caption: Terry Riley’s “In C” results in a different performance guaranteed eery time played.

The looking outwards assignment I am reviewing is Kyle Leve’s week 6 post about In C by Terry Riley. Listening to it, at first it sounded kind of jarring and unsettling because of the lack of harmonic progression, but the more I listened to it the more I appreciated it. Kyle mentions that this “piece… allows each player to make their own artistic decisions and have freedom from the written page”. I agree with this comment as there are legitimately infinite combinations and interpretations as it is dependent on how many or littles musicians there are and their own musicianship. I do agree with Kyle though to a degree about randomness as if one listens to it in passing, it would really not make sense. However, if you stop and listen and allow yourself to be open minded to the momentum of the music, the music should not feel random at all but in fact, the nonsense you hear should seem coherent.

sketch

// Sara Frankel
// sfrankel
// Project 09 Portrait
// section A 

var underlyingImage; //variable to help display the image being shown
var circx = 0; //circle starting position is 0,0
var circy = 0;

function preload() {
    var myImageURL = "https://i.imgur.com/a3mX8Atl.jpg";
    underlyingImage = loadImage(myImageURL); //loads the image into the variable provided
}

function setup() {
    createCanvas(480, 480);
    background(0);
    underlyingImage.loadPixels(); //loads image
    frameRate(10);
}

function draw() {
    var px = random(width);
    var py = random(height);
    var ix = constrain(floor(px), 0, width-1);
    var iy = constrain(floor(py), 0, height-1);
    var theColorAtLocationXY = underlyingImage.get(ix, iy);

    //strokeWeight(5);
    fill(theColorAtLocationXY);
    text("twins", px, py);//inserts text randomly to draw the image

    if (mouseIsPressed) {
    	var theColorAtPos = underlyingImage.get(circx, circy);
		fill(theColorAtPos);
		ellipse(circx, circy, 5, 5); //draws ellipse at circx and circy
		circx = (circx + 5) % width; //increments circx accross the row and goes back to 0 when it reaches width
		if (circx === 0) { 
			circy += 5;// when circx reaches width, circy will increment
		}
	}
    
}

I chose to upload a picture of my sister and I. Being a fraternal twin, most of the time people do not believe or suspect that we are twins. At times, this can be quite fun to point out to people, but most of the time it is not. So I thought it would be ironic to use this picture of us in elementary school in such an abstract image that legitimately spells and draws out the truth with the text and circles. As when you press the canvas, ellipses will be drawn to almost “clearly” draw it out for you.

Here is the original picture.

Here is a final image shot.

sketch

// John Legelis
// Section D

var imgH = 480
var pR = 10
var colorList = []
var cWidth = 360
var cHeight = 480
var sourceimg = "https://i.imgur.com/PHP8Htm.jpg"
var pimg = "https://i.imgur.com/R1D8XFS.jpg"
var Ploaded
var Sloaded;

function preload() {
    Sloaded = loadImage(sourceimg)
    Ploaded = loadImage(pimg)
}
function setup() {
    createCanvas(360, 480);
    background(0);
    Sloaded.loadPixels()
}
function draw() {
    for (x=0; x < cWidth/pR; x++){
        colorList[x] = []
        for (y=0; y < cHeight/pR; y++){
            colorList[x][y] = Sloaded.get(x*pR, y*pR)
            noStroke(0)
            tint(colorList[x][y])
            image(Ploaded, x*pR, y*pR, pR, pR)
        }
    }
    noLoop()
}

This week’s project seemed at first a bit intimidating but after thinking about it, I decided creating a mosaic representation of a portrait using “tiles” of another image would be an approachable yet interesting approach. The portrait photo this project is based on is a photo I took of my friend in a car holding her small dog named Rocky. The tile photo I used for the mosaic was a close up of Rocky’s face.

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.

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

 

 

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.

Eyeo 2018 – Giorgia Lupi from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

The artist I chose for this week’s looking outwards is Giorgia Lupi. She is an information designer who designs engaging visual narratives in a humanistic way that re-connects numbers with stories, people, and ideas. She creates work that emphasizes the notion that data can not only describe the objective world, but can also illustrate aspects of human life, which are not commonly associated with numbers. I was particularly drawn to her work, as she uses design methodologies, particularly user empathy and designing for emotion, in order to transform quantitative analysis into beautiful, playful moments of emotion, humanity, poetry, and art. She does so by creating work through very hand-drawn, analog, and raw forms, which strongly appeal to me. As someone who is interested in user experience, information design, and design methodologies, this lecture allowed me to view information design and data from a different perspective– one that is empathetic and humanistic rather than purely quantitative. From this lecture, my main takeaway was that we can inspire empathy through data, data is the eye of the beholder, data is never the point but always a medium we have to abstract, data can unite us, and ultimately, that data has the potential to transform the uncountable into something that can be reconnected to our lives and to our behaviors.

Lupi’s project titled “Bruises — the Data We Don’t See” initially drew me in through its aesthetics and color palette. At first, the image’s pastel colors and floral texture make it appear as a cherry blossom illustration. However, as I began to read the artist statement, I realized that they were not flower petals, but platelet counts, showing the amount of petechiae. This project highlighted how clinical records alone can hardly capture the impact the illness of a child has on a family. This project was moving to me, as it demonstrates how data visualization can evoke empathy and activate us on not only a cognitive level, but also an emotional level.

Giorgia lupi’s website