Visual language, emotion empathy, spiritual worldVisual language, emotion empathy, spiritual world

By stimulating sensors, Visual language add much more emotional elements. These elements are the media of the expression of the authors—their knowledge, horizons, skills, desire and much more, and were processed by the watcher’s horizons and experience. A good movie was accepted and favorite by many people, but each person has their own reasons to like it. However, people had more similar experience (age, education, living environment,…) tend to have more similar interpretations. And it isn’t necessarily true due to the complexity of human emotion and the nature of the world. The advantage of visual language is that it leaves enough space for audience to imagine or explore by themselves. And the feelings and believes (our interpretations) were enhanced or gotten more and more clear by the repeating elements of the movie. The repeating things could be motion, sound, sign, or other special expression effects. Some times we find that we lack of words to express the deepest emotions arisen from our heart. And the only thing we can do is to do some actions, real actions, such as sing a song, draw a picture, kick something very hard or drive a lot……water. Just as Tao believes that graphs are the better way to describe than words, I believe that actions is the more effective way to express our emotions. Through this expression and interpretation model, people emotionally and spiritually communicate with each other from the two sides of the media. The visual language connect not only the audiences with the media, but also the authors, actors, all the other people who involved in the making process with the media. Sometimes the virtual world and the real world were mingled together at some point, and you never know what is yours and what is your avatar’s. Although sometimes I believe that I could give my avatar a value at any time, it is not always true.

If we believe that the virtual world in which our avatars live is just a parallel world of our real one, we are just communicating with people (could be avatars), the technologies, the colors, the lines, the motions, the sounds and all the others are just tools, carriers of our emotions.

Some people said that we are all crazy in this world due to its complexity. Communication with others becomes more and more important for our live. Other than those ordinary ways, identity (living style, clothing style, sports and movie types) becomes more and more popular. And of course, the identity embedded in the media becomes a kind of label of the person who use the media. Through these media, we connect with those strangers in different ways. Moreover, this connection is in the spiritual world, and in reality, we use same thing, listen same music, like same movie…AND, SHARE SAME BLOG!

a story

Six year ago, I listened a lecture given by a very famous music composer, Wang Liping(王立平). He composed all the 13 pieces of music for the TV show "The dream in red mansion" during 1982-84. "The dream in red mansion" originally is a novel's name. It is the best novel ever in China. Almost every Chinese know it after it was written more than 200 years ago. The author spent 10 year to write it. According the novel, movies, TV shows, operas, pictures, comics.... all kinds of media were created every several years. Under this kind of situation, all the creation according the novel was examined and critiqued by all the Chinese. The characters, the stories and the poems in everybody's heart beyond all of these media. Compose all the music for the TV show became a very stressful task for him. He began to compose right after the got the task first, because he believed that he read the book before, and knew the book very well. In the first three months, he wrote and wrote, but never satisfied. The he put down his pen, and began to re-read. He told us that he could not write down even one note more than half year. He read the book over and over again even he has already read the book for several times before he got the task. He could not eat and sleep well since the day he got the task. And one day, he suddenly knew the feeling of the author, what the author was writing. In the end, he composed 13 pieces of music for the show in those two years. The music and the show became a classic, and was applauded until now.

This story remind me that writing, and also design is a process which require us to step back and put a lot of effort on it. After Tuesday's class, I noticed that what I post on blog is pre-writings. Something, one thought or others words triggers our thought, a piece of thought shows up in my mind and I just write it on the blog. Some of these thought was destroyed by further thinking, some of them were revised in mind, and others were forget behind. If only I could persist a little bit more...maybe nothing will happen ^_*

Anyway, the hardest and most exhausting moment is the nearest point to the most creative point. I believe. And the worst thing is to give up at those moment.

structuralism vs. phenomemology

If we think about the process of the language to be formed, isn’t it a phenomenological process? It’s just like the doing and undergoing model. We use our own language as a baby, but nobody can understand, then we learn, accept the language of other people which based on social rules, then we could be understood.

Does it mean that structuralism would ultimately end at phenomenology? Maybe no. This kind of relationship reminds me to think about the relationship between material and tool. Structuralism as a tool could participate the interpret process, will never be the material. Phenomenology seems more fundamental because it mixes the material and the tools together as phenomena. Is this true? I don’t know. Maybe nothing is true in the design world:P

Found or use conflict/related word is just the method of structuralism, but not their goal. By using those conflict words, they put the certain things into their frame which was composed by those words. In these sense, structuralism also include observation. And on the other hand, phenomenologists also organize their language before observe those phenomena, use their language to interpret.

Language is the tool and also the material for a writer, but only a tool for reader. A specific paragraph is constituted by language elements, but it is not common sense language anymore, it could be the special language to express the author’s mind at specific time.

interpretation of virual culture

On Tuesday, we truly have two very livid and refreshing classes. On the first class, Jeff brought several fashion magazines, and Tao, Zhuofeng and I as a group picked a serial of advertisement pictures as Jeff required to answer his questions in order to have the understanding experience.

Two of those questions are:
What message are those fashion magazine pictures sending to us? And who are those photos for?

Those photos are created and sent to those who are looking for them. And they (the creators) hope that it is basically everybody. The simple assumption here is that everybody likes beauty. We can say that those models are idealized ourselves, and they are living with our idealized lifestyles. But when they create those pictures, they are guessing the customers, what they like and what they want.

