Week 15, Christmas holiday (week 2)
Wednesday 27/12/06
Today I went to video record Samir Malik, an Islamic artist, with a great talent as well as personal sharp, really warm and welcoming brother, I felt the true Islamic brother hood in him. (may Allah reward him).
The interview went well, although I didn’t have University camera, but I I took my small digital camera, something that I realized that it has 16 bit sound quality, while the university one has 12 bit. Although the 16 bit sound quality is better than 12 bit, the 12 bit allows you to do recording on separate channels so that the original audio can be left on the tape while new audio (eg music and narration) can be added without erasing the original sound, which makes it more preferable in my case.
Anyway I did finish recording and I’m hoping to do editing at University first week back (inshaAllah).
Example of Samir Malik’s work
Source ( http://www.samirmalik.com )
He inspired me with some of his ideas on how to make kids interested into Islamic art, what sort of approach does he take when doing workshop for kids.
Story telling was one of the important element that he used, the history of these different calligraphic forms, how they relate to the history of development of the Islamic empire, how almost every culture formed their own unique form of Arabic writing, while all maintained to have the same meaning, the thing that unified all Muslims (the Arabic language that was used in the writing of the Quran, praying, and almost all forms of worship).
Week 15: Christmas holiday (week 2)
Tuesday 26 December 2006
It is hard to envision that a week has already gone. On Sunday I called Samir Malik, a calligraphy artist which his details was sent to me by Taslim., prior to my email asking him to grand me a video interview. He sounded very friendly and apologiesed for not responding to my emails. He promised to email me within coming two days.
Today I received email from him, telling me that he doesn’t mind at all, and agreed to meet me tomorrow, and I will be video recording the interview. Although I don’t have advanced video equipment, but I will take the risk and do it, wish me luck.
Week14:Christmas holiday (week 1)
Thursday 14th December 2006
I’m very grateful to Allah, presentation went well for me yesterday and although I was tired, later that day I did some work on my 3d assignment.
Now I have to focus on doing all the other contents of my site. First I have to make final decisions on following:
- What exactly I will be putting there?, what am I going to be making? What others will be contributing?
- Make sure to ask contributors and make clear how are they going to make their contribution
- Start doing my part
Sunday 17th December 2006
On Friday I received answers from Ruh Visual Dhikr (Islamic artist) then later that day I had a phone call from Taslim (artist) apologizing for not being able to finish questionnaire on time.
Today I remembered an artists name that his work was displayed on the gallery in Bradford, his name was “Haji Noor Deen Mi Guangjiang” he is from china, but he did really a great work of calligraphy with a Chinese theme.
Example of his work.
source: Cartwright Hall art gallery at Bradford
I sent him an email with the list of questionnaire and I hope he reply to me soon inshaAllah.
Week 13: 3rd week of project week
First video interview now is done.
Sunday 10th December
My trip to Bradford on Saturday was very long and tiring, however rewarding. On Friday I went early morning to Brunel University to borrow all stuff needed for conducting an interview. I borrowed camera, camcorder, boom mice, blue screen and a reflector. After I came home and finished everyday chore, I started doing some work on the project. Later I confirmed the trip with my brother who was going to drive me and a friend who was going to accompany us. I just realized a little while ago that its past 2 in the morning, and I had to wake up really early on Saturday, as the exhibition was starting at one.
In order to be there on time, I needed to at least 4 hours traveling. And also had to remember the following:
Take Equipments
Make sure that batteries are charged
Take DV tapes
A copy of the questionnaire
And be clear of what I want to ask.
We got lost, but eventually found the place before 1, which was good. Different Islamic artists work were on display, but only two of these artists were in the gallery at that time. I conducted a video interview with Mohammed Ali and then later with Mahmud Manning.
After the interview, Mohammed Ali gave a small talk on Islamic art and his way of becoming Islamic artist. The whole thing finished around 4.30. as we were new to the city of Bradford we didn’t know were to find halal restaurant, Mohammed Ali recommended one for us which was really excellent we all enjoyed the food the environment. After the food we head back home to London, we arrived after 11, but i dint reach home until 12.
I was happy the other day that I made some progress and I actually started on the content of the final artifact. on Sunday, I started preparing for the presentation, just making sure that I’m aware of what I want to do and how I will be doing it.
