LookingOutwards-12 – Page 6 – [OLD FALL 2019] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Taisei Manheim – Looking Outward – 12

The two projects I chose were Mirror Number 2 by Daniel Rozin and Milkdrop by Geisswerks. Mirror Number 2 is projected screens or kiosks connected to video cameras and computers. Daniel Rozin has done a number of mirror inspired pieces. When a viewer stands in front of one of these pieces, their image is reflected on the screen after it has been interpreted by the computer. The displays change rapidly yielding a smooth transition tightly linked to the movements of the viewer. For this particular piece, 6 different effects cycle for a minute each, totalling 6 minutes. In all 6 effects there are 1000 moving pixels on the screen. These pixels move around following a few rules, such as moving in circles or in random. As they move around they adopt the color makeup of the viewer standing in front of the piece, resulting in a rough approximation of the image of the viewer that resembles an impressionist painting. I chose this project because it is an interesting way to change an image of the user. When making our project, we could possibly change the image of the user in a similar manner.

Milkdrop is a music visualizer first written in 2001, but later updated in 2007 to include pixel shaders – flexible programs written to run on modern GPUs that can result in spectacular imagery and special effects. MilkDrop’s content is comprised of presets, which each have a certain look and feel. These presets are created by a dozen or so short pieces of computer code, as well as several dozen variables that can be tuned. Users can play with MilkDrop to create their own new presets, even writing new computer code on-screen, while they run the preset and see the effects of their changes. This has spawned a large community of people authoring many thousands of presets, creating new visuals and making it react to the music. I chose this project because it is an interesting way to visualize music. When creating a music player, this is one way to think about what is displayed while the music plays.

Visualization created based on music played in Milkdrop.

Sewon Park – LO – 12

As Professor Dannenberg suggested a global warming themed project, I searched some up as inspiration for my own project.

climatequest_3 — -a screenshot of the game “Climate Quest” by EarthGames (2016)

The one project I saw regarding global warming was the game “Climate Quest”. I think it is very interesting that the makers of the game used climate change as the main theme of a video game. This is interesting as global warming is normally a fairly boring topic that people tend to avoid. Through making a game out of it, the makers devised a clever way to communicate their message to the players.

Image result for global warming polar bear and cubs poster — “Global Warming Polar Bear and Cubs” by Stormslegacy

A more classic climate project artwork, this poster uses sentiments to communicate its message to the audience. Although an interactive game is also a very interesting way to communicate this message, one using sympathy is also a crucial one. The two projects have the same theme but very different methods of communicating the message to the audience.

Link: https://earthgames.org/games/climatequest/ (Climate Quest)

Link: https://www.redbubble.com/people/stormslegacy/works/19765199-global-warming-polar-bear-and-cubs?p=poster (Global Warming Polar Bear and Cubs)

Chelsea Fan-Looking Outward 12

Polli is an environmental artist who focuses on the intersection of art, science and technology. She has done work in public artworks, media installations, community projects, performances, broadcasts, mobile and geolocative media, publications, and through the curation and organization of public exhibitions and events. Currently, She creates artworks designed to raise awareness of environmental issues. I admire that she focuses on work that is beautiful, yet also has a purpose. Similar to my idea for the Final Project, I would also like to use my project to raise awareness to climate crisis environmental issues.

Link to Andrea Polli’s Projects: https://sites.google.com/andreapolli.com/main/projects?authuser=0

Washko on the other hand, is a game artist and designer. She is actually a professor at CMU School of Art. I admire her artwork because it seems edgy and new. Some of her video games explore difficult topics. For example, the feminist game The Game: The Game explores the topics of consent and politics. Similar to my idea for the Final Project, I would like to create an interactive game.

Link to Angela Washko’s Projects: https://angelawashko.com/section/138507.html

Cover Photo for *The Game: The Game* (n.d.)

Sammie Kim – Looking Outwards – 12

Generative Album cover design by Kostya Ostroukhov and Color Wander by Matt Deslauriers are two projects that deeply inspired me. Kostya Ostroukhov is a graphic designer from Russia; his Generative Album cover project utilizes JavaScript, and the graphics float around that match the mood and style of Imagine Dragons. The idea of a dynamic album cover immediately fascinated me, as it could express the unique aesthetics of the music for a brief moment unlike a music video. On the other hand, Matt Deslauriers is a generative artist and creative coder from Canada. Color Wander is an open source generative artwork that allows users to interact with the screen to produce fascinating textures and patterns come alive.

I personally feel that both projects could have merged to produce a more adaptable and versatile artwork. Ostroukhov lacks the complexity and interactive element that is evident in Deslauriers’s generative art piece, whereas Deslauriers lacks the purposefulness and entertainment aspect. Yet, I admire each one as I am very intrigued in producing beautiful visual elements that connect with and respond to the user.

Generative Album cover design by Kostya Ostroukhov

Link to Matt Deslauriers’s website: https://www.mattdesl.com

Link to Kostya Ostroukhov’s works: https://www.behance.net/gallery/76084379/Album-covers-with-generative-design

Alec Albright – Looking Outwards – 12

“Skataviz” by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille.

“Music Animation Machine” by Stephen Malinowski.

“Skataviz” (2012) by Theo Watson and Emily Gobeille and “Music Animation Machine” (2013) by Stephen Malinowski are two very different yet interesting projects that could serve as inspiration for my final project. The first, “Skataviz”, is a live motion detection program that visualizes the path of a skateboard as it travels in real time. This is admirable because it finely tracks the orientation of the board and is able to focus on only the subject’s board at any given time. However, it seems to overlook the potential use of these mappings. Instead, it simply displays the mapping rather than generating new innovative works from it.