After think through the process of analysis, understanding, or maybe sometimes just guessing, it is all about “relationship” to me. Those pictures, objects or models, one or in a group, are trying to reach their potential customers by interpreting our relationships with nature, other people and objects, our position in everyday life and career, social status. The audiences looking for those pictures, those products are also trying to put themselves into a specific social position. It leads me to think back to “what is culture” again when I cannot get rid of this relationship concept.

After this practical theory class, we had another more interesting one on Erik's class. Two people as a group draw a face together. We learned that we can control ourselves--our roles, our characters as a designer.

Reading diary: “Theory of Present” --"The Language Of New Media"

At the beginning, Lev Manovich proposed a lot of question, “Where were the theoreticians when….?”

These questions show us another aspect of design, theory, progresses, or we can say change: it’s unpredictable character. Although we are always trying to predict the future or the result of some action or design.

“I aim to describe and understand the logic driving the development of the language of new media. (I am not claiming that there is a single language of new media. I use language as an umbrella term to refer to a number of various conventions used by designers of new media objects to organize data and structure the user’s experience.) It is attempting to extend this parallel a little further and speculate whether this new language is already drawing closer to acquiring its final and stable form…”

What is “this parallel”? Is it between the “new language of the computer media”, which the elements of previous cultural form shaping it were still clearly visible and recognizable, and a ”coherent language”? If yes, why do we want or need to draw it further? Isn’t it good to let them melt together?

“What follows is an attempt at both a record and a theory of the present.”

That is true, we always record the past, and theorize the past experience. The present here, I am not sure, but believe that it is what has already happened before the theory made.

What is porblem?

Problem was defined as the difference between what people expect and what they perceived by a paper I read for my elective class.

In that paper, I like the following sentence: one person's problem is an other person's opportunity.

Science, art, design

CONTROL.

There is something we can control in these world, and something partial, and something we totally cannot. However, we are human beings! No matter we can control it or not, we always try to understand, predict and control the situations.

SCALE and SCOPE.

Based on different aspects we concern, there are different scale measurement. For example seriousness, the scope of the context, population, ...

Science, art and design has their own goals, outcomes, users, the method to express...But they always interweave together in the reality. It is only a simplified way to separate the complex concepts and try to understand the more complex situations and concepts which involved all of these concepts.

To Mingxian: Don't forget to check those papers, especially those you got from the first Erik's class, when you feel confused and frustrated.

Design theory, you make me crazy!

It is amazing that three classes was taught by one professor within one day. The best part is that we only discussed the theories in the first two classes, because after the second class, my head was already painful and turn into mess because of those questions and my hard thinking. After almost three hours discussion, it's difficult to stop thinking those concepts, and terms. The interesting thought of my friend Tao is that it is so ridiculous to explain words by using words which were created by human beings. He also believes that the best tool to explain thing is image. We cannot deny that it is true for concrete things, but as for abstract words, I cannot imagine what kind of image we should use to. Maybe it is not very important to make a judgment about it rightness now, but I feel so happy to hear this kind of different sound. Even thought it just is one sentence said during a friendly dinner, it leads me to think.

We discussed what is material and what is the tools in interaction design. Bits, programs, programing language, content.... At first, I believed that the content is the material, minutes later, I convinced my self that the program is the material, but now, I think the program should be the outcome, but what is the material? Logic flies across in my mind for maybe just 0.0001s. if program is the outcome, language is tool, the bits are material!? Is what are are designing is the logics including work flows involved in a project? Then the material is maybe the mappings or connections between the e-world with the artificial world, the new world with the old world.

In the beginning of the first class, Erik wrote on the board:" the material without quality". This is also in his book. I believe that the outcome of an interaction design has certain qualities. My question is that how can we create something with quality by using those materials without quality? The Erik said told me that it is wrong that material without quality. Now I think that maybe it depends on how can we define quality here.

Why the old question–what is design was asked again and again?

It is all about the old question:”what is design?” Because it is across disciplines and cultures, nobody can really give a single definition about it, no matter how many bullet items were added into the definition. When we add more, we find more which needed to be added and revised. Just because its complexity, it is full of “supernatural attractive” to those who want to truly understand what it is. And, yes, when we learn more, we find more to explore. From the using of technologies and fundamental materials to social responsibilities, from the products to the process, we try to understand it and make the design into a kind of creative, responsible, and realistic thinking process in the certain context based on all kinds of limitations. However, we still don’t know how to do the design, which means there is no patterns we can follow. Under this condition, to understand its meanings, its developing history and current stage, the design culture, and both the intellectual process and interactive relationships in a design becomes very important even necessary. We believe that the universal truth exists in all of these aspects of design. By understanding these, we will not be frightened when we face a complex system design situation; we could make balance and compromise but not wince; we make sound argument without reckless; we could feel less confused and frustrated when we face dilemmas during the design process.At the end of this post, I feel that the relationship between the three stages of technology use and the three waves of HCI. I’d like to say that the 3waves in HCI’s development is only an instance of the three stages although maybe it is not appropriate to say that HCI is a technology. The 3 waves are the history and the path HCI goes through. The happened at certain time and conditions. The three stages of technology use is always happening for a new technology. And they are mapped into the experimental stage, the beginning period of using as a principle of a method or a nontechnical support of a tool, and the matured practical technology to be fully accepted. Sometimes these three stages are not exclusive，and sometimes technologies get matured and new technologies emerged in the loop of these three stages.