photo credit: libraryman

As promised in my post on Tuesday, today I’m going to give you a look behind the scenes at the technology that I used to create the projections for The Planets.

This basically breaks down into two sections, creating the media to be projected, and actually running the show.

Creating The Media

On Tuesday I mentioned the DigitalSky 2 software which I used to create the 3-D space visualization sequences. The system is extremely sophisticated, and in fact has its own scripting language. By writing scripts I’m able to “fly” the camera through the 3-D model of the universe. It can also manipulate what objects are visible, and increasing or decreasing their size. In order to create the effect that I was looking for, I often had to increase the size of the planets and moons in view. This is because the distances in space are so gigantic, compared to the size of even the largest planets and moons.

The other major elements in the piece are mostly NASA images. There is a tremendous amount of maturity are available here, which was a great blessing, though as you can imagine, it could complicate the process of selecting material. In general I was looking for a combination of the most spectacular, beautiful and highest resolution images available. Fortunately, many images were available at far above HD resolution. The higher the resolution of the image, the more choices I have in how to use it. With the largest images, I’m able to show a small portion of the image, and then slowly move across it. This is the so-called “Ken Burns effect.” This effect allows me to take a static image, and give it motion.

Projecting The Show

When I set out to do projections for any piece were I’m collaborating as a part of a live performance, one of my primary goals is to not do anything to get in the way of the performers. One of the things that this means, is that I don’t want to create projections as a movie. It would’ve been very easy to create the projections and burn them onto DVD, and then just hit play at the beginning of each movement. The problem with that, is that then the conductor would have to follow the timing of the projections in order to stay synchronized. To my mind, that’s an unacceptable compromise to ask for in most cases.

My answer is a software package called  QLab. This amazing Macintosh software allows me to create each “visual event” of the show as a separate cue. By doing that, I’m able to essentially “edit” the projections in real time, during the performance. I read the score as the orchestra performs, and trigger each cue at the appropriate moment in music. This allows the conductor the flexibility to adjust the tempo as it feels right, and I’m still able to keep everything in perfect synchronization.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind-the-scenes of The Planets. Do you have questions? Please ask in the comments, I’d be happy to do my very best to answer them for you.

A couple of years ago, I was fortunate to be invited to do a massive projection design for The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace when it was performed by The Community Church of Durham.

This is a massive choral work by composer Karl Jenkins, and is the single most powerful piece of music I have ever experienced.

You can listen to the opening movement here:

And just to give you a peak behind the curtains:

Here’s a photo of all of the computers and the main projections that made everything happen.

Since I am, in fact, just that geeky, this blog now has a mobile version.  courtesy of WPtouch, a plug-in for WordPress, now if you visit this site from your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android device or Blackberry, you will see a special version of the blog designed to be easy to navigate, and very fast on mobile phones and other small screen devices.

Photo by Edans

When @ScottBourne mentioned mobile WordPress and WPtouch I just had to try it!  (BTW Scott Bourne is also an AMAZING photographer specializing in birds – Check out Scott’s PhotoDiary )

I am very pleased with how well it works, and how easy it is to use on the phone. You can even bookmark, tweet about and comment on posts from your phone.

This works great on my iPhone, which is the only device I have to test it on. If you have one of the other supported smartphones, give it a try and let me know how it works. I’d love to know.

And just in case this isn’t geeky enough, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) to have an iPhone app that will let you read my blog directly in the next month or so. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, let me know what you think of the new mobile version of The Journey of Story.

A few days ago someone on Twitter (I wish I could remember who) mentioned cellist, Zoe Keating. I was not at all familiar with her or her music, though I’m a great fan of the cello ever since a college friend asking to be the test audience for a piece she was working on for her recital. Sitting in a little tiny practice room, maybe 3 feet from her instrument, was an incredibly powerful, visceral experience, that left me with a great love of this instrument.

