Source Code Designer Talks With High School Creative Class

The Pasadena, Calif., resident and his girlfriend, Sandra Plazinic, spent Thursday at the high school with the students of Cunningham's former English teacher, Ginger Dunker. The son of Mary and Frank Cunningham of Aiken, Matt works as a freelance art designer, primarily for the automotive and film industries. His work in "G.I. Joe 2," starring Bruce Willis, will be seen next summer. Cunningham provided the design of a tank and several weapons. Such major feature films have their own art teams plus contract personnel such as Cunningham.

"I was always drawing as a child," he said. "I took some classes in painting and figure-drawing before going off to Pratt Institute in New York. I got a second bachelor's degree in transportation design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena." Dunker teaches creative writing and is the adviser for "Calliope," the award-winning literacy magazine at South Aiken. She recently started a digital visual literacy class, and Cunningham fit in especially well with those students. "Matt does amazing work and is extremely talented," Dunker said. "It's always an honor when he comes to talk to the kids. He goes to show that if you're determined, reaching your dreams can be achieved."

Steven Spielberg Talks Robopocalypse

‘G.I. Joe: Retaliation’ - Bruce Willis Takes Command

When the first film in the franchise, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” arrived in theaters in 2009, di Bonaventura heard from plenty of confused people — the common link was that most had grown up in the 1960s or 1970s when G.I. Joe was a brand name synonymous with the 12-inch-tall military-man toy that introduced the term “action figure.” They were all unaware of the 1980s reinvention of the brand — in Marvel Comics, toys and animation — that used G.I. Joe as the code name for an elite, high-tech military force.

“One of the things that everybody kept asking was, ‘Who is Joe?’ Most of us who didn’t grow up with the comic books or the animated series hear the name and think of a single person, not a group,” di Bonaventura said. “People who did grow up with those comics think of it as a plural… I was someone who grew up with the action figures, so when I saw the animated series I was like, ‘What the hell is this?’ That wasn’t the Joe in my imagination.”

Viewing that schism as a story opportunity, the new movie melds the mythology of different eras by presenting G.I. Joe both as a group and as an individual. Veteran action star Bruce Willis joins the franchise as General Joseph B. Colton, the “original G.I. Joe,” and a character that actually appeared a few times in the later issues of Marvel’s military tales. Now the character moves to the very center of the on-screen universe.

“In this movie putting a face on who Joe is — in Bruce Willis — and that idea of having the original Joe is great for the audience that doesn’t know the Joe of the 1980s but knows the Joe of the 1960s and 1970s,” di Bonaventura said. “There’s a combination of these things coming together in a really great way.”

Willis joins Dwayne Johnson as the two major cast additions. Channing Tatum, meanwhile, returns as Duke and shares the screen with Adrianne Palicki, Ray Park, Ray Stevenson and RZA.

“We have a couple of advantages: Channing is a bigger star [than he was when the first was released], Bruce is a well-established star and Rock is a well-established star,” di Bonaventura said. “That’s a big advantage over the first movie. That positions us in a way that we can say to the audience that we’re trying for a certain kind of film.”

The arrival of Johnson is interesting — the former ballplayer and wrestler seems to be in a phase of his career where he specializes in late arrivals by jumping on moving franchises to add muscle to their sequels. It worked in “Fast Five” and now he’s doing it with ”Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” and the new “G.I Joe.”

“He literally is bigger than life and I think that helps in this kind of large-scale adventure — sometimes it’s an advantage to be small and sometimes it’s an advantage to be big,” di Bonaventura said. ”In this world having the sort of physical capacity he has — on top of the ability to deliver the humor — that’s a great combination for the franchise. It’s great because [the series has] found the right tone and I think that’s so much about what the challenge of a franchise is now — finding the right tone. One of the things we talked a great deal about is that when someone gets punched, you feel the punch. It was one of the guiding principles of it. We really wanted you to feel the muscularity of the franchise, which exists in the comic books and the animated episodes. At the same time we wanted to hold on to the tongue-in-cheek humor.”

