I’m posting this a bit late, but I wanted to write it properly as a personal record of what I learned and what I actually contributed during the IDP.

This Interdisciplinary Project was built around “University as a Palimpsest” the idea that places hold layers of history, and even when something changes, traces remain. Our brief pushed projection + scanning and the goal was to create a short public-facing experience.

How the idea shifted (and why)

At the start, our group explored three directions:

Dance evolution over time — projecting dance footsteps on the floor as an interactive piece. It sounded fun but quickly felt risky in terms of clarity and control in a public space, so we moved on.

Fashion eras on a mannequin — projection-mapping different fashion eras onto a mannequin, with each era overwriting the last while leaving traces like labels and stitched patterns. I liked the “layering” metaphor here, but we weren’t sure it would read instantly in the exhibition setup.

Fairy town across seasons (final) — the turning point came when we were walking around campus and found a small arrangement of logs that looked like a tiny neighborhood. That discovery made the palimpsest theme feel real: like we were looking at “remains” of something that existed before. That’s when the idea clicked.

Building the palimpsest: seasons as layers

Once the fairy-town idea was chosen, our concept development became much smoother. We used seasonal transformation as the layering method:

Summer (warm, alive)

Autumn (leaf layer, shift in mood)

Winter (snow layer, stillness)

The key was making it feel like a palimpsest, not three separate scenes so we designed it so traces remain (for example: autumn marks still faintly visible under winter). We also added a subtle “university” link through library/book/study cues inside the town, so the theme didn’t drift into pure fantasy.

Concept arts made by one of my team member Linh

My contribution: building the environment across three seasons

My main role was the 3D environment work, and I treated it like a base that could be “re-skinned” into seasons without rebuilding everything from scratch.

1) Summer (base environment)

I started with the summer environment, because that becomes the foundation for everything else. I:

built the buildings to match the concept art proportions and silhouette

created stylised grass using Geometry Nodes

set up bushes and ground dressing that kept the scene readable and not too noisy

This stage was mostly about getting the feel right while staying practical: clean shapes, consistent style, and a scene that would still read well when lit or projected.

2) Autumn (same structure, different world)

For autumn, I reused the same grass and bush setup but shifted it into an autumn palette and scattered some autumn leave around the environment . I liked this part because it proved the “palimpsest” idea visually: the same world is still there, but the season overwrites how it feels.

It was also a good workflow lesson building things procedurally meant I could iterate quickly without destroying what already worked.

3) Winter (procedural snow interacting with the existing setup)

Winter was the most technical (and the most satisfying). I created procedural snow that interacted with the existing geometry and covered the scene from the top down and for the Christmas light feel using curve wire method to produce the wire from and procedurally attaching the lights around the wire all using geometry nodes . The goal wasn’t just “add white everywhere” it was to make the snow feel like it was genuinely sitting on surfaces and collecting naturally.

This was where the environment really became layered. Autumn/summer wasn’t deleted it was buried. That’s basically palimpsest in 3D form.

Final outcome (and why it worked)

In the final stage, the piece came together as a small diorama where the visuals were projected in layers, so the seasonal change felt like overwriting rather than separate scenes. That “layering” is what made it feel like a palimpsest: not a reset, but traces continuing underneath the new surface.

The project was completed and submitted on 11 Feb 2026.

What I learned

The biggest lesson for me was that procedural thinking helps a lot in short projects. Geometry Nodes let me build once and then adapt fast. It also made the seasonal idea stronger, because the same underlying setup could carry multiple “overwrites” without losing consistency.

Reading GTA’s “realism” through Immediacy & Hypermediacy

Source and Significance Blog Post - 4

In this post I focus on one framework-immediacy vs hypermediacy (Bolter & Grusin, 1999)-to track how Grand Theft Auto moved from representing a city to simulating one across GTA III → IV → V → VI (trailer). I’m asking a simple question: when does GTA feel “real,” and why? I argue that early games make the medium disappear (immediacy) through atmosphere and continuity, while later entries show the seams (hypermediacy) phones, radio, HUD, feeds yet still feel real because systems, physics and audio hold the fiction together (Bolter and Grusin, 1999).

