Many people have discovered that I can be hired, coaxed or otherwise persuaded to hold lectures and workshops at public institutions, conferences, workplaces, dinner parties, bar mitzvahs etc. I'm good.
If you are interested, contact me digitally or otherwise.
My 'tool' focus is usually Quicktime, Flash and Director, but also various other technologies brought on board to make a point, or illustrate a given solution, mindset or attitude. I am also interested in and concerned with philosophical issues relating to the use of computers in design and everyday life. The 'tool' stuff usually transfers to workshops, and the philosophical stuff translates to lectures and seminars.
Lectures can be extended into seminars (lecture + discussion). In this case, the lecture alone would normally be 3 hours, with another 3 hours for discussion after lunch.
For workshops, I would ask for a maximum of 15 students, with no more than two students per computer. You're wasting your money if you exceed this limit.
Here is a list of some of the lectures and workshops I have prepared, most of which can be more or less tailored for the occasion.
A discussion of boundaries and focus in the digital environment.
The boundaries of traditional media, painting, drawing, sculpture, printing, are usually very easy to grasp.
Often, they provides us with explicit framing devices to mark those boundaries, frames (paintings and drawings), arches (architecture and theatre), binding (books) etc.
Exceptions might include certain modernist and postmodernist transgresions which sought to break down those boundaries, such as in the work of Brecht, or Beuys. We can see that these very transgressions have become the normal context for new digital media.
The digital age has brought us a new semiotic system which, as designers, we must fully and consciously understand in order to work creatively with it.
This system uses metaphors we are familiar with so as to spare us all the gruesome details. Unfortunately, some of those details are very important. Indeed many of the metaphors can not even be understood without a basic technical understanding.
This lecture introduces new media both as abstract structures and as the more familiar metaphors which, although they resemble the real world, require some elucidation so that the true boundaries can be more clearly known.
It goes under the skin of new media and so will be of great interest and importance to all artists and designers who wish to understand them as tools rather than mere high-tech fancies.
New media have more in common on a structural level with oral traditions, narratives and mythologies: They need not have a beginning and an end, and they can easily be contextualised as discrete 'episodes' in a very similar way to the episodes of mythological literature.
If the participants are particularly brave, we will explore some physical techniques derived from theatre to help the idea to sink in to the brain stem.
(A 15 minute video will be shown as part of this lecture).
An examination of rule systems, meta-strategies and 'cheating' within cultural and entertainment products. We discuss what kinds of rules are 'best'; which approaches to design of rules systems are most satisfying, and what boundaries might be provided for the end user or 'player' to work within.
Should we conceptualise interactive media designs with timelines or layouts? If not, and if timelines and layouts are inappropriate metaphors, what do we use instead? Can we use 'screenshots' and flowcharts for anything? How do they succeed and fail as 'sketches' for interactive designs? How might we otherwise plan a multimedia project?
How might artists, project managers and programmers communicate
to bring such a project forwards?
An 'end-user' exploration of the lesser-known but thriving
parts of the internet; the protocols that fall outside http or
email, and what can be found there. Alternatives to the glitz
and glamour of web pages can often be more intriguing, bizarre,
richly human, amoral, and exciting.
'Spam', 'netiquette', pornography and piracy will be examined,
and the idea of the eternal dominance of the world wide web will
be challenged.
Digital media, new media, hypermedia, multimedia, whatever is the current or coming buzzword, lures all kinds of different people into its domain, many of whom are not 'computer people' at all. As these people move away from being passive consumers and work to make the technology their own, what kind of attitudes and pedagogical approaches are useful in the teaching and learning process? What makes a good teacher in the digital environment? What makes a good learner learn?
Special attention will be given to the phenonemon of the digital autodidact.
The various 'big names' in software are slowly coming to some agreement about a standard for marking up multimedia documents. It's rough, it's simple, it's working in web browsers today, and tomorrow it's going to be increasingly important.
Enter the world of SMIL, a working technology that already has the potential to revolutionise online multimedia content at extremely low cost.
Apple's Quicktime technology is not exactly what it is commonly imagined to be. This presentation demonstrates some of its most powerful features it includes as standard, but about which most web designers and multimedia developers seem totally ignorant.
Wired Sprites are the single most direct and simple way of implementing interactivity and dynamic data inside digital video and virtual reality. Everybody with any interest in interactive film, web multimedia, Flash or Director should pay attention.
presented here more or less in order of 'difficulty'...
Digital content is uniquely well-suited to expressing different kinds of repeated pattern. Continuously repeating time-based patterns ("loops") have a series of interesting characteristics which may be explored. Triggered patterns ("envelopes") are a very powerful mechanism for creating psychologically satisfying experiences.
Much inspiration will be drawn from music and textile design, as we explore the idea of an 'intro' sequence, a 'loop body', segues, closing sequences, different kinds of repetition, and the classic 'envelope' pattern of "Attack-Sustain-Decay-Release". The tools used will depend on the group's experience, and available software and hardware. Flash, Director or Quicktime Pro are all up to the task.
A thorough, non-geeky exploration of the use of Quicktime's hidden features to assemble high-level multimedia. (Quicktime Pro is required for this).
This is *not* a video editing course, and will be concentrating
more on the non-video aspects of Quicktime. Even
experienced multimedia professionals are likely to be surprised
by what they learn. It's not called 'secrets' for nothing.
Introduction to object messaging using existing Director behaviors.
Focus will be placed on the minimal Lingo required to connect
behaviors together from a variety of sources. Many of my own behaviors
will be made available to students on this course
Deeper into Lingo with behaviors, authoring them from scratch. This is an accelerated introduction to Object-Oriented programming, presented for programmers and non-programmers alike.
Part 1 will concentrate on the construction of a simple arcade game. Part 2 will concentrate on reuseability and encapsulation.
How much time are you or your staff doing repetitive jobs inside the new media industry. Converting files, cropping or resizing images, implementing naming conventions.
This workshop will give an introduction to some of the powerful automation technologies available to make the new media designer's life more exciting. Focus will be placed on Photoshop Actions, Graphic Converter, Debabelizer, Applescript and other tools, as suits the class.
From behaviors to lists, property lists, parent scripts, script objects, ancestors and inheritance. This is NOT for beginners! Both parts of the behavior authoring course, or the material contained therein will be assumed knowledge.