Category: LookingOutwards-01

The Sleep Art Project
By ACNE production and BETC Paris for Ibis Hotels.

This project uses a robot’s 80 sensors to detect a person’s temperature, movements, and sounds while they sleep. This data is then translated into having the robotic arm paint different types of brush strokes and colors.The result is a unique painting created from a person’s sleep pattern.

This project took a team of 100 people to complete it in six months, and uses 50,000 lines of code to run.

This form of art experiments with the translation of a series of motions and conditions into a traditional art form; painting. The artists must have been inspired by the rise of artificial intelligence and the notion of how even our unconscious states can show creativity by using code to take the input (data from sleep) and output a painting.

I find this project inspiring because it translates more abstracted phenomena like temperature into distinct paint strokes and colors. It uses the unconscious human experience to create abstract art through computation. The project points to the future of artificial intelligence and using quantitative data in creative practices. The project can be applicable based on the simple idea of input and output. For example, translating a person’s walking pattern into a sculpture, etc. Overall, this interactive art project explores the collection of data and the execution of a painting in a way that is inspiring for future projects that follow a similar method of programming. Additionally, the programming of a robotic arm to do tasks such as painting invents a new tool for artists to create through a computer controlled arm that reflects a human hand.

An interactive project that I had known about was called Online Town (URL: https://theonline.town). Online Town essentially was a type of video chatting, except that it required each user to “walk around town.” Each user would have an icon/character, and you would use your keyboard to move it around the town shown on the screen. With a specific chat room link, you could invite friends, and they too would also have to move around. The program used your camera and microphone, and in order to hear what your friends were saying in the chat, you would have to use your keyboard to get your character near their character. This was a very cool concept to me, and my friends and I often used it during quarantine.

The program was created by Cyrus Tabrizi, Phillip Wang, and Kumail Jaffer. It launched in early April of 2020. Though there have been editing and adjustments made throughout the project, the creators claimed to have built the first version of Online Town within a single day. They received some seed funding and used their own money to fund the project. It was not explicitly stated how they had divided the work up, but all three creators are highly skilled in programming and even have a tech collective on their resumes.

Because this project is recent and there is not enough information about it yet from the creators, I do not know whether the project required the development of custom software/scripts or “off-the-shelf” software. The creators might have been inspired by programs like Zoom and Minecraft, as they have combined both video chat features and map exploring features.

I think this project opens up the opportunity of having more engaging and social calls. This would serve as a great alternative to Zoom, especially for social meetings or large business meetings. Without the harsh separation of participants into breakout rooms (like Zoom), Online Town allows for participants to ease into groups or even opt out of them, as well as exploring the map with their avatar. I think this would help point to a future where video calls can motivate higher engagement levels in more ways than just talking in a group conversation.

Animal Crossing is a Nintendo game that has been running for about 19 years. The nintendo swtich version “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” peaked in popularity throughout quarantine this year as the game is a life simulator game making it the perfect companion for loneliness.
The game was developed by Katsuya Eguchi, a Nintendo developer.
Since its release, the game has always focused on simulating a difficult social environment. When playing you are faced with difficulties of making friends and starting new, you are even faced with debt and home-owning
There has been ten different versions for the game each with more elements than the last.
I really admire how Eguchi pulled ideas from his own past experiences to create the game idea and really pushed the boundaries from there to create a universal game that can be enjoyed by all people of all ages.
I have known of many life simulator games but none as successful as Animal Crossing.
This game is loved by millennials and generation z as it perfectly balances the trials and tribulations of adulting while maintaining its game-like aspect through the animations and small details.
What is amazing about this game is that every character you come across has its own developed personality. I am not sure about the coding behind the game but I can only imagine how much time and effort went in to creating and programming a seperate personality for every character as there is 397 computer characters in the newest version.

The project that has inspired me is actually work done by my friend Adam, an
arts major in my year at CMU. The summer before coming to Carnegie, he worked on a project where he took a video of people in motion (ballerinas,
breakdancers, and someone doing a flip) and compiled one pixel-length strip
from each of the frames into one image.

I really admired the project because you could still see the motion that was captured in the videos but it was a new and interesting way to express that. Adam was the main artist, but he recruited a few friends to be the models for the project and filmed them himself.

To my knowledge, Adam used video editing softwares like Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop to create these pieces. Adam said he was inspired by work professors at CMU have made because he came here for pre-college. He was really interested in the way technology and art can blend and said that CMU’s art program is more interdisciplinary than others. This project is a good example to show the increasing influence of technology in art, and points toward a future where the two mesh together seamlessly.

Baidu is a searching engine.

