Category: LookingOutwards-08

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

Christine Seo – Looking Outwards 08

Caption: Artist talk on Instint from Eyeo Festival

Kate Hollenbach is an artist, programmer, and educator from Los Angeles, California. She develops and examines interactive systems and new technologies relating body, gesture, and physical space. She designs and builds interactive experiences for collaborative spaces and acts as the Director of Design & Computation at Oblong Industries. Kate has a MFA from UCLA and a Bachelor of Science from MIT, as she studied Design Media Arts and Computer Science and Engineering.

In this project, Instint, she designed a platform that lives in the real environment around us and displays people’s interaction with each other and the space. The installation uses interfaces animate to illustrate activity, connection through spacial and gestural interactions in the product to build a software that makes interactions in a higher scale. She is able to effectively describe her work by communicating to the audience her intentions and going step by step to explain the process.She also shows various perspectives of the work, where the functions are revealed as she goes through the talk. Most importantly, she is very engaged in her work, which can be shown in her speech. I can learn from this that being engaged and having passion for what I make can make a difference to the audience when it comes to presenting works of my own.

I thought that this project was very interesting how she was able to create something that can relate to the nature around us. I think it is fascinating to see something that is a digital media, to come out of the screen and actually communicate in the world around humans. At first, it reminded me of having different monitor screens on the computer and being able to drag windows into different screens. However, this project is something that speaks more than having connected screens interact. It makes the digital world seem more accessible in our time and space.

http://www.katehollenbach.com/

https://vimeo.com/channels/instint2014

Catherine Coyle – Looking Outwards 8

Jane Friedoff’s full EYEO Presentation

This week I decided to write about Jane Friedhoff’s talk at the EYEO festival as I thought the summary of her work was interesting and I think game design is a really cool intersection of art and computing!

Jane Friedhoff studied sustainable development at Columbia University and later design and technology at The New School in New York. She seems still very young but has a lot of impressive experience with Google, the New York Times, and also founding the Code Liberation Foundation.

In her presentation, she talks about her ‘Riot Grrrl’ approach to making games. She describes these games as ‘power fantasies’ but not the usual ones found in games. Instead they revolve around making chaos and just running wild. Instead of making punk music, Friedhoff likes to make unpolished punk games. Some of the games she creates deal with tougher issues, but instead of being meant to educate the other side on why she is feeling this way, they are meant more for ‘catharsis’ and just expressing her feelings. For example in ‘Lost Wage Rampage’ two girls who find out that they’ve been paid significantly less than their male co-workers steal a car and rampage through a mall, taking back the money that they lost.

I think this is a perfect example of art in games as more than anything else, it is an effort to make you feel a certain way. Many games are more story based (which is still fun), but creating games based entirely around chaos and feelings is something new that I can admire.

As for her presentation style, she works with a standard PowerPoint presentation. However, she is great at using her voice to keep your attention and uses interesting visuals to help us follow along.

Altogether, I really admired learning about her and her work! You can read about her on her website here.

Alessandra Fleck – Looking Outwards – 08

(Image from Reuben Margolin’s Pentagonal Wave project)

Reuben Margolin is kinetic artist with a background in math and english from Harvard University who is from Berkeley, California. Inspired by the movement of small green caterpillars, Margolin’s research involves the study of structures that are wave like. Based in Emeryville, California, Margolin has been developing mathematically based natural wave structures for almost 2o years. Growing up with a father who always had woodworking tools around, Margolin was introduced to wood models early in life. He later went to Russia to pursue further study in woodworking  with artists. However, a mathematician at heart, Margolin pursued using mathematics to create flow of his wooden art pieces similar to that of a green caterpillar he had seen years ago while hiking in Utah.

The video below shows one such example of how Margolin implements the caterpillar movement into an actual moving caterpillar machine.