Perhaps, but the franchise has to hope that new director Jon M. Chu (“Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” “Step-Up 3D”) can take the place of demolition expert Stephen Sommers, a director with far more experience when it comes to effects-laden projects (“The Mummy” and “Scorpion King” franchises). The first movie grossed more than $302 million and that will be both a boon and a challenge to the newcomer, but di Bonaventura says the new recruit is ready for his tour of duty.

“He’s come to this with a certain delight in dealing with the characters,” the producer said of the 32-year-old director. “Because Jon grew up with this in his DNA, there’s a confidence that he has shown as a director that shows in the film; an understanding of these [characters] that the fans are going to appreciate as well.”

Source Code: An engrossing, entertaining thriller

Captain Colters (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in a train to Chicago, inside a body he does not identify before a woman (Michelle Monaghan) he does not know.

In the midst of his confusion the train blows up. He wakes up in a cold cockpit like cell and is told that the train he was on actually blew up in the morning and he was actually in a simulation generated from the eight minute residual memory scraped from the brains of the dead inserted into a programme called the source code. His job is to find the bomber and get clues to prevent another bombing in the city.

But every time he goes back into the eight minute loop, he fails to find who planted the bomb, even as he falls in love with the woman before him.

At the face of it, the film takes its source code from a host of other movies and series, most obviously 'Groundhog Day' to 'Deja Vu' to the TV series 'Quantum Leap' and every time-travel movie you have seen.

And that is obvious since the film also picks up generous servings from other films like 'Tron', 'Matrix', 'Minority Report', among others. Yet, where it succeeds is in not looking like any one of these films. Despite many source, 'Source Code' has a code of its own.

The film handles its different genres well. Yet, at its source, it's a love story. The sci-fi and thriller bit is more like a sugar coating on an already very sweet pill.

For a film about time, a director's grasp of this dimension is key to its success. And it is to director Duncan Jones' credit, who has earlier given the brilliant but underrated 'Moon', that he handles key moments extremely well.

And just like the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, he has a mastery of both mystery and cinematic time - speeding it up and slowing it down as the audiences watch the film at his mercy.

The script by debutant Ben Ripley is brilliant in its handling of various mysteries. Thus while our protagonist is busy figuring out the bomber, the audience is busy figuring who he is. Not sagging even for a moment in its 93-minute duration, 'Source Code' is an achievement of a writer and his director working in perfect harmony.

There are, however, a few discrepancies in the logic of its sci-fi bits. If the explosion blew up all the passengers, you wonder where the brains to tap into them to recreate the last eight minutes were found. Also the logic given by the bomber is extremely simplistic.

The ending and the creation of a universe might also jar for a few audiences. However, enough foreshadowing of it is done earlier in the film when Colters is shown connecting to the world outside the train compartment in his stipulated eight minutes, especially to connect with his father's image inside the source code. Yet, even if you consider them aberrations, they are minor ones in an otherwise stellar effort.

It’s Time for Cities to Favor People, Not Cars

That was the message transportation planner Timothy Papandreou brought to "Expanding the Vision of Sustainable Mobility," a symposium sponsored by the Art Center College of Design. The school could be called the Harvard of transportation design, and two-day conference drew experts in fields as varied as urban planning and aerospace engineering to discuss where the future of mobility lies.

Papandreou called for an end to "state, federal, and local land use policies that are literally forcing people to have to drive" and told Wired.com we’re on the cusp of an inevitable "mode shift" away from individual car ownership toward a greater reliance on mass transit and sustainable transport.

"We’re already at that crossroads," he said.

Papandreou is a former transportation planning manager for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and he’s currently with the San Francisco Municipal Railway, so he’s got some idea what he’s talking about when he says too many big cities favor cars over people.

"There’s this cycle of automobile dependency," he said. "You have to have a place to park at home, a place to park at work, and a place to park at retail establishments." In an absurd "market distortion," cities have become places where "cars have a right to housing and people don’t."

That distortion, he says, is the result of years of increasing capacity for automobiles and shifting funds away from alternative forms of transportation. It’s brought us to the point where most Americans consider automobile ownership an essential key to a productive, fulfilling life. Papandreou suggests a sea change in how we view personal mobility.

