Section B – [OLD SEMESTER] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice

“How Artists Can Bridge the Digital Divide and Reimagine Humanity”

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

Over the last couple of decades, the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) movement has brought a plethora of new changes in the world’s education system. The goal of this movement is not only to improve the lives of people physically, but to also bring people closer together by changing the way we see diversity and the digital inclusion of others.

According to author Agnes Chavez, a revolution in STEAM is how we see the development of humanistic skills and creating a sustainable future. This process is even more vital in isolated, remote areas such as rural and minority communities, where the necessity to tie the gender and culture gap is even greater.

One of many possible solutions was generated through the creation of the STEMarts Lab. Students from all backgrounds get to work directly with artists whose work imagines what can be achieved with digital technology. This new form of collaboration between generations is what will lead the future in a digitally-sustainable direction.

Furthermore, the STEMarts model is revolutionizing the way the younger generation is thinking through the following pillars:

21st-century skills and technology
Cutting-edge science knowledge
Real-world application and collaboration
New media arts and social practice

The STEMarts model is able to give people a better idea of how the world works better together with the combination of science, art, and technology. These ideas are more important now than ever before. The goal of our generation is to increase individual literacy of these fields as much as possible. The more great minds we have who are able to think critically and out of the box, the less problems our society will have. Even though this solution seems too good to be true, we’ll never know unless we try to unite these pillars by increasing STEAM literacy in our generation.

Link to Article:

https://www.arts.gov/impact/media-arts/arts-technology-scan/essays/how-artists-can-bridge-digital-divide-and-reimagine-humanity

Looking Outwards 11: Societal Impacts of Digital Art

The societal issue is in regards to copyright and how NFTs impact it. One example is how NFTs occasionally steal work from commissioned artists without their consent or permission, such as in the case of Jason Rohrer using the work of artists without their consent to sell NFTs. The article begins by detailing what NFTs are; unique tokens, most commonly a URL of some digital media which are given to individuals for ownership. However—and this is the conflict that the article highlights—that very ownership has a lot more to take into account than what the original developers may have intended. Those who have NFTs don’t actually have copyright of their NFTs, and their so-called products are still accessible and distributable to the public. To make matters worse, thousands can release unoriginal NFTs based off of digital URLs in a market that doesn’t restrict or legislate the selling and distribution of NFTs.

Link to article here

Bhaboo’s Looking Outwards – Week 9

I really enjoyed looking into this week’s “looking outwards” because the work women and non-binary people are doing around the world is INCREDIBLE. After looking through a lot of the work of these people, I decided to look more into Chloe Vardlidi who loves “designing and building playful products that empower humans to be creative, kind and curious about the world around them.”

A project she worked on, “The Littlebits Codekit + App” caught my eye quickly on their website because it helps teachers teach younger children by engaging them with fun games and cool entertainment. Using this kit, paired with the app, kids can create games and make inventions like a keytar instrument, hot potato, or button master. I find it really cool that Chloe was able to partner up with the company Sphero to work on a project of these level.

Link to Chloe’s Website
Link to the Project

Blog 09: Space Video (2012)

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

Kate Armstrong is a Vancouver-based writer, exhibitionist, and artist. She has over 15 years of experience with focusing on the broader intersection of technology and art. Throughout her life, she has produced numerous exhibitions in Canada and internationally, created many works of art, and even wrote a few books on how technology and art intersect.

Today, we’ll take a look at one of Armstrong’s lesser-known works: Space Video.

Released back in 2012, Space Video is a 3-minute generative system that addresses ideas of exploration in relation to inner and outer space. It has a computer-generated algorithm that combines different snapshots of YouTube videos with various electronic sounds and synths. The video is meant to portray non-visual spaces in outer space. It is a mixture of space exploration, hypnosis, guided meditation, and science fiction, which is very trippy to the human eye.

