LookingOutwards-10 – Page 6 – [OLD FALL 2018] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Jenny Hu — Looking Outwards 10

For this week’s Looking Outwards writing, I want to discuss Lauren McCarthy‘s work and project LAUREN.

Lauren McCarthy is an LA-based artist whose work centers on the tensions of automation, surveillance, and culture. She is also the creator of p5.js, the javascript library this whole class and all my work thus far rely on. What I love from her biography is the following quote: “I make art about what confuses me”. Work that speaks to me most strongly is work that carefully explores, processes, and asks the unexpected questions.

*video of project LAUREN

Her work LAUREN describes how Lauren watched and remotely interacted with people in their homes through a variety of cameras, sensors, etc and aimed to be an even better personal AI assistant than the commercial assistants available today. Her proposition is simple: A human can understand each person better, and anticipate their needs.

What I precisely love about this work is how it revises the ongoing distrust (and trust) of AI assistant products, and at large, the idea of sentience in artificial objects and materials. If we allow this sentience artificially, isn’t it much better to allow it naturally (an actual human being)? Our current paradigm of privacy is clearly placed in discourse in the LAUREN project.

Lan Wei-Looking Outwards 10

The project’s name is Branching Morphogenesis, created by Jenny Sabin. I love the spatial effect of the project. People can walk through and see through the structure at the same time and get varies of experiences because of different densities of the elements in different places. When looking at the project closely, I’m surprised to know that the whole structure was made out of 75,000 zip ties, and it is just so amazing to see how the small forces inside of each zip tie can work together and support such a huge structure.

Jenny Sabin is an architect, designer, artist and professor (Cornell University) who draws upon biology and mathematics to design material structures. She emphasises computaional design and digital fabrication a lot in her projects. Her projects, whether large-scale or small-scale, generally have strong spatial effect and interactive possibilities. It is easy to notice that she creates a lot of holes in many of her projects, and I believe her intention is to encourage visual connections.

Shirley Chen-Looking Outwards 10

Mouna Andraos and Melissa Mongiat are the founder and principal of Daily tous les jours(DTLJ). This design studio is best known for their work for the interactive public spaces, where the pedestrians are invited to join the interaction and communication with their environment and build up relationship between them.

For this project called Score, they turned the wide-opened parking lot in Bloomington, Minnesota to a playing field of large outdoor game. It is designed to question and challenge typical notions of competition; instead, it encourages collaboration and bonding relationship. This project is really impressive for me because they use computational skills and design sensitivity to create a engaging, inviting, and interactive public space, changing and forming a more connective and interactive community. Through their design, the public can engage with the environment as well as other people.

“Score”

People Playing “Score”

People Playing “Score”-Aerial View

DTLJ Website: http://www.dailytouslesjours.com/work/

Jonathan Liang – Looking Outwards – 10

Notes on Blindness is a short film by Peter Middleton and James Spinney. The film documents the life of a blind man called John Hull, and uses virtual reality and gameplay mechanics to recreate John’s cognitive and emotional memories. The genius behind the virtual reality component is French artist and art director Béatrice Lartigue. Lartigue is primarily known for her interactive installations and currently works in the interdisciplinary collaborative Lab212. She has won many awards, including the Google International Art Prize, Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award, the Lumen Prize, as well as the Sundance Film Festival.

Notes on Blindness is definitely something to check out: http://epure.it/notes-on-blindness

More of her interesting work can be found on her website:

http://epure.it/

Julie Choi – Looking Outwards – 10

color mapping algorithm presented by Kate Hollenbach based on the information on Wikipedia.

This project is called Color Mapping Algorithm conducted by an artist/programmer, Kate Hollenbach. Hollenbach created this piece based on the information on Wikipedia using a program called, Chromogram. The program basically sequences big text data into visually appealing patterns and color blocks. Categorizing the number of edits made on the page and the number of article headlines, Hollenbach produces a set of color patterns to show the ratio of each relative activities. I admire this project because this is a very useful tool for visual people who are analyzing a large amount of data. Although Hollenbach focused on specific sections of information on Wikipedia, this concept can be applied to many different platforms.
Kate Hollenbach works to create and examine interactive systems and inventive technological forms of space commonly in the fields of digital devices. She has built herself as an interface designer and a product developer to be in the place that she is now. She was previously the Director of Design and Computation at Oblong Industries and collected her skills of leading designers and programmers to develop systems and interfaces that are mainly user oriented.

