Category: LookingOutwards-09

Ghalya Alsanea – Looking-Outwards-09

Since I don’t know many people in our class, I decided to go through one specific Looking Outwards week, rather than through a specific person’s assignments. I chose LO-02, because I personally loving generative art and really enjoyed researching that topic that week.

I chose to write about Ellan Suder’s post about Alfred Hoehn’s Drawing Machine mostly because I have never seen a project like this and find it really intriguing.

Work by Alfred Hoehn, Swiss Artist.
Project: Drawing Machine Ptolemaios.
Year: 2008.

Building off of Ellan’s thoughts, I also am very intrigued by this project. I appreciate the simplicity, yet complexity of the machine. It is somehow shocking how just changing a bit of the diameter/length of the spinning circles can create completely different works of art. This reminds me of the Spirograph project we did.

Something that I would add to the conversation is that why make a machine that does this, when we know we can program computers to do them better? I personally like pen-and-paper, but it gets me to wonder the wast of energy and paper of creating such beautiful artworks.

Finally, I agree with Ellan, that it is very mesmerizing and calming to watch the drawing happen.

Timothy Liu — Looking Outwards — 09

An image of the Aguahoja I pavilion exhibited in the MIT Media Lab lobby in 2018.

For my Looking Outwards this week, I looked at my classmate Shannon’s Looking Outwards from Week 3 on Aguahoja, a work by the MIT Media Lab. The prompt for that week was on Computational Fabrication, and I really liked the piece Shannon chose because of how majestic yet haunting it felt. Shannon described Aguahoja as an exploration of how human technology—specifically, 3D printing—could emulate natural and biological materials such as tree branches and bones. The MIT Media Lab took an innovative design approach using algorithms, water-based design, and digital fabrication to erect these massive sculptures that represent nature’s intricacies. 

I really enjoyed Shannon’s reflection on Aguahoja because it was concise yet contemplative, explaining how although Aguahoja is an effective representation of nature’s form, it still requires manpower and technology. One thing I would add onto her discussion points are the incredible amount of research the MIT team undertook to develop their algorithms for printing. It took them 6 whole years of research into computationally manufactured functional biopolymers for them to feel confident enough in their ability to emulate these biological structures, a testament to how wonderfully unique nature really is.

 

An example of one of the biological exoskeletons Aguahoja strove to emulate.

Sources:

https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/aguahoja/overview/

Shannon Ha-Looking Outwards-03

Looking Outwards 9- Alice Cai

I am reflecting on Gretchen’s Looking Outwards from Week 1! In this looking outwards, she studied “The Emotional Art Gallery”. The emotional art gallery is an installation in many public places in Stockholm like public transportation buildings. It was created by the company Clear Channel and a design studio called Affairs. The digital billboards display a portrayal of emotion; however, not just any emotion. It is actually an interaction with the people in Stockholm; the emotions that are displayed are a direct reflection of the mood of the city.

Gretchen’s refection of this project and understanding of the benefits of the projects is pretty similar to mine and overall aligns with the goals of the creators. Displaying these emotions makes this project a human center focus. While other artworks might display a unique perspective of emotion, the interaction allows viewers to learn not only about themselves but the community that they are in. This allows civilians to ponder about negative emotions and perhaps be more conscious of ways that they can create a positive impact. 

video on the gallery

https://www.emotionalartgallery.com/

Crystal Xue-LookingOutwards-09

Fallon Creech’s LookingOutwards-05 is particularly interesting to me when I was looking through some of my peer’s posts. The generative artist Thomas Lin Pedersen created this series of art pieces by programming and using visualization techniques.

He believes “the process of generative art is dual,” meaning both system development and visualization method are required. I think that computational generative art is about developing a system that assists the delivery of an idea and its artistic value. I understand the artist thinks that the techniques should be focused less than the art itself. However, even without programming code being shared, I would love to see the generative progress of the artwork, and how the piece comes up together.

“genesis338” belongs to Pedersen’s Generative Art collection.
“genesis4321” belongs to Pedersen’s Generative Art collection.

Shannon Ha – Looking Outwards – 09

Landing page of the online visualization of this project showing aggregated statistics of Twitter activity.

Taken from https://nand.io/projects/emoto

For this weeks post, I will be looking at Jina Lee’s Week 07 Looking Outwards post on data visualization. The emote project for the London 2012 Olympics assessed the global audiences’s real time emotional response to the different events throughout out the games and visualized it physically through a generative physical sculpture. I agree with Jina’s point about how innovative and well executed this project was as it was able to synthesize everyone’s opinions within a small amount of space. This allows people to unify and gain new perspectives on a general response to this global event. One thing that Jina did not touch upon was how this information can help improve future games as the Olympic Committee can use this data to improve parts of the event that weren’t well received by the general public. I think that’s a very effective way to utilize this data beyond an observation tool for visitors of the exhibition

As a designer I also admire the simplicity of the control’s design. The singular nob/button really invites the user to interact with it as there isn’t much complication beyond that one button. This is important as the intent behind this project is to make this information to be as accessible and inclusive to all people as possible.

