Category: Section B

(Walt Disney Animation Studios, 2012, Paperman)

Link to the original post: https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2017/2017/09/28/looking-outwards-05-3d-graphics/

As a student that personally admires all of the Disney films, I was very thrilled to come across Sarah’s post about Disney’s 3D graphics in the short film Paperman. Although this film is black and white, the intricate movements and details put into the figures, objects, and backgrounds make the scene live as if they are colored and real. I very much agree with Sarah’s comment about Disney sticking to the older practice of creating animation. The combination of artistic skills enabled the production of such a solid piece of work. Especially after knowing how intense and time consuming it is to draw each frame and convert it to 3D graphic images, I have deep respect to the animators at Walt Disney animation studios.

 

For this week’s looking outwards I looked at Cora Hickoff’s post about Ian Cheng’s Droning Like a Ur. (https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2017/2017/08/29/looking-outwards-draft/). This piece is a live simulation that exists continuously by continually generating changes and combinations in his simulations. In Cheng’s words, essentially these are “games that play themselves.” What Cora seemed to admire most about this piece was its ambiguity and the intrigue it evokes by being recognizable and yet still vague and mysteriously unresolved. One thing that could be added to this point, is how the medium serves that attractive quality of the piece. The mysterious use of sound and ambiguous shapes and beings, are well executed from a design standpoint, but this is also served by the medium itself: the digital, computed realm. For instance, if these same images were done as a 3D animated piece, there would be an entirely different viewing experience. The progression and changes of the imagery by the computer itself, endlessly evolving, are what give this world a life of its own. It makes the artist’s hand, or the visual proof of the work that was done by the artist, less recognizable, and therefore more mysterious. This piece gives a lot of control over to the computer. I also agree with Cora’s criticism about the sound being less distinguished, and pushing the ambiguity even further. Again, it would be nice to let the medium and the use of the computer enhance the mysteriousness of the piece.

 

This is from Looking Outwards 07 by Jamie.

This Botanicus Interacticus project is by Disney Research. This is a mesmerizing work that is creating a very appealing visual. I agree that one of the interesting aspect of the project is on the development of response through lighting, creating dynamic visual from the static movement. Another thing I see particularly interesting is that we all consider plant as a organism that is alive but something that just cannot move, which sometimes make us think they are not even alive. I feel like this has almost given the personality and method of expression to the plants itself creating personification of the static living being.

Eyeo 2015 – Deray Mckesson and Samuel Sinyangwe from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Work of Deray McKesson and Samuel Sinyangwe link: https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

Deray and Samuel are both American civil rights activist and supporter/ member of Black lives matter. Interesting fact of Deray is that he has launched the Campaign Zero, which is a policy platform to end police violence. It is a website with ten proposals that are aimed to reduce police violence.

Samuel was also part of the launching Campaign Zero platform. Since the Protests emerged in the wake of 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Samuel worked with Deray since then to work and develop solution to address police violence in America.

I admire their work particularly because of addressing such a crucial and controversial problem that occurs often in America. I personally had close relationship with African-Americans back in California. I was there when my fellow friends were scared of police violence. In order for the information to spread and let people know of the matters, what they are doing such as protests, creating map of police violence and creating visualization of the data are best way to provide awareness to people who have access to digital medias. Their works are straightforward and logically laid out, allowing people and me to understand their challenge, solution and main issue to address.

Nayeon talked about this interesting project THE TRANSFINITE (2011) from Ryoji Ikeda, a Japenese sound and media artist in her LookingOutwards-04. (Here is the link to Nayeon’s post: https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2017/2017/09/22/nayeonk1-lookingoutwards-04/)

This is the project video:

Nayeon mentioned that she was attracted by how Ryoji Ikeda has created a dimension for combining the sound and installation art together, and I would like to say I totally agree with it. The video is very immersive for me to feel the changing vision and audio inside the big art installation space. The vision went well with the sound, and the whole wide empty space created a feeling of the theater with all the media going on. Even the audience who just stood at or randomly walked by the installation, as an outsider I considered they were a part of the stage. One interesting point that Nayeon mention in her post is that ” In his work, sound, time and space are composed by a mathematical way so that physical features of sound could reach to audience’s perception and feeling”, and it is very surprising for me. I was impressed by how Ryoji Ikeda uses technology to help convey his ideas but give audience better experience at the same time.

I found that she is very interesting as an artist.
she was born and raised in Iran during the war. That’s also why her work deals with the political, social and cultural contradictions we face every day. In early stage of her life, she took private creative writing course and learnt about the importance of telling personal narratives. She went to University of Tehran and was awarded her bachelor of arts in social science and media studies. And she moved to USA and attended two more university majoring Digital Media and Media art. She uses technology as part of a philosophical toolset to reflect on object; a poetic mean to document the personal and collective lives we live and our struggles as humans in the 21st century.

