November 2022 – Page 16 – [OLD SEMESTER] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

Looking Outwards Week 09

Based in Lisbon Portugal, Sofia Crespo is an accomplished artist and curator who primarily focuses on creating biologically inspired artificial intelligence-generated videos and images. The images are bizarre and ethereal, yet are rooted in familiar systems such as neural pathways, sea creatures, human organs, fungi, and animals. She programs her own project-specific custom AI software through which she runs her base images, using the AI to draw otherworldly connections between the earthly base images, which is incredibly admirable because she is able to seamlessly blend the computer-generated aspects of her work with a more analog process of physically retouching the images. While studying at Miami Art Direction School, she developed her love for AI generative art practices, and combined this passion with her interest in biology, resulting in her current technique. She no teaches workshops, gives talks, and does residencies in addition to making her own artistic works.

LO Week 09:

I looked at LIA, specifically their ‘ ProximityOfNeeds 20210428 ’ (2021) project that is now on auction at a curated NFT collection. I thought it was especially cool how they incorporated sound like we are learning in class, to match the visuals being created on screen. It’s quite a satisfying change in pitch as the shapes are being drawn and the control of them stopping in such a natural clunking way when the spirals come together is really nice too. I really like how the form of the shape in the different versions changes the tone and feel of the sound too.

LIA is a Software Art Company established in 1995 run by Lia who “focuses on the translation of certain experienced principles into abstract forms, movements, and colors in order to allow the viewer to explore the same on a subconscious level” (source: LIA About Page) which is a really fascinating way of thinking about how we experience the digital world and is something that is only going to be more relevant with the rise of AR/VR.

Srishty’s Project 9 Portrait

For my portrait, I decided to do something similar to pointillism but instead of dots, I used words. I made a list of words that are about my passions/ideal career choices and then loaded a word randomly from the list to take place of each pixel in my image. Each word matches the color of the pixel in its respective x and y location. The words are all a pretty small font so they can pick up the details of the pixels well.

sketch

// SRISHTY BHAVSAR
// PROJECT 9
// SECTION C 15-104
/*
let img;
let smallPoint, largePoint;

function preload() {
  img = loadImage('nameofimage');
}

*/


var srishty;
var passions;

function preload() {
    srishty = loadImage("https://i.imgur.com/kczcnA1.jpg"); // image of me, srishty
    passions = ["designer", "artist", "UI","UX", "researcher", "HCI", "architecture", 
    "color", "painting", 'music', "running", "singing"]; // list of my passions and career interests
    print(passions);

}

function setup() {
    createCanvas(480,480);
    srishty.resize(480,480); // resizes the ima2ge upload to imgur to be 480 by 480
    background('white');
    imageMode(CENTER); // centers image
    srishty.loadPixels();
    //noLoop();

}


function draw() {
    var x = floor(random(srishty.width));
    var y = floor(random(srishty.height));
    var c = srishty.get(x,y); // identifies the color of each pixels
    fill(c,255);
    textSize(8);
    textFont('Helvetica')
    text(passions[Math.floor((Math.random() * passions.length))] , x, y); // takes a random word from the list of passions and places it to be in the position of the image pixel
}

Looking Outwards 09: A Focus on Women and Non-binary Practitioners in Computational Art

Andrea Crespo- Legion (2021)

I really admired the work of Andrea Crespo. Especially the Legions project. The artwork is a video based on school shootings in the US. The artwork can be disturbing to a few but I found it to be really interesting and an accurate representation of a tragic yet true reality. The artwork consists of a culmination of things such as basic sketches to single or two words that are really impactful,, it also has animated and blurred digital art which conveys the aftermath of the preamble before the shootings. In my opinion, the artwork is really impactful with all the presented elements. The artist herself is a US resident thus, her portrayal of this horrific issue is rather close to heart. Andrea was born in Miami, and has studied in Pratt institute, she currently lives in New York City. Andrea has been a part of numerous exhibitions, solo exhibitions and screenings and works with multiple mediums. She makes artworks on political and social issues which make her work very relatable and impactful for the general public.

Link

Blog 09 – Women and Non-Binary Practitioners in Computational Art – srauch

For my piece, I picked ENIGMA, a computer-generated film created by Lillian Schwartz in 1972.

1972 “ENIGMA” – 4 min. 20 sec.

ENIGMA (1972)

Schwartz worked out of Bell Labs’ Acoustical and Behavioral Research Center from 1968 to 2002, and during her time there, she created a series of videos that were visual output of computer algorithms, ENIGMA being one of them.

What I find so remarkable about her videos is that they were algorithmically generated, but because of the technology at the time, they were physically produced. Each frame the computer output had to be burned into 35mm film one at a time, and then the film itself had to be developed before Schwartz could see the image. Schwartz fluently used the kind of creative thinking afforded by computer-generated art decades before such computational art was accessible or even necessarily made sense to make, allowing her to produce art that is completely unlike anything else being made at the time. As she said in an interview, “I’ve always been interested in what different media could provide me in terms of creating something that had never been seen before or provoke me to create in ways I had not created before.”

