September 2016 – Page 13 – [OLD – FALL 2016] 15-104 • COMPUTING for CREATIVE PRACTICE

Diana Connolly – Looking Outwards 4

Please visit this link to interact with the piece: http://www.patatap.com/

Here’s what one user created with Patatap:

Patatap, by Jono Brandel and Lullatone.

Patatap is a “Portable Animation and Sound Kit.” It is accessible to anyone on a web browser, and invites the user to become interactive with sound by creating their own sound combinations. The algorithm works by randomly assigning sounds to keys on the keyboard. The user can hit a key, and a corresponding sound and visual will generate. Once the user hits the space bar, new sounds and visuals are assigned to each of the keys on the keyboard, and a new background color sets the mood. While the algorithm uses randomization to assign the sounds and visuals, it selects these sounds and visuals from a set list. For example, oscillating sin wave symbols repeat in the visuals, as well as varying geometric shapes and colorful polka dots. This algorithm allows for the artists’ artistic sensibilities to be manifested in the piece’s final form because it makes interaction with sound art accessible to any user. It is beautiful, with its simple but varying shapes and pastel colors, and its simple but compelling range of sounds. I really like this piece because it is really fun to play with, it changes every time you hit the space bar (stays interesting), and gives me a new way to interact with sound.

Brandon Darreff – LookingOutwards – 04

With his 2016 project “re rain”, designer Kouichi Okamoto experimented with non-visual elements to invert the way we perceive the sound of rain. Fifteen speakers were placed at the base of open umbrellas to project the sound of rain hitting the top of an umbrella to the underside of the open umbrellas. In other words, the installation takes sound typically generated from a convex surface and applies it to the concave side of the same surface allowing the generated sound waves to take on the role as the rain. Just as an umbrella deflects rainwater, it redirects the sound waves throughout the room as well as vibrates from the interaction as it would if exposed to real raindrops. I admire the way Okamoto experiments with morphing such a common distinctive sound, giving it a new identity, as well as the way he gives a sort of physical presence to the sound waves. In terms of the possible algorithms behind this installation, Okamoto had to experiment with balancing the magnetic force of the speaker, the weight of the umbrella, and the pitch of the recorded sound to achieve the desired effect. By testing a range of options using these three variables, Okamoto was able to produce a simple yet elegant representation of sound art.

http://www.kyouei-ltd.co.jp/re-rain.html

Mdambruc-LookingOutwards04

http://www.machina.cc/pages/midi-jacket http://

Video of how jacket responds to motion with sound

Machina’s MIDI Jacket (2013)

Machina’s MIDI jacket first caught my attention because it is ultimately a marriage of three things – sound, motion and art. I consider the art to be created through the dancing, as well as the sound that is created through motion. The MIDI jacket is essentially a piece of apparel that creates sounds based off your movements with the aids of an altimeter (measures the distance between your hand and the ground), a magnetometer (compass-like sensor), a gyroscope and an accelerometer (change pitch frequencies based on speed). I admire this project because the wearer is able to seamlessly create a multimedia art form simply through wearing a jacket. I also admire this project because it allows anyone to be an artist – whether they can dance or not, the wearer is able to make art. In the jacket there is an electronic board and a Bluetooth module. The electronic board handles data sensing and passes the data to the Bluetooth module, which then is passed on to a companion app. In the app the data is converted to MIDI. The algorithms that created this work are available through the website as a software development kit. The artistic sensibilities of creators Stephany Jeanaina and Antonio Machina were to “design a clothing brand people could buy, but feel as if they’re buying an electronic gadget.” and to answer the question, “What sound do your moves create?”.

