For my final project, I want to do sound visualization. And here are two projects that I found particularly interesting.
This first project is called WAVES is created by students from OPENLIGHT: the creative lab of Intelligent Lighting Institute of the TU Eindhoven. Using a “sound camera”, a device with 1024 microphones which can very precisely locate a sound in space, students place it in an industrial place and visualized waves. People can interact with the device by making sounds, whistles, stomping their feet etc.
The next project is VOICE ARRAY. by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The LED light blinking gives a visual representation of the recorded sound
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Voice Array, Subsculpture 13”, 2011. “Recorders”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2011. Photo by: Antimodular ResearchRafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Voice Array, Subsculpture 13”, 2011. “Recorders”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2011. Photo by: Antimodular Research
Both of them showed different techniques and interactions that might happen in sound visualization. And I hope my project can have similar achievement like them.
In the final project, I’ll be making a game that allows users to create their own De Stijl drawing. De Stijl uses abstract forms, such as vertical and horizontal compositions, and colors, such as black, and white, and prime colors. The project will be grid based and the users are able to choose grid complicity as needed. By clicking on the grids, they will be able to draw lines with various thickness and rectangle blocks with De Stijl colors. When the drawing is completed, they can hide the base grids with a simple key press.
I am inspired by de stijl movement. It’s a Dutch art movement founded in 1917. It emphasizes on pure abstraction and universality through a reduction to essentials of form, vertical and horizontal compositions, and color, black, white, and primary colors. The name of De Stijl comes from critic Theo Van Doesburg, and the most well-know artists are Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar. Architects such as Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van’t Hoof and JJP Oud applies this art concept to their architectural design. The projects that I admire the most are Rietveld Schroder House by Rietveld, and Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames.
I am using 1 of my grace days for this late submission.
For my final project proposal, I’m planning to make a short animation illustrating rising water levels of a personified earth. One project that inspired my idea is 🔥👶🔥 by Joona Leppanen. This gif shows a still figure being partially masked by some smoke. I was particularly inspired by the different textures that Leppanen used in her illustration, but also the naturalness of that smoke. Using simple stroke and fill, she created a convincing air-like substance that communicates her message.
🔥👶🔥 by Joona Leppanen.
The second piece I’d like to talk about is a gif by Yukai Du. Using similar colors as Leppanen (which is coincidental), she’s able to capture water ripples in a simple yet elegant way. I am particularly inspired by how she represents depth through decreasing sizes of the eyes and the ripples. Her work has also made me consider putting material objects in the rising sea levels for my animation and how they can contribute to the story.
For my final project, I plan on creating a short animation personifying the Earth (as Mother Earth) and, through her, showing an aspect of the climate crisis. For instance, I found the flood map for 2050 particularly sad, so I might show her losing land mass and being surrounded by rising levels of sea water. I want to personify the earth because I think that seeing the emotions on their face will inspire more empathy, and because I personally love playing with character illustrations. I am fascinated by different illustration styles, but for this project, I would love to explore a simple illustration style with an interesting color palette through the aesthetics of my project. I anticipate animating the water level to be a challenge to get it to look natural and convincing.
A sketch of what it might look like. I have to decide where to show the water level (up to her face, or just up to her neck, etc.) I’d like to play with strokes or even turtle graphics to show the water.
I am and have always been interested in games, and have found myself understanding concepts in this class most easily though drawing connections to fundamental functions of various games I have played throughout my life. The particular strengths of P5.js that I have learned about clearly can work nicely toward creating a simple browser game, and that is what I intend to make. I would like to make a puzzle game, utilizing a geometry centered on the mouse that the player must move through a shifting maze in order to beat the game. I got the idea from an indie game that came out a while ago called ‘PUSS’. This game is remarkable both in its puzzle mechanics as well as visuals. I would love to explore both puzzle mechanics and visual style as it relates to a puzzle through this project and hopefully make something that is enjoyable to play.
