Archive for January, 2011
Slidvid 3.0
The 'ink' of the four nibs is lettristic animation
I’ve been working on version 3 of a JavaScript slideshow program I call Slidvid. I initially developed it to show screenshots of dbCinema in action. All the dbCinema slideshows use an earlier version of the Slidvid software. I’d like to show you Slidvid 3.0 in this post. And if you have a site you’d like to show your graphics on in a slideshow, drop me a line and we’ll put Slidvid on your site with your graphics.
The graphics in the first Slidvid 3 slideshow are old ones; they’re screenshots from a generative, interactive Shockwave piece I wrote called A Pen. I’ve had the screenshots on my site for quite a while, but not in a slideshow. The experience of them in a slideshow is more to my liking. Less work for the viewer. More options for the viewer and the presenter. And just a classier presentation.
The graphics in this slideshow were made with a virtual pen that has four nibs. The ‘ink’ of each nib is a lettristic animation that leaves trails as the pen moves the nibs/animations around the screen. Think of the nibs as being attached to the pen by long loose springs. When you click and drag the mouse in the Shockwave piece (not the slideshow), the nibs eventually catch up with you. And you can adjust things like the size and opacity of each nib. Hence the sort of graphics you see in this post. The project A Pen consists of both the interactive Shockwave piece and also the slideshow of screenshots taken from the Shockwave piece in action.
The Curse of the “Code Blue” Motto
The motto of the Canadian national junior hockey team in 2011 was “Code Blue”. Who knew that their motto would prove ironic? After the final game, did whoever thought up the motto for the Canadian juniors glimpse, in a kind of literary horror, the final meaning the motto would have in history? It’s final meaning was revealed only after the Russians stormed back from a 3-0 deficit at the end of the second period to win 5-3 and capture their first World Junior tournament gold medal since 2003. “Code blue” is for “cardiac arrest”, and it most aptly described the collapse of the Canadian team itself in the third period from hell. Did the motto’s writer sense being trapped in the inevitability of a story that he had helped write without knowing the end and the meaning that would give the motto?
Consider another case of literary horror. In The Shining, there’s a moment when Wendy, Jack’s wife, discovers that what Jack has been writing all winter amounts to an entire volume of repetitions of one sentence: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
It’s funny but it’s also a moment of literary horror. He’s mad! Or is he just postmodern???? A conceptual poet??? No he’s mad, look out for the axe!! A boy so dull cannot but be mad!!
Similarly, the moment, after the third period, of the revelation of the final meaning of the “Code Blue” motto. A little frisson of the secret wiles of destiny. A peek into the machinery of the universe.