Friday, January 07, 2011

Wipe - New album












Recorded between June and December 2010, Wipe is collection of nine pieces of music, mostly reflective in nature. Peter has worked with photographers Rick Medlock, Lauren Delp and Jan Eerala as well as author Martyn Lee to develop (or respond to) visual counterpoints of the music.

The album is available as a free download from www. neophyterecordings.com

Peter Every / Wipe (24 bit Flac version) by Neophyte Recordings








Monday, December 20, 2010

The Dead



A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

James Joyce from 'The Dead' in Dubliners.

Friday, December 10, 2010

A workflow for graphic simplicity

Somebody asked me recently if my photos were 'shopped', and if tampering with photos was an honest thing to do. I think the context to this question is everything. It depends on the consequences of the viewer's interpretation. A photo altered to lie about say, a student demonstration, is ethically questionable. An image altered to bring out a particular graphic quality maybe less so.

In the main, my workflow includes cropping and colour correction. I use a prime lens on an 18 mpx Canon camera. This allows me to do the framing work when I edit rather than 'on the spot'. This is, again, a practice that some find questionable. If you are interested in the debate about the 'sanctity of the pro-filmic event' please start your researches with Andre Bazin - The myth of total cinema and take it forwards from there.... (although you could start at Plato's cave, if you wanted to be really thorough)

I usually do photoshop work on images to help emphasise something that is already 'there' in the image in order to heighten its effect - in the following sequence i'll comment on my choices. you can see a larger resolution image by clicking on the images.

Base image

This is a photo I took on the way home from work recently. I could see that there was potential to emphasise the graphic boldness of the crow shape by using a 'sillouette effect' However, I would need to reduce a lot of the detail (trees in the background) and maybe push the contrast.

Cropping and colour work

Here, I have cropped down the image to remove all the background detail and enlarge the crow. Not quite the 'rule of thirds' but still has a sense of visual balance. I have done some colour work (largely de-saturating the blue of the sky). To my mind, however there is still too much 'busy' detail in the tree. Incidentally, the small oblong object is a crow dropping in mid flight.

Simplifying the image

Using the 'clone stamp tool' in photoshop, I have removed quite a few branches - particularly around the crow to emphasise and simplify the shapes in the image. A bonus of the 'flat' sky colour is that the clone stamp process is fairly easy. However, this stage does take a few hours of working on the detail.

Final image


Now that there is a stronger graphic feel to the photograph, I experiment with final presentation. In the end I used a quick mask to add a radial mask around the crow and then applied a lens blur effect. I did some more colour work - resaturationg some of the blue of the sky and red of the bark. The image also works as a two tone sillouette.

You can find some more of my photos here.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Academic Research - a primer for first year undergraduates

Gathering information for university reports and essays, otherwise known as research, can be one of the most time consuming tasks in any assignment. There is a pay-off, however, in that reports that are well researched will always be graded higher than reports that are written 'off the top of your head'.

Doing research for your report can be categorised into two distinct types of activity; primary research and secondary research.

Primary research

Primary research refers to information gathering that you conduct yourself. Primary research can take the form of conducting an experiment, designing and deploying a questionnaire, conducting some interviews or reporting on direct observations that you make.

Often primary research produces numerical or statistical data that can be presented in the form of graphs, charts or tables - so it would be useful for you to develop skills in the use of spreadsheets and the graphical capabilities of your word processor. It also helps to 'know the basics' about presenting statistics. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this report to provide guidance on collecting, collating and presenting statistical data there are some basic tips that you should be aware of:

