September 2020 – Page 45 – [OLD FALL 2020] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

LO-01-My Inspiration

The piece of art I’m writing about is the work of Giada Sun (media designer), Sean B. Leo (assistant media designer), and SooA Kim (media engineer) on A/B Machines (a School of Drama production in 2018).

I did assist the dramaturg on this show, but I wasn’t involved in the media design or engineering at all so I experienced it as an audience member. It’s also just the first thing that comes to mind when I think of technology and art, even though I’m sure I’ve seen other examples of it.

It was about a 7 month process. Essentially, there were selfie camera stations set up for audience/actor use prior to the start of the show, live cameras capturing footage onstage, and projection screens and television screens streaming all of this footage throughout the show. It was insane. Every performance, the media team had to use their technological magic (not sure if they developed software for this) to compile the audience selfies taken at the beginning of the show for the big reveal at the end of the show.

The characters were also continually operating handheld cameras that were wired to TV screens throughout the set. The work itself was largely inspired by Andy Warhol. But the media design shared a lot of attributes with the show Network. I think it’s brilliant to be able to see so many different views of this world at the same time, especially in an art piece all about overexposure and the digitization of personality. In another world and another venue, the entire production would’ve been immersive.

This is Giada’s website on the production: https://giada1198.github.io/Giada-Portfolio/works/ABMachines/

A/B Machines. By Phillip Gates, Dir. Phillip Gates. November 2018. The Helen Wayne Rauh Studio Theater, Pittsburgh, PA.

LO 1 – My Inspiration

Before taking this course, I did not come across, at least to my knowledge, a lot of computational art. One area of computational art that I have heard of is generative portraits. These pieces of art use an algorithm to create graphic elements that as a whole, represent a portrait. Since I did not know of a specific artist or project that focused on this form of art before this course, I found one artist to speak about. Sergio Albiac, a generative artist, made a project where he used images taken by the Hubble space telescope and created generative portraits by placing a series of circles on top of them. I am not sure how long it took to create the algorithm that made the images, but I know that the project ran from June 2013 to March 2014. During this time, he allowed participants to submit images that would eventually be turned into portraits (he made 15,000 portraits over the course of these ten months). I don’t know the exact software that this artist used, but they did not mention any custom software/scripts, so I imagine it was “off-the-shelf”. A large purpose of this project was to allow for the creation of art in a fast manner. It was not a matter of quantity over quality, but Sergio Albiac felt as though there are pieces of work that are not created due to a limitation of resources of all kinds, and that the ability to create for the sake of an exploration of potential creations was the driving force behind this project. With this at the core of why Sergio creates, I think that this creates a great opportunity for exploration to create what may not have been made.

Link to project:
https://www.sergioalbiac.com/wall/stardust.html

LO 1 – My Inspiration

Image of Jeju Pool from Jen Lewin’s Website

Jeju Pool, which is an interactive circular installation created by Jen Lewin, is a technological piece of art that caught my attention when I saw it in Jeju Island. Jen Lewin was the one who designed the artwork, and there were many other people (the team of Jen Lewin and Jeju LAF) who were involved in installing the artwork in Jeju Island. The Jeju Pool has series circular platforms that communicate wirelessly with other platforms. The surface of each circular pad can sense people’s movement and speed as they work on top of each pad. Using the data collected, the software determines the ripples of light that will appear in other circular pads. This installation is somewhat a visual instrument, where different patterns vary as people engage with the artwork. The Jeju Pool was inspired by the lights and reflections we see in nature. What I really love about Jeju Pool is that it is installed in a landscape with woods and plants surrounding the artwork. This project allows people to have an interaction and special experience both with the installation and Jeju Island itself.

Check Jen Lewin’s website here.

LO 1

“This Person Does Not Exist” is a computational project that was created by Phillip Wang using StyleGAN, a machine learning framework made available by the technology company Nvidia. Phillip is a former Uber software engineer who created the program to show the impressive capabilities of GANs (generative adversarial networks.) It was originally shared to a small Facebook group but went on to get over 4 million hits. His inspiration for the project likely came from the rise of intelligent video manipulation and “deepfakes” on the internet.

Upon loading the webpage, the screen is filled with a high definition headshot of a random person. Reloading the page brings up another person, and so on. While the images look believable, they are all completely fabricated by an artificial intelligence; thus the title “This Person Does not Exist.”

What makes this project so interesting to me is the questions it brings up. If a computer program can so easily trick us into thinking a face is real, what else could we be made to believe? In a world where we already question almost every piece of information fed to us from entertainment media and the news, it seems as though tools for digital deception are only becoming more advanced. By highlighting the exponentially expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence, this work leaves the user feeling both deep discomfort and utter awe.

An artificially generated face from the website.