Angela Lee – Looking Outwards – 09

An image of the data visualization “Halo,” created by Ora Systems to communicate a user’s health status.

For this week’s Looking Outwards post, I’ll be discussing Gretchen Kupferschmid’s Looking Outwards 07 about the project “Halo.” Like Gretchen, I also appreciate that the project adds an artistic element to data visualization since data, especially in the medical field, is often displayed traditionally through graphs or just listed out as numbers. Being aware of your health data is very important so that you can make informed decisions that will affect your body positively, and I see this visualization as a way of 1. summarizing dense quantitative content into an impression (that you can take in within a glimpse) and 2. engaging users so that they will want to learn more about their own health. While a creative visualization like this by itself may not provide all the necessary details for a holistic report, integrating the two creates an experience where checking your own health can become a visual delight. I also agree with Gretchen that showing data in this visual way allows users to more intuitively and efficiently compare large sets of data without having to process all the numbers in their head.

Alec Albright – Looking Outwards – 09

3D printed Adidas shoe
Inside look of the Carbon x Adidas collaboration

The Looking Outwards post that I found particularly interesting was Stefanie Suk’s Looking Outwards 03, in which she discussed Adidas’s recent initiative to create 3D printed shoes. This project has consisted of a partnership between Adidas and Carbon, and the above shoe is one of the first to be created through their method of Digital Light Synthesis.

I agree with Stefanie in the way that this project is admirable because its impact on the sustainability of the shoe manufacturing industry. The method that Adidas and Carbon are using to create these shoes is very environmentally friendly and minimizes waste. I would also add that the creation of 3D printed shoes is a progressive direction for the general clothing manufacturing industry, entering into a space with an abundance of potential. This is a groundbreaking project with a very positive upside.

Lauren Park – Looking Outwards – 09

This project seems very fascinating in ways that animation and software can be used to make very detailed graphics of the respiratory system. 

I agree with Danny that this animation is not a literal representation of the system, but that it abstracts from actual biological processes that happen in our bodies. I feel that the artist, Alexey Kashpersky did not have in mind how accurate this representation was, and that maybe it was not as important as the visual appeal of the inside of the respiratory system and to let the audience know how vast and unique our bodies are by using color and different forms interacting.

The zoom in and out effect throughout this piece really added a flow to this whole experience that made the system feel like viewers are being walked through a story. Because of this, I enjoyed what seemed like a virtual tour of the many wonders that take place in our bodies.

This overall experience also makes me curious about the software used to create this animation and has me realize how much this tool can be useful in our creative practice.

Danny Cho – LookingOutwards-5
Lungs in Silico 2019 – Alexey Kashpersky

Jina Lee – Looking Outwards 09

Puppet Parade

For this weeks looking outwards, I was able to go back and look through all the other projects that my classmates looked at. I found Margot Gersing’s Looking Outwards week 8 to be extremely interesting. She watched a lecture by Theo and Emily of  Design I/O from Eyeo 2012. I was intrigued with what this studio does particularly their interactive shadow hand puppets project: Puppet Parade. 

They used Kinect to do arm tracking for the Puppet Parade.

I thought it was cool that the reason they create these projects is to encourage children to explore and openly play. One of their projects is a game about sharing resources and sustainability and the children not only have to interact with the program but also each other in order to keep up the simulation. They use the Kinect tracking device quite a lot in their projects and hack it different ways to do what they want, like make giant animated. While looking at this project, even though it is for children, for me it seems fun and a design that I would like to interact with.

Shariq M. Shah – Looking Outwards 09


The Looking Outwards that I found particularly interesting was Tai Manheim’s exploration of the work of Stamen, an artificial intelligence tool used to analyze wealth and poverty at an urban scale. The project was developed by Stamen and researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and it implements neural networks to develop machine learning frameworks that take in information on infrastructure in various neighborhoods and subsequently uses the information to make predictions on the average income of the areas. I found Tai’s explanations of the digital techniques and data structure networks that make this project possible to be highly informative and intriguing. With a project of this scope, there are inevitably associations and unintended associations made between income, race, crime, and location which can be used negatively for increased surveillance and policing strategies. This raises issues on the interface between Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and politics, as the impressions and conclusions derived from a project like this may be based on hard data, but can be used negatively. There are also clear design incentives as to how residential areas can be organized better according to the data found from a project like this.

https://stamen.com/work/penny/

https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2019/2019/10/06/taisei-manheim-looking-outward-07/