MADA Course blog

translations

2008-07-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

Hi people

Thanks to all the amazing people who translated my phrases for me, the response was really awesome.

Below you will find the the phrases and all the translations for them and which language they have been translated into.

Phrases translated into different languages

1. Communication is at the core of all social interaction
2. For some children and young people, acquiring the ability to communicate is a difficult and ongoing challenge
3. Communication is a key life skill
4. Communication is a fundamental human right
5. One of the most common symptoms of autism is difficulty communicating.

1. La communication est au cœur de toute interaction sociale.
2. Chez les enfants et les jeunes gens, acquérir la faculté de communication est un défi difficile et continu.
3. La communication est une compétence principale de la vie.
4. La communication est un droit de vie fondamental.
5.La difficulté en communication est l'un des symptômes les plus commun de l'autisme. French

1. Communication ydy am 'r berfedd chan pawb 'n gymdeithasol interaction
2. Achos rhyw blant a 'n ieuanc boblogi , yn cael 'r abledd at chyfranna ydy a 'n afrwydd a ongoing heria
3. Communication ydy agoriad buchedd celfyddyd
4. Communication ydy a 'n sylfaenol 'n ddynol dde
5. Hun chan 'r odiaeth chomin symptoms chan autism ydy afrwyddineb yn cyfrannu Welsh

1. La comunicación está en la base de toda la interacción social
2. Para algunos niños y gente joven, la adquisición de la capacidad de comunicar es un desafío difícil y en curso
3. La comunicación es una habilidad dominante de la vida
4. La comunicación es un derecho humano fundamental
5. Uno de los síntomas mas comunes del autismo es dificultad que comunica. Spanish

1. Kommunikation steht im Mittelpunkt aller sozialen Interaktion.

2. Das Erlernern der Kommunikationsfaehigkeit ist eine schwierige und andauernde Herausforderung fuer einige Kinder und junge Leute.

3. Kommunikation ist eine lebenswichtige Fertigkeit.

4. Kommunikation ist ein grundlegendes Menschenrecht.

5. Kommunikationsschwierigkeiten sind eines der haeufigsten Zeichen des Autismus. German

1. Comunicazione e al centro di tutte le interazioni sociali.
2. Per alcuni bambini e giovani, acquistare l'abilita di comunicare e una sfida difficile e tenuta.
3. Comunicazione e un'abilita centrale della vita.
4. Comunicazione e un diritto umano fondamentale.
5. Uno dei sintomi piu frequenti dell'autismo e l'inabilita di comunicare. (italian)

1. Коммуникация - это ядрo всего социального взаимодействия.

2. Для некоторых детей и молодёжи, приобретeние способности общаться есть сложная и продолжительная задача.

3. Общение- это ключевой навык жизни.

4. Общение - это фундаментальное человеческое право.

5. Трудности в общении являются одним из самых общих признаков аутизма. Russian

1. Kommunikation är utgångspunkten för all social samvaro.
2. För vissa barn och ungdomar är det ständigt en svårighet att ha förmåga att kunna kommunicera.
3. Att kunna kommuicera är en av de viktigaste färdigheter man kan förvärva i livet.
4. Det är en grundläggande mänsklig rättighet att kunna kommunicera.
5. En av de vanligaste symptomen på autism är svårigheter att kunna kommunicera Swedish

1. Communicatie staat centraal bij alle sociale interactie.

2. Voor sommige kinderen en jonge mensen is het verkrijgen van het vermogen tot communicatie een zware en doorlopende uitdaging.

3. Communicatie heeft een sleutelfunctie in het leven.

4. Communicatie is een fundamenteel mensenrecht.

5. Een van de meest voorkomende symptomen van autisme is moeilijkheden met communicatie. Dutch

1. A comunicação está no centro de todos os tipos de interacção social.

2. Para algumas crianças e jovens, adquirir a habilidade de comunicar é um desafio dificil e constante.

3. A capacidade de comunicar é essencial para a vida.

4. A comunicação é um direito humano fundamental.

5. Um dos sintomas mais comuns do autismo é a dificuldade de comunicar. Portugese

1.　社会的交流の場において、コミュニケーションはその核となるものである。
2. 一部の子供たちや若者にとって、コミュニケーションスキルを身につけることは、ときに困難で継続的な挑戦を要する。
3. コミュニケーションは、特に重要なライフスキルの一つである。
4. コミュニケーションは基本的人権の一つである。
5. 自閉症の症状の一つとして、コミュニケーション障害があげられる。 Japanese

urdo

Hindi

Many thanks to all contributers.