  • Don't use percent figures (%) when you are reporting on very small numbers. Instead of writing "20% of the people that responded to the questionnaire believed that global warming is a myth" when only 5 people took part in your questionnaire. It is more honest to report that "one person stated that they did not believe in global warming"
  • When you have collected a lot of data (for example questionnaires) it is not necessary to include all of the questionnaire sheets with your report; this is simply cruel to trees and, if the respondents are identified, possibly in breach of data protection legislation. It is better to summarise the responses in your report, perhaps with a graph or table, and include only one example copy of the questionnaire in your appendix.
  • If you report on an experiment it is essential that you describe the experiment exactly– the scientific 'rule' with experiments is that another researcher should be able to reproduce your results by following your description. This means that your report needs to include details such as the location of the experiment, the time of day, the equipment used and the order that events took place.
  • It is important to think clearly about, and report on, any factors that might mean your information might not be fully accurate. Two examples: A student collects data on the number of cars passing a traffic light every hour during the day in order to produce a graph that will demonstrate the effect of the 'rush hour' on traffic congestion - in this case some days are more 'typical' than others, what if the student collected the data during the holiday season? Second example: A student uses a stopwatch to time five friends buying a ring-tone from an internet website to judge whether the site is efficient to use. Will the fact that these students are computer literate have any effect on the data? What if the student had timed their parents?

In general, primary research is highly valued by academic tutors. Well-conducted research demonstrates that a student has developed skills in designing research and has put in the effort in order to carry it out.

Secondary research

Secondary research refers to information gathering from sources such as books, journals and web pages. It involves gathering facts and information as well as reporting on the research findings of other people.

Including information from other sources is good academic practice and enhances the believability and trustworthiness of your report. Consider the following two sentences:

1. "almost everybody has access to the internet these days"

2. "UNESCO (www.unesco.org), using statistics gathered from governmental and telecommunication sources, report that whilst internet access in developed countries is as high as 80% - access to the internet in developing countries is much lower. In fact, access to a telephone may be as low as one person in a hundred in parts of Africa and Asia"

Question: Which of the two sentences above do you consider to be more accurate?

The first sentence is an opinion – whereas the second sentence provides evidence. Tutors will expect that any reports you write will provide evidence, in the form of secondary research sources, to support the points that you make.

There are very strict rules about how you report on secondary sources. You must not copy information from other sources without clearly stating where the information came from. Failing to identify your sources (in the citations and references for your report) may result in accusation that you have copied (plagiarised) your work.

Another important issue in the use of secondary sources is triangulation. Triangulation simply refers to the practice of using more than one source of information to provide evidence for your report. Only using one source of information to back up any point you make is tantamount to "believing the first thing you read" and suggests gullibility. Take the following case:

In one assignment students are asked to evaluate whether global warming is a reality. One report reads:

"Global warming is a reality. In a report found on the Greenpeace website (www.greenpeace.org), figures for annual carbon dioxide emissions show an 11% increase over the past eight years. Carbon Dioxide is the primary cause of global warming".

Let's think about this. Greenpeace is a well respected organisation but it has a particular perspective on environmental matters – other sources should also be consulted. A well-triangulated answer might read:

"Greenpeace report an 11% increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the past eight years. Other sources (Kimble 2002, US office of statistics 2000) suggest a figure closer to 6%. The UK department of the environment report that the link between carbon dioxide and 'the greenhouse effect' is a highly debated scientific issue. It is clear that the facts surrounding global warming are controversial…."

This second answer is better because it acknowledges that the reality of any situation is always complex. Someone once said that the mark of a graduate is their ability to recognise that uncertainty and complexity are part of reality and that definitive answers are rare things indeed.

One final point about secondary research sources, whilst the internet is an invaluable source of information there is a major problem with it – we can never be really sure about the trustworthiness of information found there. It is often difficult to tell whether information that seems "accurate" may not have been provided by a commercial organisation with an interest in portraying facts favourable to themselves. Similarly, because information about authors is often hard to find on a website, we cannot always be sure whether the convincing information we are reading has been written by a 'respected professor' or is a term paper by 13 year old Dwayne.

This uncertainty and unreliability extends to collaboratively written 'community' websites, such as Wikipedia. They provide a useful starting point for your research but should never be relied upon as your only source of information. For this reason academic tutors highly value research sources that come from published books and journals. Why? Because information included in books and journals has usually been edited and reviewed for accuracy (a system called peer review). The tip to take from this is that you should always refer to a variety of sources of information, not just the internet, in order to convince your marker that your work is accurate.