LO 1: My Inspiration

One project that I found inspirational–and actually led me to take this class– is a project done by Elena Deng and Dani Delgado for the 15-104 class they took in the fall of 2018. For this project, they attempted to visualize certain sounds through visual elements. As the user interacts with the artwork by clicking on different parts of the computer screen, certain sounds and shapes appear. Through coding in p5.js, they were able to make an invisible thing–sound–visible. As I interacted with the artwork for the first time, I found myself deeply immersed in it. When I clicked on my computer screen, I felt very peaceful– the colors, shapes, and sounds work perfectly to evoke a sense of tranquility. I am unsure of what prior works inspired the creators of this project; however, after a bit of researching, I found that many artists, such as Norimichi Hirakawa, have used computational art to represent abstract or invisible subjects similar to the creators of this project. This project also shows an emerging future as more people can use the power of computation to express and access certain aspects of life, nature, or oneself like never before. It also shows that coding is evolving to become a new medium for artists and designers to use.

Authors: Elena Deng & Dani Delgado
Project Name: Final Project
Link to project:
https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2018/2018/12/07/dani-delgado-and-elena-deng-final-project/

LO 1-My Inspiration

Title: Generative Portraits
Artist: Diana Lange

“Generative Portraits,” a collection of work by graphic artist Diana Lange, depicts human-like entities, with each image made up of hundreds of white lines connected by nodes on a black background. While none of these pieces fully replicate a human face or form, they are often reminiscent of parts of facial features–an earlobe, the bridge of a nose, eyelids, etc. Lange uses Processing and 3D modeling software to construct each of these portraits, creating areas of higher visibility, detail, and clarity by increasing the concentration of interconnections in specific places. Although it’s unclear where Lange drew inspiration from for this collection, she as an artist often looks to the patterns found in nature, using them to inform her code.

LO 1 – My Inspiration

Prior to taking this class, a project that I found interesting was one from a student named Vivian. As I was first applying to design programs, I searched the internet for other student’s portfolios to help guide the development of my own. I came across Vivian’s work which introduced me to the concept of creative coding. Although no longer on her online portfolio available for me to share, I remember this coded project to be a real-time clock which she had designed to look like a person’s face. I believe she used p5.js, but other than that, I do not know how she made it. Although this project may sound insignificant, I found it very intriguing that she created a piece of art that was live and constantly changing. I had never seen anything like that before, so it made an impression on me. I am excited to learn how I can also create responsive art. Funny enough, I searched up her name to write this and she ended up studying at Carnegie Mellon.

LO 1 – My inspiration

I went to the teamLab Borderless exhibition last year in Shanghai and was amazed by the project. The project wants to create a world that is connected by artworks and there are no boundaries for people to explore. It is a super immersive experience and all these artworks are fluid around in the place. I think the biggest inspiration for Teamlab’s project is nature. You can see from their works that there are so many natural elements.

I attended their lecture in school and learned that there are usually 10 – 15 people working together for one project. In a team, they usually have three main teams. The project management team who deliver the message from the client and push the project forward. The design teamwork on the concept and visual design. The last team is the engineering team that builds the project from concept to reality. For the Borderless project, it took them about 3 months to finish. The engineers use software like Unity, OpenGL, Processing those kinds of languages or software.

LO 1 – My Inspiration

A project I really admire is the indie game called “Undertale”. It is a story orientated role-playing game about a child who falls into the underground, and has to navigate through a world of monsters (some of whom helps him) to get back to the surface. This game is one of the reasons I want to learn programming.

I admire it very much because programming is used really well as a storytelling tool. It is a multiple-ending game, in which every decision the player makes affects the outcome. In fact, there are so many different possible endings that people disagree over how many endings it has. This type of storytelling is very powerful because the story is literally in the player’s hands. And I want to explore novel ways of storytelling that programming offers.

Another reason I admire “Undertale” is because it is done by very few people. The main team consists of just two people: Toby Fox, the developer and composer, and Temmie Chang, the artist assistant. Toby Fox used the game engine GameMaker Studio for development. This shows that a good and meaningful game does not have to take a big team, a big budget, or a super complex programming language.

LO 1 – My inspiration

Slider from interactive product page with scaling graphics

I saw this interactive experience this summer, as the Pixel 4a has just released. I was intrigued by the product page experience. I admire how it blends communicating information through high contrast shapes and scaleable objects. There’s no information on the page related to the creation of the site, but I’m sure the team of designers and developers behind it only had a matter of months to design the page, as Google has a frequent product release schedule. The whole experience blends from one section to the next, with lots of attention paid to details of opacity and object transitions. I’m not sure how it was made or if it was a custom-coded experience or off-the-shelf software. I think there’s a large precedent in the tech industry for needing smooth, seamless but memorable experiences on product launch pages, but they also need to communicate key information. I’m sure they were guided by Google’s brand identity and the previous work of their competitors, such as Apple’s product pages.

Product Page
No author or title found, Google Pixel 4a by Google.