Guest Speakers

Ellie Rees
06/12/07
http://www.ellierees.co.uk/

Kerb
22/11/07
Alistair McDonald introduced us to Kerb an independent digital marketing agency specialising in online viral flash games. He works as a programmer amongst a team of fifteen others who have different roles ranging from animator, project manager, producer, business developer, technical director, office director and so on. Kerb has been going for eleven years and used Flash all this time. They specialise in games for the young audience. We were shown stills giving a flavour of the style of characters and games they do, these reminded me of the characters from gorillaz video, and manga animations. Kerb specialise in viral marketing meaning they purposely make games for websites that are easy to steel with the intention that they will spread their work much quicker and easier and therefore promote them automatically. This technique works brilliantly and means that often they get contacted for work rather than having to look for work. There are only two things you have to remember when doing viral advertising, to make sure you make money and that people know who did the work and can get back to you. Kerb ensures that they can check up on and measure how many play their games and nick them, the statistics are impressive. The other interesting thing about this is how long these games stay alive, as Alistair put it. "you don't expect a website to last for many years, but these games do". He also told us that these casual games are mostly played y woman in their mid twenties-thirties, this is not really what you would expect, but this is a true fact. Another fact is that around $ 2.5 billion float around the casual games market.

http://kerb.co.uk/

Semiconductor
01/11/07
Unfortunately I missed this talk but have found some information on their work through their website.
www.semiconductorfilms.com/

Soheila Sokhanvari
25/10/07
Soheila is an artist originally from Iran but currently living and working in the UK. She studied science, but later did a masters in Art. Her work has been influenced by her mixed eastern and western upbringing. Through her studies, she specialised in the subject of how we relate to others with an emphasis on eastern and western views of each other. She told us that at Chelsea Art College they were always challenged to do work that they wouldn't usually do and think about new ways of presenting their work. In her case she was encouraged to think about art through drama and performance. She talked us through her final piece for her MA which was an installation, in the form of a game, that played with the audience reactions to powerful war images. The idea was to present images, that we normally see in the media but have become desensitised to, in a new way that somehow would confront us differently. The installation consisted of a small dark room with a scent of gunpowder and florescent light glowing from the wall and floor. The audience would enter the space in pairs of two and be greeted by a games master explaining the rules. Soheila was also in the room wearing a full costume also painted with florescent light. The game involved the participants shooting, if they wished to, on to the war images which were projected one by one on the wall. If they did shoot Soheila, who was their attacker, would start shooting on to their chest plates to try and drop their health and her health would equally drop according to how many images the players hit. The game would go on until either she or the participants ran out of health. The audience reactions were mixed, a lot of people didn't want to shoot on to these images but others were keen to win the game and didn't seem to care too much about the content. Weather you chose to shoot or not you were confronted with some horrific images in an environment you wouldn't normally experience.
The second project Soheila talked about involved a miniature gallery, inside an old sewing box, placed on the London tube. Travellers on the tube could look at it and use the attached headset to listen to happy music at the same time. The idea was to break the usual awkward atmosphere you get on the London underground. This worked a bit like a social experiment, testing peoples curiosity and reservations towards each other. Soheila was sitting a little distance away from the gallery pretending she didn't know what it was. A friend of hers was also on the tube, and every time a stranger had gone up to look at the gallery the friend would offer them a sweet. After a while everyone started chatting to each other and slowly it transformed into a little mini party on the tube.

Some notes from this session:
Every element is important in your artwork
As an artist you really have to think bout how you can present your work best. How can you get the strongest reaction from your audience.
The artist becomes the audience, the audience become the artist.

Simon Morse
18/10/07
Simon introduced us to his art works by explaining his long grown interest in systems of viewing the world. His artwork is very much influenced by this way of thinking and as h













http://simonmorse.co.uk/

Dan Mellor
15/10/07
Dan introduced us to his work by showing us his very impressive show reel. He works as a freelancer in 3D, After Effects, motion graphics and animation. He originally studied sculpture, then worked on props and finally became a freelance web designer. Before becoming a freelancer he worked for a TV company where he got involved in big projects including a viral campaign in 2000 which was quite a new thing at the time. Now as a freelancer he get a lot of his work through pitching. He showed us some of the work he had done for a pitch and gave us some advice on how to go about it. It is a risky but equally exciting way of finding work and it sounds like you learn a lot from it. It is a fine balance determining how much work you do for a pitch in case you don't get the job. Dan gave us a realistic insight into the industry by letting us know that it isn't always as fantastic and romantic working in this field, it is hard work and there is a lot of competition in this industry. You also have to be careful with back pain and RSI if you are working long hours in front of the screen. Another aspect that was mention about this industry, is that it is important not to under value the prices for paid jobs. If graduates don't charge enough for the work they are doing the are bringing the standard of the industry down in price which is harmful to professionals. Finally we were shown some work done for the arts council in Brighton this involved big projections on to houses.
http://bliink.tv/
studio@bliink.tv

Some notes from this session:
- Petes plugins - free to download (kaleidoscope)
- WiredSussex - really good for freelance promotion
- Brighton and Hove arts council - artists news letter - they have money left over to donate to artist who will come up with ideas for projects that involves getting the community together.

Angie Taylor
11/10/07
Angie mainly works as a 2D and 3D animator in After Effects. She originally did a BA (Hons) in Sculpture in 1986. Since then she has moved around working in many different fields such as prop making, Dj'ing, music & technology, demo work for Adobe Apple and more recently as a freelance AE animator. She has also written books on After Effects.
We were given some tutorials on multipass compositting and expressions in After Effects. Angie also advised us o find an area of Multimedia that we are good at and show this as our specialist area in our portfolios.
http://www.creativeaftereffects.com/

Some notes from this session:
- LUA - creativecommons.org - to distribute your work
- bliptv/angietaylor - for tutorials
- creativeaftereffects.com - for tutorials
- Book - How to cheat in Photoshop
- JJ Gifford - Good for expressions
- aenhancers.com










Rona Innes
11/10/07
Rona creates storyboarding, illustrations and 2D animations. She showed us a selection of her storyboards and other pieces of work. The work range from content for e-learning, viral campaigns for organisations such as Greenpeace and one-off commissions for museums and shop windows.
In storyboarding you usually work as part of a large team alongside programmers, animators etc. Ronna explained in further detail two interactive pieces she was commissioned to do for the Churchill Museum Cabinet War Rooms in London. She did a ballot box with projected comments sliding into a slot and a video installation with original footage from 1946. This was a huge project, with lots of artists responsible for making different pieces for the museum. She showed us photos of some of the installations, and explained the whole process of being involved. We also talked about how to go about setting up as a sole trader freelancer.



Moshimachine.com

Some notes from this session:
- chimwag - good agency for jobs
- koniti - creative catapult. A new scheme with workshops for graduates on how to "pitch". New coarse starting in December.
- UHC - a company that only works for ethically sound companies.

Mike Blow
08/10/07
Mike works as a freelance 'creative technologist' with an interest in art and science. He showed us some of his projects from both the past and more recent years. Most of his work seems to be closely related with ideas and observations found in nature and biology. In my opinion these projects and ideas seem quite unique simple and appear to be more concerned with the process of discovering and making, rather than perhaps the end results. He also presented us, in more detail, with one of the latest projects named 'Machines for Singing'. This project was a physical installation where one could hear and experience the sounds from within a building in the same way as the building would hear it itself. This involved acoustic sensors placed around a building to pick up various sounds that we wouldn't normally pay attention to, including the ones out of our hearing range. The result was a rather gloomy sounding piece. One thing I found interesting about this installation, was the unexpected reactions of the audience. Mike said that they had deliberately made the space as empty and simple as possible to avoid any distractions for the visitors allowing them to just absorb the sound and atmosphere. The room only had a small circle of seats, with a sub woofer in the center, placed in the middle of the room. The idea was that people could sit with their back to the sub woofer and look outward and experience the sounds coming from around the room, however mike told us that a lot people decided to face inwards and place their hand on the subwoofer to feel the vibration. This was an unexpected reaction, and shows how people in general likes to have some way of interacting with a piece more physically.
www.evolutionaryart.co.uk


Some notes from this session:
- Karl Sims, William Latham & Stephen Todd
- Arduino & Phidgets
- An issue with interactive work is that often too much is distracting from the actual point / essence of a piece

Sam Butler
04/10/07
Sam Butler works as a visual designer for a web company in London. He introduced us to the work environment and the different roles involved in web design. A thorough breakdown into the process of making a website was presented, from meetings with clients to working in a team with different responsibilities. An IA (Information Architect) is responsible for the feel of the site not the look. He/She will produce a flowchart to organise the pages and use wireframes as a layout template to organise the positioning of every element within the website. Wireframes consist of boxes and the size and positioning of each box will often determine the importance of this information. A Visual Designer is responsible for the look of the website. He/She will have a meeting with the client to form some ideas about the style they want. Following this, the Visual Designer will produce some mood boards so the client can choose different things within these that they like. From this information three designs are produced, and the client agrees and signs for one design to go ahead. The Visual Designer then makes all the pages and passes them on to the rest of the team. A design handover guide with instructions is also produced and given to the client. A site may also need a CMS Content Management System to allow client to update information regularly.
We also talked about Web 2.0 styling, which is a guide to web design where the focus is on the user experience rather than the designer showing off. Usually the philosophy of this is lees is more. We looked at examples where web 2.0 was applied and where it wasn't.

Some notes from this session:
- Jesse James Garret - The elements of user experience
- Stock Photography - isostockphoto.com or stockexchange for free images
- To make stock images more interesting crop them.
- webdesignfromscratch.com - useful site with info about web 2.0 styling
- N.M.A - New Media Age Magazine + Website - good for jobs, look for top 100
- Jacob Nielsen - Graphics are evil

Daniel Pryde - Jarman
01/10/07
Dan introduced us to his gallery Grey Area, a small independently run art gallery tucked away in a dark cellar near Brighton Station. He put forward some of his own thoughts about art and culture in general and presented us with some of the work that has been displayed in his gallery previously. This led to a discussion in class where subjects such as high & low culture, online galleries, street art and conceptual art was discussed. Some interesting points were raised, is the Internet a good or bad way of displaying art? In a real gallery an artist can control precisely how his work is displayed whereas on an online gallery the control is taken away from the artist because screen sizes, colours and lighting will change from different computer monitors. The general belief in class was that some art was more suitable for an online environment than others. The Marchel Duchamp, fountain 1972 was talked about, some thought it was reasonable to call this art, others didn't except this as being true art.
One thing I noted down from this session is the term pooterism, which from what I understand means something self-indulgent, dull and mundane. I am planning to look up more about this term, as it seems to tie in with some of the ideas I have for my dissertation.

http://www.thegrey-area.blogspot.com

Some notes from this session:
- Robert Smithson, Cultural Confinement.
- Kasimi Malevich 'Non - objective art & suprematism 1919