LINK TO VIDEO: https://vimeo.com/136921326

Looking Outwards 08: The Creative Practice of an Individual

Christina Phazero Curlee is a game designer, specializing in emotional impactful and narrative driven Art Games. She describes herself as a “multi-disciplinary game designer” since she works seamlessly in multiple 3D editors, and does script coding, and uses her traditional art foundation in her game design process. She studied traditional art in college and even formerly worked as painte but also she is self-taught in game design, 3D Art, and programming. Her visual art foundation and self-teaching gave her an unusual framework as a game developer as she blends a principle, techniques, and subject matters found in fine arts with game conventions to create her own design style and language in game development.
Her body of work usually explores emotional experiences, marginalized identities, and digital consciousness. I admire her work “Artifacts II” the most as her passion in emotional storytelling is well brought out in this game. Artifacts II is a surreal narrative game about personal discovery and trauma such as chdildhood neglect; The game is set in a surreal storybook-like series of environments, representing memory spaces in the character’s mind. The character engtangles trauma in the mind and body and go through process of introspection and self evaluation as he/she plays. I admire the way she utilizes symbols to convey her personal experiencs, making an game environment conceptually rich, imaginative, and compelling.
To effectively present her work, she uses symbols such as enemies, scores, and timers to represent the concepts of love, fear, and defense mechanisms. Also, Artifact II uses elements of exploration (walking sims), RPG, and survival MDA (mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics) to effectively reveal the fragments of character’s past memories.

http://www.christinazero.com/

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.

Blog 08: Manuel Lima

By Ilia Urgen
Section B

Manuel Lima is a Portuguese-American designer and author who is known for transforming informational data into various elegant and beautiful forms of art. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Industrial Design at the Technical University of Lisbon and received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Design and Technology from the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Lima’s website, Visual Complexity, illustrates his vast portfolio of detailed and intricate artwork, which I find very appealing to the eye. His work often uses a lot of curves and lines, which is made up of many different colors. Yet, each piece of art represents some different form of data. For example, his piece “Marvel Uberframework” (see below) represents the correlation of different Marvel characters, such as Spiderman and Captain America.

However, his most well-known and complex artwork can be found in his literary work, “The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge”. As mentioned in his 2017 lecture, Lima shows various artwork pieces represented in many circular forms that comes from any form of data, ranging from ancient to contemporary times. I love how in his lecture, Lima mentions the bridge of knowledge from thousands of years ago to the present, which keeps our well-established society going. He also emphasizes the importance of creating new artwork using data, that can be passed down to future generations.

Link to Lima’s website:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/

Image 2: Contemporary Circular art using data from the size of various companies

Looking Outwards / Brian House

Brian House is an accomplished artist working with ‘human and nonhuman systems’ to create works that translate data into visual and audible experiences. He studied at multiple universities, earning degrees in Computer Science and Computer Music/Multimedia [Columbia (bachelors), Chalmers tekniska högskola (masters), and Brown (PhD)], and is currently an art professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

House’s methods of data collection, as well as his productions, are multidisciplinary, focusing not only on the existing rhythms and natural trends of environmental dynamics but on the human impacts on these trends. His work spans past, present, and future, visual art, music, and technology. Much of his work– if not, all– is focused on emphasizing the importance of environmental awareness. Despite being grounded in science and data collection, these works are historically, culturally, and politically aware. When speaking about his work, House tends to provide such context prior to explanations of a given project’s approach, method, objective, and result. His speech for Eyeo 2018 opened with an acknowledgment of the Indigenous land upon which the venue was built. I admire the conscientiousness in both his work and his presentations, as well as the common thread of translating the world around us into something we can hear. House’s projects are extremely powerful, moving, and at the same time, more educational than I had expected.

My favorite project of his is Animas (2017). The objective of this work was to convert the real-time fluctuations of the Animas river’s heavy metal content into audible vibrational tones. Collecting data through water sensors installed in the river, House suspended sheets of the four heavy metals which had surpassed safe levels in the Animas. Each sheet was rigged with a sensor and amplifier which projected the individual frequencies of the metals in correspondence with their level fluctuations in the Animas.

A brief sound clip of Animas.

Water sensor installed in the Animas River to collect real-time data.

Looking Outwards 07: Information Visualization

The interactive light structure, Unnumbered Sparks (2014), by Aaron Koblin and Janet Echelman was truly something spectacular to see. The concept itself—of a massive light structure that changed depending on real time audience interaction—promoted this lovely theme of unity and creativity in a very beautiful and meaningful way. The way it was constructed was also very artistic and elegant, and it was clear that Koblin and Echelman’s artistic touches could be seen through the color palettes as well as the delicate way the light filaments interacted with one another to create a stunning night sky display. In addition, the way the project was structured meant it relied heavily on focus and distance, something that the artists needed to balance in order to create something visually appealing. The algorithms involved appeared to have taken in people’s data from their phones and mapped it to some value that would allow it to alter the way the lights in the structure appeared, whether in color or shape. The way it was produced was through the usage of a website, distributed and projected onto a real, physical structure.

Link here

Project 07: Hallucinogenic Roses!

sketch Download

// Ilia Urgen
// Section B
// iurgen@andrew.cmu.edu
// Project-07

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