Lens

Immediacy tries to erase the interface so we “forget” we’re looking through a medium; hypermediacy calls attention to mediation—windows, overlays, feeds—but can still feel authentic through density and self-awareness (Bolter and Grusin, 1999). I’m applying that lens to the series while noting the engine shift from RenderWare to RAGE, which enabled a move from representational tricks to systemic behaviour (Rockstar Games, 2014).

RenderWare era - GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas

Replaying GTA III (2001), I’m struck by how much realism arrives from continuity and atmosphere: day–night cycles, traffic patterns, ambient radio and weather. Physics are gamey, but the camera, cuts and soundbeds keep the interface out of the way—classic immediacy. Vice City (2002) leans even harder on style—soundtrack, colour, VO—so place and time feel convincing without deeper simulation. San Andreas (2004) scales to a whole state and adds light RPG systems (skills, body stats), nudging towards behaviour, yet the primary sell is still representational: the medium “disappears” behind mood and rhythm.

The pivot RAGE

GTA IV (2008) feels different because bodies and vehicles respond. Euphoria’s procedural animation and Havok physics produce micro-events-scrapes, stumbles, weight shifts-that I negotiate rather than just watch. Paradoxically, this resistance increases immediacy: I’m present because the world pushes back. The city stops being a set and becomes a system; even with visible UI, the feel is immediate (Rockstar Games, 2014).

GTA V (2013) - balancing immediacy and hypermediacy

GTA V keeps systemic credibility but tunes handling for flow. The next-gen first-person mode is textbook immediacy-windshield, head-bob, occluded sirens, and muzzle flash all pull the interface out of mind. Yet V also embraces hypermediacy: smartphones, radio, TV, weapon wheels, map pop-ups. Instead of breaking realism, these layers feel true to a media-saturated Los Santos; dense mediation becomes part of the world’s authenticity (Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Rockstar Games, 2014). I found sound and physics doing the heavy realism lift: traffic layers, room tone, and suspension noise made me believe the street more than texture counts.

Immediacy on tap (FP), with hypermediated layers still in play

GTA VI (trailer) — ambient simulation as hypermediated realism

From the GTA VI trailer, the latest RAGE iteration foregrounds ambient truthfulness: ray-traced lighting and reflections, dense crowds, hair and cloth behaviour, and a camera that feels filmic while surfing highly mediated frames (Digital Foundry, 2023; Rockstar Games, 2023). Even before interaction, scenes read as “on”—neon bounce on chrome, wet sidewalks, social feeds—hypermediated yet convincing because the systems are consistent shot-to-shot.

What I learned

Across the series, GTA’s “real” doesn’t live in pixels alone. Immediacy shows up as continuity, physics and audio that make me forget the interface; hypermediacy shows up as visible media layers that still feel true because cities are saturated with media. The engine shift (RenderWare → RAGE) matters because it lets representation give way to behaviour—the world acts back. For my own work, I’ll A/B the same 20–30s slice in Unreal:

Immediacy pass: HUD-free, FP camera, continuity-first sound mix;

Hypermediacy pass: diegetic phone prompts, signage overlays, radio bed. I’ll log which version peers call “more real” for the task (Bolter and Grusin, 1999).

Reference

Bazin, A. (1967) What is Cinema? Vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bolter, J.D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rockstar Games (2014) ‘Grand Theft Auto V — First-Person Mode and next-gen features’ [News post]. Rockstar Newswire. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Rockstar Games (2023) ‘Grand Theft Auto VI — Trailer 1’ [Video]. Rockstar Games/YouTube. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Digital Foundry (2023) ‘GTA 6 Trailer 1 — Tech analysis’ [Video/article]. Eurogamer / DF YouTube. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE)’. (Accessed: 13 November 2025).

