Month: August 2019

Sarah Kang – Looking Outwards – 01

Virtual walk-through of the Borderless World exhibit in the Museum of Digital Art in Tokyo, Japan by teamLab on YouTube

The world’s first digital art museum opened in Tokyo, Japan early last year. One of its most famous exhibit sections is Borderless World, where visitors can experience an otherworldly waterfall, an interactive digital installation by teamLab. teamLab is an art collective created by an interdisciplinary group of ultra-technologists aiming to analyze and explore the interactions between humans and nature using art. I was immediately drawn to this exhibit because of the virtual three-dimensional experience inspired by the fusion of natural elements with the world of digital art. This is an example demonstrating the possibilities that can be created in virtual reality to take art installations to another dimension in the future. The interactions amongst the water particles are extensively calculated to simulate the reality of a waterfall, and directly react when people approach the water flows that transform in real-time. The lines that are drawn from the interactions between the water particles are flattened using “ultrasubjective” space resulting in visual states that can never reoccur, or be replicated.

image of visitor interactions with the digital waterfall

Kimberlyn Cho- Looking Outwards-01

Disturb me – Brussels from PopcornMakers on Vimeo.

demonstration of how the installation works by thepopcornmakers

“Disturb Me” is an installation that strives to engage people with their environments, an often forgotten interaction amongst the prevalence of technology in today’s world. It absorbs the sounds permitted in the room to project lights that comply to the room’s “mood”. The senses are turned on once someone physically interacts with the room.

example of a light projection in the room by thepopcornmakers

Although I’m not too sure, I believe this project used a custom script for the interaction between the users and the space. I find this installation intriguing in its irony of using technology to draw users away from a focus on technology. It also shows promising signs in computational art in its attempt to engage multiple senses. Most installations I’ve come across only interact with one sense, but this room interacts with both sight and sounds. I also find the practicality of the installation very reasonable. Many art installations don’t intend for practical use, but I found it very inspirational how the designers took into account how the installation would be applied to daily use. A missed opportunity would be the possibility of incorporating smell as well to create a more accurate environment for users. However, “Disturb Me” points to a more interactive future in general and the practicality of computational art in the modern world.

Jamie Park-Looking Outwards-01

Photo image of Matt Copson’s Blorange

Link to the website

I am inspired by Matt Copson’s Blorange (2018), a laser-projection art displayed at Foundation Louis Vuitton. The art piece consisted of three different laser projections of a bird: one perfectly well, one on a skewer, and the other in its deconstructed or abstract state. The video work constantly moves the birds with a recital in the background, capturing the attention of the viewer. Copson’s work alludes to British pop culture and comments on the way people perceive society.

Although Copson is the listed artist of this piece, the coding for this laser work is done by Pieterjan Ruysch, a laser programmer based in Netherlands. Since he is a professional, I suspect that the coding did not take long for Ruysch. He, unfortunately, does not list on his website whether he uses custom script or “off-the-shelf” software.

I find Blorange to be a First World Art, as I have never seen a laser-projection video art with a narrative before. Copson’s unique ability to combine technology, art, and story telling has inspired me to create something similar. I am excited to learn how to code through 15-104 and utilize those skills in my future design classes.

The video of Copson’s Blorange is unfortunately unavailable online. 

Charmaine Qiu – Looking Outwards – 01


During the summer, I visited an interactive exhibition in Shanghai called “teamLab: Universe of Water Particles in the Tank”. The exhibition showcased a section of Japan’s “teamLab Borderless” in Mori Museum. From the exhibition, I remembered being immersed in a space surrounded by digitally animated waterfalls and flowers, yet when the viewers physically make contact with the space, flowers would boom from the surface. 

The concept of “teamLab Borderless” was to display artworks that exist without boundaries, and that viewers are invited to interact and become part of the work. This could be inspired by interactive art installations like the rain room.

This is an interactive installation created by teamLab named “Transcending Boundaries”

TeamLab is a collaborative group that consists of artists, programmers, engineers, CG animators, mathematicians and architects; together, they create artworks that connects humans with nature by embracing digital technology.

More information can be found through this link:

https://borderless.teamlab.art/

Sewon Park LO-1

“Before and after” pictures from ASAP Rocky’s “Yamborghini High” highlighting the effects of visual tools throughout the film.