One thing that I particularly admire about Margolin’s work is the details he puts into creating such caterpillar – like flow.  There is a subtle sense of flow in all of the modules that carries that larger piece together. Once such project I think that exhibits this well is his work called Nebula, which also implements 14,064 bicycle reflectors into the structure. I find it fascinating how someone who does not have a very technical background/education, is still able to take concepts of mathematics and apply them to a project of this scale like this. Note that the entire structure used in the Nebula structure is comprised of a thousand amber crystals organized in a “multi-tiered, geometric pattern.”

The means in which Margolin presents his work is very much rooted in the process of trial, failure, critical questioning of what is conventional and discovery. These are three critical aspects of design that I do not think is emphasized very often in the overall design process. Often it seems that Margolin makes several mathematical implementation strategies as he is designing the structure. This approach to designing the structures proves that not all of the work can be planned out them implemented. There is a passing between the drawing board and the shop that goes hand in hand.

 

More Information

Reuben Margolin

https://www.reubenmargolin.com/waves/

Nebula

 

 

Justin Yook – Looking Outwards 08

Chris Sugrue is a digital artist who is known to create interactive displays, audiovisual performances, and algorithmic animations. She has a Masters of Fine Arts in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design, and now is based in Paris, France; she currently is a teacher at Parsons Paris.  Sugrue’s work mostly involves experimenting with technology by coming up with fascinating ways to explore artificial life, optical illusions, and eye-tracking. I admire her art because each piece she made has a different story within it. Story is important in any art piece because it gives the art a new level of depth and interpretation. My favorite project is Delicate Boundaries, an interactive simulation where cell-like creatures on a screen can crawl onto the person touching the screen; the small creatures move around a person’s body to another in interesting ways. The visual for this project is very simple, so that it is relaxing to the eyes. However, the project’s message and interactivity makes all the difference because it is a way for something so simple looking to have so much complexity. I learned from this that what is more important than visuals is the message that is conveyed, and that my projects should try to incorporate more interactivity.

Source: http://csugrue.com/delicateboundaries/

FashionTech by Anouk Wipprecht

Anouk Wipprecht is a Dutch, female artist working in the field of Couture Fashion, but at the intersection of analog design and robotics.

Eyeo 2016 – Anouk Wipprecht from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

Anouk Wipprecht is such an inspiring artist because she is truly pushing the boundaries of her field. She has defined these two fields of interest to her, fashion and robotics, and exploits them to create a new bias in her designs. She sees her designs as living systems that “move, breathe, and react to the space around them.”

One of the most interesting projects to me is the Spider Dress, which “attacks when you come close to it.” Anouk has been especially interested in defining these spaces of interaction with fasion, i.e the tiers of space around our bodies.

Diagram, Anouk Wipprecht

Attached to the shoulders are robotic arms which expand from this boundary of personal space into the social space as people approach the dress and model.

Spider dress, Anouk Wipprecht

Link to video of dress here!

What I love about this artist is her actual deployment of these intersectional ideas. There exists a conceptual level of her work which influences the development of her work and eventual fabrication. At each of these levels, the others don’t fault.

“FashionTech” is defined as “a rare combination of fashion design combined with engineering, science and interaction/user experience design.” The idea of fashion, as more than a garment, that exists on our bodies, in the space around us, and as a response to the environment we exist in is such a holistic approach to an everyday idea we take for granted.

Read more about the artist here!

 

 

Mimi Jiao – Looking Outwards 8 – Section E

Eyeo 2016 – Kyle McDonald from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

