Culture lesson

Today we looked at culture and the aspects of culture that can inform design. Some of the areas we looked at were;

• Customs
• Religious beliefs and mythology
• Music and performing arts
• Fashion
• Food
• Lifestyle
• language
• 
  

We initially as a class looked at japan and it's areas of culture. As individuals  we each took an area of culture and researched how Japan was different compared to other cultures. I took fashion and looked at classic Japanese clothing as well as the more modern youthful fashion.

Japanese Fashion

Japanese fashion has many facets and has changed dramatically over the past few years. A lot of Japans fashion stems from its history, and directly reflect the cultural beliefs and customs related with the time periods.

The most recognisable Japanese garment would be the Kimono.  The word Kimono literally means “clothing”. The Kimono is most commonly worn by Japanese women though at the height of their popularity there were also different types of Kimono worn by men.

During the Meiji era the traditional clothing of Japan began to change as clothing like suits and dresses imported from the west became popular. The Kimono is still worn today and is a common outfit for special cultural occasion such as weddings. Donning a Kimono is a popular experience for tourists.

Modern Japans youth have adopted their own fashion culture that is distinctly their own, dubbed as street fashion, these young people don vivid and extravagant get ups that truly stand out in an almost rebellious fashion when paraded around the street. A stark contrast to the formal suit wearing adult masses that have become so common in today’s Japan. There are several places in japan that have garnered a reputation for being social and commercial hubs for the modern Japanese youth, these places like Tokyo and Osaka. These places often have tourist coming to view the fashion on show and explore the wide array of outlandish clothing stores.

There is also a current style called “Sohoku” that involves mostly males that try to blur the lines between how genders traditionally dress. They don more decorative clothing in a

There is as large cultural fascination with cuteness, from this a lot of young females have adopted and fashion style called Lolita which is a fashion style based on Victorian era clothing style with a light colour style and a fascination with the depiction of youth, making themselves look almost childlike. From this came Gothic Lolita, a darker and obviously more gothic take on the style.

One of the most bewildering and exciting new movements involving clothing in Japan is called “Cosplay”, this is an activity and in many cases regarded as events where people will dress up in elaborate costumes that reflect some of peoples favorite characters from media such as games, cartoons, comics and the like. Cosplay is common at conventions but has really blossomed into its own cultural activity and has been adopted the world over. 

After we all did this and compiled it into a pamphlet style presentation document we came together again to create a small game concept based on the culture research. The result was....bizarre, we only had 30 minutes so it wasn't really polished or serious but it still showed what can be done with outside inspiration. 

Stem cell ethics

So today i tried to catch up on some of my research by looking at the political, ethical and moral issues with embryonic stem cells.
The most prevalent issues with embryonic stem cell research is in the USA. America has a very large religious culture who strongly opposed the use of embryonic stem cells. In 2001 president George Bush implemented a ban on federal funding for stem cell research, although private funding was still allowed it put a major dent in the research progress.
In 2009 president Obama rescinded this ban in an attempt to aid the research and make up for lost time.

I found this video showing Obama talking about his stance on the subject and reasoning behind rescinding the ban.

This shows there is still a clear moral dilemma about how embryonic stem calls are used but also shows a growth in moral standings and the understanding of how important medical research is.

Authenticity Lecture

 This lecture was about authenticity in games, i watched this video below witch is a TED talk about authenticity. The talk is more about authenticity in business but it still applies to games.

Authenticity is a tricky subject as it is ultimately boils down to how the viewer perceives it. Joseph Pine said "There is no such thing as an inauthentic experience", authenticity is an experience that is true to itself, meaning that an experience can be authentic even if it is fake.

The lecture led into a talk about what creates an experience in games, the four things were triumph, tragedy, excitement and . We also talked about games that have little or no story in them and how they go about conveying narrative even without an overt plot or storyline. Games like journey and Sim City were looked at, both games that have a light narrative but are mostly fueled by the players imagination and experiences.

We also looked at player driven plot lines in games like Mass effect and Heavy rain, these are game stories where the stories are more expansive and the player has a sense of responsibility in where the story goes.

origins

So to start off the research I'll be putting up here I'm pretty much starting from the beginning  My first area of research detailed in my project plan is the discovery of embryonic stem cells in humans. This is basically my theme in a nutshell so it only makes sense to start at the heart of the issue.

Ok so i looked into a bunch of articles online till i found one that actually told me about who first found embryonic stem cells in humans. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/science/22stem.html?_r=0 This article by Gina Kolata talks about Dr. James A. Tompson, the man who in 1998 first extracted stem cells from a human embryo. This took place in his laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. From that point is sparked a whole host of ethical problems, questions and oppositions. I did find out the small fact that may have helped the matter a little if it had been more widely known, the first embryo he extracted these stem cells from was in fact donated by In Vitro Fertilization clinics and was an embryo that was discarded due to some form of structural damage which would have resulted in the embryo never fully developing.

My next area of research is to look into the other types of stem cells there are and how they compare to embryonic stem cells.

Update

Ok quick update before the nitty gritty. My project plan is complete but I've been having problems getting it onto the blog. Word and Photoshop seem to have it in for each other and it messes up my formatting every time i try and move it across. So until i can find a way around it i won't be able to post it up here.

So in todays lesson we looked at gamification, a subject i had learned about previously in a video by the Extra Credits guys.

 Extra Credits (2012), Gamification, Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dLK9MW-9sY&feature=plcp.

We also looked at Jesse Schelle and his presentation on gamification in the future. His views were that eventually gamification will be applied to everything from your shopping to your personal achievements. Both positive gamification and negative gamification like large companies and organizations getting a hold of peoples lives and habits through the use of gamification.
Jesse Schelle wrote the highly revered "The Art of Games Design: A Book of Lenses" book which continues to influence games designers today.

Schelle, J (2010), Design outside the box presentation, DICE2010, Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NzFCfZMBkU&feature=relmfu.

This was the Jesse Schell presentation we saw in which he talked about the possible future of gamification.

We also saw a TED talk from a games designer called Jane Mcgonigal who looked at how much people play games, why people play games and what people learn from games. She talked about four major things gamers are good at, Urgent optimism, Social fabric, Blissful productivity and Epic meaning. She talks about how she researches into how these skills learned through time gaming could be used to make changes in the real world.

Mcgonigal, J (2010), Gaming can make a better world, TED Talks, Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM