Today I went to the ministry of health to update my OHIP card. The guy at the counter noted that our birthdays are very close together and that we both have a watershed birthday coming up this spring. "I don't care," he said, "you're only as old as you feel." Then, when he took my picture he said, "Is that one okay with you?" I shrugged "sure." It's not like I sit around staring at my OHIP card. Then he said, "even with the frizzy hair?" Then he said, "it's winter hair." Then he said, "I know that feeling." Then he said, "not that I have any hair." Then he said, "I'd rather have frizzy hair than no hair." I was pretty much done with saying things, myself, so I left. Which is all by way of introduction to my new favourite phrase:
"graceful degradation"
Which has deposed my old favourite phrase:
"accelerated decrepitude"
Here's what the current issue of Scientific American says about graceful degredation in their article on the broadcast transition to digital tv:Even if your TV can receive over-the-air digital signals, that does not guarantee you can see the pictures. Analog offers what is called "graceful degradation": people in fringe reception areas can at least see something, even if the picture ghosts or fades in and out. DTV is not as forgiving. You either get it, or you do not.
Being of a fairly murky mindset I find myself quite comfortable in the fringe reception areas. I grew up in the country without cable and spent a lot of time staring at something-less-than-completely-random TV snow that teased me with rare decipherable images hinting at the storyline of Battlestar Galactica. I'd rather have a fuzzy winter broadcast than no broadcast at all.
...but he was trapped by circumstance...getting an OHIP card replaced is like entering the film Brazil....a very scary experience.....
I hated turning thirty, forty felt like a breath of fresh air, fifty a lot less cool. Boomers are famous for not wanting to age, but I bet no other generation is (or was) particularly keen to do it.
Whenever people stress about turning 40, I tell them about this guy:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/excellence/bio/forest.asp
After meeting him, I kinda re-calibrated how I felt about turning 40.
As for graceful degredation, (aside from the fact that Scientific American has ben degraded quite ungracefully over the years) the issue of analog degeradation and visual perception is something I could talk for some time about. I think part of the key to it is that degredation of an analog signal is similar to the degradation of vision we experince in "real life"- fog, snow, swirling dust, myopia, etc. The kind of freezing and pixelating that we experience with digital breakup has no correspondence in our natural vision, aside from possibly some types of hallucinations. So we find it especially jarring.
They were all in love with dyin'
They were drinking from a fountain
That was pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Rob, that's very interesting! I have been speculating that spending so much time looking at the computer screen makes my brain more "thirsty" for art that deals with digital visual forms. I find Monica Tap's new paintings (currently on view at KWAG) extremely satisfying partly because she has included pixellation as part of her lexicon with a great deal of finesse, mixing it in with with other visual effects more historically traditional to painting such as optical colour mixing and big brush strokes. Also recently I saw a projected video work by a young artist at U of Guelph named Chris Faulkner that has extremely satisfying pixels. There are lots and lots of artists who use pixels, of course, but only sometimes do the pixels seem to carry exactly the connotation and depth that my eyes-brain seems to crave.
Also, new topic: I keep thinking about those "what's missing from the picture puzzles" as "inverse animation". Our brain seems pretty determined to provide analog experience, which is why we can watch a flipping set of stills and perceive motion. The article about graceful degredation goes on to say:
Analog TV transmits a complete picture 30 times a second, a lavish waste of bandwidth from a digital perspective. Digital compression, on the other hand, is based on the premise that it is only necessary to transmit reference frames and intermittent changes. That is how the same 6 MHz allocated to a single analog TV channel can accomodate up to six standard definition digital channels or perhaps one HDTV channel.
I read this and it sounds like animation to me...but I don't know enough about digital compression to verify if that analogy is valid. They go on:
But it also explains why momentary signal losses can be so disruptive to DTV reception. Without the luxury of analog redundancy, a DTV set may freeze up on the last reference frame it received, or the picture may break into a less than gorgeous mosaic or just go black. There is nothing graceful about any of those glitches, especially if they happen as the killer is revealed during a crime show.
I happen to be the kind of person who relishes glitch-art, so I might not agree totally with this last bit. Also I do take Rob's point that this kind of signal failure is less familiar and therefore more disruptive. But I aslo suspect we might get used to it pretty quick.
The analogy to animation is actually good- think of the reference frame as the background cel, you draw it once per scene, then animate anything that changes between frames, until the background changes, and then you have to draw a whole new background. The compression level determines how much of a change in the scene you need for a redraw, so different compression levels would look something like:
Classic Disney-->Classic Warner Brothers--->Hanna Barbera---->Transformers
One of the pleasures of looking at animated classics is all that economy.
Why do pixels alway have to be square? It gets a bit boring.