Many hip-hop artists have been attempting to emphasize the importance of aesthetics to promote their music. As such, qualities of album covers, concert posters, and music videos have been improving. One piece of such artwork that I have been heavily inspired by is the music video of “Yamborghini High” by ASAP Rocky. 

The music video is characterized by extensive datamoshing that goes in sync with various auditory components of the song. I enjoyed this video because of the skillful use of digital tools used to bring out pre-existing colors such as coloring the sky pink to match the pink lamborghinis featured in the video. Furthermore, I liked the synergy drawn from the combination of both music and visual art. The use of aggressive datamoshing at highlights of the song such as the beat dropping or the chorus was groundbreaking.

Overall, I enjoyed this project for its visual creativity and contributing to the future of convergence between music and visual art.

The video was directed by Shomi Patwary with the help of Robert Simmons (Compositer, colorist, and main visual effects artists), and Unkle Luc (Graphics Artist). They mainly utilized Adobe After Effects, Mocha Pro, and Boujou. Shomi stated that his old digital novel, “Alfa Arkiv” inspired use of visual tools in the video.

Link: https://airship.nyc/projects/yambo.html

Emily Stark- Looking Outwards 01

Think about an interactive and/or computational project (from anywhere, by anyone except yourself) that you knew about before starting this course, and which you find inspirational. In a blog post of about 100-200 words,

Please discuss the project. What do you admire about it, and why do you admire these aspects of it?

  • How many people were involved in making it, and how did they organize themselves to achieve it? (Any idea how long it took her/him/them to create it?
  • To the best of your knowledge, did creating this project require the development of custom software/scripts, or did the authors create the project using “off-the-shelf” (commercial) software?
  • What prior works might the project’s creators have been inspired by?
  • To what opportunities or futures does the project point, if any?
  • Provide a link (if possible) to the work, and a full author and title reference.
  • Embed an image and a YouTube/Vimeo video of the project. All images and videos should include a caption, e.g .”Computer-generated image titled X by Artist Y”, or “Video documentary on the process used by Artist Z.” As always, cite sources. You may find WordPress support for adding captions to embedded content, or you can simply type text below the image.
  • Label your blog post with the Category, LookingOutwards-01. (You can find these Categories already made for you in the “Categories” section of the WordPress editor.)
  • Also label your blog post with your section, e.g. SectionA.

I have very limited experience with interactive art, but one project that stands out to me was by one of my fellow students. The project was an interactive piece in the play “A/B Machines” put on by the School of Drama last fall. Giada Sun was the media designer with Sean Leo as the assistant media designer on the play and made an interactive photo booth for the audience. In addition to that, cameras were used the entire show for the actors to interact with, which were then projected onto the set. I believe Giada used Millumin to program the projections. This show, sadly, had the short run time of one week.

Ammar Hassonjee – Looking Outwards – 01

A video showing the project, unofficially titled ‘Sensing Change’, examined up close and how it changes graphical data to match current weather conditions.

On 151 North Franklin street Chicago, a design firm named ESI Design recently led the development of a 95 ft long display attached to the side of a Loop Parking Garage that shows weather inspired graphics reflecting the current real time weather in Chicago, mimicking graphics such as downpours, fluffy clouds, and even falling snow. I personally love the simplicity and purpose of the graphics and how it corresponds with real time data to be something both aesthetic and useful. A missed opportunity in my opinion that the project had was perhaps finding a way to graphically represent upcoming weather in the next few hours in order to show weather predictions as to communicate even more data, but the creators made a wonderful decision to use a parking garage as the background of the canvas, a very public element, as the background so that the graphic is seen by many.

Image of facade with graphics changing, courtesy of ESI Design.

