Month: October 2018

Looking Outwards 8 – Sara Frankel


caption: The work of Amanda Cox’s projects that I admire the most is her primary election visuals as she not only used them to present the outcome of the votes, but she also used statistics and analytics to try to predict the voting outcomes as well.

http://amandacox.tumblr.com

Amanda Cox is a NYTimes editor of The Upshot section of the New York Times, however her first position was as a graphics editor, a position she held from 2005 to 2016. She was awarded the National Design Award in 2009 and the Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award from the American Statistical Association in 2012. Ms. Cox received a bachelor’s degree in math and economics from St. Olaf in 2001 and a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Washington in 2005. Having won awards in design, one of her most infamous works is the mapping of the primary election in 2012. She loves to correlate the abstract image of politics with more tangible images such as a colored bubble. What I admire about Cox’s work is her ability to branch the intangible concepts to the tangible; the concept of politics to bubbles. As a musician, this is my career as I am to connect my ideas and creation of sound to something that would make sense to the listener. Cox presents in a more casual way, throwing in jokes from her experience and outside references to help the audience member receive a better understanding of her work with visuals of politics.

Xiaoying Meng -Looking Outwards 08

 

 

 

Nicky Case is a game designer who makes games that are designed to explain complex social issues.  His talk was very different from a lot of other speakers’. He started by talking about personal stories. He grew up in an abusive family in Singapore and his family did not react well when he came out as queer. He then used this personal experience to create a game helping others come out.

In his talk, he talked about telling stories and making interactive nonfiction about systems. His most famous work including The Evolution of Trust, Parable of the Polygons and A Better Ballot and Fireflies. I really appreciate The Evolution of Trust, this game really makes the player question their worldview and how trust works. By creating these games, Nicky hopes to change people’s heart and mind and makes people understand the world and each other better.

Connor McGaffin – Looking Outwards – 08

Jen Lewin is a designer and installation artist who works to create interactive pieces with a common motif of playing with light. In 1974, Lewin was born in Boulder Colorado, she attended a local elementary school where she was introduced to primitive coding practices in the third grade. where she was trained in classical ballet before studying architecture at the nearby University of Colorado campus.

Lewin began to explore an intersection between these disciplines through her work on the Light Harp project. These public installations projected “strings” of light which, when broken, play a sound at a nuanced volume and frequency. Because of their invisible nature in daylight, many are intiaill surprised when walking into her playful trap, before turning back around and engaging with it more. This activity sparks the attention of curious bystanders, who are pulled into the piece and join an impromptu, dadaist symphony for those passing by to hear.

A demonstration of music being played on  Long Harp (Jen Lewin, 2006)

I am drawn to how Lewin talks of her work, and how those who interact with it interact with the piece, which actually allows them to communicate with others that are playing with the piece. I am fascinated by how quickly her work is able to suddenly open up a side of people that is so vulnerably human and playful. Kids and adults alike interacted with the piece, too filled with wonder to engage in any kind of judgement.

The presentation that Lewin gave on her work was really well done, where she was able to keep a controlling, yet conversational tone with the audience leading up to an open Q&A. I think she communicated her ideas articulately, and her ability to do so while simultaneously queueing videos, action shots, and process photographs contextualized everything nicely.

Jen Lewin

 

Xindi Lyu-Looking Outwards 08


Brian house is an artist with both computer science and sound studies background, which influence his practices and works. His recent concentrations are AI, technology and urban rats. His works explores a great range of topics including the rhythm of body, technology and environment. His art pieces usually display not only audibly through sound tracks but also visually through installations or digital arts. The combination of the installations and the sound track express his idea as a whole piece. These combinations are mostly achieved by technology and Artificial Intelligence.

In his presentation he presented his works from the most recent to his earliest works, explaining each the back ground stories of each:his motivation, inspirations, how he did his work, where was he coming from and what ideas were he expressing through his arts. That made me easily understood the message he was trying to spread through his works.