Academics have a particular perspective on the status of TRUTH

Academics tend to only accept, as ‘fact’, information that has been investigated by more than one person or group of people. They have self-imposed rules about which information to value highly and which to ignore. They try to ignore opinion; they try to ignore information from sources that have a vested interest in ‘painting the facts’ in a certain way, for example, by providing partial information that ‘covers up’ the truth.

One of the VERY WORST types of ‘proof’, and one which academics try to avoid at all costs, is called anecdotal evidence – that is evidence that ‘plays on’ the human tendency to generalise truth from isolated incidents. For example, evaluate the following statement: “I knew a guy who always played beat ‘em ups on his Xbox and he ended up assaulting some kids at his school, this proves that computer games cause violence”. Does it?

Another type of poor proof is equating the number of people who believe something with its status as truth. The popularity of an idea does not necessarily make it true.

The three main tools that help an academic to evaluate the status of information are:
  • Research triangulation. This is where information is gathered from more than one source to determine whether those multiple sources are ‘agreeing’ on the information. BE CAREFUL – a Google search can suggest that there are multiple sources of information, but if you really ‘dig deep’ you find that all of those sources originally got their information from a single source. (Try this experiment: Google search for ‘smallest petrol engine’. Now look at the results from: Esato Archive, Gleez and The Sun did you notice that they’re identical? Does this make the information more true?)
  • Peer review. This is the system academics use to verify that their community accepts the validity and reliability of their information. Basically, before publishing their findings (in a book or at a conference) academics submit them to a group of other, trusted, academics whose job it is to investigate and criticise the information and findings. If they confirm the results and find nothing wrong with the process used to carry out their investigation the results can be published.
  • Trusted sources. Finally academics value information from a ‘trusted source’ more highly than other sources of information. The most trusted sources are
  1. Academic journals (e.g. NATURE www.nature.com is the most trusted source in natural science, The Lancet www.thelancet.com is the most trusted source in medicine, the ACM www.acm.org is one of the most trusted sources in Computer Science)
  2. Academic conference papers from peer-reviewed conferences.
  3. Specialist textbooks (which are themselves peer reviewed)

Sources that academics treat with suspicion include: Wikipedia (a good starting place, but completely unverifiable regarding authorship or veracity), some types of journalism, personal blogs (where are you reading this primer?), information provided by political or pressure groups, opinion pieces, etc.

LESSON: Cutting and pasting unverified information, from untrusted sources on the back of a poorly conducted Google or Wikipedia search is probably the worst thing you can do if you hope to get high marks in a written assignment.

The difference between fact and opinion.

One of the key problems for academics is determining true information from opinion. Opinions are subjective but very often can be presented as if they are ‘fact’ through a variety of techniques, such as using persuasive language and argument, or visual evidence such as photographs and graphs, that only support one opinion, whilst suppressing or ignoring other evidence. Another technique involves asking high status individuals to support the opinion in order to gain popular support. Sometimes academics support or promote a position which the academic community (their peers) has not yet fully agreed. (If you wish to explore this further examine ‘the global warming debate’ or ‘MMR vaccine linked with autism’)

In order to determine whether an academic might be acting outside the academic community’s remit you very often have to look for clues, such as; who is funding their research? Are they working for a political or commercial organisation that may have an interest in portraying facts in a certain light?

For examples of these strategies see, for example, Ben Goldacre’s excellent (and funny) book Bad Science [fourth estate, 2008].

LESSON: This means that sometimes your secondary research task has to go beyond just finding the information, sometimes you are called upon to determine the value of that information; for example by asking who is providing it and why? Are they providing it within the context of triangulated, peer reviewed and trusted sources?

What does this all mean for your grades?

For the next three years your written work will be marked by academics, not business people, journalists or family members. Academics look for certain things in a report that allows them to properly grade your academic capability, central amongst these will be your ability to do high quality academic research and to take a considered and balanced view on the status of the evidence.

Conducting poor secondary research, and failing to evaluate the validity of your sources, WILL EFFECT YOUR MARKS. During your first year an academic marker may subtract a few marks for reports that fail to use trusted, peer reviewed and verifiable sources and which do not use the Harvard system for referencing these. Penalties at level 2 and 3 are usually much harsher.

