Category: LookingOutwards-10

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(Clip Above shows Kate Hollenbach’s User is Present)

For this week’s Looking Outward post, I reviewed Kate Hollenbach’s project named User is Present. I particularly liked this project because it is an art piece that examines the interaction between the human and the mobile phone. The experience is captured and presented in an artistic form. I admired how she skillfully combined the world of art and technology to convey a message about a merge between the two worlds. I feel like this was done well, as Hollenbach has an extensive background in studying both worlds of technology and design.

Kate Hollenbach is an artist, programmer, and educator based in Los Angeles, California. Kate has a MFA from UCLA Design Media Arts and a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT. Her work includes developing and examining interactive systems and new technologies relating to body, gesture, and physical space.

hqq – LookingOutwards10 – sputniko!

Hi guys! This week, I’m profiling one of my favorite new media artists, Sputniko!. I met Sputniko! [sic] when I visited the MIT Media Lab where she is an instructor

a few years ago and learned a lot about her work as an artist working in a field dominated by men. Much of her work posits questions about these double standards. One of my favorite works of hers is a music video she created called Menstruation Machine.

^The music video project which combines computational story development with reproductive and trans-rights.

The music video tells the story of Takashi, a trans woman who, before undergoing transition, explores the idea of a post-transition lifestyle through understanding menstruation. She creates a “menstruation machine” to experience these. Though controversial, Sputniko! explored this issue while it was still uncomfortable for many to talk about while using people’s comments as an expose on how people react to such issues.

She uses computational effects throughout this video, and it succeeds in making a machinic flow throughout the video while creating a story that successfully does the same thing.

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Changing Waters by Nathalie Miebach

Nathalie Miebach is a women data artist who is usually working with weather data with interdisciplinary execution. She incorporates data, science, visualization, and music. She visually articulates weather data into complex weaved sculptures. Then, she makes these sculptures into musical scores. Changing Water is a series of sculpture that visualizes seasonal variation in marine life based on the data about meteorological and oceanic interactions within the Gulf of Maine. She gathered these data from weather stations along the coast and buoys within the Gulf of Maine. Information about geographical location and relationship between ecosystem and weather are plotted on all the installations. I admire her because she combined multiple disciplines in translating data. Incorporation of the data, scientific knowledge, sculpture, and music composing is very unique.

Changing Waters

svitoora – Looking Outward 10 – Lorna Barnshaw

Lorna Barnshaw’s Self Portrait

Lorna Barnashaw works as a digital creative director in the UK Barnshaw’s private life is relatively unknown, but she is famous as the artist that tries to 3-D Copy and Print herself.

Barnshaw’s various glitched portraits.

While Barnshaw was attempting to 3-D capture herself so that she could 3D print herself, Barnshaw encountered many glitches in the various software and hardware she uses. Instead of discarding those glitches as defects, Barnshaw embraces the technological imperfection because it “illustrates that technology is flawed”. This notion that technology is “close mimicking reality but isn’t quite there yet” is a central theme to Barnshaw’s work, but for me, her work raises the question of what does human identity mean in a digital age? By 3D printing, these glitched forms from the digital realm into the physical realm, Barnshaw’s work transcend the digital and physical binary. I really Barnshaw’s work because it speaks about identity and technology in a physical form.

Reality Reduction 1

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Inside The Flower Matrix from Claudia Hart on Vimeo.

Inside the Flower Matrix is a virtual reality environment created by Claudia Hart in 2016. She examines the idea of identity through the lens of technology through virtual imaging and simulations technology.

The wallpaper in the physical space changes rapidly in the virtual reality space, meant to make a statement about the Internet. I’m currently studying environments in my design classes, and this venture into the virtual/digital space interested me because in making a statement the artist wanted to make something visually alarming and headache inducing, which is opposite in intent from what I am usually instructed to do. I think creating something alarming can be extremely impactful when the artist/designer wants to send a strong message.

