibration would be done according to floor and wall measures when the camera is held at a certain height - but how would the app know if I was actually pointing the camera much closer to the target point than was meant to? Would it place the sofa in miniature size? I guess I won't find it out without actually trying out the application. On the other hand, so far the application only covers furniture sold by expensive designer stores (nevermind Ikea), so I don't think it will be useful for me for the next ten years.

How to try if the sofa fits without actually crushing the dog by accident.

The following presentation on Arilyn Augmented Reality was also very interesting, but sadly I can't remember almost anything trivial about it and the pictures I have show the two aspects I can recall: using augmented reality in bringing books and magazines to life with embedded AR codes, and in street advertising. Honestly, the advertising for Linnanmäki lik!week via AR posters was one of my favourite topics in the presentation and inspired me on how traditional graphic design could be taken to the next level. Good shit right there.

Example video of Iik!Week's advertisement in practice.

Post borrowed from Arilyn's Facebook page.

Even though I did take part in several other presentations, the aforementioned ones really made an impact on me and proved to be the most interesting findings of the second day. All in all, despite all the problems and salty emotions regarding Mindtrek I found the experience rather enjoyable and in the end even educative. Just make sure to not repeat the mistakes in the next conference, thank you.

#mindtrek #mindtrek16 #neilharbisson