IMPORTANT: In order to get a first class mark it is a necessary pre-condition that your research be triangulated (comes from more than one source), uses a selection of peer reviewed content (journal articles, textbooks, conference papers) from trusted sources.

This does not mean that you shouldn’t use Google. It DOES MEAN that you should use it wisely, and that you should ALSO verify your search’s content by other means.

A suggested exercise for personal tutors

Ask your students to consider the following statement:

“Playing violent video games makes children more likely to be violent in everyday life"

  1. First decide what you ‘gut reaction’ is. Do you agree, disagree, or have no opinion on the statement? For the purposes of this activity you will need to ‘set aside’ you opinion and adopt the position ‘I don’t know’.
  2. Using at least three sources that you believe to be academic in nature (remember peer review, trusted source) and in no more than 500 words, briefly report on the evidence provided from your search. Include correct citations
  3. Finally, on the balance of the evidence you have found, make a decision on whether the statement is completely true, possibly true or completely untrue. If you cannot decide, state why it is difficult to make a decision.
At the end of your report write down the three references in the Harvard format.

Hints for the exercise

This debate started in the 1950's about the effects of TV violence on children. A great deal of academic research has been conducted to decide whether media can directly affect individual behaviour and beliefs. The academic discipline that has probably the most research on the question above is SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, however you will also find the question examined in disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, and computer game studies.

Useful search terms (yes Google!):

  • Media effects debate / Media violence debate
  • Albert Bandura / Bobo the clown experiment
  • Folk devils
  • Video game behavioural effects
  • Game Brain
  • Media violence research
  • The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games
Useful Journals and Conferences: Psychological Science Journal, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Digital Games Research Association.

In your argument, be mindful of, and comment on, the source of your information (is it opinion? is it statistical? Who funded the research? Who funded the website where you found the information?). Using only one source of information is tantamount to “believing the first thing you read” – so avoid doing this!

References

Goldacre, Ben (2008) Bad Science fourth edition. Fourth Estate.

Graham, Leah and Takis Metaxas, Panagiotis (2003) “Of course it's true; I saw it on the internet!” Critical Thinking in the Internet Era in Communications of the ACM Vol. 46, No. 5

Thursday, November 04, 2010

A professional portfolio. Some advice for Creative Computing students.

When we survey our students, we get a fairly clear picture of their employment aspirations. In no particular order our students want to work in games programming, games production, web design, web application design, media related positions, video, sound and web production, application development for mobiles. Rarely, we get some unusual aspirations, such as illustrator, author, film director and professional wrestler (we’ve had two!)

We have evidence that graduates from Creative Computing who paid attention to crafting an excellent portfolio have landed the jobs they wanted more easily than those that didn’t. Kim Blake, education officer of Blitz games, spells out what employers want: “we want to see your work, make it easy for us to see your best work”.

Another thing we know is that portfolios take a long time to develop and mature. A typical portfolio will have to go through several iterations, be critiqued by professionals, rebuilt and tested until it compares with the best it is out there. So let me spell this out: If you haven’t started to build your portfolio, do it now!

A few examples

Here are five portfolios for either current or recently graduated ‘Creative Computing’ students. Please spend some time looking at them.
  • Andy Abgottspon. Graduated 2010. Now doing a postgraduate course at the National Centre for Computer Animation.
  • Adam Taylor. Graduated 2009. Now a web applications developer for studentbeans.com
  • Ben Davis. Graduated 2010. Freelance games developer and programmer for hire.
  • Thomas Davies. Third year Creative Computing student.
  • Sean McNulty. Second year Multimedia Computing student.
It should be really easy to see what each of these students is aiming for in terms of their career aspirations (they are focussed on one particular role). It should also be clear that they are demonstrating a willingness to engage with (and publish about) the industry sector they are aiming for. We hope to hold one portfolio analysis day per year (probably in the summer term) where we will invite you to submit your portfolio for professional critique by employers. Hopefully the feedback will be useful to you.

