Category: Section A

amui1- LookingOutwards-09

I chose to look at my friend, Katie’s, Looking Outwards for Week 8. She did her Looking Outwards on the Clouds Documentary.

Caption: The opening screen for the Clouds Documentary website. A kickstarter video for the project can be found below and at this website:

I liked how Katie referred to the project as “adding another dimension to the idea of marrying videography, design, and programming.” I strongly agree with this b/c this team figured out how to bring all of these mediums together to create an even more outrageous and innovative creation.

Caption : Visualization of Space Junk: One the interactive graphics that can be found on the cloud.

Caption: Visualization of a noise sphere: One of the interactive graphics found on the cloud.

Caption: Fernanda Viegas. One of the contributors to the cloud.

I chose this Looking Outwards because it also has some relation to what we are doing our project on this week: computational portraits. As you can see from the last photo, Fernanda is pixelating. The Cloud took into another level and pixelated a whole story. I think this project is really fascinating because of the mass amount of interdisciplinary contributors that helped bring this project forth.

 

 

heeseoc-LookingOutwards-09

I decided to reply to Joohee Kim’s post, about a generative art titled “Random Numbers,” created by generative artist Marius Watz and data artis Jer Thorp. I was browsing through all the posts she had made, and thought I like the look of the generated object, how the layers of lines create a dimension, and was curious about the algorithm behind it. In her post, Joohee describes about how she appreciates the randomness in this piece of artwork, and I also agree that this work has an interesting way of combining data and randomness, since those are the two contrasting ideas since data isn’t a thing that could be completely random. Also, the fact that the final piece was screen printed by hand gave it a bit more authenticity because it has a original yet unexpected quality to it since the outcome is not necessarily the same each time, and the concept of it is parallel to the “data and randomness” since they use the same exact frame for printing but the results come out as random.

https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/vvzxkb/random-numbers-screen-printed-generative-art-nyc-event

LookingOutwards06-jooheek

heeseoc-Project-09-Portrait

sketch

//Steph Chun
//15-104 section #A
//heeseoc@andrew.cmu.edu
//Project-09

var img;

// load image
function preload() {
	var imageurl = "https://i.imgur.com/jYztupF.jpg";
  	img = loadImage(imageurl);
}

function setup() {
	createCanvas(500, 500);
	background(0);
	img.loadPixels();
	frameRate(20);
}

function draw() {
	
	//array for the letters that comes up in random sizes and position
	//which spells out the name of my roomate in order
	var name = [];
	name[0] = "j";
	name[1] = "o";
	name[2] = "o";
	name[3] = "h";
	name[4] = "e";
	name[5] = "e";

	//the position of the letters
	var x = random(width);
	var y = random(height);

	//assigning colors to the letters according to the pixel of the image
	var ix = constrain(floor(x), 0, width-1);
	var iy = constrain(floor(y), 0, height-1);
	var dotcolor = img.get(ix, iy); 

	//letters of random sizes that shows up constantly
	noStroke();
	fill(dotcolor);
	textSize(random(10, 30));
	text(name[frameCount%6], x, y);

	//text that follows the mouse
 	var mousecolor = img.get(mouseX, mouseY);
	fill(mousecolor);
	textSize(10);
 	text("I don't know man", mouseX, mouseY);

}

I made a portrait of my roommate, Joohee, out of the letters of alphabet in her name and the phrase that she uses a lot. I wanted to somewhat capture her personality through this project, by the photo I chose and the text in a more minimal way. Below are the original photo and different experiments that I’ve done, only with text.

thlai-Project-09-Portrait

I went through many iterations of shapes, trying to see which one looked the best with my photo. I tried rectangles, lines, and ellipses, but ended up going with straight diagonal lines. This gives the photo the feeling of looking through rainy glass:

 

sketch

// Tiffany Lai
// 15-104, Section A
// thlai@andrew.cmu.edu
// Project 09

var portrait; // variable to store image

function preload() {
    var imageURL = "https://i.imgur.com/2w1VggQ.jpg";
    portrait = loadImage(imageURL);
}

function setup() {
    createCanvas(480, 480);
    background(255);
    portrait.loadPixels();
}

function draw() {
    var px = random(width); // x location of line
    var py = random(height); // y location of line
    var ix = constrain(floor(px), 0, width-1);
    var iy = constrain(floor(py), 0, height-1);
    var colorAtLocation = portrait.get(ix, iy); // get color at location x y
    var randomSize = random(0, 15); // random size of line

    stroke(colorAtLocation);
    strokeWeight(3);
    line(px, py, px + randomSize, py + randomSize); // draw lines

    var colorAtMouse = portrait.get(mouseX, mouseY);
    fill(colorAtMouse);
    line(mouseX, mouseY, mouseX + randomSize, mouseY + randomSize); // draw line where mouse is
}

thlai-LookingOutwards-09

2016 AICP Sponsor Reel

I asked my friend Heidi what her favorite Looking Outwards project was, and this was it. I had actually watched this video before – I think it went viral about a year or so ago. I agree with what Heidi says in her Looking Outwards post: “…it looks so believable, and yet the textures and behaviors of the people dancing…would never make sense in real life.” When I first watched the video, I actually thought it was people dancing in intricate costumes because the movements and textures looked so realistic. I think the dancing and colors really capture the energy of the music, and the fast paced changes in costume keeps the viewers on their feet and keeps them interested. I think the creators did motion capture technology justice. I agree with what Heidi says her her post. The project is incredibly imaginative and entertaining to watch.

