Hannah Perner-Wilson uses conductive materials and craft techniques to create new styles of electronics that emphasize materiality and process. She received a BA in Industrial Design from the University for Art and Industrial Design Linz and an MA in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab. Her website, Plusea, contains links to her numerous projects. It dates back to 2004, and has dozens of pages on her creations. I like her project KOBAKANT, which focuses on wearable technology. They want to deconstruct technology, and create very interesting results. I like how she explained the creation process for the different pieces she presented. Talking about how she came up with the art helped add another layer to it. When I present my own work, I know talking through the steps I took to make it will help my audience understand it better.
This week I watched Jennifer Daniel’s talk at Eyeo 2017. Daniel is a digital artist and editor, having had work published in many famous publications, such as The New York Times and Wired. At the time of her speech Daniel was working with a start up on the future of digital communication, specifically emojis, and is now the chair of the Unicode Consortium’s Emoji Subcommittee. Daniel’s work is in digital communication, specifically how humans communicate on digital platforms versus in person speaking or formal writing. Her presentation demonstrated a robust and nearly comprehensive understanding of digital communication, such as explaining the difference between emoji, gifs, and stickers or lightly chiding celebrities trying to capitalize on emojis but fail to understand how and why they are used. I think what Daniel is doing is very cool, her dedication to making communication as universal as possible and elevating emoji and other digital communication to the same consideration as traditional language is groundbreaking. I think in 20 years time her work will be remembered as a real positive for human communication.
For this week’s Looking Outwards writing assignment I chose to write about Lucianne Walkowicz. Lucianne was born in 1979 in NYC and she is an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium located in the city of Chicago. In the 2017-2018 Lucianne was given a Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/LOC Chair in Astrobiology! As an astronomer, she studies the ethics of Mars exploration, how stars influence a planet’s suitability as a host for alien life, stellar magnetic activity, and how to use advanced computing to discover unusual events in large astronomical data sets. Walkowicz holds a BS in Physics and Astronomy from Johns Hopkins University, an MS and PhD in Astronomy from the University of Washington, and held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and Princeton prior to joining the Adler Planetarium. Lucianne is a very bright, warmhearted and open minded person. She described herself as privileged to study space – many would feel proud or even get cocky about the fact that they’re studying the aspects of space, yet she said she felt privileged because she understands that it is a dream of many but not everyone gets to do it.
I admire Lucianne and the work that she does. In the 2019 Eyeo Festival, Lucianne said that astronomers have to tell people what they owe to them. She is studying space not only because she is interested in it and because it fascinates her, she studies it so she could educate other people about it. In 2011, when Lucianne moved back to her hometown NYC, she along with other astronomers would hop on the train and ride from first to last stop holding signs that tell people to ask them any questions about space. She would spend her time and energy riding the train and giving people the opportunity to find out more about space. I respect her for what she does. Lucianne’s main goal was to not make people be interested in science but rather make them feel that they can access and do science themselves. She was all about equity and inclusion. The research showed that only around 37% of Discovery channel viewers are women so her goal was to make the idea of science be more broad and available for everyone. In 2018, Walkowicz co-founded The JustSpace Alliance, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advocate for a more inclusive and ethical future in space, and to harness visions of tomorrow for a more just and equitable world today.
Lucianne presents her ideas through charts/graphs, pictures, videos and even art. She understands that many science related terms wouldn’t be too clear for many people so she uses visual representations to help people understand many different concepts. I really enjoyed her artistic project called “40 Orbits” which was performed as a dance in the air using electronic sound effects and LED lights. I felt as if I was watching a movement of a star in space – her aura and her movements made it seem like magic. Lucianne understands that many people are visually oriented so she created a meditation space where a person can sit and not only watch the stars and many constellations, but also listen to the stars move around! It is simply unimaginable. Lucianne made this project using her artistic abilities and a lot of technology to represent unearthly sounds of stars. I admire that project the most because it gives people the opportunity to focus on their spiritual aspects by listening to the stars. Many people don’t have the opportunity to even study space so Lucianne makes this experience available to everyone.
What I can learn about how to present my own work from Lucianne is the fact that I have to do the work not only for myself but also for others. My work can be educational and inspiring for others so I want to make my work accessible for everyone because the learning process shouldn’t be done alone. I want to use many visual representations as well in presenting my work to catch the attention and to make the ideas presented seem more easier and understandable.
