We Create Identity Final Expo

By Jannis Rohde November 12th 2018

For the first module we created an interactive video which can now be found in my portfolio. At the end of module exhibition we had the chance to present the video to fellow students, faculty and other guests, and had the opportunity to check out the projects of others. Overall, it was great to see how other groups approached the task and their end product. I thought it was interesting to see the fact that a lot of the videos had certain aspects in common, even though they were all created independently.
In general, I was satisfied with my final product, however, I believe some aspects could have been improved. For example, I felt like there was not enough depth to our story and some options were pretty meaningless. Also, I think additional length would have been good, to make the whole thing more fleshed out. In my opinion the main reason for these shortcomings was the lack of thorough prior planning, which is something I will keep in mind for future projects.


Website Peer-Review

By Jannis Rohde October 16th 2018

The website I am reviewing can be found here. Overall the website has a simple layout and portrays all the required info, but could use some more creative visuals and style elements that make it more unique. I think the best site is the home page, when the site is first accessed. Sadly, once that site is left it cannot be accessed again and the rest of the website does not follow the same style. This first site uses some of the students work as a background image, which I think is awesome, as it already portrays some of his work, looks great and makes it unique. Then it has a simplistic title with a fitting font and a button element that will link to the next page. I think adding the authors name would be appropriate.
One of the main thing I learned when analyzing this website is that layout is super important. I felt like even though the content was great, the fact that some of the elements overlapped was off-putting. Also, it made me realize, that a websites identity is key. The first site sets a strong tone for the website with its front page, but does not build on it with the other pages. This makes me want to change a lot on my own website, which I think, in its current version is stale.


Final face made for Visual Communication

By Jannis Rohde October 2nd 2018

In the Visual Communication course we have created a story and summarized it in keywords with symbolic significance. Now we had to use objects and different materials to represent these keywords visually. Some of my keywords were hope, perseverance, purpose and wholesome. Therefore, I decided to use plants to form a face. Plants are a symbol of hope and represent growth, much like the protagonist undergoes in the story. Also, the plants I used have a purpose, they are herbs and spices used for cooking, which means there are many parallelisms between the plants used and the story. To improve my draft version of this image, I removed the background, which used to be a distracting tiled floor with a smooth white gradient. You can find the finished version in my Portfolio.


Personalizing my Webpage

By Jannis Rohde October 2nd 2018

The entirety of this website is created from scratch by myself, I chose to do this because I wanted to learn the skills to create websites from scratch, without relying on tools like wordpress. Also, it gave me a lot of creative freedom when making design decisions. The background image I chose inspired the rest of the colors used for the navigation bar and the background for the individual blogposts and portfolio entries. The color used in the navigatiion bar is #28c2d6 and I chose it because it compliments the background image. Also, the navigation bar is a flexbox and will resize to smaller computer monitors, but a mobile version is not yet available. Another addition to the navigation bar is that the text has a small black shadow to make the white text more legible on the light background, which disappears when the link is hovered over and the text and background change color. The CSS lines responsible for that are:

li a:hover:not(.active) {background-color: white;
color: black;
text-shadow: 0 0 0 black;

For the sections of the website with larger clusters of text, namely the blog and portfolio, I added an additional background for the individual entries. It is completely white and slightly see through to keep the background image visible and make it easy to read the text. The CSS responsible for that is:

.portfoliocontent {background-color:rgba(255,255,255,0.7);
border: 1px solid grey;
padding: 20px;
text-align: left;
color: black;
}


Creature made in Processing v.1

By Jannis Rohde September 18th 2018

In the programming tutorials, we have been working on creating a creature that one can interact with using processing. So far, I created a Narwhal that can be moved with the mouse and can hide underwater. I am working on making it shoot lasers out of its horn with left-click. Last week I achieved pixel-abstraction, which is one of the criteria for the final outcome. Other things I would like to add, is that the narwhal can move its flippers and that the water is constantly moving. You can find the current version of the project in my Portfolio.


WCI: Interactive Video Update 1

By Jannis Rohde September 18th 2018

So far, we have created our project groups and received some further lectures on filmatogrophy. We learned about the correct use of cameras, script-writing and post processing. For further progress, we have planned a group meeting where we will brainstorm and discuss our ideas, so that we can start working on the video as soon as possible.


Progress Update

By Jannis Rohde September 12th 2018

The plan for this website is to continue with the current format. Currently there is a "Home", "Portfolio", "Blog" and "CV" section, however, none of the sections are final, as I will decide on the ones I am going to use once I have more to show. Other sections I consider adding are a image gallery for future work or a personal site with details about me. Next I would like to work on my portfolio, displaying some of the stuff I did in other classes.


Favourite installation at Gogbot 2018

By Jannis Rohde September 11th 2018
Robot Musician

My favorite installation at the Gogbot festival was the robot band. On one hand, it was technologically impressive, as the robots were not only able to play their instruments, but also perform certain complex movements. Especially the robot that was “singing” was very mobile and had an impressive choreography. On the other hand, it was artistically impressive, because it was a stunning musical performance on par with a human live band. I thought that the changed lyrics of classic rock and metal songs to be more robot-themed was a nice touch. The success of this performance was shown in the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the audience. I am uncertain if the novelty of this installment is key to its success, or if music performances like this could become the norm in the future, considering how many advantages it has over live performances of humans.