Midterm Challenge - DGIGB

Jixuan, Mithru and myself are working on the following challenge for our midterm:

These are a couple of rough sketches that we came up with in our first meeting:

Idea #1:  SMS ATM -

The sender sends money to the receiver and the receiver gets an SMS text with a code that they can punch into the ATM to withdraw currency.  The ATM then sends a notification of the withdrawal to the sender.

Idea #2 Blockchain + SMS money exchange.

The issue we are running into right now is that we aren't able to test these hypothesis with an actual user, so we are unaware what are actually realistic.

Midterm Proposal - DVR

I am working with Alexia and Natasha to recreate an existing film scene in 360 video. We have decided to work with a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey .  I'm excited about recreating this scene because there are alot of different technical techniques that we can use to recreate it.

The techniques that we will be using will be the following:

• creating 360 footage from existing shots from the movie.  This Mettle tutorial shows how we will be able to do that
• Using unity for different visual effects in the spaceship (**and audio effects outside the spaceship)
• actors and live footage of the individual in the spaceship
• depth kit to add some interesting visual textures to the experience (Calibration tutorial, Visualize tutorial, Capture tutorial )

** a nice to have, but may be too much work.

Class 4: Learning Isadora pt 2 + Midterm Proposals

I am working with Lindsey, Sharif and Jared on the midterm assignment for this class. Here is our collective blog post that describes our possible options for creating an illusion for a particular space: http://www.lindseydoes.com/2017/02/19/nothing-midterm-ideas/

---

Additionally we were tasked to work a little more with Isadora to get comfortable in the software.  Here are some screenshots of that process:

This screenshot shows how you can move the location of a particular image on the screen

This screenshot demonstrates the ability to add effects to a video file (here I added the dot effect)

Class 4 Readings + Object assignment

In the reading, Leslie Bedford talks about how storytelling, if done correctly, can have a profound effect, a "transformative experience" to the viewer.  I truly feel that the most well told stories have an ever lasting effect on the individual and these are the type of stories that I want to create.  It helps to keep a critical eye on the reason why you are telling the story and if the correct message and feeling is being captured. "...stories are powerful because they do not fill in all the blanks. They open up a space into which the listener's own thoughts, feelings and memories can flow and expand. They inspire an internal dialogue and this ensure a real connection."  - Garrison Keillor. This is a really powerful quote that I think should be something that I refer back to whenever I try to tell a story. With this in mind, now that I reflect, some of the films that I worked on in the past that were less successful were the ones that had way too much dialogue and detail leaving no room for the individual viewer's interpretation.

For my object assignment, I wanted to work with a different medium.  Thus using slides as my object seemed like a perfect nostalgic way to tell my story about the origin of the slides and how I came to possess them.

I wanted to project the slides on the wall as I talked about the their story.  Here is a 360 video that shows me going through the slides for the first time at my house:

Here is the story I attached to the slide show in class: Fist Full of Slides - Object for Collective Narrative

Class 4 Readings - Blockchains

At the end of the first reading, The Death of Charities: Bitcoin & Blockchain Technology To Replace Them?, there is a quote that mentions the following: "...the danger of radical transparency is that without further efforts to educate donors about the way charities operate, it could simply lead to people making unreasonable demands about the way that their own donations are used."  I'm curious to find out more on what the charities are doing to solve this problem and if it has been effective. M-Pesa And The Rise of the Global Mobile Money Market.

This reading is in direct relation to the midterm assignment for this class. M-Pesa allows micro-financing through its mobile platform. This service has shown that in 2011, 72% of Kenyans that make less than $1.25/day use this service since they don't have access to formal financial services. This could be a great system to build our idea off of which is one of the key points when developing new project ideas -- reuse and build on previous infrastructures.

The struggle for this type of service:

• having banks work with the telecom on this service
• only able to transfer small amounts of money
• does not replace a bank account (but could work well for those that don't have access to banks in rural areas)

With that said, it is helpful that there are already companies in place that are doing this concept.  And with the growing adoption as a use case in some countries, this could be used as a means to entice new business in new countries where this could be impactful.

From shore to plate: Tracking tuna on the blockchain

I really like this example use case for blockchain implementation. The last step in the process where they worked to inform the consumer on the ethical status of the product is not something that I contemplated before and think it's a fantastic idea.  Blockchain as a form or paper trail can help to educate the consumer which then provides a feedback loop for the producer as to what the consumers values are in regards to the products they want to buy.

How Bitcoin Brought Electricity to a South African School

Interesting points from this reading:

1. "Rather than paying for electricity after it is received at a home or business, end users are instead paying for this electricity upfront. You can now have a smart meter, a bitcoin blockchain-enabled meter, and foreign donors can send money directly to the meter without having to send it to an organization that will take or re-distribute the funds."
2. "the project involves two components – the smart meter programmed to accept digital currency and positioned at the building set to receive power, and the crowdfunding platform through which donors can contribute bitcoin."

This is very encouraging.  I would like to hear a little bit more about the barriers/limitations that once faces when using the blockchain process however. Is this initiative solely run by donations? What happens when the funds get low and how would the individuals that donate the money know if the funds are low? What sort of sustainability approaches are these companies putting into place for this project.