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IP Justification

My IP opportunity statement is:

Using modular tools to change the world or beings around the user in a hostile environment.

My statement is based on the idea of making variety a key factor for users. One of the main themes for series such as the Guitar Hero series was variety, first in songs then in instruments, then in a combination of the two. Part of the reason Guitar Hero declined in popularity was because there was not enough good downloadable content being released for it for it to keep up with competitors such as Rockband.

I would like to extend this beyond just music, however. Taking into account the thrill factor of my human flight research was creating danger by challenging yourself  to conquer a dangerous natural environment feature using only the equipment you provide. The challenge of an environment set against you should prove an original and challenging design project.

The lessons I should learn from the real life examples are to keep my designs interesting and not limit myself to a gimmick, whilst making the content varied enough to appeal to as wide an audience as possible (Something musical could help me achieve this, perhaps something to do with different music in different environments).

Forecast

Onwards to predicting the future!

Through my research my prediction for human flight is the production of a non-powered flight suit that a human could actually fly with. Though it would require a little 'kick-start' - such as a drop or a jump from a height, the user could ride thermals like a bird or similar gliding creature to achieve lift. This theory is backed up by the research into wing suits in my human flight present research, which clearly shows that slight lift has already been achieved accidentally.

Jetpacks will eventually become a common product that works efficiently, if the development up to this point is anything to judge by. They are becoming more efficient, able to travel further, faster. For them to become truly successful, however, it would be better with an alternate power source, as that is the current constraint limiting development - more fuel means a bigger, heavier pack.

The future of guitars should, if history is anything to judge by, be that they are succeeded by another instrument based off of their current design. This process could be slowed down because of their popularity today - a product of instantaneous worldwide media. In the days of the lute, there was no television or Internet to show the lute in use all over the world, and fads could die out in an area much more readily. This also works as a double - edged sword, as media over-saturation could cause people to become bored with the guitar and instigate the creation of the next musical instrument fad.

Technology for guitars could lean towards the creation fo a fully elecronic guitar - strings consisting of lasers and all. These new guitars would need to be incredibly diverse in sound and advanced in design to actually take off, however, so this is more of a speculation.

Horizon Scanning - Guitars

On the horizon for 2012, the first thing I found was the release of a reboot for the Guitar Hero series - published by Activision! It seems that although the games died a death in recent years, Bobby Kotick, the founder of the series is determined to prove that they can still be popular. It will be interesting to see whether the reboot is worth their time and resources, or just a massive waste. Perhaps the media silence surrounding the series for a while will act as a reprieve that means people will be genuinely interested when the series reappears.

Bobby Kotick - (igogaming.net 2012)

 

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Looking into the technological developments for the guitar I found an article about the 'Q-Tuner' pickup, an innovation from this year that apparently massively improves the quality of sound for guitars and bass guitars. Perhaps innovations like these will take hold in the coming few years, pushing the limits of the instrument and perhaps even instigating the creation of the guitars' successor.

The Q-Tuner - (Patent 1991)

Another technological innovation set for 2012 is the Laser Pitch Detection (LPD) system, that detects what frets the player is strumming and calculates the pitch of the note before it has even been played, this technology could then be used to electronically synthesise exact guitar riffs, or even play a super-advanced, accurate version of Guitar hero that uses the real chords and notes instead of buttons! (Something which could, in fact, be used as a valid reboot for the franchise amongst the musical communities, as a major complaint I personally heard whilst the game was popular was 'It wasn't like playing the real thing').

The LPD - (GIZMODO 2011)

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There are a seemingly never ending amount of events occurring in 2012, ranging from rock concerts to classical guitar workshops, to guitar making seminars. The popularity of the guitar worldwide is truly staggering. There are so many events it is hard to distinguish what events are actually new and original and what are more of the same.

Screen grabs of a variety of event schedules for 2012 - (Various sources)

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An interesting article I found concerning what the guitar could develop into was stumbled upon whilst looking for other advances in technology. the chameleon guitar, as the name suggests, can change its sound depending on the type of board the user places into the middle of the guitar. With interchangeable technology like this, more sounds could become available to a player at a more affordable price, without having to buy a whole other guitar. Perhaps the next stage in design is a fully modular guitar, that could be assembled as a bass, a classical, an electric or an acoustic guitar. Perhaps the design could even be perfected to the point as to incorporate other string instruments like banjos, cellos and double bass!