Zoe takes an extremely unusual approach to the cello, or rather to what can be done with the sounds that the cello makes. She creates her music by playing segments, and using electronics to record them and loop them so they play over and over again. By doing this, she creates amazing layers of sound, and creates an entire orchestra from her cello alone.

Listen to this:

Now here’s a short interview with Zoe where she talks about how she makes this amazing stuff:

If you like this music, check out her website at http://www.zoekeating.com.

So of course when I discovered how cool Zoe’s music is a naturally followed her on Twitter. She is @Zoecello.

Then today she tweeted about a new band that she just found out about called The Finches.

You’ve got to see this:

Pretty amazing, isn’t it. And by the way, if you’re thinking that this is faked, I’m quite confident that it isn’t.

This was done as a part of an art installation called “Rhythms of Life,” at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. It’s an installation piece done by the French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot.

I know these are far from the typical music most of us listen to on a daily basis (me included.) I’ll be interested to hear what you think of them.

One of the most amazing things that technology is making possible is long-distance collaboration. We are able to work together in ways that we never have before. Blogs like this one are a perfect example, people comment, and join in the discussion from all around the world. But much more intimate and direct collaboration is also possible. Over the last few days, I’ve been talking with folks in the southern US about giving a talk at a conference in Kentucky. Thing is, I’d be giving the talk from New Hampshire through Web conferencing. It’s pretty cool.

It struck me this morning just how powerful this is when I ran across a link on twitter to this video:

It was created by a group called Playing For Change. They believe, and I agree, that one way to create peace is to bring individuals from around the world together collaborating in creation. One of the really cool things about this type of project, is that even when it’s “finished” we can still continue to collaborate, by sharing the work across the Internet, and in person. Here’s another video from Playing For Change which is fair introduction of themselves, and has another great song.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these videos and music, I know I did, but the real question is, what are you going to do now? How are you going to use this to make a difference? Share it with the people you love. Pass it around the Internet. Maybe host a party to show the Playing For Change film. I’m looking into showing it at the theater were I am the technical director.

How have you been moved by technology enabled collaboration? Please share in the comments.

This afternoon I was sitting in the office of a colleague of mine, looking at some new pictures of his baby. The pictures were spectacular, and clearly professional. I asked him where he had been taken, and was very surprised when he told me that it was in a studio at the mall. Then I thought about it for a minute, and realized that the reason these mall studios were able to be successful, is that they were able to take out the majority of the technical variables for making a good picture. The lighting is set up, the camera is all set, the backgrounds are in place  – the technical details are all taken care of.

Waiting for the moment (Photo by ^riza^)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it means that their photographer is unskilled. What I am saying, is that they have been able to optimize and lock down enough of the technical process that it limits the skill set the photographer needs to get good results. The thing that struck me so powerfully about these images was was how natural the baby looked, and how excited and engaged she clearly was. Getting that an expression is an incredible skill, and by having the technical issues solved ahead of time she was able to focus on relating to her subject and making a great picture.

Of course there is a downside to this, her creativity with how to set up the photographs is limited by the locked down technical setup. A truly skilled, imaginative, creative photographer, with full command of all of the technical issues, as well as having the ability to relate well to a subject will make much better and more innovative images. But, I realized something as I thought about this. It really comes down to knowing when to push the button on the camera that takes the picture. Yes, you need all of the other skills, the technical issues dealt with either by your own skill or by being in a preset studio. However, even if all that is done, it still comes down to the moment that you push the button. Knowing whether you need to push the button right now, or a split second from now.   It really does make all the difference.

This all reminded me of the tittle one of my absolute favorite books about photography, The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally. Joe is an incredible photographer and teacher of photography, and this book is filled with amazing images and stories about how he made them. If you want to check out the book, click on the Amazon affiliate link below.

It occurs to me, that this idea of moment is an important one in many areas that I’ve experienced, I’d like to hear in the comments about times when you became aware of the significance of having that sense of the right moment. I’ll look forward to your posts.

