LookingOutwards-01 – Page 6 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Siwei Xie – Looking Outwards – 01

Library Street Collective presents Detroit artist Charles McGee’s “Unity” in mural

Since 2012, Library Street Collective of Detroit is a local organization that brings artworks and murals to downtown areas, where the artworks can engage local audiences publicly.

What inspires me about the project is that, the founders are able to partner with local museums to share artworks, and attract visitors from traditional museums. Their efforts to increase the accessibility of arts is admirable. To be more effective, the project can host various art-related activities to increase the popularity. For example, artistic competitions, guest artist lectures, class on painting, etc.

The founders do not come from an artistic background, yet they were inspired when Detroit Institute of Art’s prized artworks to help the city exit bankruptcy. They related social responsibility with artworks, and reimagine the way residents can be involved with arts (outside the old-fashioned museums, and more than reading descriptions online).

*Library Street Collective presents Detroit artist Charles McGee’s “Still Searching” in mural*

Original source here.

Ankitha Vasudev – LookingOutwards – 01

An interactive and computational project that I find inspirational is Subtitled Public by electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, completed in 2005. This installation consists of an empty space equipped with projectors and a computerized surveillance system that detects visitors who enter into this space. The system generates a random verb for each person who enters and projects it onto him/her. If a person touches another, their words get exchanged; hence encouraging people to interact with one another and the art.

Image of verbs getting exchanged between two visitors in contact

I admire this project because of its purpose/intention. The piece comments on society’s excessive use of surveillance systems for safety and its profiling of the public based on ethnic groups and other characteristics. It also makes a statement on the branding of individuals by assigning them random words.

Many other projects by Lozano-Hemmer also involve words to describe a viewer. The arbitrary placement of text on the viewers allow them to experience the positive and negative connotations of the words places upon them.

Video of the visitors within the technological installation

Joanne Chui: Looking Outwards – 01

http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/WebExclusives/SyntheticSeductionShihChiehHuang

installation view of “Synthetic Seduction” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

“Synthetic Seduction” is an installation made by Taiwanese artist Shih Chieh Huang to investigate bioluminescence. The installation consists of many miscellaneous objects assembled together to create forms similar to creatures in the deep sea, and portrays movement through mechanical installations that try to mimic the movement of bioluminescent creatures. These objects come to life through glowing neon colors and the audible sounds of the continuous motions of the mechanics. This project is interesting in how it seeks to mimic nature, but a part of nature that we do not really understand. Huang exploits the methodology in which bioluminescent creatures use their lights to seduce and captivate prey to similarly captivate visitors to his installation. A critique that I would have is that the individual pieces seem extremely robotic and angular, contrary to the fluidity and curving nature of nature in the deep sea. However, that may be his interpretation of bioluminescent life, because he purposefully makes the mechanical sounds obvious to visitors.

Sean Meng – Looking Outwards 01

TeamLab is a collective group that explores the connection between human and nature by applying technology to art field to create “digital art”.

One of their project called “Paper Plane Music Airfield” engages with sound and light technology. This project is created collaboratively by the whole teamLab group. It is an interactive art installation that consists of multiple layers of sensors which can sense the motion of paper planes. The light and sound of the space are connected to the flight of the paper airplane, when the airplane touches light it influences the entire space causing it to change color and emit a sound tone. The project aims to evoke children’s curiosity of how the flight works by provides them interaction with technological installation. They work with coding to produce and manipulate the variation of the light and sound. This innovating interaction between digital art and humanity opens up a bright future for a broader overlap between technology and art.

https://www.teamlab.art/w/paper-plane-music-airfield/

Sean Leo – Looking Outwards – 01

4/20/18 Algorave at PS122, Codie Live Code

An Algorave is a niche subset of the live club scene. It’s the portmanteau of Algorithms and Raves, where the music and visuals are generated by code. Rather than mixing sounds or performing instruments, everything is created in real-time and improvised by changing the code live. Normally a VJ would mix and composite collected media elements, whereas a Live Coder would create and generate their own visuals and effects through the code they are writing.

Often coding is thought of a as a published medium. It is written, drafted, edited, and then finalized. Updates are scheduled and versioned. Algoraves directly contrast that. By performing live, the code is always changing, and has the opportunity to be influenced by the crowd and the music in the room.

Joseph Zhang – Looking Outwards – 01

As I browsed projects online, I couldn’t help but stop and admire Murasaki Uma’s Impressionist Blobs – Starry Night. Murasaki Uma is a freelance artist based in Japan who specializes in Computational Design. This digital installation is an individual project by Uma that showcases flowing particles made up of Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night. When in motion the visuals flow in an organic fashion that mimics the wind patterns in Starry Night. As seen when clicking the link, Impressionist Blobs is built with HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Project’s Title, Uma’s Twitter Handle, and a few functionality options

Uma implements a “Start” and “Restart” functionality that allows the viewer some control over the animation. Clicking anywhere on the interface shifts the camera perspective to an arbitrary angle. If I were to iterate on Uma’s project, I would offer more control to the user with the ability to fully control camera shifts and movement.

Despite scouring the web, I failed to find any biographies or summaries about his background. However, I did find the few sites he is active on: Github, Twitter, CodePen, and his personal site. Impressionist Blobs really reflects his other pieces of work, that is, its sense of unity and order whole that holds together chaotically random pieces. This project really points to the future of visual design, that is creating generated graphics through coded algorithms.

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

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/