Bat-Signal across Comics, Film & Games

Source and Significance Blog Post - 3

Suddenly a gigantic cone of light pierces the dusk of day and etches an eerie symbol against a black cloud—the silhouette of a giant bat -Detective Comics #60 (1942), DC Comics.

Why the Bat-Signal?

When we covered intertextuality in the lecture, the first thing that hit me was Batman. I’ve read, watched, and played this world across comics, films, the animated series, and the Arkham games—so the motif that surfaced immediately was the Bat-Signal. A single image switches Gotham on in our heads—Gordon’s pact, city in crisis, vigilante en route. Each appearance cites the rest: intertext at a glance.

Intertextuality

Inside the franchise: it instantly loads the Gordon - Batman pact and Gotham’s “always-in-crisis” state.

As a genre cue: it’s superhero shorthand - vigilante justice, a public call to action, a night-time civic ritual.

When flipped: deconstructions land (villains hijack it, cops smash/cover it) because we already know the default meaning the lamp usually carries.

Why the Bat-Signal travels so well

Transmedia (Jenkins): the same icon shows up in comics, films, TV, games even marketing but each medium does something different with it.

Hyperdiegesis (Hills): the lamp hints at a bigger, mostly unseen Gotham system - who ordered it, who maintains it, police politics, street rumours , so the world feels deep and consistent.

What each medium adds

Comics: panel-filling punctuation—the visual contract between city and vigilante.

Film: sound + orchestration + scale turn a light into spectacle or dread.

TV/Animation (BTAS): a Deco mood machine—the signal as timeless noir atmosphere.

Games (Arkham): symbol → mechanic (waypoint, mission gate, a landmark you can glide to).

Paratext/Marketing: a one-shot brand key that onboards the world instantly.

Comics -

I started with the comics. In Detective Comics #60 (Feb 1942), the Bat-Signal is basically a public summons that makes the Gordon - Batman partnership official. That becomes the template everyone else quotes. Even in The Killing Joke, when the lamp isn't on the page, that "lawful call" idea sits in the background and makes Joker's attacks feel like a violation of the pact. Then in The Batman Who Laughs, the symbol gets corrupted-the bat reads as predation, not protection. That flip only works because we all know the original meaning. So, for me, comics set the contract that later media keep echoing or breaking.

Animation

When I checked the cartoons, format really mattered. The Adventures of Batman often uses the Bat-Phone for quick cheap summoning, and saves the Signal for big skyline shots - classic TV economics. In Under the Red Hood, the lamp pops up as a clean citywide punctuation mark whenever the story needs that public Gordon-Batman alignment. Batman Ninja shows how the idea travels: even without a modern searchlight, flags, moons and silhouettes stand in for the Signal. Animation's superpower here is ritual and mood - music, timing, fog, and framing make the light feel like a civic ceremony.

Movies

Onscreen, I saw three clear phases. In Burton's Batman, Batman basically gives the device to the police, and that emblem becomes the brand for years. Nolan changes the origin-Gordon builds the lamp in Begins, then in The Dark Knight they use it like a bluff: sometimes it's lit even if Batman won't show, to spook criminals. It's smashed and later rebuilt in Rises, turning hardware into a symbol of hope. Reeves' The Batman pushes it further-the opening makes the Signal feel like a citywide fear broadcast. Film adds sound, scale, and editing, so the same icon can play as spectacle, policy, or dread.

Games

when the symbol becomes something I can utilize In the games, the intertext becomes interaction. Arkham Asylum proves you can feel “Batman” through systems - glide, grapple, detective vision - even if the lamp is just background. In Arkham City, the Signal becomes a waypoint/landmark - you literally aim or glide toward it. Arkham Knight keeps it as a hub icon on GCPD’s roof while the weather and lighting make the skyline feel alive. Big takeaway for me: games turn the Bat-Signal from a sign you recognise into a tool you use, which is why it’s such a strong transmedia hinge across the whole franchise.