While capturing the video I came across Xillysoft software that convert video to 3GP format to be used on mobile phones.
This is a really helpful technique as I will be able to share the video that I will be putting on my site with wider audience, especially with the growing popularity of 3G phones. I did an experiment short clip which was good.
On Monday I curried on preparing for the presentation, while doing my work my hard drive fell on the floor and didn’t work. I felt a great feeling of panic and despair, but then remembering allah removed all these feelings. I went to Rob “university colleague” to have a look at it. He was not sure whether it can be repaired, but my trust in Allah was big and luckily while Rob was saying “no way it done this time, you lost everything”, I kept praying deep inside me, and allah made it work.
I went back home in the afternoon all filled with gratitude to Allah for his mercy and continued on my work.
Tuesday, today i went to University to return video equipment, and now i try to finish putting presentation together, wish me luck.
Week12:Friday 8th December 2006;
On Thursday night, I amended the questionnaire then emailed one copy to Tasnim and another to Ian Whiteman (Islamic artists).
Tonight finally I managed to make up my mind on the choice of my final artifact;
Which is:
A dynamic educational website for kids to learn about Islamic art and culture.
After numerous brainstorming sessions, I have settled on a project idea. However, once I was happy with my chosen idea I started to analyse and document it in order to overcome any doubts or confusions later on and to be able to highlight everything that I will need and how i will go about in achieving them. Also, I will be able to refer back and chart my progress against the following aims and objectives.
To help me with this process I asked my self the following objective questions;
- Why a website and not any other multimedia artifact?
- Why educational or dynamic and not just static website?
- Why kids and not other groups?
My answers to the above questions are;
Why a website and not any other multimedia artifact?
A particular advice that always crossed my mind whenever I sat down to choose a project was: “don’t just make a website?”. This advice was given by some of our lecturers on a number of times when guiding students in assignment projects. This somewhat discouraged me and it always gave me the impression that to make a web site for my final year project is unwise or somehow unworthy. I can understand their reservation in creating “just” a website because nowadays anyone can set up a website in few minute with the help of ready-made templates and graphical user interfaces that eliminates the need to know the intrinsic coding, even an eight year olds can create a website sometimes in no time.
However, when I thought of it deeply and asked my self the following questions, I came to the conclusion that I can adopt as a final year project a website as the main multimedia yet neutralizing my lecturers’ reservations.
First of these two questions I pondered on was does the website that is created by, lets inexperienced person or even nine or eight years old, comply to web standards, can it be read by a colour blind or totally blind people? Does it use anything like CSS or xml? The issue of web compliance is a major issue today where web content is no longer viewed through a graphical web browser. Web Standards, such as that of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) ensures that web content can be read or interpreted by assistive technologies, such as voice browsers and the like, used by the disabled and also by other viewing agents such as text only browser, mobile phones, multimedia players used by choice.
The second question was, does having a website as a medium or as an artifact serve my aim and objective? If yes then no need to go for an alternative.
I went back to analyse my aim and objectives;
Aims:
To make people particularly young kids learn about Islamic art and culture, in order to bridge gab and build a better way of coexistence.
Objectives:
To carry out a thorough research to find out how did this art developed, when and where did it start, the stages and evolution that went through
- What does Islamic art cover, its types and subtypes, and the distinguishing characters of each type.
- To find out what is the religion of Islam, when and how did start, what are the most unique characters of it?
- Who are Muslims where they live and what do they believe and who do they warship?
- To explore in details the most highly valued form of Islamic art; Arabic calligraphy
- To show or share with people from all background Muslims and non Muslims equally Islamic art and culture.
- To promote the Islamic art and culture through interactive stimulating media artifact
- To enhance my understanding and knowledge in different multimedia fields as well as learn new skills.
Sharing of information to bridge the gab, can be through a dynamic website, where kids can share their own art work with other kids. Through the site, kids will be able to post their art work and will be added to the database, then each week some of these work will be displayed. Different Artist will post new technique or idea for creating some new Islamic art. Young kids will be able to post any questions they would like to ask about Muslims and their culture and will be answered by Muslim scholars.
While exploring the art and culture of Muslims through video, text, audio and online interactive activities, I will be achieving my objectives of enhancing my multimedia skills and learning new others.
Through the creations of a website that meats web standard rules, will help me learn new programs such as Xml, and CSS.
