Sorry this one's late

I personally would love go to Second Life (SL), but every time I try my computer crashes. Having said that, I love to go to museums; you might say I’m a museum junky. In my prior life, I was a student of art. Sorry Dr Walters. One of my greatest trills was to see Monet up close; but I had to go to Paris to do it. To be able to visit museums from all over the world would be incredible.

Another example of how virtual environments could change some ones experience, is Michelangelo’s Dying Slave; here is a picture. No where on the Web will you see the back of the sculpture, but the back of the sculpture has its own story; here it is.

My wife and I toured the Louvre and the guide made a point of explaining the back of the sculpture. I quote “you will see a monkey, only partially carved, grasps the left shin, representing art as mere "aping" (mimesis) or suggesting earthly passions.”

Here’s the real story explaining the monkey. Michelangelo goes home early, leaving these two under paid guys to clean the shop. Instead of cleaning the shop, they hide behind the sculpture, waiting for the shift to end. Time drags on, so one of them said “Watch this” chisels a monkey’s face in the back of the sculpture. So you see “if all you pay is peanut, you get is monkeys to work for you”. You may ask how do I know that my story is true? I ran a cleaning crew on the third shift at Sea World of Florida for nine years.

If Dying Slave was in a virtual environment you could see this for yourselves.

Blog assignment 2

The site I selected was the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The reason was because I was so impress with the museum when I visited it in person, I wanted to see what type of impression the site would give me compared to an actual visit. The question was would I have gone to the museum if I have gone to the sight first; the answer was, not likely.

I found the site to be flat, with little interactivity. The site did offered some pop-up images, but no sound. I feel they should have some audio narrative to accompany the images.

There was a YouTube video of the production of the Battle of Belleau Wood re-enactment which will part of an up coming exhibit. But again the narrator could not be worst.

The commercial site was the official site for the movie Zombieland, which is a movie opening this weekend. The site offered two area one from those under the age of 18, and the other for us who are older. Last week we talk about this kind of option for different sites. They add the need for the zip code as will as name and age; interesting. The games were lame, but they link you to their Face Book. I actually open a Face book account; this is my first time on a social network. The site uses all the social networks to contact everyone who visits the site.

http://www.zombieland.com/

The other commercial site was Hasbro. It is aim at a young audience so it has all the bells and whistle. The opening page is incredible; it is something that I would like to do for my world’s fair project.

http://www.hasbro.com/

I would incorporate the flash of the Hasbro site with the links to the social networking of the Zombieland site. There is a commercial shooter video game that is promoted by the U.S. Army. With this in mind I would add some first person shooters to the museum site.

Winter Park Zombie Walk

On Friday night I went to a zombie walk that was held in Winter Park. It was a small event, but fun. For those who are unfamiliar with a zombie walk, it is largely an underground event; mostly promoted though word of mouth and online message boards. The participants are encouraged to dress and act like zombies from the classic film Night of the Living Dead and do a group walk or shamble for a mile or so. Even as bizarre as this may sound, the event is still filled with controversy. Zombie fans are divided into two camps. There are the classic zombies who activities include grunting, groaning and slurred, than there are those who moaning call for 'brains'. Traditionalist who draws their definitions of zombie activities from the original Living Dead films will claim zombie consume only living or freshly killed flesh and not just brains in particular and would never have the ability to call for 'brains'. The other group, fans from the film Return of the Living Dead, just doesn’t appreciate a classic film, zombies from that movie eat only the brain. There is a third group, but we don’t talk about them.

At night when returning from school, I started to notice something strange.

If you what to know more about zombie walks here is a link.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_walk

First concept drawing

This is the first concept drawing for my Dupont Project. The idea is to take video of the Fun with Chemistry production and the science demonstrations and animate them to the original sound track. I feel that this would be more interesting than showing old videos.

Sorry for the long stretch between blogs.

The week before last I damaged my corneas, which kept my computer time at a minimum.

The museum that I have decided to use for my project is the Salvador Dali museum in St. Pete. I believe that his work is incredible and the museum wed site does not to justice to his art. Using flash I think that it could be jazzed up significantly.

I will try to explain my concept in more detail as the blog continues.

Thanks

Blogging

Week Two

This starts my second week with my return to college. My Wednesday night class is on Public History and Digital Media. As personal project we are to select one of the pavilions at the 1964-65 World’s Fairs. This picture of a musical revue called "Wonderful World of Chemistry.", sold me on doing the Du Pont Pavilion.