Pixels have to be square. Our society is not advanced enought for the round pixel- it's apparently one of the most terrifying things to behold:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iandraz/384278235/in/pool-make/
Rob that's hilarious. Round...pixels...must...defuse...aaaaugh....
|
Today I went to the ministry of health to update my OHIP card. The guy at the counter noted that our birthdays are very close together and that we both have a watershed birthday coming up this spring. "I don't care," he said, "you're only as old as you feel." Then, when he took my picture he said, "Is that one okay with you?" I shrugged "sure." It's not like I sit around staring at my OHIP card. Then he said, "even with the frizzy hair?" Then he said, "it's winter hair." Then he said, "I know that feeling." Then he said, "not that I have any hair." Then he said, "I'd rather have frizzy hair than no hair." I was pretty much done with saying things, myself, so I left. Which is all by way of introduction to my new favourite phrase: Which has deposed my old favourite phrase: Here's what the current issue of Scientific American says about graceful degredation in their article on the broadcast transition to digital tv: Being of a fairly murky mindset I find myself quite comfortable in the fringe reception areas. I grew up in the country without cable and spent a lot of time staring at something-less-than-completely-random TV snow that teased me with rare decipherable images hinting at the storyline of Battlestar Galactica. I'd rather have a fuzzy winter broadcast than no broadcast at all.
- sally mckay 2-09-2007 3:07 am
- L.M. 2-09-2007 3:21 am
- sally mckay 2-09-2007 3:34 am
...but he was trapped by circumstance...getting an OHIP card replaced is like entering the film Brazil....a very scary experience.....
- mister anchovy (guest) 2-09-2007 5:59 am
I hated turning thirty, forty felt like a breath of fresh air, fifty a lot less cool. Boomers are famous for not wanting to age, but I bet no other generation is (or was) particularly keen to do it.
- galenagalaxian 2-09-2007 6:27 am
Whenever people stress about turning 40, I tell them about this guy:
http://www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/excellence/bio/forest.asp
After meeting him, I kinda re-calibrated how I felt about turning 40.
As for graceful degredation, (aside from the fact that Scientific American has ben degraded quite ungracefully over the years) the issue of analog degeradation and visual perception is something I could talk for some time about. I think part of the key to it is that degredation of an analog signal is similar to the degradation of vision we experince in "real life"- fog, snow, swirling dust, myopia, etc. The kind of freezing and pixelating that we experience with digital breakup has no correspondence in our natural vision, aside from possibly some types of hallucinations. So we find it especially jarring.
- rob (guest) 2-09-2007 4:52 pm
- bill 2-09-2007 5:25 pm
Rob, that's very interesting! I have been speculating that spending so much time looking at the computer screen makes my brain more "thirsty" for art that deals with digital visual forms. I find Monica Tap's new paintings (currently on view at KWAG) extremely satisfying partly because she has included pixellation as part of her lexicon with a great deal of finesse, mixing it in with with other visual effects more historically traditional to painting such as optical colour mixing and big brush strokes. Also recently I saw a projected video work by a young artist at U of Guelph named Chris Faulkner that has extremely satisfying pixels. There are lots and lots of artists who use pixels, of course, but only sometimes do the pixels seem to carry exactly the connotation and depth that my eyes-brain seems to crave.
Also, new topic: I keep thinking about those "what's missing from the picture puzzles" as "inverse animation". Our brain seems pretty determined to provide analog experience, which is why we can watch a flipping set of stills and perceive motion. The article about graceful degredation goes on to say:
I read this and it sounds like animation to me...but I don't know enough about digital compression to verify if that analogy is valid. They go on:
I happen to be the kind of person who relishes glitch-art, so I might not agree totally with this last bit. Also I do take Rob's point that this kind of signal failure is less familiar and therefore more disruptive. But I aslo suspect we might get used to it pretty quick.
- sally mckay 2-09-2007 6:13 pm
The analogy to animation is actually good- think of the reference frame as the background cel, you draw it once per scene, then animate anything that changes between frames, until the background changes, and then you have to draw a whole new background. The compression level determines how much of a change in the scene you need for a redraw, so different compression levels would look something like:
Classic Disney-->Classic Warner Brothers--->Hanna Barbera---->Transformers
- rob (guest) 2-09-2007 11:28 pm
One of the pleasures of looking at animated classics is all that economy.
- L.M. 2-09-2007 11:33 pm
Why do pixels alway have to be square? It gets a bit boring.
- ...g 2-10-2007 6:55 am
Pixels have to be square. Our society is not advanced enought for the round pixel- it's apparently one of the most terrifying things to behold:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iandraz/384278235/in/pool-make/
- rob (guest) 2-11-2007 8:23 pm
Rob that's hilarious. Round...pixels...must...defuse...aaaaugh....
- sally mckay 2-11-2007 9:51 pm