Close reading When rewatching Nolan's trilogy, I noticed how the Bat-Signal shifts from a simple call into a citywide pressure system. In Batman Begins, that rooftop scene frames the lamp as infrastructure-Gordon literally builds it, so it feels like a sanctioned, civic tool. In The Dark Knight, Gordon sometimes lights it even when Batman won't show. That turns the signal into a bluff: criminals can't know the odds, so the uncertainty itself works as deterrence. When the lamp is smashed later, you can feel that pressure vanish. By The Dark Knight Rises, rebuilding it reads as public reassurance-the pact is back. For me, Nolan's "realism" doesn't kill the myth; it puts the symbol to work.

With The Batman, 2022, it means something else again-from bluff to ambient dread. The film opens like a diary: rain, street crime, and that line "I am the shadows." Cross-cutting and sound make the whole city feel like a threat field. The signal isn't just "meet me on the roof" it conditions behaviour across Gotham. Film tools-heavy sound, slow tempo, watchful framing-make that deterrent felt moment to moment. So whereas Nolan's lamp plays probability, Reeves' lamp bathes mood. So it upscales the icon from summons to climate of thought, the city breathes in and out.

Reflection

Tracking the lamp across media made the lecture’s point concrete: intertextuality is how worlds cohere; transmedia is how they extend. Recognition (the emblem in clouds) carries the entry cost ,variation (owner, function, tone) is where meaning shifts. Compared with last week’s medium-specificity focus, this isn’t about tools shaping form so much as shared signs shaping expectation.

References

Kristeva, J. (1986) ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, in Moi, T. (ed.) The Kristeva Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 34–61.

Jenkins, H. (2007) ‘Transmedia Storytelling 101’. Available at: https://henryjenkins.org (Accessed: 12 November 2025).

Hills, M. (2002) Fan Cultures. London: Routledge.

DC Comics (1942) Detective Comics #60. New York: DC Comics.

Timm, B. and Radomski, E. (1992–1995) Batman: The Animated Series [TV series]. USA: Warner Bros.

Nolan, C. (2005; 2008; 2012) Batman Begins; The Dark Knight; The Dark Knight Rises [films]. USA: Warner Bros.

Reeves, M. (2022) The Batman [film]. USA: Warner Bros.

Sources and Significance blogpost 2

AI as Meta-Medium: Medium Specificity vs Gesamtkunstwerk

Medium specificity landed in a world that’s already multisensory and accelerated: purity survives less as an ideology than as a method. Our media environment is already multisensory and accelerated, so it’s unsurprising that hybrid forms command attention more easily than single-medium purity. I’d argue that “purity” isn’t dead so much as displaced: in AI pipelines like my ComfyUI character-sheet workflow, the site of specificity moves from materials (ink, film stock) to systems (prompts, seeds, LoRAs, samplers). That’s where style and authorship now crystallise. In this sense, AI behaves like a meta-medium: it can imitate many arts, yet each concrete configuration (graph + parameters) yields its own constraints the new “rules of the game".

Leaving the medium-specificity session, one line stuck with me: in a plural, entangled culture, “purity” survives less as an ideology than as a method. In AI pipelines like my ComfyUI character-sheet workflow, the site of specificity moves from materials (ink, film stock) to systems (prompts, seeds, ControlNets, LoRAs, samplers). That’s where style and authorship crystallise.

If Wagner fused arts on a stage, today’s version often lives in latent space. AI collapses image, text and layout, so the question isn’t “what medium is this?” but “which configuration did you choose and why?”

image: my ComfyUI graph for the character-sheet pipeline

Why I built this

I wanted to model a character from my favourite manhwa in 3D. Before sculpting, I needed a clean character sheet (front/side/back + expressions) to lock proportions and costume logic. Instead of drawing it from scratch, I designed a ComfyUI workflow that keeps style and anatomy consistent while giving me fast iterations I can take straight into Blender.