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The Home Page of MINICADE | Chloe Varelidi is the Co-creator
The Home Page of Varelidi Website

This week, I was inspired by Chloe Varelidi and her project “MINICADE”. This project attracts me not only because of its being very interesting to play but also the ability to create our own games. In general, “MINICIADE” is a super easy way to collaboratively create a playlist of mini-games with participants’ friends. Each person can add a link to one or more mini-games to the playlist and instantly play them as one massive game. Mobile-friendly and 100% open-source. Participants also get a chance to learn code while we create the game. Personally, I always see this game as silly but really fun to play. And I think these games get to become really popular recently. However, sometimes I wished that I have an app to create these games myself, to create some tricks to my friends. I think Chloe Varelidi here provides this chance.

Some biography about Chloe Varelidi. Chloe Varelidi is a Game designer and illustrator who currently work at littleBits as a Sr. Product Design Strategist where she spends her days with the finest of humans designing new products that empower children to create inventions.

 

“Minicade” by Chloe Varelidi and Atul Varma  (the specific date was not found)

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An interfaith mandala DIMONscape® based on the crucifixion
Roz Dimon
Now that it was brought to my attention, most or all of my looking outwards for the past 10 weeks have been about men creators, so it’s a breath of fresh air to focus on something different. Roz Dimon is a digital artist based in NYC – her work has a very unique style that I like, which is why it drew my eye.
Dimon works in a collage style for a lot of her projects, which result in multilayered images and textures composed in a single image. As a communication designer, I find her work engaging and exciting. One of her most recent works is still on exhibition now until November 18th in Connecticut – the exhibition aims to bring together her works that embody multiculturalism and inter-religious unity. I not only like the pieces in this exhibition (which include the works of several artists, Dimon being one of them), but also the message of highlighting the aspects of humanity that unite us rather than divide us. I’ve included an image of Dimon’s piece that is exhibited. It has the same collage-y feel of her other works, although I wish she didn’t write the words “peace, love, justice”. I just don’t think it’s necessary in the context of the piece.

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A gameplay still of “The Game: The Game”
An extremely disturbing image of “The Game: The Game”

A project that I thought was incredibly admirable was Angela Washko’s video game The Game: The Game. The title refers to a common phrase in the self proclaimed “seduction community.” For context, the members of the seduction community, to put it bluntly, aim to have sex with as many women as humanly possible and treat them like trash (this is unfortunately an accurate description). The Game: The Game is a point and click game where you play as a single female. The purpose of the goal is to see if you can distinguish average normal guys from members of the seduction community. I personally think that it is good that she is shedding light on this heinous group, and spreading social awareness. I wasn’t able to find that much information on her background. It was difficult for me to find information on her background. She graduated from from Temple University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and received a masters of fine arts at the University of California. Additionally, she won the Terminal Award for her video “Chastity,” and has had her art featured in several exhibits. Angela has worked on several other projects which fight for gender acceptance and women’s rights (Wikipedia, sect. 1-6).

Link to Angela’s Vimeo

Link to Angel’s main page on The Game: The Game

Sources Used:

  • “Angela Washko.” ANGELA WASHKO, angelawashko.com/home.html.
  • “Angela Washko.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Nov. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Washko.
  • “The Game: The Game.” ANGELA WASHKO, angelawashko.com/section/437138-The-Game-The-Game.html.
  • Washko, Angela. “Angela Washko.” Vimeo, Angela Washko, vimeo.com/angelawashko.

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The artist I chose to talk about is Heather Kelly. Heather Kelly is a game designer, curator, and digital artist who is considered the “Five most powerful women in gaming” and “technology” according to Inc. magazine and Fast Company. As a curator, she co-curated “Joue le jeu / Play Along at La Gaîté lyrique” in Paris, a groundbreaking exhibition, and curated the GAMMA event, a renowned event that promotes experimental videogames as creative expression. As a game designer, she created numerous projects such as “Fabulous/Fabuleux”, a game installation that  can be controlled with your full body. Another game she worked on is called “Hyper Cube”, a VR puzzler pong game that takes the original game to a whole new level. In a technological field where it consists of people who are mostly men, Heather Kelly will be one of the most influential people that will make the technological field more gender diverse.

SUPERHYPERCUBE