Her work prompts me to think about how art can inspire technology. Art is perhaps an excellent place for an algorithm or computer program to begin its life, because there isn’t initially an expectation that it’s perfect or exactly efficient. Freed from the initial constraints of functionality, new creative ideas can flow and grow, and by the time the program is being translated into the practical realm, it’s become something completely new.

anabelle’s blog 09

One work I find inspiring is Claudia Hart’s The Flower Matrix. Hart is one of the pioneers from the 80s XR emergence in art. She received her education in at and architecture from NYU and Columbia and now teaches as a professor at the Chicago Institute of Art. I think it’s particularly cool how she combines physical spaces with the VR space to create a magical, surreal space that raises the question on what is “natural” and “real.” The entire exhibit is a small, isolated room covered in matrices and flashing images, which effectively convey the “surreal” effect she wants. The fact that there is also a sound element to the exhibition just makes it more complex and cooler. The multiple elements she balances in this work reminds me of the object arrays we’ve been learning about in lecture, where the VR, physical, and audio are all objects in the flower matrix array.

One of the flashing images that covers the walls of the exhibits:

Looking Outwards-09

For this week’s blog, I wanted to highlight the accomplishments and work of Sougwen Chung, a Chinese-Canadian female identifying multidisciplinary artist who bases the majority of her art on the conversation between humans and machinery. She is a former researcher at MIT’s Media lab, and currently works in a London-based studio. A specific piece that I found uniquely interesting is her piece called “Omnia per Omnia”, in which the project reimagines the traditional art of landscape painting as a collaboration between an artist, a robotic swarm, and the dynamic flow of a city. Chung creates these beautiful and intriguing artworks through the collaboration of ‘Doug’, her robotic arm that paints, powered by artificial intelligence. Chung uses the arm alongside other robots in her artworks, working together in a sort of dance. I admire the creativity and nuance approach Chung utilizes throughout her art pieces, each project more unique and meaningful than the other.

lo: non-men in computational art

One project from a woman artist that caught my eye a while ago is CAre BOt by Caroline Sinders. Sinders is an artist and designer who studies digital spaces and patterns and responds to them with her projects. CAre BOt is sort of an extension or spin-off of another one of her projects – the Social Media Breakup Coordinator – that addresses the irresponsible social media policies concerning harassment and abuse. The chatbot was given dialogue by Sinders that highlights the mistreatment of online victims, backed by her personal research of harassment on social media platforms. While interacting with CAre BOt, you can also learn a lot about that research and how social media sites are poorly designed systems. Many of her projects address system wide flaws in things and who they affect. Her artistic approach to data-driven research and issues allows users like me to learn about the data without being overwhelmed or even traumatized. It’s really interesting to me.

Project 9 Portrait

project7

This was pretty fun to think of different ways to create a portrait. Going off the pointillism idea, I tried to think of different shapes that could be used and experiment. I decided to use mousePressed() to restart with new shapes. I feel they all came out pretty interesting and all the shapes relate to each other differently.

//Rachel Legg / rlegg / Section C

var img;
var option = 1;

//load image
function preload(){
    //photo of me
    img = loadImage("https://i.imgur.com/wtr45Lt.jpg");
}

function setup() {
    createCanvas(450, 400);
    background(0);
    img.resize(width, height);
    img.loadPixels();
    //fast frame rate
    frameRate(500);
}

function draw() {

    //have random x & y for portrait
    var x = floor(random(0, 450));
    var y = floor(random(0, 400));
    //use color from pixel
    var color = img.get(x, y);
    //smaller shapes leads to more detail
    var s = random(3, 10);
    
    // #4 is used for each pixel
    if (option == 1){
        //have shape pop as pixels
        fill(color);
        //outline of light-colored stroke
        stroke("lightyellow");
        strokeWeight(.5);
        stroke(color);
        textSize(s);
        text("4", x, y);

    //switch 4 to circle option w/ mousePressed
    } else if (option == 2){
        //have shape pop as pixels
        fill(color);
        //outline of light-colored stroke
        stroke("lightyellow");
        strokeWeight(.5);
        circle(x, y, s);

    //switch circle to triangle option w/ mousePressed
    } else if (option == 3){
        //have shape pop as pixels
        fill(color);
        noStroke();
        strokeWeight(.5);
        triangle(x, y, x - s, y + s, x + s, y + s);
    }
    
}

function mousePressed(){
    option++;
    if(option > 3){
        option = 1;
    }
    background(0);
}

Looking Outward – 09

Janet Echelman creates artwork that brings together sculpture, architecture, urban design, engineering, computer science, and material science. She scales her sculptures to buildings and calls viewers to reflects on their experience and the relationships between our world’s many scales. She combines ancient craft with computer science to achieve her style. Earthtime 1.26 Munich invites viewers to consider the interconnectedness to each other and our planet, and become more aware of our sensory experience. One of many sculptures, this installation has been installed in 15 cities around the world. This physical form was first digitally modeled based on data collected that describes an earthquake in Chile in 2010 that created ripple effects and led to the earth’s daily rotation speeding up. Earth’s days shortened by 1.26 seconds. Made up of fibers, the installation hangs from buildings and is illuminated by many lights. This sculpture has over 361,728 knots! I really admire how interdisciplinary Echelman’s work is, along with the beautiful, colorful aesthetic. Her work completely transforms spaces and changes your perspective on your relationship to the rest of the world.

Title: EARTHTIME 1.26 MUNICH, GERMANY, 2021
Artist: Janet Echelman
Link: https://www.echelman.com/#/126-munich/
https://www.echelman.com/about