The speaker that I chose for this week’s LO is Mike Tucker. I watched the talk he gave “NEW DOORS OF PERCEPTION: EXPLORATIONS INTO MIXED REALITY” at Eyeo 2019. Mike Tucker is an Interactive Director, Designer & Developer, currently based in New York. He studied Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University. For the last 5 years, Mike has been working at Magic Leap, a company focused on developing the future of Spatial Computing. His work mainly involves interactive arts and music, and his hope is to “encourage the next wave of spatial designers to question our expectations of media, and the opportunity we all have in designing a mixed reality future.”
At Eyeo, he talked about how he started his journey from graphic design to web design and then to VR and interactive art. His most recent work is Tónandi (means “tone spirit” in Icelandic), which is an interactive audio-visual experience where participants are within a virtual environment with a unique soundscape. The soundscape adapts to the current environment and changes based on the participant’s eyes, hands, and movement.
Tónandi in action
I really love this project because I think it really breaks the expectations of how a medium should be experienced. The way that sound is represented visually and the ability for people to touch and interact with “sound” is so incredible. It’s also very admirable because Mike talks about how they started from prototypes and experimented with different elements before developing the final product. It’s quite amazing to see his early explorations worked towards his current works. Furthermore, he broke down the different aspects of how they created perception and illusion, which includes head tracking, controllers, spatial sound, touch, eye gaze, and environment.
Mike presented his work by documenting the stages of development. He used a combination of images and videos to show his past projects and also various explorations. He also showed other creators’ projects that served as inspiration. It’s very interesting to see how the technology improved over the years. I can definitely learn from him by doing a better job of documenting my work process.
Martin Wattenberg Application of the Embedding Projector
Martin Wattenberg works with computational information visualizations and one project that was particularly interesting to me was the one about machine learning. In this project he used the Embedding Projector, which is a visualization tool for high-dimensional data which he helped create. The algorithms generate the work by using the input data to computational visualize and display the information. Martin co-founded Google People + AI Research which has worked toward further understanding and improving human / AI interaction. The key goals of his research and projects into machine learning are to broaden interaction within AI and computational representation tools. The Embedding Projector is what’s shown above and is a key for creating interactive exploration into high-dimensional data. This type of interaction allows new patterns and connections can be made within the data as it’s visualized in various ways. Ultimately the artist’s sensibilities are able to be specific to each data set as it can be visualized in different ways.
For this project I made 2 lemniscates(?) that can be manipulated using the x and y coordinates of the mouse. I decided not to erase the previous drawings so that the user could have multiple shapes on the canvas.
I am a huge fan of quirky jewelry, so I think this project is super cool. Rachel Binx makes earrings and necklaces using various unicode arrows. I hadn’t thought about how many there were until I looked at her work. All of the pieces look crisp and classy. Although simple, I can imagine that certain arrows hold special significance to specific people. To make such a large range of options, Binx has compiled a list of unicode arrows that people can use. Honestly this seems like too many, but apparently all of them were approved by a group who thought they were worth using. Binx’s database + jewelry shop is an incredibly cool blend of technology and fashion.
//Yanina Shavialenka
//Section B
var n;
var heartShape = [];
var theta = 0;
var nPoints = 55;
function setup() {
createCanvas(480, 480);
}
function draw() {
background(map(mouseX, 0, width, 0, mouseY));
heartCurve();
epitrochoidCurve();
hypotrochoidCurve();
astroidCurve();
}
function heartCurve() {
//https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HeartCurve.html
push();
fill(255, 153, 255);
stroke(73, 84, 216);
translate(width/2, height/2-35);//changes (0,0) point to center the heart in the middle
beginShape(); //Begins to draw heart curve
for (var v of heartShape) {
vertex(v.x, v.y);
}
endShape(); //Ends drawing heart curve
//The following equations were taken from teh MathWorld
var radius = height / 40; //sets how big the heart is on the canvas
var xPos = 16 * pow(sin(theta), 3) * radius;
var yPos = (13 * cos(theta) - 5 * cos(2 * theta) - 2 * cos(3 * theta) - cos(4 * theta)) * -radius;
heartShape.push(createVector(xPos, yPos));
theta += 0.8; //changes the angle by 0.8 each time which increases the outer blue stroke
pop();
}
function epitrochoidCurve() {
//https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Epitrochoid.html
var b = 3.5;
var h = (b + 5) + mouseX/100;
var a = mouseX/b;
push();
noFill();
stroke(0, 0, mouseX);
translate(180, height/2-50);
/*
Changes (0,0) point to center the epitrochoid on the
left side of a heart.
