Category: SectionB

Random Internationals Swarm Studies is incredible because it automatically draws people in. It allows people to interact with the piece through visuals, audio, and motion. I agree with Mango in that I also admire how the piece manifests unique forms with each interaction it has with each person. In a way, it encourages people to become an artist themselves and create their own personalized experiences.

I also believe that Random Internationals wanted to imitate the acrobatic efficiency of birds in flight. It seems like mystery how entire flocks of birds are able to make quick, instant turns when they are flying forty miles per hour. Studies have shown that flocks are able to propogate easily because each bird watches for the moves of their nearest neighbor. Similarly, each light source in the piece changes their direction and motion in response to the noise near them, resulting in collective behavior.

In this way, I think that the creators’ artistic sensibilities are rooted in togetherness. The act of collective behavior of the lights, people, and their interactions, can lead to artistic experiences.

In the 5th week of looking outwards, we were tasked with looking at 3d graphics. There is a wide variety of choices my classmates have chosen to analyze and elaborate on. A specific one I’ve taken a liking to is the one on Jakub Javora by the author under the alias, rkim. They bring up the transformation of a real location to an alternate reality in a project called Restore Point. This is similar to the post by the author under the alias, carson michaelis. The core concept of creating an illusion with a preexisting condition is what the authors and I find fascinating. They focused on a rendering from an architectural firm, WOJR, and their project, ‘Mask House’.The difference between the two projects is one is creating an artificial world that is meant to be fantasy but one is created to portray a potential reality. Both create a mood they want the viewer to experience and cater to their visual palette. I enjoyed both projects and think both authors are absolutely right when it comes to their analysis of their executions.

For this week’s Looking Outwards, I looked at Shaun’s (I worked with him in lab) LO for week 7 on Information Visualization. Shaun talked about Stefanie Posavec’s collaboration project with Greg McInerny titled, “(En)tangled Word Bank.” I agree with Shaun that this project is a very cool way to portray evolution, and I think that the six different editions of the project show how Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” One thing I would add is that Posavec is very interested in wearable art/art that can be interacted with and utilized in common settings, so it makes sense that she’s interested in evolution and the study of biological life.

I chose to look at yoli’s Week 03 post about computational fabrication used in Iris Van Herpen’s fashion pieces. I love yoli’s commentary about the fashion industry, pointing out how fashion is always pushing the “cutting edge” while also repeating itself in many ways. I find this repetition as a mechanism for forward-thinking to be really profound and perfectly exemplified by Van Herpen’s work. While Van Herpen is pushing the field forward in her forms and novel fabrication methods, she also references traditional fashion with the soft sculpture elements and dress bases of her looks.

I find that not only are fashion professionals repeating themselves in their methods and designs, but repetition, as in Van Herpen’s work, has become a central principle to the designs themselves. For instance, in her “Sensory Seas” collection, she references human anatomy systems through repetition of physiological shapes.

When browsing through the 3-D Computer Graphics Looking Outwards, I found Poppy’s post about Jennifer Steinkamp’s digital animation “Womb” very interesting. I was initially intrigued by how she wrote about the piece being centered around femininity. I found my peer’s assessment about how the artist’s sensibilities manifesting in the piece to make a meaningful analogy with her work very insightful.  

I admire the way the artist uses bright “Fruit Ninja” style visuals to create a thought-provoking piece. Steinkamp describes this piece as a way of showing how a womb is a place of transformation that “grows and stretches outward to exercise agency.” With this piece, the viewer acts as the form of agency as the piece’s movement mirrors the viewer’s movement. I agree with my peer’s assessment that this is an interesting way to represent how we as people take up space.

I learned that the wind sound used is taken from the Wizard of Oz tornado scene, which I thought was an interesting choice as it’s unrelated to the subject matter of the piece. I also learned that Steinkamp tailors each of her pieces depending on the space in which she shows, which I thought was very impressive. 

MTV: Love from Laurie Rowan on Vimeo.

I was scrolling through the previous Looking Outwards category on 3D Graphics when I stumbled upon eyelash’s post on Laurie Rowan. The work “MTV: Love” was extremely mesmerizing, to say the least. I agree with my peer’s analysis of Rowan’s work, that it is demonstrative of how a seemingly impractical artistic vision can find a place to reach and impact a greater audience. I really appreciate how each of his work’s is definitely idiosyncratic, yet clearly still his distinct style. Rowan’s work is absurd and adorable, appealing to people of all ages. I think it is interesting to consider how music and sounds come into play with his animations and add yet another degree of complexity. I would also like to add that Rowan creates pieces that comment on society as well, as evidenced by his piece for a Businessweek Editorial (seen below). His works are playful, but also critical.

Although I am not familiar with animation software, I agree with the assessment that these were likely made with a combination of rendering/animation programs such as Cinema4D and AfterEffects, and I believe that Blender might have had a role in their creation as well.