At the Albright-Knox Museum, I saw Anthony McCall’s installation “Dark Rooms, Solid Light.” This mesmerizing exhibit consists of rotating cones of light emerging from a projector. The audience may walk through, intercept and interact with the paths of light. I believe that in creating it McCall was the sole artist. He had iterated and developed upon his ideas for decades. While it may not initially appear to involve computing, McCall actually programmed the pattern of the light’s movements (although I am unsure what software was used). He had done this to create an effect of a transcendence of time.

This artwork is inspirational to me for that reason – McCall can cause people to lose track of time and lose themselves in his work. He is able to give life to something as technical and removed as light and computing. He may have been inspired by contemporaneous works of the time that were able to utilize new technological inventions in order to bring their creations to life. For example, Nam June Paik creatively used new technologies to produce his work.

I think that this work may lead to new advancements in the way that people utilize computational art. Many people likely believe that programming only generates two dimensional works you view on a screen, but McCall has shown that it can be used to create living, interactive experiences.

Mario Klingemann uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks to create art. His project called Memories of Passersby I is an installation of two framed screens placed right next to each other, over a wood cabinet. These screens contain a very powerful machine capable of continuously creating portraits of un-existing human faces. They are never repeated nor recorded. The infinite stream of portraits is created by the AI brain itself.

This project required the development of custom scripts. He had to train the AI model using thousands of 17th to 19th century portraits. Creating an application similar to a dating application called Tinder, he taught the machine to develop its own preferences of physical traits on human faces.

Klingemann may have been inspired by brushes. The neural networks are similar to that of brushes in that in the end, a medium provides feedback between the artist and the art. The medium, whether it be intricate neural networks or paintbrushes, can create a visual masterpiece.

This project points to a future of other forms of media and presentations, not limited to just portraits.

Memories of Passerby I by Mario Klingemann (2018)

I found the interactive film “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” extremely fascinating and inspiring. Bandersnatch is a psychological thriller about a programmer who begins questioning reality when developing a novel (titled Bandersnatch) into an interactive video game. The film itself is also an interactive experience, as the viewers have a role in controlling what happens next during “choice points”.

I found this project admirable because it begins to explore and push the boundaries of cinema and technology. Not only do both work in harmony, they are both able to bring the best out of each other; interweaving technology into cinema pushes the producers and writers to tackle new challenges and rethink many pretenses of a TV show. Introducing cinema to technologies, introduces not only viewers to the expansiveness of what technology can do, but editors and producers to the expansiveness of what they can do.

This film was created by Netflix, the team more specifically, involved Annabel Jones, Charlier Brooker, and David Slade. The process of creating this film also involved the actors, Will Poulter and Fionn Whitehad’s collaboration. Tackling a script with such a large amount of variations of outcome required a lot of exploration in the filming and plot writing. With this all in mind, they also had to make sure the variation of endings wasn’t too overbearing overall for the viewers. The process of which the plot began, started on Post-it notes, then progressed to a whiteboard. Following this, they used a programming tool called Twine. The script was both on paper, but also navigatable on Twine. Scrivener, Final Draft, and Microsoft Notepad were utilised during the process of creating as well. A flowchart was initially used during shooting but then thrown out because it ended up complicating things.

To tackle the interactive component for the viewers, Brooker and Jones had to actually develop a special technology with Netflix, so that the film plays seamlessly, instead of pausing when “choice points” came up. The system they used was one in which lighting, sound design, and aspect ratios change while viewers take the time to choose their options. The time constraint, music in the background, adds to the intensity of the film itself as well.

The interactive film was an idea that Netflix approached the producer and director in May 2017 with. Interactive films have existed prior to this, but the targeted audience was typically for children, with much more straight forward plots.

The Fallen of World War II is a historical data visualization documentary that analyzes the deaths that occurred during the war and the subsequent decline in battle deaths. Neil Halloran wrote, directed, coded, and narrated the piece (presumably) using commercial software. He conducted extensive research and organized interviews with volunteers to create the project. Andy Dollerson created the music and sound design. The timeline of the project is not specified. The data visualization can be viewed as a 15-minute video or paused to interact with the data.

I admire this project because it is visually captivating and highlights the war’s impact on different countries and details the lasting effects. Halloran uses cinematic storytelling techniques to show a unique perspective of a pivotal moment, allowing viewers to visualize the impact of the war. It integrates data and touches of personal stories that humanize the data.

Halloran was inspired by The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker, which explored human nature through the lens of psychology and history that showed the world as inherently non-violent. Halloran intends for this project to spark interest in history and human nature which may inspire future episodes that explore “trends of war and peace.”

Source: The Fallen of World War 2
Neil Halloran