Extended capabilities

This week I've been brainstorming different ways to make an interactive website that incorporates some of my interests while extending the capabilities of different objects. For instance, instead of just having a turntable that plays a song straight through, give the user the ability to select how far into a song for the needle to drop or skip between different songs just by moving the needle to the right place. This is like the normal functionality of a record player. Then, to extend its capabilities, I could incorporate a second or third arm. This way a familiar object has a whole new set of capabilities. I've also been thinking about different methods of control besides mouse input. Some ideas I've come up with are keyboard input for drums, where surrounding keys have different mallets that hit the drums, wii remote to control a theremin, xbox joystick to control the crank on a music box.

I have also been thinking about incorporating some of my other interests into my website including photography, biking, snow, etc. I could include a page that displays some of my photography with a reactive digital camera to scan through the photos or even take the user's photo if they have an attached web cam. Biking and snowboarding could be incorporated into pages that explain about me like a bio page or my blog. Before I get distracted with more ideas however, I should stay focused on the musical pages first and making those work as well as keeping the style consistent between the pages.

New Quarter, New Project

This quarter I'm going to shift gears. I would like to make a portfolio website to display the work I've created while at UCSD. Rather than creating a boring, html page with a biography, contact information and simple examples of audio and graphics that I've created, I'd like to present it in a fun and interesting way that will explain more about my style and interests. I will do this by creating an interactive and musical flash website.

The timeline:
2nd week-develop structure, style, and choose content
3rd week-photograph and photoshop images for animations
4th week-assemble images in flash and write code for animation
5th week-rinse and repeat for each separate page
6th week-record music/ sounds and eq/master sounds for a multitude of speaker systems
7th week-incorporate audio into the site
8th week-incorporate projects from other classes
9th week-ask for outside critiques
10th week-send website to possible employers!

(I have a placeholder html website now that will be available to those who do not have a flash player here: jmichael.tv. I will be tweaking the style and format of the html site to mimic the appearance of the flash site as well throughout the quarter.)

Possible formats:
-turntable
-drum set
-music box
-abstract instrument
-radio

Inspiration from holden outerwear website. Unfortunately last year's website has been taken down, but it is very similar to this year's site.