I find his works very inspiring for the way he combines a visual installation with sound arts, allowing people to understand him with two different senses at the same time. It showed me how dynamic an art can be displayed with the power of technology.

Min Jun Kim- Looking Outwards 8

Eyeo 2014 – Lauren McCarthy from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

Speech from Lauren McCarthy

The speaker that I would like to discuss about today is Lauren McCarthy. She from New York city (currently based in Los Angelos) and is an artist and programmer. She is esteemed in the sense of programming because she was the person that developed P5js, which is the website that we use in class to learn various part of javascript. Her motto is “I make art that confuses me.” The statement makes me wonder a lot, because it kind of dives into the idea of what the purpose of art is. Is art merely there to look pleasing? Is it to make us think? Is it to invoke feelings?
She considers herself a more of a hacker than a people’s person, meaning that she has more of a ease at dealing with computers than fitting in to the norm, so to speak. Therefore she focuses a lot on in relationship between people and machines/devices in her body of work. A lot of the projects that she makes are related to how can technology make a person, more human?
Some of her artwork include: Happiness hat, anti-daydreaming device, body-contact training suit, and conversacube. These all focus on different aspects of what it mean to be human and sees to how it can help improve a person’s aptitude in that. I admire the happiness hat the most out of her artwork, because it makes one think, what does it really mean to be more human? Does simply emulating the behaviors of a refined human make someone more human? In a way, I differ in view from what the projects are trying to portray, because I think that the purpose/place it’s coming from is way more important than action itself. Meaning, just because I smile for the sake of smiling doesn’t make me more human. The smile should come from the desire to make someone else happier or to display how someone else is making me feel.
She presents her artwork by tying different stories and thoughts together with the project, instead of simply presenting them in an orderly manner. I think that this helps illustrate her main purpose and the purpose of the devices she creates. I think that by tying stories to how I present, I can more deeply engage the audience and such.

Website of artist: http://lauren-mccarthy.com/
Video of happiness hat is included in the embedded video.

Christine Chen-Looking Outwards-08

The above is a video of Mario Klingemann’s speech at the 2015 Eyeo Festival where he presents his perspective on the topic of order in the world of art and computer science. Link: https://vimeo.com/channels/eyeo2015/133783443

Mario Klingemann is a German artist who is known for being one of the first who utilized the use of computer programming in the arts. His works and studies involve researching the connections between creativity, culture and perception through the perspectives of artificial intelligence and mechanical learning. One quote that resonates with his views of the influence of computer programming with art is the quote “If arithmetic, mensuration and weighing be taken away from art, that which remains will be little indeed” from Plato.

In his speech at the 2015 Eyeo Festival of 2015, he discusses about his approaches towards the concept of “order” from the perspectives of a programmer and from that of an artist. A work from him that he discussed during his speech that I was particularly interested in is his work with the image collections of the British Library Labs. In this work, Klingemann classified 1 million images from the British Library Lab and utilized machines learning techniques to define different index for each image. Then, with the new order that he created, he created an artwork (shown partially below) with the information. Knowing how difficult it is think of methods to even run through simple layers of array (from the assignment we just did that involves locating the brightest pixel of the image) I admire this project so much for his skills of being able to sort through such a gigantic array of information!

Mario Klingemann, British Library Labs, 2015

In his presentation, Klingemann uses various images combined with graphic diagrams that help audiences better understand and visualize that information that he is communicating. As a student of communication design I am actually studying how to ease the process of transfer of information between different forms(people to people, things to people…etc.) His method of coordinately visual graphical information through data maps with his presentation really made the data-grasping task of mine as an audience a lot smoother and this is what I am trying to learn from in design too.

Link to Mario Klingmann’s personal website: http://quasimondo.com

Kevin Thies – Looking Outwards 08


Minimaforms is an experimental architectural design practice founded in 2002, the vision of two brothers, Theodore and Stephen Spyropoulos. Theodore is an architect, and Stephen is an artist and interactive designer. Their work is synergistic, and look at possible futures and designing projects that act as prototypes. They’re interested in looking at communication and the way information is deconstructed and connected.

