Say it Like You Move it: A Documentary from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.

Ok so three things on top don't really equal a fruity hat

When I did my internship in San Francisco last summer, well the Bay Area actually, down in the peninsula at EA he recited that familiar lyric to me and told me not to leave my heart in San Francisco. I call him Dad Dad, and Dad Dad called it because he is a west fanatic. I guess I take after him and so, upon graduating from my masters degree I have moved back to the Bay Area to head back to EA to start a career (the word career sounds so early nineties for some reason to me) in the games industry. My job should be a challenge, never boring, and creative and so I am psyched to say the least.

The move here, however, was an experience. I had to pack my car so full I couldn’t see out the back or the sides and stuffed in the mess was my pet snake. Originally named Slithers by his first owners, I slapped on “Mr.” to the front so it would sound like the Simpson’s character. Mr. Slithers hasn’t gone on many road trips before. As soon as I carried his terrarium into the car he was totally confused. The sun in Tempe was super bright, so I covered his cage with old t-shirts that I serendipitously forgot to throw out at the Goodwill donation kiosk. Mr. Slithers didn’t get a sunburn but I did. Go figure. Mr. Slithers was packed in there so tightly though, that even the check point guys at the California state line (normally not there but I suppose working because of swine flu) didn’t seem to notice the snake when I agreed with their question-statement of “oh Idaho, that is far, congrats on moving to California, no plants or animals in there, ma’am..?”. I simply said “no”.

My trip took two days, and had an unfortunate late start on the first day. Arrival to LA wasn’t until around 11 pm and my buddy Chloe waited until then for me to arrive at her house. Thankfully she still took the time to chat and catch up and told me all about her life in LA after grad school. The next morning we caught breakfast with another friend of mine in LA at a cute diner.

The drive to San Francisco included two pit stops with “urination prohibited” gas stations. The first one just didn’t have one, the second one was missing its key. So FYI if you are driving up the 101 from LA, be forewarned, the gas stations are tiny and they would rather you pee in their soda fridge than in a toilet. As my friend Sharon would say, “frown.”

Although lacking in pissable gas stations, the 101 has some beautiful rest stops. I stopped at one and shot a picture of my “carmen miranda” car. I call it that because it just felt so packed to the brim and was so un-aerodynamic that I felt like I was driving one of her giant hats on wheels.

And so I finally made it to San Francisco, I drove my carmen-miranda-car up the traffic laden 19th ave through the Sunset to my new place at 25th and Balboa in the central Richmond. Hooray. Today I headed down to San Mateo for Maker Faire and saw my now ex-roommate who coincidentally made it to SF before I did since she works for O’Reilly media. You may know her, she is Bekathwia on Twitter and of course on the Make and Craft blogs and does a regular video pod cast as well. Additionally my friend Matt showed his Power Glove 20th Anniversary addition, also completely awesome. Below is a video of an LED tower that will go outside London School of Economics, on display at Maker Faire. It is sideways to see how the words go through, unfortunately they are upside-down. I left my buddies at Maker Faire who will return to the Valley of the Sun without me feeling a little sad, but my internet addiction will sure do everything but prevent us from keeping in touch and they very well know they have a couch here no matter what (and everyone else too).

Maker Faire from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.

So with Maker Faire done visited by me, tomorrow starts a new day, a new job, a new life. Holy hell that sounds really cheesy but I assure you I did get the occasional chill (and sometimes sick chill) of freedom as I drove up through the People’s Republic of California (where hopefully my 98 Jeep passes emissions test) listening to the awesome playlist my professor Alice made me and the awesome gigs of music my friend Andrew gave me on the iPod my brother lent me for the trip. I owe them a lot. Thanks guys, you saved the day!

In summary, yes, I guess I left my hear in San Francisco, and I had to drive through pissless gas stations with my carmen-miranda-truck with snake “illegally” in the back, but I think it is going to be worth it. I know this because I am sitting in a coffee shop with two high school girls working with their tutor on writing and drawing projects for World History (I think). Their homework somehow involves the need for a Wacom tablet. They hiked it over to the coffee shop to work on their drawings and diagrams for their paper! What a great place to be in.

