LookingOutwards-08

Looking Outwards-08

For this assignment, I watched a speech by Chris Barr, a director of arts and technology investments at Knight Foundation in West Virginia. Chris works with art museums and other artistic or cultural institutions in order to implement technology that will help attract and engage audiences. Chris describes himself as “interested in how human culture is shared via media, art, and information systems” but “most of all interested in bringing people together in new and interesting ways.” In this speech specifically, Chris discussed the ice cream museum in New York and the way in which the simplistic and child-like design of the museum increases attraction of all ages. I admire his work and analysis of museums because he provided very simplified breakdowns of the information. He used audio files from other people along with visual aids and feedback from museum-goers to help ground his speech. From this speech, I can learn more about presenting from the amount of aids he uses to help get his message across.

Access Chris Barr’s website here.
Access the speech video here.

LO 08: Space in the Mind of a Machine, Eyeo 2019 – Refik Anadol

Refik Anadol is a media artist born in Istanbul, Turkey and holds a master of fine arts degree from UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts, master of fine arts from Istanbul Bilgi University in Visual Communication Design and a bachelors of arts degree in photography and video. Currently situated in Los Angeles, he works in the field of site-specific public art, leveraging data, live audio, and video to produce interactive information visualization. His key works explore the spatial relationship between architecture and media arts with machine intelligence.

The most interesting part is how he visualizes various datasets with relationship to visual and spatial storytelling. I can relate his method of inquiry to critical regionalism or place-making reflecting the memory or history of that context. His final project named WDCH Dreams was the best of all as the presentation format was incremental and progressive.

WDCH DREAMS – Process from Refik Anadol on Vimeo.

His presentation for the Eyeo Festival, 2019 begins with his motivation to computational design followed by his capstone project for master of fine arts degree at UCLA. On a larger context, the presentation can be divided into before AI and after. The key feature of the presentation was incorporating his experience with various clients and people he met during this journey through storytelling, which involves the audience into his works.

Eyeo 2019 – Refik Anadol from Eyeo Festival on Vimeo.

Bhaboo’s Looking Outwards – Week 8

In our assignment this week, I really enjoyed looking at different people that have attended the Eyeo Festival. I’ve never seen such amazing people that have revolutionized technology, interactive art, and media in one place. Although this was a longer blog than usual, it was fun to learn about so many new topics. For this blog, I chose to learn more about Daniel Shiffman. He started up a YouTube channel that’s called “The Coding Train.” This channel actually is focused on p5.js which is why I chose to look into Daniel Shiffman more. He works with NYU and their Tisch School of Arts which makes sense because his goal is to share code with the world. After looking into this, I noticed he also has a Discord Channel, social media accounts, and a very large following. It’s so cool how Daniel Shiffman is spreading p5.js so well throughout the world. I admire the fact that he’s really doing such a good job of sharing this form of art/code in a fun way. Cool projects, fun colors, and lovely entertainment are paving the way for p5.js to be taught to the world.

Looking Outwards 08: The Creative Practice of an Individual

Matt Adams is one of the people that is a part of Blast Theory. This group creates interactive art that questions the way people interact with each other as well as the social and political climate during that time. They test how people respond to various scenarios and create interactive platforms highlighting certain actions and choices. They play with the relationship between real life and fictional lives, often the occupants have to make choices that result in real-life consequences or analysis. Even though a user thinks they are playing a make-believe game, the game might be linked to actual life events that have taken place. I admire that they make people question what is happening in the real world by temporarily removing them and placing them in a fictitious world. Doing so leads the user to think more about the real-life consequences learned from that simulation. The order in which he talked about the projects also helped to explain the concepts. He alternated between explaining and showing the examples, which aided in explaining the concept. The audience is introduced to the idea, then they are shown the project so they can see it in action. After that, he explains the conclusions and the result of the project.

https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/?from=header

2. Looking Outwards 08: The Creative Practice of an Individual

I really admired the work of Matt Adams. Matt Adams is the lead artist at Blast Theory, which is a pioneering group of artists creating interactive art related to political and social scenarios of the world. In my opinion, the fact that really makes his work unique is the fact that he is really passionate about theater
and theatrics. Matt works draw inspiration from pop culture which is another aspect which makes his work more interesting, engaging and relatable. I admire
how interactive and visually striking the artist’s work is in all formats of art, whether it be 2d, 3d or digital. I really liked ‘A Cluster of 17 Cases: Installation’ , a piece which demonstrates the outbreak of a virus in the world back in 2003.
The aspect which makes it extremely relatable is because of the pandemic onslaught which was very recently upon us. The artists showcased how a virus spreads in a 3d artwork installation which I think is really cool. Matt’s approach
to his work is simple, drawing inspiration from global affairs and issues, which as I mentioned before makes the work extremely likable and engaging.