Their work is quite refined. The more pure architecture projects not display parametricism, but specifically resemble communicating nodes, or as they say, an agent based system with an emphasis on how they communicate over time. One of their projects that I particularly admire is titled Archigram on their website, and is an evolution on a 1966 Archigram project “Living Pod“, which is a proposal for a trailer home-like dwelling that can move and connect to other units to create larger structures. I think the project is impressive both on the conceptual level, but especially that they brought it all into a large physical model. Additionally, they took the idea of the pod and literrally evolved it, developing spines and tails to connect, which does fit with the idea of a time-based development.

“Archigram” by Minimaforms

Their presentation strategy felt “standard architectural”. They ran through their work, showing images and videos, going through the goals and results of the projects. By looking at the results of the projects, you can frame what it is an individual or group aims to change or improve.

Julie Choi – Looking Outwards – 08

Maria Scileppi is an artist and a designer whose career has been dedicated to developing mission-driven programs. She gave a lecture in Eyeo talking about some of her works and experiments that had the most takeaways. She confidently believes in collaboration has it creates a beautiful mix of people’s strengths and alertness into an execution. She solely believes that collaboration complements occupation’s creativity and that it extends the reach as a creator. One of my favorite projects done by Scileppi is her social experiment in which she makes a friend every day for a year. This required her to be vulnerable to strangers by telling her story and opening up first. However, the takeaways from this social experiment were that you cannot neglect other people’s stories and perspectives because since art and thinking expands with collaboration. Under the collaboration, people tend to bring their best attitudes and abilities because of the psychological trust that they build upon each other while working and build on ideas.
The way Scileppi enunciated her words while speaking really helped me understand the point she was trying to deliver. Although she was standing behind the podium during her lecture, she made sure that she had clear eye contact and made gestures that kept the attention of the audience on her. Another notable thing was that she used visual cues in her slides so that the audience caught specific transitions during her presentation.

Link to the Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/eyeo2015/135073611
Link to Maria Scileppi’s website: http://www.mariascileppi.com/

Yingying Yan – Looking Outwards 08

Sha Hwang is an information designer who is working to improve the government at Nava. He founded Meshu, Motivity and worked for Trulia. He started by studying architecture, then animation, modeling and finally data visualization. His works are amazing, but his personality is what made him more successful. In the video, he said: “ I do not have much, but I have enough to give someone space, time to breath.” He knows what is right and does his best to support those rights. He mentioned his mother and her influence on him. He talked about lighting and how it searches for the ground similar to how someone can live one’s life and search for the “one thing” to do. He is inspiring, so as his artwork.

An example of his mapping method

I am doing a mapping project in the studio now. Sha’s mapping methods allow me to think more out of the box. His mapping methods are simple, visually attractive, and more importantly, conveying the information effectively. There are 2D graphics, 3D representations, animations and more. My favorite project from his website is the Photo Reel, which is a collage. He combined 2D collage with computation interaction. I think that is innovative.

The collage

Alexandra Kaplan – Looking Outwards 08

 

Lecture at Eyeo given by Neil Mendoza

  An artist that stood out to me is Neil Mendoza, who has an MA in math and computer science from Oxford University and an MFA in design media art from UCLA. He only started to self-describe himself as an artist in 2014 and often imbues his art with humor, which is why I really like his work. I admire his approach to his work, in his lecture, he often talks about getting a simple idea from a single idea or object, thinking about it, then expanding upon in a whimsical way.

An example of Neil Mendoza’s work I found particularly amusing.

    One project that really stood out to me was his “Hamster Powered Hamster Drawing Machine. His thought process started with the idea of selfies, which led down the rabbit hole of why selfies are limited to humans. He then took this concept and built a contraption that, when a hamster runs on its wheel, it draws a picture of a running hamster. The way it combined technological software (the cams were needed to draw a hamster) and the physical (a hamster controlling the drawing device) is really inspiring and opens my mind to the different possibilities programming, code, and computer science can offer even outside the technological world.