Although I couldn’t find any inspiration for this specific project or design idealogies from ESI Design, according to their website, the ESI Design studio’s main objective in all of their projects is to combine both digital and physical elements in order to create a truly transcendental experience for visitors. In this Loop Garage display, their hope is that natural ivy and foliage will grow over the canvas, leading to a beautiful harmony of both digital graphics and natural figures.

https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/8/14/20805835/art-installation-loop-garage-sensing-change

LaurenPark-Looking Outwards-01

Brandi Twilley creates a series of paintings based on her memory of the living room she grew up in as a child. She paints freely, dramatizing this living room by using soft flames, as the artist revisits the memory of her home in Oklahoma when it burnt down. I find it really intriguing that the artist uses the series to show the happening and overwhelming movement of fire as it takes over the room. It is also fascinating to see the amount of detail in each object in the living room, while each object also has soft light that makes this scene so hazy. The artist can improve these pieces by being more consistent in the way she stylizes and inserts sharp details in some paintings, while not as much in others. However, this may be what lets the artist be successful in trying to depict a specific scene differently every time which shoes the haziness in her memories. Another successful moment the artist has is the way she portray loneliness throughout each scene, focusing mainly on the fire. I think that the artist was inspired by the way her mind’s imagination works when recreating this memory. She takes multiple parts that she remembers from that room and pieces the image together, binding it altogether with the dominance of the fire.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkwqkx/artist-paints-the-fire-that-destroyed-her-childhood-home

Jasmine Lee – Looking Outwards – 01

The interactive piece that I’m choosing to talk about is an exhibit I came across in the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art. The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson is a 64-minute music piece that uses synced video projection to create an immersive visual and audio experience for visitors.

A female performer playing the violin recorded for The Visitors piece.

Set up in a dark room behind curtains, visitors are drawn in by a chorus of instruments. Stepping in, they face nine different video projections placed on different areas of the wall. There are different performers in each projection and as music stops coming from one video, it begins in another video. The experience is especially interesting because of the way the performers seem to leave their respective videos and walk into the space of another performer. The performances together create a chorus that can only be experienced in the room of the exhibit itself.

A third-party recorded video of the exhibit by Ragnar Kjartansson at the Boston ICA museum.

This work is profound because it explores the potential of video as a medium to create more immersive experiences for visitors in a way that a single video cannot. It experiments with how 2D visuals can transform into a 3D experience by encouraging the movement of the viewer. The artist, Kjartansson, often uses repetition combined with music to explore the potential qualities of sound. Born to an actress and a director, Kjartansson was very influenced by both historical art and performance. He collaborated with other musical performers in a historical upstate New York house to create this piece.

Timothy Liu — Looking Outwards — 01

This is a before-and-after map of Kamrangirchar, Bangladesh — a striking example of the type of impact Missing Maps can have on a rural area (via Missing Maps, Twitter)

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a “mapathon” through Missing Maps, a collaborative initiative that aims to map “off-the-grid” parts of the world in order to improve humanitarian access and disaster relief efforts during times of crisis. The platform was designed and launched in September of 2014 by the American Red Cross alongside Doctors Without Borders. The project is an open collaboration that involves volunteers mapping streets, buildings, and infrastructure in high-risk areas into OpenStreetMap. Community volunteers then take these satellite maps and add in specific details, including what each building specifically is, before handing them off to humanitarian organizations that then use these maps to plan more efficient disaster responses. This project heavily utilizes OpenStreetMap (OSM), a software that actually originally involved a java-based applet on the OSM homepage. Over time, the basis of OSM has evolved into an online JavaScript editor known as iD.

The creators were likely motivated to create an initiative that enabled anyone with a working computer to help those in need. OSM was already in existence before the start of Missing Maps, and the creators of the initative likely felt that OSM could be better utilized through humanitarian efforts. Through its simple and easy-to-use online OSM editor, Missing Maps has impacted hundreds and thousands of people around the world who have suffered through crises. I was incredibly inspired by how simple yet powerful Missing Maps’ mission is, and it was amazing to think that I was able to potentially impact a small town in Kenya simply by mapping out a portion of their rural roads. And yet, the opportunities for further exploration and mapping are endless. There’s still a massive amount of rural area that needs to be mapped, and the 86,543 contributors thus far are ready to continue with their efforts to help the Red Cross save lives.

Some of the incredible contributions that have been made by the thousands of Missing Maps volunteers around the world (via Missingmaps.org).
A video explaining how Missing Maps works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEEnOqmVfqM)

Sources used:

https://www.missingmaps.org/

https://www.redcross.org/about-us/our-work/international-services/mapping-vulnerable-communities.html

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/History_of_OpenStreetMap