Communication through videoart

2008-07-30T11:17:00.002-07:00

This post will look at video art and its use in communication.

Art is in itself a medium communicating a message, as discussed in previous posts the interpretation of the communication is contextual to the medium and its perceived message.

Some examples of Video art that I feel have conveyed a message, whether my interpretation is the video makers intentional message who knows.

This video shows a communication but no context so its interpretation is random, this may be the intention.

This video is very digital in concept and style but has for me a sense of spaciousness and hypnoticness.

This video has used a similar idea to how I would like my film to be seen, it uses two curved screens with what seems to be two projectors. I would like to use one projector with a widescreen lens fitted. Alas that is not going to be possible just yet. It is a nice video, though the theme does not seem to be communication other than to communicate an artistic narrative.

This last video shows a range of expressions and allows the viewer to derive meaning and intent. It is by a deaf person and highlights communication needs and modes very well.

Making contact

2008-07-30T11:17:00.001-07:00

This entry is mostly a link to an article by Dr. Jeff Sigafoos and Dr. Mark O’Reilly of the University of Texas. The article is about the relationship of autism to communication and the use of technology to unlock communication pathways.

http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2004/autism.html

I do not profess this is a solution for all autistics but it does open ideas and questions on the methodologies of conventional communicating methods and also on teaching methods.

one quote that raises such questions is;

Further to this is the following excerpt from the article

“When an autistic child is moving through his environment,” said Wood, “he’s not picking up information incidentally the way that a ‘normal’ child would. The therapist or teacher has to break all of the information out there down for him and teach each thing specifically. At some point, many children will begin to pick up some of these things on their own and be able to operate a little more independently.

This relates to the opening up of communication channels, I have felt through this piece of work and looking at the alternative ways others communicate that communication is not simply about the broadcaster and receiver but about the complete interactive surroundings. The "spatial" occupancy of broadcaster and receiver is present within each person as well as the interactive space and technology.

Does not understanding of communications begin with internal and personal interpretation of the message.

The communication theorist Marshall McLuhan stated that "the medium is the message" but he does not say which medium he is refering to, thus an alternative communicative form may be an acceptable message broadcaster, we simply have not found the right code to decifer it yet.

Bercow Interim Report

2008-07-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

Bercow Report

A Review of Services for Children and Young People (0–19) with Speech,
Language and Communication Needs (2008)

Between April 2006 and July 2007, in speeches and Parliamentary Questions, John Bercow MP raised the issue of children and young people with speech, language and communication needs over 20 times with ministers responsible for the subject.
Towards the end of August 2007, the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson, and the newly
appointed Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, asked John Bercow MP if he would be willing to lead a review of provision and to suggest a way forward.

They agreed to concentrate on three key issues:

The range and composition of services required to meet the diverse speech, language and
communication needs of children and young people aged 0 to 19 in an affordable way.
How planning and performance management arrangements, together with better cooperation
nationally and locally between health and education services, can spur beneficial
early intervention.
What examples of best practice can be identified as templates for the wider roll-out of
services across the country.

An interim report was to be submitted to Ed Balls and to the Secretary of State for Health, Alan
Johnson, in March 2008. This would be followed by a final report to both Secretaries of State in
July 2008.
By the middle of September, the Review’s Advisory Group was in place and a work programme
was agreed. Officials from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the
Department of Health were put at the Review Group’s disposal. (Bercow Interim Report 2008)

The full report can be seen at:

http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/bercowreview/docs/7771-DCSF-BERCOW.PDF

It is from this document that I have gained a great deal of understanding of the nature of communication and the need for greater use of communication provision to aid those least able to communicate. It is also the initial source for the following phrases:

Communication is at the core of all social interaction
For some children and young people, acquiring the ability to communicate is a difficult and ongoing challenge
Communication is a key life skill
Communication is a fundamental human right
One of the most common symptoms of autism is difficulty communicating.