While I was at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference yesterday, I had a chance to see a presentation given by a wonderful teacher. John Fladd is an eighth-grade social studies teacher at the Deerfield Community School, in Deerfield, NH.   He gave a talk called “Inspiring PowerPoints – NOT an Oxymoron,”  during which he showed us a large variety of PowerPoint presentations which he uses with his students. These presentations all use sound, video  and many many wonderful images to bring to life the topics that he teaches, and to do it with a theatrical flair and a great sense of humor.

On his blog, Teacher Toys, John has created a page with quite a number of links and resources that he uses in creating presentations.   If you use PowerPoint with any regularity, take a look at his page, I suspect that you’ll find quite a number of useful things. It’s at http://teachertoys.weebly.com/nelms.html.

John opened his presentation with a YouTube video by comedian Don McMillan which does an amazingly good, and amazingly funny job of demonstrating the problems of so many PowerPoint presentations. Watch it now, just make sure you’re not drinking anything you could spit out all over your keyboard when you break out laughing.

When I googled to find Don’s website, I discovered that he has a brand-new version of his Life After Death By PowerPoint video which you can watch on his site. I actually think I like the original version a little bit better, but there is some great new bits in the new version. Check it out at http://www.technicallyfunny.com/blog/blogdon.htm

I just got back from making two presentations at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Nashua, NH. I really enjoyed presenting both longer and shorter versions of the talk I call “Once Upon a Supercomputer — Technology Assisted Storytelling.” This is a talk I first developed quite a few years ago for the Faculty  Instructional Technology Summer Institute at the University of New Hampshire, and have given to a variety of other audiences since.  I really enjoyed meeting so many inspired educators, and sharing with them some of my ideas.  Specifically, I believe that we can learn from thousands of years of human experience, transmitting knowledge through story and apply that to the modern classroom. Imagine for a moment drawing on the power of the storytelling techniques that make a great movie so engrossing, and using them to make classroom lessons equally engrossing. I really believe that this is powerful stuff, and that by using technology effectively we can multiply its power.   This is really the next step from what I wrote in my recent post PowerPoint is the Enemy of Effective Communication!

When I have given this talk in the past, I’ve always handed out a list of resources which I thought would be helpful to teachers as they begin to implement the ideas that I shared. This is always been a single sheet of paper, basically a list of links. I’ve never really been happy with it, and I always felt there was a lot more that should be included. This time, I decided to do something about that. So, for the first time I’m giving a “digital handout.”  I want to share it with any of you who may be interested. It’s not completely finished yet, what I’ve done so far is an annotated list of software and hardware tools, which I felt would be useful and a few books as well. What I haven’t finished yet is going through the pages and pages of notes that I have on potential sources for content to use in presentations (images, audio clips, video segments and much more,) but that will be coming soon. Besides, I was shocked when I finished the first part of my list and discovered that it was over 2800 words. If you want to take a look, find it at http://andydolph.com/cmtc.  Understand, this list is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a selective list of tools that I recommend. If you think there’s something that I should look at to include, please let me know about it in the comments below.

Well, that’s actually not entirely true. PowerPoint itself is not the enemy of effective communication, but the way it’s used is.

Do your audiences stay awake?

Of course, PowerPoint is a tool and, like any other tool, it can be used for good or evil; effectively or ineffectively. The problem is more than just people using PowerPoint ineffectively, rather I think the problem is that PowerPoint begs to be used ineffectively. What do I mean? Well, look at virtually any PowerPoint presentation you see. The vast majority of them look basically the same, slide after slide after slide of bullet points. Essentially, an outline of the presentation projected on the screen. Sometimes it’s even worse, more often than I care to admit I see the actual (spoken) text of the presentation projected on the screen.

So what’s wrong with that? First is that it’s incredibly boring. It’s also distracting and not useful.