Looking Outwards 4: Carolina

For this week’s focus on sound art, I chose to explore Jono Brandel’s (jonobr1) Android experiment collaboration with artist Kimbra on her song “Carolina.” The experiment is a mobile app that essentially takes the user through an animated digital road trip. As the song plays in the background, various shapes, figures, and lines appear against a white background, creating the illusion of the user driving by. The abstract shapes and colors are triggered by specific sound aspects of the song, such as instrumentation and pitch. The user can also pinch to zoom in and out and change perspectives in the app, in order to fully experience the digital road trip to Carolina. As for the coding part of the experiment, Brandel uses Three.js in order to code the actual music visualization. While I don’t actually know anything about Three.js, I would imagine it differs from p5.js for a bigger emphasis on animated computer graphics (and more complex graphics).

Carolina (July 22, 2015)

This project stands out to me because it not only puts music into a visual art form, but also takes into account the meaning behind the song for creating that visual. The variations in shape, color, placement, and movement are not just reflections of the sounds of the music, but also take into account artistic sensibilities as to what would count as an abstract road trip through Carolina.

For more information on the project, to get the code, or download it on Google Play, click here.

Isabella Hong-Looking Outwards-03

Dot San is a design, model, and manufacturing company that works out of Edinburgh, Scotland. The product design company renders 3D models using software such as Rhino 3D and Maxwell Render to create photorealistic works to be used for marketing, 3D printing and manufacturing purposes. The company works with clientele all over the world and also has their own Etsy shop.

I scoped out Dot San’s merchandise on their Etsy page and was thoroughly intrigued by the types of work that they produce. I was particularly interested in the 3D keychains of astrological signs and chemical molecules that they sell. The keychains are all 3D printed out of nylon and steel metals, each one being unique due to the lack of mass manufacturing.

The whole initiative is called the “Wired Project” and is centered around the effort to experiment and push the limitations of 3D printing. Dot San creates personal and intricate merchandise that defies the traditionally negative perception of consumerism. I admire that their products are individualized, each one embodying it’s own little quirks, a result of the one time printing process. In addition, Dot San itself – the company and it’s mission is dedicated to testing the boundaries of technology that is currently available to us, something that is essential for advancement and progress.

My favorite piece they’ve produced is a standing mini sculpture of the famous Vitruvian Man. It’s an example of classic art done with a modern medium.

Dot San’s Etsy Store:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/DotSan/items

Andrew-LookingOutwards-2

Wheel of Primes – Mario Klingemann

This project was created to demonstrate a new type of visualization involving Prime Numbers and their positioning on linear rays when the natural numbers are aligned along a Fermat spiral. I thought that this was inspirational through its demonstration of how a key mathematic principle can be boiled down to something so orderly and beautiful at such a large scale even if it’s hard to comprehend at a molecular level. I think the author was able to convey his artistic sensibilities through this display as he mentioned that he did not come across anything like it before, showing not only his creativity in finding this pattern, but also in expressing it. The artist actually included part of the algorithm in the blog and explained the process he went about to create it. But for the ret of the algorithm, I believe he took the numbers generated from the initial algorithm and just formatted them alongside the circle.

LookingOutwards_Jihoonp_04

In less than two centuries, visual technology has evolved from chemical capture of light in black and white photography to two dimensional and three dimensional film, and now virtual reality that provides the utmost realistic visual experience. VR has suggested to us a whole new way of experiencing the media, and further the world. Now, we can have the full visual experience of being at the Pyramid of Giza, the deepest of the Pacific and even outer space, all in the tiniest room with a phone and a pair of VR goggles.

A few years ago, Google had announced their new product called “Tilt Brush.” It is basically an electronic paint brush that can be used to draw in 3-D through Virtual Reality. The significance of Tilt Brush is that it has amalgamated the very primitive form of visual art-line drawing-with the tip of the edge technology of virtual reality, giving the lines a whole new dimension. Can this still be called a drawing? Is it a sculpture? Most of us are still not sure, but it sure has opened up doors for possibilities we did not even know we had.