Looking at my aims and objectives, I realized that creating a website will definitely is the solution for my problem;
Why educational, or dynamic and not just aesthetic website?
Dynamic educational website are visited more often than aesthetic website, also will allow sharing of information. Further more, I will be increasing my web skills in SQL and PHP.
Why kids and not other groups?
For the following reasons:
1. I believe that kids are the seeds of every nation, therefore, if they have a better understanding of one another, will be growing into more tolerant adult who coexist and live together in harmony.
2. Most kids are passionate about art, colouring, tracing etc, this was build on my own observation on kids as a mother and Arabic teacher.
3. A very high percentage of Muslim children are ignorant about their culture.
After being sure about the artifact, I asked my self isn’t there any website that educate children about Islamic art and culture?
Through my research and background as an Arabic teacher, i came across many site that was intended for Muslims children only, with poor design. I also found a lot of website about Islamic art and culture but not appealing to kids.
islamweb.net/kidsen
Friday continue
From this stage I started concentrating on what contents I will be displaying on the site?
What will be the structure of the site?
Colour theme and template or layout?
How am I going to make it, using flash only?, mixture of flash and html or html only?
What I will be need learning and what i know and have to start doing it?
Write a time table how and when to accomplishing each task.
Contents:
- Information about Islam and Muslim culture.(text)
- projector small information with audio
- interactive learning programs in flash
- motion animation in flash
Week12: Second Week of Project Week
Monday 4th/12/2006
Two weeks ago when I started on the advanced action script, I was very excited, but then after only few lessons, I found that I it was becoming harder and harder and was losing track. As a result I decided that I should have a closer look at what I want to do, my aim and objectives, the possible artifact that could serve these, and be achievable within the time constraint.
By having a closer look at my initial idea, which was to create a screen play using action script and flash, I realized that it didn’t fully serve my aim and objectives. However a web site will do.
As a result, I highlighted what would I need for that, and I realized that I would need to learn some web standard tool such as CSS. I obtained a tutorial and started learning.
Early morning Monday I went to Amar’s office, and explained my progress and all the difficulty that I came across during the month of November. He was pleased to find that, I handled the difficulty that faced me learning action script by changing my way to something else. Changing my artifact didn’t mean that I will not use action script at all, in fact I will make use of the basic action script that I learned and combine it with other interactive multimedia such as video, audio, motion and as medium I will use the web.
On Tuesday evening, I called Tasnim (Islamic artist), although I was hoping to conduct a video interview, she agreed on a vice interview and apparently she doesn’t feel comfortable being filmed. However she offered her help, and said she could forward the questionnaire and interview request to all the Islamic artist which she knows.
Mohammed Ali also called me on that day and he seemed a very concerned man, and I confirmed with him my visit on Saturday9th.
Week 11: First Week of Project 3 weeks finished
Friday 1/12/06
Yesterday I emailed Abdillatif Ian
Dear Sir;
Thank you for your response, I was very pleased to read your email this morning, but i just realized after re-reading it that you said i should call before Wednesday and today is Wednesday.
Therefore, I was hoping if you would allow me to call on Friday or any other day, as I will be at university tomorrow,
Kind regards
Unfortunately, this is how he replied
But still he was happy to do a text interview which is kind of him.
After the lecture on that same day, I went to Amar’s office, to discuss my progress with him around 1.40, but couldn’t find him in his office, he told me before, that every Thursday he will be in his office between 2-3 and I don’t need to make an appointment, but because I finished lecture early I just thought I might find him. I went to prayer then came back to see him, but was not lucky again as he was talking to some people, their meeting was quite long, I waited iinfront of his room for almost 25 minute, until 3.08, I decided to go home. I think next time I should tell him in advance.
At night I made a phone call to aerosol Arabic artist (Mohammed Ali), he was very friendly and willing to help, however he was moving house, but he suggested for me to go to Bradford on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th December as he will be exhibiting with other artists.
After the call he emailed me with an attachment of Saturday event details
After his email I emailed him back asking him more details about Friday event.
On that same day I called Tranquil artist (Taslim Rashid) after her email;
She was not able to talk to me but informed me that she will be calling on Sunday hopefully when it is more convenient for her.
After not being able to talk to Amar, I decided to email him the report and discuss with him on Monday when I see him.