Top of viewing kiosk showing student work

My MFA thesis show was called Stratification. It involved solo and collaborative works that I made using the Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab (SMALLab). The show involved artworks inspired by concepts of figurative language and linguistics. The name Stratification refers to the various layers of memories and meanings we have in our mind that relate to the way people construct language. The show included works made by local English Language Learning high school students. Their works were compositions made with the SMALLab’s embodied and mediated capabilities and they resulted in twelve unique animations about English Idioms. I also made works relating to English idioms, as well as an interactive piece called Hybrid Word Gardens which was influenced by Sydney Lamb’s theories of language stratification.

The pieces in my show include:

1. Embodied Poetry Idioms by Mrs. Tuominen’s and Mr. Garcia’s class
2. Embodied Poetry Idioms about Gardens by Sarah Hatton
3. Say It Like You Movie It: a Documentary on how to create embodied digital poetry
4. Embodied Poetry Idioms by various embodied poetry workshop attendees
5. Hybrid Word Gardens: View all of the hybrid gardens HERE

This post shows documentation from the opening and closing receptions.

A participant drops seeds and waits for them to grow into a new word garden

A participant drops seedpods to grow a word garden

An example of a finished hybrid word garden with many funny, fake hybrid words

The start screen shows a short animation of a girl dropping a seed pod with the orange glowball

people check out the student works and the documentary video

Show attendees try to guess the idiom represented: See the Light

Sarah Hatton's MFA thesis show

Here is the poster to my thesis show. It is April 20th to the 24th in the evenings in the Digital Arts Ranch on ASU’s campus, in building Tower B.

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Panorama of 3601small on CleVR.com

This tool is nice and possibly much better than anything I could write on my own, plus it is free! I was trying to write it from scratch in Flash but hopefully this will help a friend who was trying to embed QT VR in a swf, which I think is impossible, but I am not sure. If you know anything about QT VR over the web and how to do it, please feel free to comment, as always, but I think this clevr is the way to go!

Tomorrow students will be randomly given the idiom they will make on their own. They will start designing their idiom composition on paper first and then we will move to SMALLab and SCREM after Spring break.

Check out the sweet drop shadow on the word “afraid.” GET IT??? Ya, that drop shadow feature was written by AME’s own Loren Olson, who is a total Cocoa and Obj C guru. Thanks to Loren for making the TextDisplay Dash object so awesome.

English Idiom: S/he is afraid of his/her own shadow! from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.

I recorded myself holding one of the SMALLab objects low in the space and then I bobbed it up and down until I was standing on my toes. The values of the 3d actions are then applied to things like color as well as the size of the text objects that say things like “blablabla” and “can I convince them?” and “argue”.

Idiom: Talk until blue in the face from Sarah Hatton on Vimeo.

SMALLab @ Arizona State University - 2009 from aisling kelliher on Vimeo.

Speaking of Processing, 1.0 came out back in November ‘08. I have been using it for about a year now, off and on for various things. I prefer using Flash just because of the GUI (and awesome things like FlashDevelop for the PC) and I find ActionScript 3.0 just slightly more intuitive, however, they are almost the same. The main difference is that Processing is FREE. I would like to someday be just as well versed in prototyping and designing in Processing as I am in Flash. If you have never used Processing, check it out HERE! I recommend the reference book with the polka dots, the one by Ira Greenberg. If I ever have the opportunity to teach a computational art, digital media or rapid prototyping class in the future, I would use Processing.

developed by David Birchfield, Sarah Hatton, Harper Piver, Ellen Campana and Tracy Avalos

top down view of The Storyline, language arts learning scenario for the SMALLab, 2008

During Spring and Fall of 2008, I have helped teachers at a local Phoenix high school incorporate the Storyline scenario into their curriculum. I helped develop this scenario, I created artwork for the “sandbox” tutorial phase, and I worked with students to help them create the visual aspect of their stories.

Background on the Storyline

(I yoinked some of this text straight from our Storyline project page which you can visit here!)

The SMALLab story line scenario was created in collaboration with high school language arts educators. The scenario addresses four primary content learning goals. Through their participation, students should gain understanding of: summarization of key plot elements, identifying theme, distinguishing between multiple perspective, and the model/story structure of rising and falling action (tension in plot).