There is more. Now, Tilt Brush has been augmented be addition of another sensory element-hearing. Google has merged the visual and the acoustic by adding musical notes to the path of the brush. The lines represent musical cords and melody and now we can create music not by drawing notes on lines but making visual art.

Many in modern art world had attempted to visualize music, or make visual art audible. But not much so far will get so close to being synchronized as Tilt Brush has done it. Drawing music opens new doors not only for artists but even more to lay people who are outside the profession of art or music. This includes the deaf and the blind.

It is not in the future, but today that we can ask, what does a rose sound like? or what does Beethoven’s symphony 9 look like? Can it be that there is some coherence in the beauty of visual pleasure and acoustic pleasure? All of this now is the user’s responsibility to explore.

Among plethora of uncertainties, one thing I can say for sure is,
“What a time to be alive.”

Link to the articles :
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/paint-sound-with-audio-reactive-tilt-brush
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/watch-a-disney-animator-sketch-classic-characters-in-thin-air

Shannon Case – Looking Outwards- 03

vanitas_install-1

Still Life (Vanitas) 2009

In this piece, Jason Salavon renders in a 17th century Dutch style, a constantly changing in animal skull and candlestick. As the skull evolves though animal type, such as: bear, human, baboon, and boar, the intermediate forms create many interesting fictional hybrids. I really admire the attention to detail, and the way that the transformation of the skull slowly evolves to create so many different combinations of features. I also love the metaphor it serves to animal and human evolution as well as the evolution of art and technology. The allusion to 17th century Dutch art portrayed in a modern medium was super interesting, and provokes a strong sense of evolution in the viewer.

Video of project:

Hannah K-Looking Outwards-03

This piece is called Zuhal and was created by Neri Oxman and was created in 2014 in Frankfurt, Germany in collaboration with Christoph Bader and Dominik Kolb.

I was drawn to this project because it is a beautiful wearable, but the process for creating it was quite unconventional. Inspired by Saturn, the stylistic and color choices reflect the turbulent nature of the planet. The wearable was created with multi-material 3D printing technology and is an example of a field called Material Ecology, which examines computation, fabrication, and material as one whole body of design. To me, this work represents not only the fields of computation and design individually but is a perfect marriage between these two disciplines.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attain more specific information about the steps of this process. More of Neri Oxman’s work can be seen here.

dynamicdrawing

/*
*Sadie Johnson
*15-104 Section C
*sajohnso@andrew.cmu.edu
*Project-03-Dynamic-Drawing
* This program creates an image based off mouse position

*/

function setup() {
    createCanvas(500,500);
}

function draw() {
    background(0);
    fill(mouseX/2,mouseY,mouseX/2);
//connecting lines t0 cursor
    stroke(mouseX/2);
    line(0, 0, mouseX, mouseY); // top left
    line(width, 0, mouseX, mouseY); //top right
    line(0, height, mouseX, mouseY); // bottom left
    line(width, height, mouseX, mouseY); // top left

//circle that follows cursor
    ellipse(mouseX, mouseY, 55, 55);

    fill(height-mouseY/2,width-mouseX,height-mouseY/2);
    ellipse(0,0,mouseX/2,mouseX/2); //top left
    ellipse(0,height,mouseX/2,mouseX/2); //bottom left
    ellipse(width,0,mouseX/2,mouseX/2); //top right
    ellipse(width,height,mouseX/2,mouseX/2); //bottom right

//rotating lines
    if (dist(width/2, height/2, mouseX, mouseY) > height/10) {
        stroke(225);
        strokeWeight(12);
        push();
        translate(mouseX, mouseY);
        rotate(millis()/mouseX/2);
        line(0,0,height,width);
        pop();  
        push();
        translate(mouseX, mouseY);
        rotate(millis()/mouseX/2);
        line(width,0,0,height);
        pop(); 
    }
}

The hardest part of this assignment for me was keeping track of which variables controlled which reactions, and fixing them accordingly when they didn’t work the way I wanted them to.