Min Jun Kim- Looking Outwards 10

The female artist that I would like to discuss in Looking Outwards this week is Eva Mattes. She is a prantivist and net artist based in New York City. She operates under a pseudonym of 0100101110101101.org which I thought was interesting and works with a partner named Franco Mattes. Her work focuses on the issues- both political and ethical- that arose since the inception of the internet.

The artwork by Eva Mattes that I would like to discuss is her BEFNOED project. The concept of the artwork is rather straight-forward, but the meaning that stands behind it is very deep. The project involves having a monitor facing the floor or a wall that is very close, and puts the audience in compromised and bizarre positions- which in a sense puts them into a role as a performer.

One thing that I admire much about this art is how it tells a message in a very creative and experiential way. I think that a lot of art can be rather blunt yells out a message, but I think that this way of telling the story is actually very fun and impactful. I think that the message that she tells regarding the issues from technology is very relevant to society today, as people being born currently will have no concept about life before the computer.

Source: http://0100101110101101.org/befnoed/
Title: BEFNOED
Artist: Eva Mattes
Year: 2014

Looking Outwards – 10

Link: Production of bio-fuel through photosynthesis by algae located in Lille, France on October 2013.

From the Energy Futures project in 2012, the Algae Curtain was a part of the Living Laboratory. Materials used for this project includes: clear tubing, silicon casts, cultures of algae (specifically Nannochloropsis), nutrients for the algae, electronics and pumps, and lighting. The tubes are weaved into drapes suspended from the windows and algae is pumped inside the textile, where it performs photosynthesis to produce a bio-fuel for local use. This structure provides a permanent infrastructural support for the Future Fruits and it also formed micro-ecologies inside the plastic tubes. I find this project really unique because living organisms are integrated with a building’s structure and not only does it provide some sort of structural assistance, it could also provide fuel!

About Rachel Wingfield:
Rachel is a researcher, educator, and a designer who trained at the Royal College of Art. She specializes and studies living environments and their responses to the environments. She likes to explore emerging technological and biological futures by integrating technology, space, and living materials to create unique environments and experiences. Her past works not only showcases a new role for designers to innovate and intervene at an urban scale, but they also offered collaborative tools for public engagement activities/practices.

Other works by Studio Loop.pH:
Loop.pH is a studio based in London that experiments across the fields of the sciences, architecture, and design. This studio was founded so that people are able to create visionary experiences that can help them dream or re-imagine new visions for the future.

Elena Deng-Looking Outwards 10

This week, I looked at the Cloud Vessels by Nova Jiang from 2012. I chose this artist out of the list because it’s generally difficult to find a female artist of asian descent mentioned in a list of installation artists. Cloud Vessels itself peaked my interest because it seemed like a project involving environmental awareness as well as aesthetics. The project itself was developed and utilized in Los Lunas, New Mexico where water may be scarce. The form of the vessel was based on the cloud forms that pass over the site. Over time, water gathers from the environment through the process of condensation.

Cloud Vessel in the desert collecting water.

The artist herself focuses on the human senses of touch as well as encouraging the creative participation of the audience. She has a masters in media design from UCLA and currently lives in Los Angeles.
http://www.novajiang.com

Looking Outwards 10: Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman is well known for a plethora of things around Mediated Matter and creating Material Ecology. As an associate professor at MIT Media Lab, she’s a well-recognized artist, designer, and architect that speaks, most famously, about the intersection of design, technology, and biology. I want to focus specifically on her collaboration with another prolific female designer, Iris Van Herpen. Anthozoa is a wearable feat of 3D printing technology where they created a custom program to enable printing in both rigid and soft materials.

Jamie Dorst Looking Outward 10

For this week’s Looking Outward post I’ve chosen to write about Kate Hollenbach, an artist, programmer, and educator based in Chicago and Los Angeles. The project that really interested me by her is called phonelovesyoutoo. The project was done over one month, where she recorded her own cell phone front camera every time she used her phone. In her database, she put together all the videos arranged like a calendar, and played each tile proportional to the time of day it was recorded.

A video showing phonelovesyoutoo.

I was intrigued by this project because I think our phone usage is something that we hardly notice albeit it being one of the things we do most. I thought it was interesting to note the similarities and differences between clips in the project–a lot of her facial expressions are very similar, while the scenery around her changes. I think that has implications as to how we are spending our time–when we are on our phones, we have no emotion despite the changing world around us.