Author: gkolosek

The article I selected is “Finding Inspiration for Art in the Betrayal of Privacy” by Jenna Wortham in the New York Times. The article focuses on an exhibition in a gallery in Lower Manhattan put on by a Berlin group called the Tactical Technology Collective. The exhibition looked at the impact of technology and how it observes us on the daily through an artistic lens. One example that they used which I found interesting was how step and activity data may be used in the future to determine insurance costs. This would cause people to “hack” their devices in order to make it seem like they moved more in order to lower their insurance costs. They also experimented with a facial-recognition software called “Churchix” to create an immersive experiment for gallery goers. The way the Tactical Technology Collective subverted technology that we use day to day lives, causes us to rethink our own relationship with technology and the way we “buy into” our own surveillance on the daily.

The piece if work I selected is “Body Sketches” by Molmol Kuo. Molmol Kuo is a Taiwanese artist and educator. Kuo works closely with NYU’s Tisch school of the Arts’ graduate student program consulting students on projects which combines the arts, augmented reality and technology. Kuo is also a partner at YesYesNo Studio, a multimedia design and arts studio. The work was at the Brooklyn Academy of Museum and uses computation and a screen to extend the user/observer’s body into a variety of dynamic costumes. The base of the project is three individuals projections, each of which then use the human form as a starting point and transform it through different geometric and physical changes.

The individual I selected is Catherine D’Ignazio. D’Ignazio is an associate professor of Urban Science and Planning at MIT. She is also the Director of the Data + Feminism Lab, also at MIT. Her work focuses on using data and computational methods to work towards gender and racial equality through the lense of urban design and architecture. She also authored the book Data Feminism that she published through MIT Press. A project of D’Ignazio’s that I was particularly interested in was her creation of the reproductive justice hackathon. The hackathon pushed individuals to come up with solutions to the issues that arise with finding a secure place to pump breast milk as well as finding better solutions to current pumping devices. Currently, a big focus of her work is discovering and elevating “hidden data.” This includes data such as how many women have died during childbirth in countries where that data is rarely recorded. D’Ignazio’s presentation style is very engaging and personable. She started her presentation with her own experience pumping in the MIT Media Lab as way to engage with her work and its importance.

The piece I selected is the song/composition named Hausmusik by Harmonia. The piece is made up of seemingly random notes and sounds. We hear the randomness most in the variation of tempos in the piece. The ever changing tempo feels quite random and haphazard. I do not know anything about the process of writing the piece or if there was an algorithm used or not but it seems like there was an effort made to make the piece feel generative as opposed to highly planned and choreographed. I quite admire this as it in a way makes electronic music feel much more natural. Electronic music has a tendency to feel cold and often sharp and this piece in contrast feels sort of warm because of the way it randomly undulates. If I am speculating on the artist’s intention when creating this work, I assume that he intended for the piece to feel quite generative.

The piece of work I selected is “Cellular Forms” by Andy Lomas. The piece of work depicts a simple example of morphogenesis. In the video, the form morphs and changes and goes through a series of evolutions. Each time the form undergoes a change it shakes and undulates and then almost “settles.” I picked this piece because I was intrigued by how the artist represents something quite scientific like cell morphogenesis, and makes it feel very peaceful and elegant. I was unable to find any information about the specific algorithm Lomas used but it seems like he used some kind of additive algorithm and based all of his additions on a spherical boundary surface and all of the spheres which made up the larger cell object divided by an even amount within that boundary surface. In my opinion, it seems like Lomas took into account the overall action of the cell’s division but chose to remove the human aspect of it in order to make it feel more like art.

The piece of work I selected is “data.matrix” by Ryoji Ikeda . The piece was released in December 2005. When listening to the piece its electronic quality comes to the forefront. It sounds almost as if it is made up of “beep boops” and tapping. However, there is an effect added to the sound which really enhances its electronic energy. Additionally, the piece sounds closer to noise frequencies than a traditional music piece. Ikeda’s pieces are often compared to a soundscape and that is apparent in data.matrix. Ikeda has had large scale sound installations all across the world and had prominent work at the TWA flight center at JFK. It reads more as art, and even though I was not able to find what algorithm Ikeda used for this piece it is apparent that some kind of algorithm must have been used. There is a clear order and organization to the piece that makes it feel quite mathematical and computational.

A computational fabrication project I found interesting was the Computational Design and Fabrication Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Learning Human-Environment Interactions using Conformal Tactile Textiles. The project explores how the user has sensory interactions with a variety of various textiles. The textiles used are created via digital machine knitting of inexpensive piezoresistive fibers. They are then calibrated using machine learning techniques. The textiles are able to sense the various interactions that humans have with textiles, for example how they move, sit and adjust their clothing. The textiles then categorize the movement and store the data. I found this project particularly interesting because it is a small scale project that interacts quite intuitively with the user as opposed to the large scale intervention that we typically think of when we think of mapping human movement and interaction.

The piece of work I selected is Inhotim by the computational architect Michael Hansmeyer, https://www.michael-hansmeyer.com/inhotim. I selected this piece because I found the way the artist created a dialogue between the sculptures to be quite beautiful and compelling. I also have had some experience with computational design in architecture so I really enjoy getting to see its application in the world outside of class. From what I know it seems like the artist could have used Python in the Rhino plug-in Grasshopper to create the work since it seems like he manipulated the mesh surface in rhino to create the push pull illusion. It seems like the artist’s sensibility manifested in their algorithm in the way that grasshopper is really about manipulating the earth and a given terrain, and that’s what Inhotim does. It uses nature as a base, but its intervention could not exist without an algorithm.