In regards to my Final Project, I have found two inspirations for the program I would like to make. I have decided I want to try my hand at creating an “avoid ’em-up videogame similar to the indie game Puss (link) in which a cat avatar follows the mouse as you attempt to avoid colliding into the walls of the mazes you are navigating. Puss also has very psychedelic style and colors, part of which I would also be interested in experimenting with in order to make the game more visually complex.
The second inspiration I have is a throwback to our first assignment with Mondrian. For this project though, I am more interested in something like Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie-Woogie
Broadway Boogie-Woogie | by Piet Mondrian
I like the implied movement and chaos created by the roadways of yellow and the larger interrupting squares. I feel like this aesthetic and sensibility for design could work well for the creation of a visually interesting and distorted puzzle game.
The two artists I have chosen to highlight for this Looking Outwards are Roz Dimon and Claudia Hart. Both are digital artists with work mainly in the areas of computation and graphic design. I found that their work relates well to the pieces that I want to create through a series of programs in my final project, which will explore collage, prints, and patterns.
Frog Pledge by Roz Dimon
I found the collage element of this project to be really intriguing. Dimon takes imagery from archive collections and uses custom programming to develop digital collaged elements that tell the story of the collections she has pulled from. In addition to being visual, these pieces also have audio and motion elements. I think as a standalone image and with the full experience the project is powerful and really fun.
I thought this project was also very close to my goals for the final project. I really enjoy the combination of images and textures to create really dynamic prints. The other fun thing about this project was that it utilized augmented reality to create a user experience of viewing the wallpapers. As, with Dimon’s work, I really appreciate the fact that this project is a visual product and an experience.
Overall I feel really inspired by these two pieces because of the extended element of designing an experience. It makes me consider what I could do with the programs that I generate to make them into more of an experienced piece of artwork. Both artists have a very distinct style and method, but at the heart the are both combining imagery and objects to create unique visual patterns and compositions.
I am using 1 of my grace days for this late submission.
For this looking outwards, I found two interactive art projects that are relevant to the project I have in mind: Hershman Leeson’s Lorna in 1984 and John Lennon’s The Bermuda Tapes in 2015. The first project is the first artwork that used laserdisc technology. Using this medium to explore the possibilities and extent of interactiveness, the artist enables users to explore and intervene in the world of an agoraphobic woman named Lorna. Lorna’s actions can be controlled using a remote control, and three outcomes are possible: Lorna remains trapped by her apartment and her insecurities; she commits suicide; or she shoots the television instead, in a sense ’murdering’ the medium. The second project is an interactive Album App that tells the story of John Lennon’s journey, sailing through a mid-Atlantic storm to Bermuda in June 1980. Through the screen of an iPad or iPhone, you are able to interact with the narrative, moving, swiping and tilting, to give the story a sense of personal touch.
Both of these projects relate to the final project I have in mind, which is an interactive game composed of choices that eventually leads to an ending. I chose the first project to discuss it because it is one of the earliest works of interactive game/film, with a really similar game structure that makes the players feel relatable (because they are the ones making the choices). The second one is graphically more developed. However, I think it has more room to grow in terms of interactivity. Players can only interact with certain things in the story, but don’t necessarily have the ability to change the story.
As my final project proposal focuses on interactive environments, I selected the Animal Agency’s Rebook ZPump campaign that motivates people to run as fast as they can to win a free pair of shoes. What I admire about this project is that it turns a traditional form of a billboard into an interactive element through technology. By a sensor measuring speed, people run across the advertisement to see how fast they run. If it meets a specific rate, the billboard will unlock a shoe to be taken. The next work is an advertisement for the Ford Explorer. The user scans a QR code and places the phone on the magazine. Through this, it creates the illusion that there is a moving car on the phone. In comparison to the Rebook campaign, they involve the sensing of human interaction that I desire to implement in my final project proposal.
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