The media object: my comfyui character-sheet generator

The goal was to generate front/back/side and expressions for a character to be 3d modeled in blender.

This pipeline lets me “draw” by designing a system. Pose is blocked by OpenPose, mass by Depth, line discipline by LineArt. My “brush” is the graph; my “stroke” is a parameter change.

At a glance (mapped to my diagram):

Load models & resources - UNet / DualCLIP / VAE / LoRA.

Prepare character image input — reference portrait (identity & palette).

Define prompts - (a) character-sheet layout prompt, (b) style + quality prompt, (c) character descriptors.

Combine & condition - join strings → CLIP encodes; PuLidFlux / InsightFace help maintain face identity/embedding.

ControlNet operations - OpenPose (pose sheet), Depth (volumes), LineArt (edge discipline) via ControlNet SD3 Apply.

Generation parameters - latent noise + scheduler, sampler (DPM++ 2M Karras), and guiders.

Pose-sheet input - scaled to match canvas; guarantees orthographic consistency.

Image generation - SamplerCustomAdvanced → VAE Decode.

Upscale/Tiler and Grid assembly — print-ready sheet; save.

What this enforces:

Composition from pose controls,

Form/lighting from depth control,

Line economy from line-art control,

Identity/style from LoRA + Flux/InsightFace,

Repeatability from fixed seed & sampler.

Medium specificity (today)

Classic modernism said each art should embrace its own limits (Greenberg). In my workflow, specificity lives somewhere else: in the configuration. The exact graph + weights + seed + sampler + ControlNet balance is what gives my sheet its look and reliability. Designing the pipeline is designing the form.

(Post-)Gesamtkunstwerk

Wagner fused music, stage, architecture into a single experience. AI fuses text, image, layout (and soon motion/sound) inside one system unity conducted by a trained model. It’s a kind of technical totality: immersion by generation. That’s powerful for production, but it can drift toward the same “AI sheen” if I don’t set deliberate constraints.

So is it good or bad?

Good: rapid iteration, consistent multi-view outputs, accessible hybrid making.

Risk: style homogenisation and fuzzy authorship.

My guardrail: log seeds/samplers, limit variables per run, and keep a human pass when needed.

Notes from a hallway debate (friend • me )

Friend: In a feed already multisensory and accelerated, single-medium purity struggles to hold attention. Hybrid orchestration (image + layout + motion/sound) matches how we now perceive.

Me: The 20th century saturated many “pure” experiments. Mixing media creates fresh constraints (graphs, seeds, models) to explore. “Medium” behaves more like a configurable system than a fixed material.

Lecturer: Pursuing purity is complicated under plural, entangled, stochastic conditions. Speak about specificity under hybridity—what a work does because of its setup, not its silo.

Reflection

Working with ComfyUI moved my authorship from stroke to system. ControlNet blocks pose, the sampler is my “film stock,” the seed fixes repeatability. That’s where my voice lives what I lock and what I let vary. Purity isn’t gone,I use it as a method (fix variables to isolate causation). The risk is homogeneity; the answer is intentional constraints and iteration notes so results are reproducible and mine.

I’m now pivoting this workflow toward product animations. The goal is to keep the same pipeline logic (pose/volume/edge control, fixed seeds) but apply it to short, loopable promos that hold up under motion.

References

Bolter, J.D. (2023) ‘AI generative art as algorithmic remediation’, IMAGE, 37(1), pp. 195–207.

Greenberg, C. (1940) ‘Towards a newer Laocoon’, Partisan Review, 7(4), pp. 296–310. (Reprinted in: Frascina, F. (ed.) (1985) Pollock and After: The Critical Debate. London: Harper & Row, pp. 34–46.)

Kay, A. (1984) ‘Computer software’, Scientific American, 251(3), pp. 52–59.

Krauss, R. (2000) A Voyage on the North Sea: Art in the Age of the Post-Medium Condition. London: Thames & Hudson.

Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.