Amit Zoran with his invention - (Zoran, A - 2009)

The Chameleon Guitar - (Zoran, A - 2009)

Back casting - Guitars in the past

The guitar is actually an evolution of the design of the lute - the popular instrument in the period before.

The original design is of Spanish origin, and was considerably smaller, with four paired sets of strings or 'courses'. The modern day design has 5 single strings and is now primarily electric, solving the earlier issue of volume in large venues.

A lute player - (Antiveduto Grammatica 1620)

An early guitar, note the extra strings and small body - (Miayf.com 2010)

A modern guitar for comparison of design - (Musicplayer.com 2010)

It would be interesting to see what kind of instrument will succeed the guitar in its role as a staple instrument in popular music. If it is an adaptation of the guitar, what design features would change? Will the number of strings increase again? Will they revert to the old paired string format? (these guitar designs exist but are not widely used as of yet).

In the late 80's, Bill and Ted's excellent adventure was the start of the stoner-comedy movement, present today with films such as the 'Harold and Kumar' series. In the movie the main characters are in a fictional band, "Wyld Stallyns". The movie is arguably the first instance of air guitar in popular media, starting the phenomenon now present with the world championships sees in my present research.

 Bill and Ted 'Air guitar-ing' - (DEG 1989)

Another good example of guitars on the Hollywood scene is the movie Spinal Tap - a parody of the heavy metal music scene in a documentary format (a common format for detailing the lives of bands and musicians). The movie was popular enough to warrant the fictional band achieving some success in real life - a feat which has now been improved upon with the likes of the Gorillaz, an entirely animated band! (perhaps the next feat will be a band entirely computer synthesised, with literally no human involvement in the creation of their songs and appearence?).

Spinal Tap - (MGM, 1984)

The Gorillaz - (Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett 1998)

On television, there were a number of cartoon series that had heavily guitar based theme tunes to relate to the music tastes of the time, I myself remember the themes of shows such as Biker Mice from Mars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they influenced my taste in music today.

The Teenage mutant hero turtles original comic - (Mirage studio 1987)

The Biker Mice - (Rick Ungar 1993)

If music from popular cartoons works as a direct inflence on music taste as it has for me in the past, could companies use this to their advantage by running various shows and genres in tandem?

State of the art analysis - Guitars

The guitar is one of the most popular instruments in the world, and is often seen all over the media in the hands of many a celebrity and amateur alike.

This section of research was fairly easy to gather information for, as there is a saturation of guitar-related media!

Events such as music festivals are held all over the world, with guitars the predominant instrument, especially for the modern genres of music.

A small selection of V-Festival guitarists - there are many more! - (Various sources)

Learning to platy the guitar is probably the most numerous instrument learning hobby. There are a wide range of books, websites and magazines (even a T.V style website channel!) dedicated to people learning how to play. The popularity of the guitar is staggering. I wonder what the next method of learning will be - interactive tutelage from a computer in a virtual reality environment perhaps?

One of the popular 'For Dummies' series of books, dedicated to the guitar - (Mark Phillips 2003)

(Total Guitar, 2011)

The Guitar Player TV site - (New Bay Media 2009)

Even if you choose not to learn how to play the guitar, or don't think you are very good, modern phenomenon in the games industry Guitar Hero can give people the feeling that they are playing like the guitar players they idolise, with similar games like Rockband branching out to the use of drums and bass guitar too. Though their popularity has dropped in recent times (shown by the removal of the games from Activision's funding list and agenda), the series could perhaps be rebooted at a later time (New instruments?).

(Activison, 2007)

(EA Distribution 2007)

Guitar Hero controllers - (Harmonix 2007-2008)

Looking further into playing the guitar without actually playing the guitar, I found the air-guitar championships, a competition that comprises entirely of people pretending to play the guitar and being judged on their performance. This could be counted as a dance act than a musical one, and as odd an event as it seems the event is growing in popularity every year! Perhaps other, similar events will try and adopt this, or maybe the event itself will follow the same pattern as the Guitar hero series, in the coming years we could see whole bands of air-guitarists, air-drummers and air-bassists!

Competitors in the air-guitar world championships - (Inertica 2011)

The 2011 air-guitar world champion - (Inertica 2011)

This quote is taken from the website, showing the light-hearted spirit of the competition:

The purpose of the Air Guitar World Championships is to promote world peace. According to the ideology of the Air Guitar, wars would end, climate change stop and all bad things disappear, if all the people in the world played the Air Guitar. This is why the whole universe is invited to play the Air Guitar for the world peace at the end of the competition.