These two images are some of her works that caught my eyes from her website. As a woman artist, she uses sexual images to create her work in non sexual ways. Mean by that, I feel that female’s body represented on her work are very bold and nude. I always love the way of female artist using their gender as a story of their work as it stand alone from other’s -usually male- perspectives.

She also uses her work to fight with political problems. In this video, she used 3D printer to create a sculpture to say something to IS. I admire her braveness and creativeness as an artist.

“Morehshin Allahyari’s website

I watched and studied Scott Snibbe, and his 2012 lecture. Scott is an artist/developer that works in augmented reality, interactive interfaces, interactive art, and digital video. He lives in San Fransisco, currently works at Facebook as a project manager, and studied at Brown University in computer science. Scott describes himself as a pioneer in interactivity and augmented reality.

Among his many projects, I appreciated the depth he explored interactivity in an app he helped construct called Biophilia. It’s an interactive album built into an app format, so that you, as the listener, can manipulate the music in a way that makes it never the same, and different depending on the user. I really appreciate how relaxing and sane and normal everything feels in the interaction. Scott describes it as similar to nature and natural interaction, and that’s how it was deliberately designed. It’s simple, satisfying, and obvious as to the purpose.

In his presentation, I observed how Scott stayed simple. He didn’t delve too immensely far into any one theory, or concept, or piece of his work to the point where I and everyone else could easily understand what he was saying and what he meant. There was nothing intimidating about what he did, and even if he put years of his life into a piece he explained it plainly and simply. Hopefully, I can explain some of what I build the same way, to allow everyone to understand.

His Website: https://www.snibbe.com/

His lecture video:

 

(Above is a VIMEO clip of Maya Ganesh’s talk in Eyeo 2013)

Maya Indira Ganesh is a reader, writer, researcher, and activist working at Tactical Technology Collective in Berlin. She is a PhD candidate at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. She works as a feminist activist, and has been writing about and researching gender/sexuality, media, technology and rights, and social justice since the early 2000s.

A topic she is passionate about is Visual Influence. In the video clip that is attached to this post, she talks about Visual Influence and how data and visuals can be artfully used to benefit spreading and progressing social issues.

I admire her work in bringing together two different groups that are not linked together all the time. However, in stressing their advantages she talks about how both groups can benefit from collaborating their strengths together. She is able to do this because of her diverse background in working in both fields actively.

A project she has actively worked in is called Tactical Tech – a non-profit working for the past ten years to help activists worldwide use information more effectively. It made me think about how in the artistic pieces I design in the future, the message behind the art is equally as important as the aesthetic aspect of it.

https://tacticaltech.org/team-members/maya-indira-ganesh/

The lecture I watched was given by Darius Kazemi. Darius is a video game developer, computer programmer, and generative artist. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He hoped to get a master degree, but eventually dropped out to work on independent projects. Darius worked on generative art created from several websites such as twitter and google maps. His most popular project was a bot on Amazon which bought random books, CDs, and movies each month. I admired his work because his programs took small and inconsequential things and put them together to make something bigger. His presentation style was very interesting. One of the main points that he brought up that generative art would be boring without the human input. His best example of this was a program that would give the definition of random words. Darius realized that there was nothing interesting with this whatsoever. He decided that he would turn it into a joke generator. I also like that he gave examples outside his own creation. The best example he gave was a twitter account intended to mimic a teenage girl. It was actually, so good that there was a boy who spent three hours hitting on it.

Sources:

“Darius Kazemi.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Aug. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_Kazemi.

http://tinysubversions.com/

(Jake Barton, “Like Falling In Love”, 2012)

Link to Barton’s website: https://localprojects.net/

Jake Barton is an American designer who is also the founder of the company “Local Projects.” To introduce his educational background, Barton got a Bachelor in Science of Speech at Northwestern University and studied at New York University for his M.P.S. Interactive Telecommunications. He then recruited a media design team to launch his company.

Local projects is a media and physical design company that invents and build upon new media form to help customers connect with algorithms and up to date technology. Barton mainly focuses on making products that explores the relationship between technology and emotions that are most of the times derived from customers.

One of Barton’s most admirable work  is the media of the 9/11 museum in New York City. This piece was created through a custom algorithm that reproduced clips of video, text and audio of that tragic day. Although the contents could have been sensitive, I felt that Barton’s approach to this tragedy was smart. His approach was indirect and subtle enough to not upset those who were victimized, but also strong enough to get the message across. His balance and approach was ideal.

Barton’s usage of pictures and examples of his algorithmic products makes the talk more engaging. It definitely catches attention of the viewers and also makes his words more understandable. Also the interaction with the viewers by asking questions was smart.