*/
beginShape(); //Begins to draw epitrochoid curve
//The following equations were taken from teh MathWorld
for(var t = 0; t <= TWO_PI; t += PI/110){
var xPos = (a+b) * sin(t) - h * sin(((a+b)/b) * t);
var yPos = (a+b) * cos(t) - h * cos(((a+b)/b) * t);
vertex(xPos,yPos);
}
endShape(); //Ends drawing epitrochoid curve
pop();
}
function hypotrochoidCurve() {
//https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypotrochoid.html
var b = 3.5;
var h = mouseY/2; //As height increases, the get little sharp crown circles
//As height decreases, we get oval star curves instead of crown circles
var a = mouseX/b;
push();
noFill();
stroke(mouseX, 0, 0);
translate(width/2+70, height/2-35);
/*
Changes (0,0) point to center the hypotrochoid on the
right side of a heart.
*/
beginShape(); //Begins to draw hypotrochoid curve
//The following equations were taken from teh MathWorld
for (var i = 0; i <= nPoints; i ++) {
var t = map(i, 0, 50, 0, TWO_PI);
var xPos = (a-b) * cos(t) + (h * cos(((a-b)/b) * t));
var yPos = (a-b) * sin(t) - (h * sin(((a-b)/b) * t));
vertex(xPos,yPos);
}
endShape(); //Ends drawing hypotrochoid curve
pop();
}
function astroidCurve() {
//https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Astroid.html
var a = map(mouseX, 0, width, 0, height);
push();
noFill();
stroke(0, mouseX, 0);
translate(width/2, 300);
/*
Changes (0,0) point to center the astroid at the
bottom of a heart.
*/
beginShape(); //Begins to draw astroid curve
//The following equations were taken from teh MathWorld
for (var i = 0; i < height; i++) {
var t = map(i, 0, width, 0, TWO_PI);
var xPos = 3 * a * cos(t) + a * cos(3 * t);
var yPos = 3 * a * sin(t) - a * sin(3 * t);
vertex(xPos,yPos);
}
endShape(); //Ends drawing astroid curve
pop();
}
|
In this project I drew the curve of a heart and inside of a heart there’s 3 addition curves. Epitrochoid and hypotrochoid in my opinion were kind of like opposite of each other since epitrochoid draws ellipses inside and hypotrochoid draws ellipses outside. For me it was kind of challenging to do this because I had to research a lot of new functions such as Math.pow and many things for me didn’t work so I had to change the curves multiple times for them to work. It was interesting to analyze how angles of 0.1 or 1 would affect the curves, sometimes the smaller the angle the bigger the shape became which is polar opposite of what would I have expected.
For this weeks looking outwards I chose to look at Aaron Koblin’s flight patterns. Together with colleges from UCLA, Koblin developed a Processing program to analyze and visualize flight patterns over North America. Koblin does’t elaborate on the mechanics of his algorithm, but from the images he has up on his website it looks like he made color and thickness a function of flight frequency, which makes the final product look like a colored pencil-like piece, with webbed spots around airports. This obviously makes for a really effective depiction of the flight patterns in question as it makes really clear where and from large chunks of flights go, but it’s also really visually appealing as a work of pure art.
I really like the dichotomy in this project between calm and chaos. I wanted a pretty simple curve(s) on a plain background that change from very simple and still to complex and chaotic. I set the colors to make it seem like a star or spreading entropy or something. I hope you enjoy!!
var nPoints = 100;
function setup() {
createCanvas(400, 400);
frameRate(10);
}
function draw() {
background(255);
// draw the frame
fill(0);
noStroke();
stroke(0);
noFill();
// draw the curve
push();
translate(width / 2, height / 2);
drawCurve();
pop();
}
//--------------------------------------------------
function drawCurve() {
// Hypotrochoid
// https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypotrochoid.html
var x;
var y;
var a = constrain(map(mouseX, 0, width, 50, 150), 50, 150);
var b = a / constrain(map(mouseX, 10, width-10, 1, 8), 1, 8);
var h = b;
var ph = mouseX / 50.0;
var n = 12;
for (var j = 0; j < n; j++) {
var c = map(j, 0, n, 0, 256);
stroke(256-c,114,c);
beginShape();
for (var i = 0; i < nPoints; i++) {
var t = map(i, 0, nPoints, 0, TWO_PI);
var r = map(mouseY, 0, height, 0, 5)
x = (j/n)*(a - b) * cos(t) + (j/n)*h * cos(ph + t * (a - b) / b);
y = (j/n)*(a - b) * sin(t) - (j/n)*h * sin(ph + t * (a + b) / b);
vertex(x + random(-r,r), y + random(-r,r));
}
endShape(CLOSE);
}
}
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