Also a source for communicating difficulties is the The National Autistic Society http://www.nas.org.uk/ this site outlines the need for the Bercow Report and the need for better provision and greater unity of provision deliverers.

Spatialised

2008-07-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Communication

This entry will be talking about the unit spatialised practices and outlining the theme of the project.

The theme is communication and the impact it has on the understanding of the message.
The methodology of communication can alter the the meaning of the message in so far as the individuals interpretation of the communication and its intended meaning/s.

I will deliberatly create a non speaking piece, this is to ensure that thre viewer has to concentrate on other forms of communication and thus place them unwittingly into a state of creating meaning of the film through individual interpretation rather than verbal explanation.

Within this unit I intend to create a film that has a meaning of mis-communication, a film that conveys a message of communication through different forms of communication. A message of interpretation but also of communication challenge where the viewer is asked by the film 'how hard is this to understand?' and in doing so may ask themselves 'do some people always find it this hard to communicate?'

I will judge the success of the film by a response comment sheet given to those who view the finished piece.

The film will comprise of a number of communicating elements, film footage, audio, text. Within these elements a range of communicating devices will be used.

Film

Facial expressions

Gestures

Sign Language

Moving background

This is to show the viewer different forms of non-verbal communication that is used within society.

Text

Translated phrases concerned with communication in various languages

Positioned through the film and using different text parameters - font, colour, size, position

Animating the text - opacity, movement, speed

This is to show the viewer that language and reading can be seen as communicators or barriers dependant on the viewers 'normal' mode of reading. The animation forces them to visually track the text and places a time constraint for interpretation of what the text is and what it means.

Audio

Verbal noise - crowd babble

Whispered phrases

Daily living noises

This will give the viewer a further sensory point of communication to interpret and link to the visual material.

The point is not to baffle, confuse or produce an incoherent film but to encourage the viewer to feel a sensory overloading of stimuli. When we watch TV all three elements can be on screen at the same time - french subtitled film for example - but the order that the filmmakers place them makes them coherent and easy to simultaneously interpret. My point is that this happens in real life all the time for most people. However, some people find life to be more like the film I have produced, all the time.

They live with and try and communicate through a wash of sensory input that is not just limited to audio and visual but extends to smell, taste and touch also.

Please watch this video and you will get a new understanding of communicating. It feels a bit random at the start but stick with it for an alternative view on communication.

I saw this video and it struck me just how much communication and the normal perception of effective communication is taken for granted. Also it shamed me into the knowledge that I have judged individuals talents and characters by their ability to communicate in a preconceived normal way. Communication is stereotyped to class,creed, abilities, intelligence and social status, but it does not define who we are, it is simply a methodology of conveying thoughts and ideas.

The thoughts and ideas are what define who we are. (end of sermon [make of that what you will])

Collaborative material

2008-04-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

For my collaborative unit I am researching the benefits of using flash based animated social stories for ASD children. When I figure it out I will place a power point file giving an outline of the project and the conclusions drawn from this study.

Most of this unit is paper and researched based, though to add weight to my project and considerations I am adding a number of videos from Youtube. These represent the general quality and diversity of videos with a social story base. There are any number of sites and DVD's offering animated stories, however these do not cover the criteria of a social story - the fact of educating a child on social behaviour through animation.

Carole Gray www.thegraycenter.org/ conceived of Social Stories and first developed them for use with children with ASD, the approach has also been successful with children, adolescents, and adults with ASD and other social and communication delays and differences, as well as individuals developing normally.

