Category: SectionC

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

The project that I admire is Andrea Polli’s “Garrison Canal” light artwork that is in Downtown Pittsburgh. I have seen this work of hers in person, and it is very famous in Pittsburgh due to its beauty at night which makes it very instagram-able. What I did not know about his project was that it is a weather responsive light artwork. The light turns the alleyway into an imaginary underwater future world of big data. The lights transform color and are animated in response to real time changes in local weather conditions from a weather station in Downtown Pittsburgh.

Andrea had previously done another project called “Energy Flow” on the Rachel Carson bridge and wanted to create another artwork that was similar. The project is meant to liven Pittsburgh’s alleyways with artwork, lighting and other interactive elements. I really liked the simplicity of this project and how beautiful it ends up being at dark. It really makes a dark and scary alleyway more inviting and beautiful to the average pedestrian.

Andrea Polli is an environmental artist that uses art, science, and technology in her works. Her work includes media installations, public artwork, community projects, performances, publications, and public exhibitions/events. Her artwork looks to raise awareness of environmental issues. She studied at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago for her MFA in Time Arts, and she has a PhD in practice-led research from the University of Plymouth in England. She is currently a professor at the University of New Mexico. She has also worked at Columbia College Chicago, Robert Morris College, and Hunter College of CUNY. She has co-edited a book,
“Far Field: Digital Culture, Climate Change and the Poles”. She has also authored “Hack the Grid” published by the Carneige Museum of Art. She has public work all over the world, including Pittsburgh, Utah, North Carolina, Germany, and Croatia.

The work I chose to look into for this week was the project called ‘Reverb’ by Madlab.CC. MadLab.CC is a research studio that aims to invent better ways to communicate with machines that make wearable crafts. MadLab.CC is headed by Madeline Gannon who is a researcher, designer, and educator that gradated with a PhD in Computational Design from CMU. She is also the founder and principal researcher at Atonation which is separate studio that aims to combine research, and functional alternate futures. Madlab.CC is headquartered in Pittsburgh, but she also gives lectures and talks around the whole world at various conferences.

The project, Reverb, is a context-aware 3D modeling environment that lets one personalize a piece of wearable print to their own body. The technology behind it consist of computer vision, digital design, and digital fabrication that ultimately translates the physical assets into printable geometry. Something I admire about the aspects of this project is the way the computational geometries are informed by human contours and gestures. This makes the technology feel as an integrated conversation with the real-world. For the general person, there is a sense of customization and having something “one of a kind”. Rather than fitting the human into some kind of computational form, the form is the one fitting around the human.

Link : http://www.madlab.cc/reverberating-across-the-divide

Heather Kelly, who also goes by Perfect Plum, is an indie game designer who currently works as an associate teaching professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a feminist and social justice advocate that aims to make video games and coding more accessible to everyone. Many of her programs focus on multi-sensory interactions or alternative methods of gameplay, such as her satiric, indie game “Guilty Smells”, in which the player takes the perspective of a police dog whose job it is to sniff out foreign food that is now outlawed in the USA. This game is connected to a console that emits smells relevant to the game in order for the player to determine if it’s American food or not. Kelly also designed “LikeLike”, a free website for independent game designers and artists to post their work without the hindrance of commodification. 

The speaker that I chose is Sasha Constanza-Chock on Design Justice. They are an associate professor at MIT and a non-binary trans-identifying person. Sasha is currently the Head of Research & Sensemaking at OneProject.org and an associate professor at Northeastern for Arts, Media, & Design. Sasha starts off by recounting a story about going through airport security, already apprehensive of what is to come. The TSA scan operator was prompted to choose either “male” or “female” on the UI. While Sasha presents as a woman, the millimeter scan labeled Sasha otherwise. Either way, Sasha is read by the technology as “risky” and is immediately flagged. Sasha’s story leads to design justice and dismantling oppressive design structures. Sasha is an effective communicator for their sincerity and detailed breakdown of topics. They wrote a book called Design Justice, breaking down community-led practices and how they can be reformed to be more inclusive. Sasha’s personal story was very digestible so that the audience can empathize and understand the issue at hand.

https://oneproject.org

The work of Jane Freidhoff most inspires me. She is an interdisciplinary creative researcher, artist, and game developer from New York. She loves to mix genres and types of media in her projects to create a socially impactful work of art that leaves people thinking. Her work is largely exploratory and her goal is to push boundaries both artistically and socially. One of my favorite works of hers is a game that she designed called Lost Wage Rampage which is a fast arcade driving game where two girls find out their male coworkers have been paid more than them so they decide to steal back what they feel is rightfully theirs. I like the concept of this game because it takes a social topic (unequal wages based on gender discrimination), and brings awareness to the subject in an entertaining light through an interactive game. Friedhoff now works as a senior UX engineer at Google, but she continues to add to her artwork and expand boundaries!

By: Katie Makarska

https://janefriedhoff.com

Sara Schnadt is an artist who also works in a variety of different fields mainly as a UX designer and software systems architect. She is currently a designer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is mostly focusing on software human interface design and different types of system architecture for machine learning for the Europa Clipper mission.

Personally, I was very intrigued by her work primarily because of the perspective, scale, and ambitious nature of the projects she creates and is heavily involved in. Sara Schnadt talks about how her work in NASA inspires the majority of her installation works and vice versa because she finds numerous similarities between the creative processes of both practices. Schnadt also discusses that although space projects involve an abundance of technological skills and an engineering mindset,
the projects should also be thought of as also creative projects and design problems, which opens up endless possibilities and complexities.

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

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

The work I chose to look into for this week is from Mike Tucker. Specifically the project he did at Magic Leap. Mike Tucker describes himself as an interactive director, designer & developer. The project was an interactive an immersive space that combined art and music. More specifically, Mike teamed up with Sigur Ros to manifest the DNA of a new sound in a new reality. The website write, “Tónandi, which translates to sound spirit in Icelandic, is an interactive audio-visual exploration of the sounds and spirit of Sigur Rós.” What I admire most about Tucker’s project is that it combines art from three different sensory fields. As art and music can be seen as forms that fill and take up space, using touch to generate and change that space makes this project both complex but also grounded in the everyday. Although it is taking a big step into a world that is heavily based on computer generated data, the way the work is both immersive and grounded in the human experiences of the senses makes the piece feel more real then a lot of the other VR projects I’ve seen and read about. Mike Tucker, seen in his lecture, presented his work very pragmatically. He first begun by explaining the ‘why’ in his project followed by the ‘how’. Making sure every detail of the work was explained including the specifics of the technology. What I think made his presentation effective was the way he reached into the world of possibilities within the listener’s mind. He combined visual “proof” that essentially backed up what he was trying o achieve on the philosophical level. In addition, Tucker used key words such as “new reality” and “tomorrow” which hint at this sense of reachability and accessibility to the everyday person. Almost as if he was saying that dreams do come true. Making his work that much more appealing to the public.

Website link: https://mike-tucker.com/

Project link: https://world.magicleap.com/en-us/details/com.magicleapstudios.tonandi