Link

Clare Katyal

Chris Barr is the director of arts and technology at Knight Foundation. This is a nonprofit that works with newspapers to support democracy and free speech. Barr is interesting because while he has a background in art, design, and new media, he also works in journalism and civic tech through his non profit work. His art reflects this multi-faceted background, as it is often of landscapes or nature, showcasing his knowledge of the natural world. In his talk for Eyeo in 2019, Chris Barr discusses the art of interactive experiences. He brings up the Muesum of Ice Cream, which is a place widely adored for the way adults get to act like children in it. It has many immersive art exhibits, such as a pit full of sprinkles. He discusses how these companies generate massive amounts of revenue just from cheaply designed exhibits. He helped create Meow Wolf, a company centered around this idea that immersive galleries can become very popular. According to their mission statement, Meow Wolf intends to “inspire creativity through art, exploration, and play so that imagination will transform our worlds”.
https://vimeo.com/354276161?embedded=false&source=vimeo_logo&owner=8053320
https://meowwolf.com/about

LO 8: The creative practice of an individual

Christina “Phazero” Curlee is a video game and video artist. She designs video games that express her emotions and childhood experiences and connects the audience to themselves to help them discover who they are as a person. I think it’s really interesting how video games can be connected to someone’s inner feelings and emotions and not something superficial like tactical shooters. I have never seen anything similar before. Curlee also had a different style of learning for game making because she has a fine arts background where she uses and combines it with game development to create her own style. She focuses on using symbols, experiences, and nonverbal communication in her work. Her current project Artifacts lets users experience her life through a lucid dream-like state to help them become closer to themselves. I think it is really powerful how she is able to create a game that can help people understand themselves and possibly allow them to grow emotionally. Curlee does a good job presenting by explaining her passion and how her work is unique and her previous life experiences and then her projects and how her experiences helped her develop her style.

link

Looking Outwards-08-SectionA

I liked Mike Tucker’s work. He spoke at the 2019 EYEO conference. Tucker is an Interactive Director at Magic Leap. Magic Leap is “focused on creating the future of Spatial Computing.” He is based in Los Angeles, California which is really cool because I am from California.

I really liked how he his pieces look magical. I love his use of color and how his pieces are interactive. For example, in one of his pieces at a science museum, visitors could draw something on their phone app and it would become part of the exhibit. Even with using visitors’ drawings, the exhibit was stunning because how his technology would integrate their drawings; this makes his art engaging for viewers but is also cool how he can still tie all the drawings together. Additionally, I love how all his works revolve around perception. Perception is interesting because everything we see and know is just our perception of something. I like how his art really gives a magical experience and plays on our perception.

His talk was engaging because he showed all the pieces he made. Seeing demos opposed to just photos, really adds to the speech because videos help us understand his pieces for ourselves instead of just listening to him.

Here is the link to his website: https://mike-tucker.com/

Here is the video:

The video of Mike Tucker’s talk.

LookingOutwards-08

Meow Wolf is an art collective based in Santa Fe. They create interactive, immersive, diy art. The goal of their art is to transport people into fantasy realms/worlds. The collective puts a lot of emphasis on the process of creating and how you are creating instead of the final output. The House of Eternal Return is a project they built in a old bowling alley. The house looks like a normal Victorian era home; however, there are multiverse portals throughout the house that take you to other dimensions, rooms, and worlds. There are interactive features that are physical, but also digital. For example, there are some worlds with touch sensors that create a sound and light experience. The house was their first permanent exhibition and opened in 2016. I admire this project and their other projects in how they use a variety of mediums to generate the interaction in their art. They use traditional building techniques as well as computers and programming to make their projects come to life. Through the lecture, they talk about the process of creating their work and what Meow Wolf strives for in that process They also explain the reception and impact of that work.

https://credits.meowwolf.com/house-of-eternal-return#projects
https://vimeo.com/354276551?embedded=false&source=vimeo_logo&owner=8053320

Looking Outwards – 08

Jennifer Daniel is a designer and is pursuing a career in illustration. Originally from Kansas, she moved to New York. Since then, her work has been published in a variety of publications. Jennifer has taught visual narratives for SVA’s masters program and recently moved to San Francisco. She was a professional communicator before working at an engineering company and now makes visual art.

In the eyeo festival Jennifer Daniel talks about an app she helped develop called allo. In the app you take a selfie and it makes automated emojis cartoons of your face. Traditional computers utilize mapping on the art to analyze pixels of an image. Algorithmically it examines attribute values to look for shape and colors. A well known problem is the uncanny valley of images. Emojis that look too close to the picture look scary. Machine learning can access and confront people about what they look like. Instead alo produces low resolution emojis which create a less realistic emoji. There is a customization feature of emojis. She talks about how she can as an art director design something for everyone when machine learning can reduce data about unique stories. She is aware of bias in computer algorithms and how it can promote racism and sexism. Art directors who work on these projects can work with artists with many perspectives to articulate their world. Not enough to make an avatar that is a literal representation of you when there are many versions of you.

What I really like about Jennifer Daniel’s app and project is that she takes an approach to illustrating similar to a UI UX designer, which is my dream career. She explains that visual vocabulary online is very vast. There are text, emoticons, emoji, and tiny illustrations. Emojis, gifs, stickers all make up an emergent complexity. Texting is closer to speaking than writing. People spoke first to communicate. Writing only came later. Writing is very different from talking. Writing is a conscious process while Speech is looser, text is like that. No one thinks about capitalization, we text the way we speak. Emoji is a Japanese word which is a combination of emoji and character and a very important form of digital communication in japan. Easy way to apologize or show nuanced communications. Emojis have a problem when trying to communicate something detailed. Automatic emojis can change meanings of texts. I’ve seen this with slack and face messenger. Emojis are not perfectly transferable across mediums. Ios emojis sent to an android emoji may look much different. Important emojis look similar across platforms and are cohesive but she wishes emojis used unicode like type fonts. More styles there are, the more variations can exist. Emojis have broadened the world of communication and it will be interesting to see how it shifts our language in the future.

https://vimeo.com/channels/eyeo2017