Car-friendly policies have created a "carbon shadow" that vehicles can’t escape — the result of "all of the regional consequences of all these policies and collective actions," he says. Instead of the "manufactured value" of personal car ownership, we should adopt "demand management" by creating disincentives for driving that will, in turn, encourage people to walk, ride mass transit, carpool and use other means of getting around.

In Papandreou’s eyes, freeways are wasted space. Consider this: 200 people can jam the I-405 riding along in 177 cars (the average ratio). Or they could use just two lanes in three city buses, or have plenty of personal space around them if they rode bikes.

"All that road space could become something else," he said, stressing that the only way to achieve that vision is with a total "eco rehab" that avoids the sort of ineffective piecemeal programs that only survive due to their political popularity. The Obama Administration’s economic stimulus package could be a first step toward that future.

"It’s a down payment to a massive mortgage," Papandreou said. "I’m hoping that the stimulus gets the ball rolling."

Rendering and visualization of the South Pasadena metropolitan area in 2050 by Matthew Cunningham, a student at the Art Center College of Design. Used with permission.

L.A. Design Challenge 2007 - Mazda Motonari RX

There’s still folks in the auto industry’s blue sky labs who know how to dream big…

Paul Raven - Futurismic.com

Abstract

The year is 2057 and sheet metal is dead. Form is no longer constrained by tooling methodologies or material properties. Molecular engineering and rapid prototyping have supplanted the 200 year-old paradigm of the factory. Production assemblages are non-local and distribution of output is completely efficient due to interspersed molecular assemblers. The economic domination of the robotics industry coupled with advancements in ubiquitous computing and artificial intelligence have accelerated and shortened automotive production cycles to one week. Individual vehicle costs have been driven to below C.3500 ($5000 U.S. -2007 equivalent) and on average weigh 200 lbs. Accident Avoidance Systems have eliminated traffic accidents and fatalities. People still manage to get speeding tickets.

Design Method (General)

Humans (and robots) need structure, and the establishment of a structural narrative for the design process is essential to the successful marketing of a product line in the compost heap of mid-21st century design. As aesthetic tolerances have been broadened over the last thirty years of local-rapid-production, the cohesiveness of the narrative with relation to the design methodology has become a point of philosophical dissertation, public discussion, and civic pride. Due to massive increases in computational power and neuro-aesthetics, creative abstraction is the last bastion of human intelligence and has yet to be outperformed by A.I., since it is essentially a qualitative skill based on random interpolation. As a result, well- developed, human designed logic systems garner a high premium globally and are essentially proprietary. They also guarantee the greatest market saturation, since a large portion of the human population are not cyborgs and typically boycott A.I. designed logic systems. (Creativity Preservation Act of 2037).

Weirdness Factor ( 1 - I could buy that today, 10 - OMG WTF ): 9

John Neff - Autoblog.com

Design Method (MotoNari RX)

In 1589 Mori Motonari founded Hiroshima, literally ‘wide island’ on a broad delta on the Ota River. Nearly 500 years later, Mazda introduces the Motonari RX, a high-performance exo-skeletal conveyance. The pervasive use of cellular design methods and the heightening of civic pride both actual and virtual, has led to the practice of naming industrial products after local, famous personalities. ‘Moto’ translates to ‘origin’ while ‘Nari’ translates to ‘be’ or ‘to be composed of’ which inherently describes the precise process used for the vehicle. The base cell of the MotoNari RX is the ‘M’ from the Mazda logo. This core form is than combined with itself and multiplied to develop the construct, resulting in a vehicle whose physical make-up is an aggregate of the origin shape, the precise condition which MotoNari describes. Moto may also be translated as ‘manner of movement’ indicating the kinesthetic characteristics of the vehicle which mirror those of the occupant or driver as an extension of the body. And finally, there is the traditional association of Moto being an abbreviation of motor tying into the transfer of kinetic energy from the movements of the driver into an auxillary source of energy for the vehicle, making the driver a contributing source of locomotion, in effect being the motor.

Performance (Mechanical)

The goal of the Motonari RX is to non-invasively integrate the driver with the vehicle to the extent where they become indistinguishable from one another. This represents the quintessence of the driving experience and is a natural outgrowth of Mazda’s Zoom-Zoom slogan of the early 21st century. Rapid advancements in the fields of robotics, haptic interface, virtual reality, and material sciences over the past fifty years have made this goal a reality even without the use of neural implants.