- (airguitarworldchampionships.com 2011)

The air-guitar IP has also been developed into clothing that reacts to the user, such as the guitar hero belt buckle that picks up the users' movements and creates sound accordingly. Perhaps if this technology was developed, a new kind of electronic instrument that uses your body as an input could be developed - a mixture of dance and music working in tandem.

The Guitar Hero belt buckle - (Krunker.com 2008)

So far I have seen a pattern emerging of people actually having the skill to play the guitar becoming an imitation, up to the point that people are being rewarded for not playing the guitar at all! If this continued, would people be rewarded for just listening to music? It seems very counter productive to me that alot of the trends appearing seem to be about making things easier for the user to the point of not having to develop any kind of skill at all. Although fun, it isn't challenging the user to improve themselves.

The challenge here I see would be to create something that is both fun AND helps the user to improve their creative skill.

Movies featuring guitars such as School of Rock are in my opinion a positive influence, as they put a fun, positive spin on learning to play an instrument and becoming part of the music scene, and show a journey where the participants are not instantly rewarded, but work for their achievements - a realistic, respectable trait (Though the movies themselves do not have to be overly realistic).

(Paramount pictures, 2003)

Another positive find I came across is the website Guitar Getaways - A business devoted to teaching people how to use guitars with social interaction. The idea of the site is that you go on a holiday with a guitar teacher, basically having a controlled, relaxing environment chosen by you with someone there to teach you a new skill (or develop your current one). I think this is an excellent idea as it not only provides a solution to the potentially very slow pace of self tutoring, but allows the holiday goer to relax in a new environment. Perhaps an idea similar to this could be adapted for other areas of the creative industries?

The Guitar Getwaways site - (GuitarGetaways 2010)

Horizon Scanning - Human flight

Time to look towards the future of human flight, with whats arriving soon in the modern market.

In the world of games 2012, titles like Mass Effect 3, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and Star Wars: The Old Republic all use devices that humans may use to fly, often with a jetpack or similar device. All of these titles are Science Fiction, it is unusual to find a title that uses flying machines in a retro format (possible market niche?!)

Jetpack combat in Mass Effect - Jets are attached to the attackers' feet. - (BioWare 2011)

Gundam robots flying (although often in space, they are seen flying in atmosphere too) - (Konami 2011)

A Star Wars bounty hunter using his jetpack - (Lucasarts 2011)

The use of jetpacks in games as a mode of transportation are an indication of where the world expects that technology to progress to. Although the commercial jetpack is still a fantasy for the everyday person, their increasing use in games and films, as well as the media coverage of actual real life jetpacks being developed, is demonstrating that this technology is becoming much more of a reality.

I have further enforced this point with my research into the present.

The Birdman competition happens August of every year, in which participants try and 'fly' the furthest off of a pier, using man powered contraptions. While most of these are only costumes, some people try to make genuine machines to achieve a decent distance when flying. I stumbled across this event looking at upcoming competitions involving flight for 2012.

Flying contraption being set up - (Worthing 2011)

One of the contraptions in use - (Worthing 2011)

And another! - (Worthing 2009)

The competition holds a certain charm, and while very basic and low-tech, shows that people will try and create a flying contraption in the name of competition (A marketable quality!).

If I create my IP based on anything to do with human flight, then the more promising paths to follow as it stands are using flight in a historical setting, reinforced by the work of Leanardo da Vinci and making it competitive in some way.

Looking to the skies of the year ahead 2012, there is news that China is starting their own manned space program. This apparently has all the current superpowers taking an ever increasing interest in how much of a threat they are. If this trend continues, will there be a habitation zone in the Earths' atmosphere as well as it's surface? - Will there be a whole new world built above our own? Will it have it's own divides and territories like the world below it, or will the scientific minds that create these stations be disinterested in the political affairs of those below?

Chinese astronaughts - (Chinadaily.com, 2008)

There are theories that the launch of the American SBL (Space based laser) tests taking place in the coming year could also mark the beginning of a new age of warfare, warfare launched from space. Whether this is a paranoid theory or a genuine concern can only be discovered in time. What is the next step? War was fought on the ground, then the air, then the atmosphere? Will the next terrifying man-made threat appear from another planet? It seems the further we get into space, the more paranoid people get that we will create doomsday devices to blow ourselves up.

The article also goes on to talk about the American policy seeming to be to make it into space with weaponised technology first so that they can have the monopoly on space security and control affairs both on and off world. This seems to be going very much in the way of George Orwell's '1984' - 'Big Brother is watching'.