A Social Story™ describes a situation, skill, or concept in terms of relevant social cues, perspectives, and common responses in a specifically defined style and format. The goal of a Social Story™ is to share accurate social information in a patient and reassuring manner that is easily understood by its audience. Half of all Social Stories™ developed should affirm something that an individual does well. Although the goal of a Story™ should never be to change the individual’s behavior, that individual’s improved understanding of events and expectations may lead to more effective responses.

The stories produced have almost entirely been print based with some 'live' action video stories recently produced. I have scoured the net for animated or Flash based social stories and have found very few, some I have placed below for you to view. Most of these are made by autistics.

The bees Knees

The dream

Teddy on the Potty

Chinese Dragon by autistic child

Thanks to Anne and Lissy for their hard work and tolerence during this unit.

The rest of my work for this unit will be placed here in due course.

2008-03-31T05:29:00.000-07:00

Again a long time between posts. Things have been very hectic at work and home leaving my studies a distant 3rd place for a while, feel disappointed by that as I really want to get more from the MA than I feel I am. This is predominantly down to the available time and energy I am able to devote to studying and researching, something I am in the process of rectifying by adopting better strategies of time and resource management, negotiation and getting more sleep.

hybrid update

2008-01-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

Sorry it has been so long since the last posting, hopefully this post will make up for the time lapse.

My hybridised practices unit hit a bit of a technical hitch during december, I trialled a number of model constructing and face recognition software. I found that a number of these trials had some of the facilities required to build and animate my model, the problem was that not one had them all. Another issue was that as with trial software it stops functioning after a period of time and also has limited functionality. I believe that my original concept idea is feasable to a limited extent using a combination of the following pieces of software, Genemation face modeller, facial animation toolset 2.1, and Maya 8.5.

Genemation will create a 3d head to an adequate degree which can then be saved in a maya format, the facial animation toolset is a high quality plug-in for maya to be used to creata the facial animation, compiling and further motion tracking would happen in maya. The problem encountered is not simply one of using limited trial versions that time out or will not allow plug-ins but one of technical sophistication. A number of experimental trials would need to take place which would take a considerable amount of time and I feel would be more suitable for a longer project. I would at some point like to complete the project whether during the MA or at some future time.

However, this left me with a dilemma of how to convey the project idea in another form. Following advice from a tutor I decided to create a film piece using collected footage based around facial expressions. In the original idea I had wished to produce a piece of software that could be used to aid the recognition and understanding of human facial expressions in order to derive meaning from the expressions. The finished product is using the theme of facial expressions to show the difficulty and complexity of meaning within expressions. My aim is to have the observer wondering about how the normalising of the meaning of expressions is taken for granted and that the complexity and subtlety of expressive movement is more difficult than credited.

I aim to achieve this by showing a selection of 'head shot' footage giving a number of expressions, then slowing down each clip to show the range of movement and sometimes lack of movement to produce each expression. A number of subjects will be used so as to give a range of responses and all will be shown simultaneously, this will give the observer multiple expressions to convert, thus increasing the chances of an unrecognised or misunderstood expression. Therefore highlighting the difficulty of deriving meaning from facial expressions.

Imagine how hard it is for someone who lacks the capacity to visually track expressive facial movement to derive meaning in the everyday world.

I have filmed and edited footage of four volunteer subjects (thank you all very much) and placed these as a quarter view per subject effectively splitting the screen into four. I attempted to get 'real' emotional responses from the subjects and deliberately used subjects not used to cameras or acting. I felt this would give a more accurate representation of real expressions and not performed expressions. I felt it worked in the sense that all expressions give meaning but not always the same meaning to each person.

It also seems that the intended meaning from the expressee can be frequently mis-interpreted by the intended observer or unintended observer. This I have discovered by discussion with subjects, observers, family, friends and collegues. The range of expressions viewed turned into a 'guess the expression game' which was interesting in that it brought differing responses and debate on the mqualities and characteristics of a known expression. The idea of showing some of the unedited footage was to gauge an audience response to the work and to develop delivery ideas. The change in product also altered the intended audience, the original audience was for those who experience difficulty interpreting facial expressions. This product is aimed at the general public and is intended to raise awareness of the difficulties posed to those who are unable to accurately determine meaning from facial expressions.