Peter Ragonetti, Sachin Jadhav and 91,438 others like this.

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The racing suit is the primary interface between the occupant and the vehicle. It contains millions of microscopic actuators which function as a haptic envelope, allowing the driver to experience the road psycho-somatically, while receiving electrical stimulation to specific muscle groups from the on-board A.I. guidance system (or other remotely located users) in order to pilot the vehicle optimally. The vehicle shape is anthropomorphic, not an uncommon feature in the mid 21st century, although Mazda pioneered this concept as early as 2035. This enables topographical sensory correspondence between regions of the vehicle and the occupant body. The driver will literally experience the elements, if he/she/it chooses to. Conversely artificial sensory algorithms or the built in anticipatory neuro-aesthetic OS may be used depending on personal environmental preferences.

The users line of site is keyed in directly to the holographic camera array located on the top of the vehicle which mimics head movements and focal lengths. The input is than directly fed into an immersive holographic projection which gives the driver the impression that he is the vehicle, and indeed, the vehicle feels as though it is the driver.

Someone needs to go to Art school! Atrocious!

Ron - Concept-Supercars.com

The entire structure of the vehicle is comprised of a 100% re-prototypable, carbon nano-tube/shape memory alloy weave with a photovoltaic coating. This enables programmable tensegrity and fluid movement while insuring efficient energy transfer to the in-wheel electro-static nanomotors. These nanomotors are organized in a hierarchical system known as ‘epicyclic’ or ‘planetary gearing’, where the mechanical advantage is multiplied from the frictionless nano to the macro scale. The vehicle’s photovoltaic coating topographically resembles a lotus flower, which prevents the accumulation of dirt, water, or anything else on the surface, a condition known as the lotus-effect

The four omni-wheels facilitate 360 degrees of movement and further optimize driving performance via a programmable treadcone tm . This wheel feature enables expansion of the tread grip and contact patch while also functioning as the primary absorber of vibration. The vibrational energy is dampened, than converted to electricity through the piezo-electrical effect and transmitted directly to the in-wheel motors. Vehicle acceleration and direction is determined by two armrest mounted control points which consist of two parts, an envelope and trigger. The envelope surrounds the majority of the hand and is responsible for directional orientation, the trigger is similar to a bicycle brake only it controls acceleration. Occupant positioning controls the effectiveness of cornering and is comparable to street luge maneuvering in appearance.

Has Terminator taught us nothing?!

Alex55030 - Mazda6Club.com

Performance (Psycho-Social)

MotoNari RX is the flagship terrestial conveyance of Mazda. It is a multi-layered extension of the occupant both physically and socially. The physical nature of operating the vehicle provides a full-body workout with adjustable resistance settings, a welcomed innovation in the otherwise sedentary lifestyle of the mid-21st century. Conversely, if the operator wishes to operate his PRP (personal roving presence), either at home or in the office, his physical and perceptual connections are disconnected from the vehicle and rerouted to the desired construct. The vehicle enters it’s ‘passive mode’ folding in it’s appendages and dramatically reducing it’s footprint. Environmental conditions within the vehicle are suitably adjusted to reflect the appropriate location and the vehicle goes into autopilot.

Multiple exterior modifications to the vehicle both structural and superficial are utilized to describe the occupant's place of residence or affiliations as civic pride has all but supplanted that of the Nation-State. This is applied specifically to the MotoNari via direct analogy to Samurai armor which contains many such features. The kuwagata of military helmets were used to represent individuals , while the ‘mon’ is equivocal to the European family crest and was often displayed on the sashimono, a small banner worn by individual soldiers. Both of these elements have been integrated into the MotoNari RX to better facilitate individual expression, while also emphasizing the honorable history of the city of Hiroshima. Persons wishing to purchase the MotoNari RX simply subscribe to the anthropic Performance Package which includes the base material for construction by a local molecular assembler, as well as 10 iterations annually. Reconstitution time is approximately three hours and based on availability. Personal kuwagata included.

Now, this here is what we call next-level thinking.

Mike Spinelli - Jalopnik.com