At the beginning of the activity, students study a work of literature, or write their own stories. In the past, students have studied “La LLorona”, a latino folk tale about a mother who drowns her children in a river after her marriage falls apart. While studying “La Llorona”, students focused intensely on the role of perspective. Students choose a character in the story and retail the story from that character’s perspective. Students have to create six images and six sounds that match the six key story points of the story. The image below shows how students reenacted the story through role play, black and white photography and collage.

retelling La Llorona from the Ranchero's perspective

There are two phases to the curriculum. During phase 1, groups of students take the role of designers to create an interactive storytelling environment in SMALLab. During phase 2, groups of students interact in SMALLab to construct a multimedia storyline using the materials created by their peers in phase 1.

During phase 1, students:

• Identify the theme of the story
• Identify the perspective from which they want to tell their story
• Create audio recordings
• Create visual media
• Upload their media to the SMALLab database
• Program the interactive elements for their storyline in SMALLab

There are six elements to the interactive storyline scenario:

• The collection of story points created by the students
• The storyline structure
• The story workshop
• The storytelling station and presentation
• The theme display
• The perspective display

Groups of three or more students work together to create a storyline in SMALLab during Phase 2. One student positions the story structure within the story workshop area using the glowball. Meanwhile, another student uses the glowball to audition the sounds and images which correspond to key points in the story. These two students work together to appropriately sequence the events. A third student holds a device that responds to shaking. This student shakes the device to increase the “tension” of a particular story point. The more vigorously he or she shakes, the higher the tension will rise. In this manner, all three students work together to construct a story sequence and structure that accords with the original story.

The Fall of the House of Usher Storyline

For the purpose of learning how to use the Storyline, we created a “sandbox” (or is it a fishbowl???) phase for students to play before they start taking on the role of designer. We based our sandbox Storyline off of an abridged version of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Teachers can also use this Storyline as a supplement to their curriculum, as Poe is a popular read around Halloween, so playing the Storyline is a real treat! Students can play through the story and discuss themes and descriptive words used. Below are some examples of what students constructed. Notice that the first and second story point are often interchanged.

detail of How to Corral, 2008

I have been working on ideas for my MFA thesis. The final works will combine ideas about play, games, language learning, and poetry… most likely. One of my prototypes/works in progress is a piece I showed at Bragg’s Pie Factory in downtown Phoenix. It is called How to Corral. It is a metaphorical piece about notions of wildness vs. normalcy (but mostly it is just fun and causes the participant to look deeply into the relationships of — how the words move — the physical movements the participant must engage in — and the meanings of the words — ). Link to the project page of How to Corral here.

The version I showed at Bragg’s uses a WiiMote. I developed with the WiiFlash server. It is awesome and so easy to use, I hope to use it again. You can download the WiiFlash server here. You must have bluetooth enabled on your computer or laptop to use WiiFlash.

original 3D Models and textures created for Alice, 2000-2003

From 2000-2003, I was a 3D artist for a research group at Carnegie Mellon called Stage 3. While there, I created 3D graphics for an interactive software called Alice designed by the late Dr. Randy Pausch and his team of Ph.D. students and staff members. Alice aims to make the process of learning how to program more appealing to both children and adults through the creation of interactive 3D worlds. Programmers can see their lines of code come to life while certain objects on a “stage” react to various commands. In order to ample creative possibilities to students of Alice, we tried to keep up with consistently adding hierarchical objects to a local and web-based 3D gallery. Some objects come with inherent behaviors, such as walk cycles or skill sets such as skateboarding or dancing, so that the authoring of a 3D world is easier for the beginner student of programming.

While working at Stage 3, I also participated in a research project called Developing Interactive Narrative Components, also known as DINC. This project was lead by then PhD student Caitlin Kelleher who is now at Washington University in St. Louis. challenged Alice developers to consider storytelling as a vehicle for learning programming. Students and staff members worked together during a semester-long project to make worlds that facilitated an original story line. Working with the ideas of narrative and obvious conflict, the three member teams had two to three weeks to design a pre-packaged “Storykit” with characters, objects, environments, and behaviors. These kits were then tested by middle school volunteers who came in each week to use our kits and create their stories.

The DINC, or Alice Storykits, homepage is still available here.

Tools, scripts, software, equipment and ephimera:

the Alice software, 3D Studio Max, Deep Paint 3D, Photoshop

browsing the Alice gallery

I designed clothing textures for the Alice person builder

Examples of characters designed with the person builder