Author Archives: kyle.fowlie

02/14/14

Moonshine

Moonshine is a simple game I made while experimenting with the MIT programming language, Scratch. The assignment was to design a game that the user can play without a keyboard or a mouse.

Scratch has a few built-in ‘blocks’ (functions) that allow you to utilize the webcam in a variety of ways. In this game, the user simply swipes his/her hand over the missiles to destroy them. Bombs spawn from the top of the screen and work their way downward towards the players base. The green health bar denotes the health of the base currently. This bar will progress from green at full health to black at one health left. If a missile gets past the user when the bar is black, the game is over and a high score is tracked.

If you’re on a device with a webcam and want to check it out you can click the image below or follow this link. Read the instructions on the right then click the green flag to begin.


Moonshine_Pic

02/14/14

NMD 200 Project: Film Database

I was inspired create the Film Database project when Prof. Blais asked us a simple question, “How can we get student films out of the dorms?” I thought back to my early film-making days and realized Freshmen just simply don’t know the campus and greater Orono/Old town areas well enough to avoid making a movie in the dorms. The Film Database project serves to solve this issue with a variety of film locations arranged by specific qualities such as outdoors, indoors, on-campus, off-campus, forest or graveyard to name a few. If you want to check out the actual website, I have provided a link here.

02/14/14

Cultural Shift: Holochat Screencast

Holochat Screencast

 

For the NMD 100 final project, my group theorized that Skype would develop a technology allowing 3D personal holograms to be projected piratically anywhere at any time. Essentially, as this technology worked its way into the mainstream culture it became the ‘ next big thing’ and holo-rooms became as common in the home as the computer is now. The Holochat system, combined with sensory input technology would allow anyone to go anywhere be able to interact with anything in the real world all from the comfort of their own homes. As one can imagine, we hypothesized what effect this technology might have on planet Earth – and it wasn’t pretty. This screencast depicts a typical owner of the Holochat system and how his world has been skewed without him even knowing it.

A link to the screencast video and website can be found here.

Apart from the screencast, I also wrote a short story depicting the world that Holochat has created.

12/19/13

NMD200 Final!

List the 8 New Media Strategies and
a.) define them in your own words
b.) give an example discussed in class and
c.) give an example outside the classroom.

 

1.) Upstage the Man –

a.) A new media strategy that utilizes the power of a larger organization/company/program and turns it against themselves or channels it in a different manner.

b.) We talked quite a bit about The Yes Men and how they used this strategy heavily in several of their projects. One of their pranks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men#ExxonMobil) involved them posing as ExxonMobil representatives and delivering a proposal for a bio-fuel created from human remains. It wasn’t long before they were pushed off stage, but the message was received none-the-less. By posing as ExxonMobil employees, The Yes Men were able to give their message an urgency that would have been otherwise impossible.

c.) In NMD102, Mike Scott gave us an interesting assignment. He required us to take photos of good and bad designs that we saw on campus every week. Unfortunately, the assignments parameters were quite vague and he never specified when to stop doing the assignment. Due to multiple complications, the class collectively agreed to put the actual assignment as one of our bad designs. We then showed these during class. Mike got the message, in a particularly powerful way. I feet this experience represents some of the goals of upstaging the man, using Mikes power against him.

Continue reading →

12/10/13

Pecha Kuchas

What is a Pecha Kucha?

PechaKuchaPink

We were recently introduced to the idea of a Pecha Kucha in NMD 100. Previously, I had no idea what they were or what they were supposed to be. At first they felt like glorified PowerPoint presentations, but I eventually realized that they were designed to start a conversation. If you have never heard of this style of presentation before, I would recommend taking a look at some of the ones listed on http://www.pechakucha.org/.

12/10/13

Fun With Arduino

Arduino_3

This is the famous Arduino. If you haven’t heard of this wonderful machine yet I would highly suggest doing some research on the topic, or at the very least heading over to their site at http://arduino.cc/

Arduino_2

Here I have started to wire the pieces of a simple chord-synthesizer together. This project was coupled with Max/MSP and used several buttons and a slider to play the root, third and fifth of a given note at the users discretion.

Arduino_1

I purchased a starter pack from sparkfun.com which gives you access to a small sample of sensors, wires, resistors and of course the microcontroller. The learning curve isn’t very steep and the possibilities are only limited by your budget and imagination. Pretty neat stuff.

12/10/13

NMD 102 Final: Raindrops

NMD102_Raindrops

For my NMD102 final project, I decided to engineer a ‘virtual poster’. I generally sleep much better during a rainy night, so I improvised a simple Processing sketch that would mimic a rain-storm. This particular sketch uses a light sensor built into the Arduino to increase or decrease the amount of drops on the screen. As the amount of light in the room fades, more drops will appear and vice-versa. The background also fades between a sunny habitat and a rainy one, depending on the amount of light available. With a dedicated computer and a small projector, it would be possible to project this application onto a window or a wall and produce a similar feeling to the one I always get on rainy days.

12/10/13

Data Structures in Processing

My goal for this project was to create an applet that would enable the creation of simple data structure trees. Functions such as addNode(), Height(), Size(), preOrder(), postOrder() and inOrder() were implemented to give the user more information about the tree he/she was forming. With this tool, users can visualize tree structures and hopefully grasp the primary concepts at an accelerated rate. I chose Processing because it uses Java and is great for visual projects.

DataStructures_Processing

12/10/13

Turtle ‘Pocalypse

This application is a simple simulation of numerous ‘Turtles’. These objects ‘wiggle’ in a random direction and continually move forward. A ‘Turtle World’ keeps track of where they are on the screen. This particular setup simulates a zombie invasion. The diseased (red) turtles will infect all living (green) turtles they come in contact with. Root for your favorite turtle! But don’t get too attached, they never last long.

TurtleFinal


Download TurtleZombies

11/25/13

Gorilla Illustrata’

DVDCover

 

I did a lot of work in Illustrator for Matt’s NMD 104 class but this was one piece that I particularly enjoyed. The task was to create a CD cover for a particular band. I chose the Gorillaz and although they don’t behave or appear anamalistic, their musical genre could be thought of as having similar qualities. It was for this reason that I chose to incorporate the mean-looking face of a primate on the cover. By using a horor-themed font and blood-red coloring I hoped to accentuate the fear one might feel when confronted by such an animal in the daylight or otherwise. The stark contrast of the face and the inky background give the CD cover even more of a shaky feel and drive to promote the band as tough and serious about their work.