The second project is more focused on demonstrating the cadence and dynamics of music through a computer visualization. This is different from “Skataviz” in that it does not do this in real time. Rather, it takes a musical score as an input and generates a visualization that is traversed in a rhythmical pattern specified by the user. This is admirable because of the way it is able to sync up with instrumental performance as well, as demonstrated in the video. Unlike “Skataviz”, this seems to overlook any real-time processing that, though computationally complex, could move as a function of the sound being produced by the performer.

Looking Outwards 12 Ellan Suder

When searching for motion comics, I found this scrolling style comic — it is a compilation of animated horror comics called “Chiller” (2015) by several different artists. It uses the scroll to trigger the effects.

Music starts to play when you scroll to this part and the title appears

I think this is a really interesting way to adapt horror comics. It’s kind of a middle ground between regular static comics and horror video games, where it’s still linear but gives a little control to the reader. The reader controls the story instead of passively watching like they would for a horror movie. By including this interactivity in the reading experience, the reader is more immersed in the story and hopefully more susceptible to fear.

The sounds were the creepiest part of the comic for me because of how sudden they were, like auditory jumpscares. They added to the dread the reader feels when scrolling further down the page.

The second motion comic I found was also controlled by scrolling, but this time it moved horizontally. The comic is an informational comic about The Walking Dead’s BTS makeup effects. Scrolling animates the character to make him walk forward through the buildings, where info about the show will appear. There are also clickable elements, play buttons for videos that reveal themselves as they scroll.

The play button in the closet doesn’t seem to be working unfortunately

You can scroll back and forth to make the animation play or reverse

It’s a really fun and interesting way to present information, as opposed to maybe an article or long video. The feature I liked most was the reversibility. Instead of the scroll triggering an effect and then ending there, the scroll was actually directly tied to the motion itself. So in the ending scene where the zombie is shot, you could control the animation frame by frame by scrolling.

Mihika Bansal – Looking Outwards – 12

For the final project I want to play with creating animations based on the manner in which the user interacts with the keyboard and the mouse. So I am looking specifically at artists that have interesting styles in the manner that they create work. The first project that I am looking at is by an artist: Carlos de Oliveira Junior. The project is a generative flower piece, and many of his works resemble this style of work. I think his usage of color and imagery is very strong which I find to be interesting.

Generative Flower
Generative Experiment

The second artist I am looking at I Benedikt Gross. This artist is very interesting because he uses data to create specific interesting visualizations. It isn’t apparent that Oliveira uses specific data to create his visualizations, he just has a strong visual sense. The project by Gross that I think is particularly interesting is “All Roads Lead to Rome.”

486.713 routes to Rome, 120cm × 80cm, lambda print / interactive web map — All Roads lead to Rome Image

The project has a strong visual sense, but uses data and a space that people are familiar with to create an image and feeling.

So these are the two artists that I am interested in using as inspiration for my final project for this class.

Jamie Park – LO 12

I know that I want to create something that generates drawings using a turtle. Therefore, I looked into computer-generated arts online.

This first artist is called Bogdan Soban, and he has been creating generative art for over 20 years. He uses a computer to combine and complete a work of art. Soban notes that there are four phases of the generative art method: idea, code creation, process, and final selection. The first and last are within the domain of humans, but the second and third are based on a code time machine. Therefore, it is the complication of code that differentiates the image of A and B.

Sample works of Soban

I also wanted to create something that is interactive, so I looked into an interactive computer-generated installation. The example that I found is Nike’s interactive installation during Milan Design Week. This computer-generated work reacts to the viewer’s location and motion, creating an image based on the way a person interacts it.

Nike’s Super Natural Motion

For my final project, I would like to combine computer-generated art and interactive art together, creating interactive computer-generated art.

Joseph Zhang — Looking Outwards — 12

Hyperobjects – Erwin Hoogewood- 2019

Chihiro Sakoda – 2019

For my final project, I wanted to look into two computational artists Erwin Hoogerwood and Chihiro Sakoda. Above are two javascript projects that utilize various forms in geometry and nature to create beautifully animated forms. In both projects, there’s a sense of orchestrated randomness that’s really intriguing to observe. The one above by Hoogerwood is definitely much more systematic and geometric while the one below by Sakoda uses random participles to create something that seems more free flowing.

I would love to see how these artists might be able to make their respective art projects interactive. That would be really fascinating to interact with because it gives us as the user a new sense of agency. I think without this form of interactivity, these beautiful projects remain as cool animations with not as much depth as there could be.

Lanna Lang – Looking Outwards 12

Katie Rice and Luke Cormican // Skadi Comic // 2008 – 2018

This project was a comic that has its own website and many storylines created over the years. I found out about this project after researching online for projects that were similar to my final project idea, but I could barely find any. This one stood out to me because this comic has a choose-your-own-adventure storyline, which most comic stories that are out there are not. Readers can click on the poll choices that are given below the comic page, or sometimes the readers can click on a sign in the comic itself that will help direct the story plot. I appreciate this project because of this interactive idea that not many comics do, however, for my project, I definitely want to step out of the illustration genre and more into animation or graphics.

My screen recording of me interacting with “Skadi Comic”.

Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones // Black Mirror: Bandersnatch // 2018

I believe movies, music, games, etc. are all works of art and are long-term projects made by artists, so I’m including Bandersnatch in my Looking Outwards because it is the main influence for my final project. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is a movie that transformed into a live-action interactive environment with a choose-you-own-adventure style. I am highly inspired by this movie because of how complex the work became; the storyline, character development, etc.

Although I know my final project will obviously not be able to reach this capacity, I want to strive to have this level of thought behind the process and the plot in order to create an interesting enough concept behind my own project. I will draw inspiration from “Skadi Comic” and its classic comic book style layout combined with the choose-your-own-adventure theme, and Bandersnatch’s creativity on its complex plot and its artistic direction.