Hi there. Tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your name, where are you from, how do you spend your time?
I’m Hugh Fisher (or Hugo if you’re French, Spanish, or Italian and rightly appalled by English spelling and pronunciation). I’ve lived most of my life in Canberra, Australia. I’ve been playing around with computer graphics for one purpose or another since the days of the Apple 2, and occasionally manage to get paid for doing so. Outside of that I draw, read a lot, and play tabletop roleplaying games. When I want to be a bit more active, I’m doing casual jogging, archery, or ultimate frisbee.
What are some of your favorite sci-fi interfaces (Other than in Johnny Mnemonic)? (And why?)
I’m a sucker for old school monochrome text and wireframes, so Alien and Aliens, Star Wars: A New Hope, and classic Battlestar Galactica. And not just the graphics, but also the physical keys, sliders, and joysticks—none of your shiny smooth glass. For color and animation, the BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Strangely, I’m also fond of the very modern full body gestural interfaces seen in Iron Man and Ender’s Game.
Why did you decide to review Johnny Mnemonic in particular?
Because I’m a William Gibson fan and interested in virtual reality. It’s a terrible film, but I’ve always liked the presentation of a futuristic VR Internet. More about this when we get into the film…
What was your biggest surprise when doing the review?
The number of different interfaces and devices was one—I had no idea how much work I’d inadvertently signed up for. I was also surprised to realise that an awful lot of the film makes no sense at all if you haven’t read everything by William Gibson.
What else are you working on?
I’m building up a toolkit of Python code for 3D graphics and the Microsoft Kinect for a couple of artistic/fun interactive projects. I’m also drawing science fictional sheep, and learning about the new edition of the Paranoia RPG.
Hell yeah a fellow Gibson fan. Yeah, the movie is so not the short story but man they did Jonesy right on. The rest ick, except as you pointed out the Matrix is awesome in the film.
As to the work load, that my friends is why I have yet to do my comparison and review of ROBOCOP, which dohave some nifty UI in them.
So, welcome to the party pal.
Looking onward to the review.
Thanks Craig.
I hope you’ll have a go at discussing RoboCop for us. I’ve been complaining about how much work I had to do for Johnny Mnemonic, but I was the one who picked a movie all about futuristic computer hacking!
I’ve only seen the original RoboCop but from memory it didn’t have nearly as many different systems. And I’d love to read a user interface design analysis of ED-209 🙂 It’s not too challenging and definitely satisfying.
Well, been…okay am still pretty messed by illness and I keep forgetting that these reviews usually are broken into parts, whereas I had been thinking of it as one whole chunk.
That said, while I still favor the original, I am not one of these purist haters, I liked the new one also.
I think the 80s visor was way superior for all its simple low end graphics compared to the newer one. Which is the peeve that even got me started on idea of doing one of these.
Let me see about getting things sorte and maybe I can back to it. And thanks for the encouragement.
Enjoying your series so far.
Pingback: A shout out for sci-fi 3D file systems | Sci-fi interfaces