Kyle McDonald is an artist, philosopher and computer scientist whose artistic medium consists mainly of code. He is heavily involved in creating and collaborating on initiatives that blend engineering with art and through that he hopes to bring connectivity to visual processing and computer libraries. He specializes in new media and uses coding systems such as openFrameworks to create systems with elements of playfulness. His works mainly revolve around the idea of interaction and visualization through code – many of his works adhere to his visual brand of glitchy aesthetics. However, he has also created many larger and higher fidelity works including installation and performance art. I admire his works because it very clearly shows his exploration in having fun and pushing the boundaries of what coded art can become. His smaller scale works like the glitchy renderings are the ones that I personally enjoy the most from an aesthetic standpoint, and it is something I have been trying to render throughout this course. Since creating these glitchy graphics don’t necessarily take up a lot of resources and is very accessible, I want to really try and push myself to see what I can create. His larger installations, like Social Soul, are also works I really respect and appreciate. Many of his installations emerge the visitor in a whole-body experience where the digital and physical come together to create a hybrid experience. These two worlds come together and the perception of space, time, and physicality is heavily altered. I really enjoy this type of isolation and eeriness that McDonald’s installations create and it pushes me to ponder the influence of technology on the physical existence of all matter. Especially in this hybrid age with the integration of digital and physical experiences, it is really interesting to see McDonald’s take on bringing coding into real life. If I ever had access to the resources to make large scale installations like these, I would love to design experiences that play on the idea of blurring the line between reality and the digital realm.

Sharon Yang Looking Outwards 08

Eyeo 2014 – Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

The artists that I have been inspired by are Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat. They are  both from Montreal but they work all over the US and in Canada. Mouna studied New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program and Melissa holds Creative Practice for Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, UK. They are the founders of Daily Tous Les Jours. Daily Tous Les Jours is a design studio that uses technology and storytelling to explore collaboration of different individuals to induce change. It is known for its work in public spaces; their projects involve inviting passing crowds to play important roles in changing their environment. Their work utilizes tools such as  digital arts, performance, and contemporary devices such as sensors, phones and real-time data, to musical instruments, dance choreographies, food and meditation. Out of their many outstanding projects, the one that attracted my attention was Choreographie pour humans et les etoiles (Choreography for humans and stars). The goal of the project was to get passing crowds to dance in public as if they were celestial bodies, which many would not do in fear of others’ judgments.  During the project, the crowd were instructed to hold hands and lean back while spinning as fast as they could. Their celestial motions were captured by a camera and were processed into a graphic of universe on the screen. I found it highly interesting to see how the crowds, though some at first were reluctant to do it, but became increasingly comfortable with doing it especially as other people joined them to do it. I found the project highly inspiring and powerful as it delivers a message of how you should not be afraid of others’ judgements and be willing to act differently from the norm sometimes.

As for their presentation, I believe it was done quite effectively. It was not one of those highly engaging with funny jokes or heartfelt and powerful presentations, but was calmly done and the content was delivered clearly. As an audience I felt comfortable watching their presentation. Also, as they are co-founders of an organization and have been working with each other for a while, them presenting together also worked very well. I learned that presentations can be calm and still be able to communicate effectively.

Mouna and Melissa’s websites: http://www.dailytouslesjours.com/about/

http://inst-int.com/speaker/mouna-andraos/

http://inst-int.com/speaker/melissa-mongiat/

Kevin Riordan Looking Outwards-08

INST-INT 2013 – Jared Ficklin from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

I chose to do this week’s Looking Outwards on Jared Ficklin. He is based in Austin, Texas, and he is currently a partner and Lead Creative Technologist at ArgoDesign. In his past, he worked at frog, becoming one of four frog fellows for his work. He is most interested in the interactions between user-experience and touch and multi-touch, and using physics to enhance the user’s experience. I admire the way he approaches his work, and his motto which is “Think by making, Deliver by demo”. He believes that the best way to integrate cutting edge technology is by using user experience simulation as early in the process as possible, which is something I admire.

In his presentation at INST-INT 2013, he talked about organizing frog party, which is the unofficial name for the opening to the SXSW interactive. I enjoyed his presentation style of making little jokes throughout to keep the audience engaged, while still making sure the important information was included. His slide design was also very nice, which is something I will be incorporating into my own presentations. He focused on the user experience entirely, not getting into the technical stuff at all, which was interesting to me.

His bio can be found at http://www.argodesign.com/jared-ficklin-bio.html