Showreels

Showreels are are a good starting point and centrepiece for a portfolio. Showreels are short video summaries of a student’s work. The key is that they are short, impactful and very professionally put together. See: http://www.brownblogfilms.com/news/what-makes-a-good-portfolioshowreel/

Some basic advice

  • Buy yourself a domain name. It not only helps with name recognition it shows potential employers that you are serious about your work. If money is an issue use a hosted site, but switch to a dedicated site as soon as possible. Never place your portfolio on a hosted site that put banner ads over or under your work (it could be porn – what a great first impression!)
  • Never point out that your portfolio is unfinished, no ‘page under construction’ messages, no ‘I will be updating this page soon’ messages. All of these will make viewers question your readiness to work for them.
  • Only show your best work. Always start with your strongest material. Never show anything that you are not 100% proud of. If you show stuff which is a bit ropey, (no matter what the excuse is—e.g. ‘I did it in 2 days’). People will always presume this is the best work you can produce, remember you will not be present to explain or make excuses for time restrictions.
  • Never apologise for your work. It is either good enough or shouldn’t be there. “Do or do not, there is no try”.
  • It is OK to host video and images elsewhere but you should try to avoid it. Also, a Deviantart page is not a portfolio. A youTube user page is not a portfolio. A Myspace page is not a portfolio. Re video hosting: Always Vimeo never YouTube.
  • Provide links to your own blog, personal reflections and other web presence. It shows someone who is alive and engaged. Make your content shareable via social networking – more people will get to see it – so find the relevant widget to embed on your site.
  • Your best work is not necessarily your favourite work. You should get advice from professionals about what you should include. Don’t include something just because you like it – you are not the ‘customer’.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Creative Computing Film Show 2009

You are all invited! Come and meet up for a drink afterwards ...

2009 Creative Computing Film Show Trailer from Peter Every on Vimeo.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Boogie Oogie Oogie - A PhD Proposal

Wandering into work today I hit upon a PhD idea that I think could run and run.

OK, so what if, either by grand cosmic accident or by the evil design of Joe Tex and his Sexolettes, the sum total of human philosophy had become enmeshed in the classic disco hits of the 1970's? Optimistically, This could breath life into the reflexive human endevour for meaning that has been consigned, of late, to the fusty halls of academe. So, in the spirit of the famous 'doobydoobydoo' joke here are:

"I think therefore I am" (Descartes): I am what I am (Gloria Gaynor), I'm Every Woman (Chaka Khan). You Make Me Feel Mighty Real (Sylvester).

From a utilitarian perspective: In
Maslow's Hierarchy of needs (you know the triangular diagramme that moves from primeval needs at the base to hedonistic satiation at the pinnacle or, put simply: avoid death, get food, have sex. Ooh, mobile phones...) is clearly mirrored in the progression from 'Staying Alive' (Bee Gees) to the self-actualisation of 'Yes Sir, I can Boogie' (Baccara).

"The quest for certainty has played a considerable part in the history of philosophy: it has been assumed that without a basis of certainty all our claims to knowledge must be suspect". (A.J. Ayer) "The ONLY ABSOLUTE TRUTH is that there are NO ABSOLUTE TRUTHS". (Paul Feyerabend) - I Guess you'd better 'Knock on Wood' then (Amii Stewart) or go for the empirical realism of 'Black Is Black' (Belle Epoque)

Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains (Jean Jacques Rousseau), So, Don't leave me this way (Thelma Houston), .... "Set me free, set me free, set me free, set me free, set me free. Now, 'Young Hearts Run Free' (Candi Staton) and there 'Ain't No Stopping Us Now' (McFadden & Whitehead)


Disco; on the transient and ephemeral nature of existence:


'someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
because it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!'

MacArthur Park (Richard Harris / Donna Summer)


"Do or do not, there is no try" (Yoda)
- Can you feel the Force? (The Real Thing)

...As for
Marx's dialectical inversion of the Hegelian Weltanschaung - well "Ces't Chic"

Last word to A taste of Honey:

Now git on up on the floor
Cuz we're gonna boogie oogie oogie
till you just can't boogie no more
Boogie no more
You can't boogie no more (boogie)
Boogie no more
Get down, boogie oogie oogie
Get down, boogie oogie oogie
Get down, boogie oogie oogie



Expect this post to be added to. A lot.