Thursday is presentation day where the product and the process will be reviewed, this I will find a little odd in that I am used to writing an essay format piece of work whereas this will be a presentation and showing of the work. It feels a bit raw, sort of like an unveiling, a submission of the newly formed creation. I regard others opinion as valid and welcome any comments on the work, process or idea that may come. The next post will offer some screen shots of work in progress and of useful and used web sites.

head model

2007-12-01T14:08:00.001-08:00

This last week I have been looking further at the modelling side of the project and found an interesting piece of software from Genemation http://www.genemation.com/index.cfm

The software has a trial version to make 3d heads, but you can't save the results. However on my first attempt with some low quality pics of myself I managed to make a 3d head of myself, which was a bit weird and slightly scary. Check out the pics and you will see what I mean.

And with plotting nodes

This is a powerful piece of kit and with a good image and a bit of tweaking of the nodes a really good model can be achieved. The problem is time and finances, this is only the trial and does not include the valuable motion tracking SDK. More work to be done!

3d and flash

2007-12-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

This week we continued with a further workshop on Flash from the very knowledgable Jonathan. Learned a few cool tips and tricks and Jon found a solution for a niggling problem I was having.

Also we had our first 3d introduction, it was a little fast and technical but I got the idea about the program and some of the basic tools, could do with a set of workshops based around a project, this would be very beneficial as Maya is a very complex program.

Hybrid thoughts

2007-11-26T15:24:00.000-08:00

Things have become a little more complicated since my last post, I have been looking at the technicalities of developing and producing my model and found this is more complicated than first imagined. There is two parts to the idea, 1. The 3d model. 2. Facial recognition system. each has an element of technical difficulty to overcome, however the main problem is getting the two to interact. I recently had a conversation with a games design tutor who very kindly gave me some extremely useful advice on 3d model expressions and the lack of realism of these expressions. This has the potential to increase the technical difficulty with regard to the models expressive detail, further more this appears to be a problem throughout the 3d modelling world.

The facial recognition system is also proving difficult to match to the proposal, many FR systems are based on a contrast comparison model and as such can operate at a low camera resolution, which is fine for most uses. However, I need the system to pick up small changes of each quarter of the face and recognise these changes.

Further investigation into the technical realities of this project is needed.

On a positive note I have found a neat pice of software that allows you to create models easily, however you can only use them if you purchase the license. see link below
http://www.genemation.com/New_Pages/gentools.cfm

It also uses a tracking system, so I think an email is needed.

Ideas for Hybrid unit

2007-11-04T04:25:00.000-08:00

This week we had to present our idea for the hybrid unit, the idea I have is based around the using digital technology to assist face recognition and social communication in people with the ASD condition. My objective is to develop a visual program that can be used to facilitate the recognition of facial expressions and social nuances.
The program will start at a basic level and progress in levels to more complex expressions and meanings. The problem is getting the software to function accurately, and to generate the 3d facial model. Research into face recognition aids has mainly been video based using a selection process and using actors. My idea will be to progress this further into a 3d model form. I have to figure out exactly how as yet.

If anyone can offer possible technical advice it will be much appreciated.

MA Show

2007-10-31T15:52:00.001-07:00

Recently I attended a Digital Arts show at NSAD. There was some really good pices on show, some were really inventive and captured the imagination. I found the whole show inspirational and look forward to showing my own work.

Cool stuff

2007-10-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I attended two really cool workshops, the first was learning how to use After Effects, which was a little tricky. I found program a little frustrating at times but once I managed to get it working ok you can really create and control the images.
The second workshop was on VJ'ing which is using small video clips and mixing them together and as a sequence 'live' and projecting onto a screen in real time. I found that this was very artistic and a great application of entertainment and video production. Both workshops expanded my thoughts on how the skills and technology could be used to create unique pices of work.

Thanks for dropping by

2007-10-24T17:11:00.002-07:00

This blog is about my progression on the MA in Digital Arts at NSAD over the next two years. I hope to share my interest of the subject with you as well as my views and opinions. Please feel free to add a comment.