“But wait,” I hear you cry, “isn’t it useful and valuable to present information through multiple senses”

Yes! It absolutely is, when it’s done well. Each medium, each sense has ways in which it is best communicated with in the context of the presentation. Screen after screen of text confuses me, it doesn’t help me to know what’s important, and if all the content of the presentation is projected and why do I need you to stand there reading it to me. There is a better way. I’ll get to that shortly.

Remember, I said that PowerPoint begs to be used ineffectively. Open a new PowerPoint presentation, choose a template if you must (and most of them are mediocre at best) and what you get? The first default slide is the title page, that’s reasonable. Okay, now create another new slide, what you get? A bulleted list. An empty page asking to be filled with text.

In the earlier versions of PowerPoint it was even worse.  Trying to be helpful, Microsoft included an auto content Wizard. An automatic process for creating any type of presentation that you needed to give. The very idea that a few simple forms could create even the skeleton for most type of presentation you would give drives me crazy.

This was taken to it’s illogical, and extremely humorous extreme by Peter Norvig when he imagined (now rather famously) what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln had used a PowerPoint auto content Wizard to create the Gettysburg Address.  You can see the results on his website http://norvig.com/Gettysburg/ Also very worth reading are his “making of” article and his article PowerPoint: shot with its own bullets.

There is another way!

PowerPoint can be an amazing tool to support a presentation when it’s used well. The key word is SUPPORT! The PowerPoint visuals should support the presentation that you were giving verbally. How can you do that effectively? Use the visual medium for what it does best: images.

Use the PowerPoint to punctuate what you’re saying with images, brief quotes, illustrations, backdrops and other things that help you to tell the story.

The story is the key

When you go to create a presentation, don’t open PowerPoint first! Start by laying out the story you want to tell. What is its beginning, middle, and end. Look for ways to create an emotional flow, and a payoff, and emotional reason for going along with you on the journey that you were inviting your audience to take. You may find that this is useful to do in an outline, or you may like mind mapping (which is how almost all of my presentations start), or you may work in narrative, or some other way. Whatever you do, lay out the story first.

Once that’s done, now you have a framework. Look for aspects of the story that are particularly important, now search for the visuals that either punctuate, demonstrate, or otherwise support those turns of the story. Where do you find them, lots of places — stay tuned for a post on that coming soon.

Now I think that there are times when that most effective “image” may be a few words. But it’s very, very few words.   In his e-book Really Bad PowerPoint and How To Avoid It, Seth Godin says “no more than six words on a slide. EVER.”  I think he’s got the right idea, although I’m not as militant about it as he is. I think there are a few situations where more than six words on a slide may make sense. Occasionally, I think putting the text of a longer quote on the screen can be effective. If you’re teaching a hands-on class, putting a list of instructions on the screen for the class to follow can work in some situations.  And very, very, very rarely a bulleted list may even be appropriate  to show a large variety of choices or something of that sort.

In my world, effectiveness comes from emotional engagement. As you create your presentation, whatever the topic, I believe there is nothing more important then finding a way for your audience to connect emotionally with the story you are telling.

What do you think?  I look forward to your comments.

My friend Ian recently started an incredibly exciting project. It’s called The Grok Project

To quote the description from his “what is the grok project” page:

Over the course of three years, I will step through the history of science and technology … and, of course, blog about it.  Instead of just studying and summarizing this history, I am going to try toexperience it in any way I can.  I will smelt iron, perform the oil-drop experiment, build motors, etc….  This will go from the dawn of civilization through the present <reverb>and BEYOND!</reverb>

He is starting by experimenting with the Paleolithic diet which he describes on his blog grokproject.net. And it’s been a people fascinating and exciting to follow this project over the next three, or four, or five, or however many years.

As I listened to Ian talking about this project, it immediately brought to mind a book which I’ve heard talked about in some detail on a number of occasions on the Twit Network of podcasts (or netcasts as they prefer to call them.) The book is called The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive.

It is me trying to describe it, I’ll let the author speak for himself in the video below.

Geek Atlas Video - Click to play

Have you read The Geek Atlas? What do you think of it? I look forward to your comments?