Category: Looking Outwards Week 1

Most of my interest in tech-based art centers around sound art and electro-acoustic performance. I’ve been really interested in the integration of performer movement (dance or instrument-playing, etc.) with the production of sound, and I’ve found “wearable instruments” especially intriguing.

Here is the website for one of the first instruments to catch my attention: a suit with cables, which are amplified through the bridge’s infrastructure to produce sound.

About

Generative Portrait made with processing by Diana Lange

Diana Lange Generative Portrait works started from taking photos of individual in context, to portrait outline created with small units, then adding on more and more units over and over. The portrait is created with multiple layers. The process reminded me of myself doing observational drawing with pencil. The small units with coding has this organic consistent texture. I am inspired by the generative portrait, having both the 2 dimensional sketching quality and the 3 dimensional depth at the same time. Moreover, they contain both organic and geometric systems.

I saw this video few weeks ago and it was most interesting project I’ve seen recently. It’s simple, but it has technology and design principle that I love ‘Time and space’. This project created movement in space with only water using lights and time.

Sports drink brand Gatorade made a advertisement for G Active promotion using 3D technology and motion capture created by Unit 9. It had a real-size running water athlete, animated it in mid air, and caught it on camera. They used motion caption technology to capture the real person’s movement like running, jumping and kick boxing. And using 3D liquid which has liquid drop into specific small halls and express each frames very precisely, they filmed each frames like stop motion animation. They created physical 3D animation with interaction between lights and time. Since water drops are usually invisible to human eyes, they need to come up with new idea to hold very short time frame. Using flash and strobe light, they had succeed to capture the each moment of frame. The director of this project said during the interview that he got inspired by his formal work experience as a photographer. He used to tell the story out of image using unusual way into photography and this leads him to capture something new.

Here is the website of the production. You can check more detailed description about their project.

Unit 9 website

Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly are artists that focus on perception and the relationship between the world and its inhabitants. They created the “Meta-Perceptual Helmets,” which allow humans to see the world from the point of view of different animals.

I find this interesting because humans have never truly been able to experience the perspective of another animal. The artists questioned why our eyes are positioned the way they are, and what kind of limitations or advantages we have over other creatures. The project was intended to be an interactive art exhibit, but I think it could be used for science as well. Seeing from the perspective of animals can help us understand more about the creatures themselves and can allow scientists to develop tools that allow us to see differently.

Website link: http://www.connolly-cleary.com/Home/helmets.html?utm_source=DesignTAXI&utm_medium=DesignTAXI&utm_term=DesignTAXI&utm_content=DesignTAXI&utm_campaign=DesignTAXI

I explored some of the suggested blogs and stumbled upon modern map art that was created by David Hoe (Mini Cloud Studios). What struck me the most about his art was that they were made up of various simple elements such as rectangles and squares. This also reminded me of our first project assignment for 15-104.

Although the small individual elements were rather simple, they made up to produce a very intricate and detailed masterpiece. David Hoe’s modern map art was compared to jigsaw puzzles. The artist himself deconstructed the puzzle to individually color each piece before assembling altogether again with his own custom designed software. The art is made using tools such as Node.js, Google Maps API and node-canvas package.

I had only seen such similar patterns found in modern map art from actual printed maps in my Geology class before. David Hoe’s works made me appreciate maps as a form of art for the first time, since I had only seen it as a tool for navigating purposes before. The additional care to color and shapes in the modern map art compared to regular maps is crucial. However, maybe using a wider variety of patterns could increase the art’s individuality. Overall, I really enjoyed the sense of harmony that the art seems to express.

I must admit… I have not been exposed to much interactive or computational art. As I browse some of the amazing inspirational art my peers are referencing in their looking outwards posts, I realize the extent of how little I know.

Regardless, in some shape or form, digital art has been a part of my life since I was a child. In fact, perhaps my biggest artistic influence could be considered digital art: Miyazaki’s animated films.

Miyazaki’s films draw deeply on the water color painting tradition in Japan, going back hundreds and thousands of years. Every cel was painted by hand, and painstakingly put together to create a flawless animation; individual pieces of art in their own right, joined together to make something new.

What I find interesting about these animated films now, as an artist, is the number of people who helped to create them. In this sense, it diverges from the traditional singular author approach to art. These animated films joined the talents of composers, painters, computer scientists, and film directors to create something none of them could have done on their own. I admire the humility that takes (to not need all the glory for oneself), and I admire the communal strength that displays.

These films demonstrate great opportunity for collaboration among artists and different fields. They show that science and art are not disparate, but rather when they come together, they create something entirely new.

If these films set any sort of precedent for the future, I hope to see animation taken more seriously as an art form (high-brow or commercial). It seems to me that the general public attitude towards animation is that of childish entertainment, but anybody with critical faculties that watches a Miyazaki film will be forced to rethink that opinion.