hannahk2-LookingOutwards-09

I chose Clarisa’s looking outwards from week 2, because I can relate to her fascination with virtual reality after experiencing it for the first time recently. I think the project she chose, Memo Akten’s Fight (2017), is really amazing and I agree with Clarisa in that the most interesting aspect is its variability- no two people will see and interpret the visuals in their brains the same way, though the images stay constant with each showing. I think it is important, however, to highlight how the artist achieved this effect by utilizing his knowledge of psychology and the binocular rivalry phenomenon. While looking around, the viewer’s brain chooses which aspects of the two images shown become dominant or suppressed, presenting the viewer with an animated patchwork of the two images. Even more amazing is the message that the picture we see in our minds is not a clear representation of the outside world, but of simulated world constructed based on our expectations and prior experiences.

http://www.memo.tv/fight/

(the link to the work)

cespinoz-Looking Outwards 02

(the original looking outwards post)

(the simulation of the mixing of the two images within the brain)

fight_snippet_4 from Memo Akten on Vimeo. (a clip of the two images shown in the VR)

sntong-Project-09-Portrait

sketch

// Scarlet Tong
// sntong@andrew.cmu.edu
// Section A
// Project 09 - Computational Portrait (Custom Pixel)

// variable to store the image
var pic;

function preload(){
  // load image into variable
  pic = loadImage("https://i.imgur.com/fLLh0am.jpg")
}

function setup(){
  createCanvas (280,480);
  imageMode(CENTER);
  background(255);
}

function draw(){
  // extract pixes from image
  pic.loadPixels();
  // select random x and y values to generate the "cross"
  var x = floor(random(pic.width));
  var y = floor(random(pic.height));
  // extract color from that pixel
  var pixCol = pic.get(x, y);
  //set stroke color to color of the pixel
  stroke(pixCol);
  // distance to allow to draw ther lines to form a cross
  var dis = random(10);
  // draw crosses
  line(x,y,x+dis,y+dis);
  line(x,y+dis,x+dis,y);
  // create small cicles that are located at the center of the crosses
  fill(pixCol);
  ellipse(x+(dis/2)+0.5, y+(dis/2)+0.5,dis/3,dis/3);
}

I decided to make a pixel that is a cross with a dot in the middle, which I will use to trace a self portrait of myself. I used random to select where every new pixel is drawn to create the image.

Portrait generated from code

sntong-Looking Outwards 09: on Looking Outwards

I viewed the Botanicus Interacticus project by Disney Research (in collaboration with Philipp Schoessler, Jonas Loh/Studio NAND, Munehiko Sato) as an interesting project that aims to bridge the gap between our ability to understand, and communicating, to nature and to understand how nature will react. By projecting images around the plants due to the physical interaction by other objects around it starts to allow us to read, empathize the world plants experience in their perspective. It also suggests ideas of Deep Ecology that strive for a more responsible stance of human activity in this era of Anthropocene. As I did not focus on much of the technical implications the project which Jamie did in her post, I am fascinated by the cultural implications the project begins to tease out.

Interactions of the person with the plant produces amazing visual images

 

 

mjeong1-Looking Outwards-09-Section A

Link to Hae Wan Park’s Looking Outwards06

Link to Maius Watz

Marius Watz, “Arcs04-01” and “Arcs-04-01″
Jer Thorp,” RGB – NYT Word Frequency, 1981 – 2010″ and “Hope/Crisis – NYT Word Frequency, 1981 – 2010”

Random Number Multiples by Marius Watz and Jer Thorp

What I admire about Marius and Jer’s “Random Number Multiple” series is that the artist never neglect the beauty of traditional craft while embracing new digital interface through computer generated design. They used computer software to generate complicated geometry and screen-printed the final work. In Haewan’s post, she admired Marius Watz’s “Arc” series for its intentionality given to it random shape. The artists does not just randomly shape the geometry but they precisely calculate the geometry they want.

I agree with her that the randomness is generated by certain rules through a definite computer software to satisfy a statistical test. It seems random but it is actually generated by mathematical processes. I really admire their process of working. They effectively take advantage of computer generated design to visualize complicated statistical data and they also used traditional way to print it. Its nice combination expands more possible ways of executing art expression.

 

ljkim looking outward 09

I am reviewing the work of: ssharada from looking outward 05. Their cited project was on an Absolut Amber ad.

Absolut Amber from ZEITGUISED on Vimeo.

I appreciated their point in stating that although this looks like natural materials, it is in fact algorithms and computer generated art. “but in reality are created using technology and synthetic non-physical matter – usually from coded algorithms.”

Although this is computer generated, I consider this more on the design side. Its more likely that this was in works with an advertising ad. There was a creator who directed the vision and visuals, but had an engineer code what they wanted. I appreciate that music was the inspiration for this work because I can clearly see the correlation.