Author: Felix

looking outwards 11

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4x4p43/6-art-projects-prying-the-lid-off-online-privacy

I chose the article showcasing 6 Art Projects Prying The Lid Off Online Privacy. I think vice did a good job of curating art pieces to showcase, and they referenced a good south park episode as well which I appreciated. The first piece was a browser extension that sets off an alarm everytime information gets sent to google called the google alarm. I think that’s pretty clever and is an interesting check in for when the system is keeping an eye on you, which is always. The other project that stood out to me was called My Little Privacy by Niklas Roy. He created a motorized curtain that covered a small portion of his street window display, and tracked people as they walked by. I thought it was an interesting metaphor, the idea of false privacy in the modern era. I mostly like the personality it has, it looks like it would be a lot of fun to pass by and it somewhat takes on a life of its own.

looking outwards 9

Text Rain

I chose Camille Utterback for this weeks looking outwards. She’s an american artist and mostly works in instilation and interactive art using computational and generative methods. She’s very interested in how the human body moves and gestures and how that motion can be translated into digital images. The work I looked at specifically was called text rain, which was an interactive projection of people in the exibit with text falling down onto their body like rain and resting. You can push them around and play with them, and it looked quite fun actually. I thought it was a great exploration of the human aspect of typography and text and how we can connect to something as lifeless as letters.

Looking outwards – 08

Alexander Chen

https://vimeo.com/channels/eyeo2017

Ths speaker is a musician and father and works at google. He talked a lot about how his children have influenced his work and the way he views music. His work mostly includes music and how we interact with it. He became fascinated by the way music works and was concieved. He made a ton of interactive visual instruments for people to use. He creates a very interesting interaction between graphic design, music theory and does it in a very “engineery” way. He analyzes music in a very technical way and I thought he was pretty unique.

Looking Outwards 07

This week I looked at CMU alum Chris Harrison’s project Search Clock. He created an algorithm that mapped what people use the internet for the most during every hour of the day. This stood out to me because we just made clock looking devices with code, this is just way cooler. I also have just spent the semester in an intense mapping class and am impressed by his visual simplification and efficiency in descriving multiple changing factors so consicely. He somehow found hourly data on average time spent on certain websites and generalized them into catagories, and converted the scale to years. I think it’s super visually stunning and am impressed with how innovative this representation of data is.

https://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Visualizations/SearchClock

Looking outwards 6

For this week I looked at Brian Eno’s use of generative algorithms in music production. I didn’t know that he literally invented generative music and was doing it in the 90’s. This is exciting for me because I’m a fan of him and it makes me more impressed with him as an artist as well as interested in the application of coding. He used a moire pattern, which is two grids of sound layered on top of another and overylaying them into what he calls ambient music. He had a lot of interesting methods using hardware and homemade contraptions to produce and alter his music in really unique ways. This is a link to a talk he gave on his generative music.

https://inmotionmagazine.com/eno1.html

Some of his albums useing genrative production methods are ambient music 1 through 4, and Apollo.

Project 6 abstract clock

I sort of messed around with the changing of these blocks for a while. I had them as notches for a second but I liked how at midnight it’ll turn to a black screen and slowly become red green and blue again. I also liked the layering effect of seconds in front of minutes in front of hours. It would be interesting to try to make it into more of a shifting gradient of red green and blue.

sketchDownload
//felix cooper fcooper D
var secs = {x:200, y:240, w:100, r:0};
var mins = {x:100, y:240, w:100, g:0};
var hours = {x:0, y:240, w:100, b:0}; //initializes each time box as an object

function setup() {
    createCanvas(300, 240);
}

function draw() {
    let s=second(); //sets a variable connected to each set of time
    let m=minute();
    let h=hour();

    background(255);

    fill(0,0,hours.b);
    noStroke();
    rect(hours.x,hours.y-4,300,240); //draws rectangle across canvas
    hours.y=map(hour() + norm(minute(), 0, 60),0,24,0,240); //mapps y value to hours
    hours.b=map(hour() + norm(minute(), 0, 60),0,24,0,255);//same for b value, the norm function makes it move in minute incriments
    if(h == 0){
        hours.y=240; //resets at midnight
    }

    fill(0,mins.g,0);
    noStroke();
    rect(mins.x,mins.y-4,300,240); //does the same stuff just for minutes 
    mins.y=map(minute() + norm(second(), 0, 60),0,60,0,240);
    mins.g=map(minute() + norm(second(), 0, 60),0,60,0,255);
    if(m == 0){
        mins.y=240;
    }

    fill(secs.r,0,0);
    noStroke(); //does the same stuff just for seconds 
    rect(secs.x,secs.y-4,300,240);
    secs.y=map(second(),0,60,0,240);
    secs.r=map(second(),0,60,0,255);
    if(s == 0){
        secs.y=240;
    }

}

Project 5 – Wallpaper

I had a really hard time doing this one, the array functions were giving me difficulty and at one point I created a file that just crashed the html file permanantly so I kept having to make more files but I figured them out in the end and ended there.

sketchDownload
var s = [10,15,20,25,20,15];
var x=20;
var y=20;
var c=0;
function setup(){
    createCanvas(600, 600);
    background(255);
}

function draw() {
fill(0); 
for(var l = 0;l <= 5;l += 1){
    y = 20
    for(var h = 0; h <= 5;h += 1){
    x = 20+c;
     for(var i = 0;i < 6;i ++){

        circle(x,y,s[i]);
        x += 15;
        y += 15;
     }
     y += 5;
    }
    c += 90;
}
noLoop();
}

Looking Outwards 5

This week I looked at the artist Sebastien Monroy , a designer who programs generative art, games and digital experiences. The project I looked at of his is called Palm Reading, a project that generates abstract animations based on bioelectricity measured from palm tree fronds in Koh Lon island. He recieved an audio file from measuring the electric pulses of the plants that he took and converted into a moving image inspired by the movement of the waves generated by the plants. I think the result was really cool.

https://www.dinacon.org/2018/07/04/jessica-anderson-sebastian-monroy/

I couldn’t upload the video’s because they were too big for wordpress but they’re on that site

Project 03 dynamic drawing

I wanted to play with the translate and rotation tools so I made this fun little spinning ellipse.

sketchDownload
//felix cooper fcooper d

var r=constrain(mouseX,-180,180);
var height=constrain(50,-255,255);

function setup() {
    createCanvas(600, 450);
}

function draw() {
    background(0);
    noStroke();
    translate(300,225);
    rotate(radians(r)); //spins circle according to mousex
    ellipse(80,0,50, height);
    r=mouseX;

    if(mouseY<225){ //changes ellipse length based on mousey
        height=height+5;
    }
    else{
        height=height-5;
    }
    fill(height); //changes gradient based on how small it is - will dissapear
}