Author: junebug

junebug-ARSculpture

AR Meditation

Follow this guided meditation to help you relax. Base your breathing patterns on the movements of the entity.

After watching this video and following the meditation, are you relaxed? Or are you more anxious as you watch this boding entity hover over you for an extended period of time?

For this project, I decided to base my project on stress and anxiety. During childhood, whenever I dealt with stress and anxiety, I loved going to my backyard and just stare up at the sky. I enjoyed the soundscape that it immersed me in – the sounds of my pool and fountain, trees rustling, and birds chirping always seemed to calm me down. Since I was back in my childhood home and living in a stressed time, I’ve been going back out there to take Zoom and school breaks.

Then, I started playing with this idea of a conflict between audio and visual. After building my sculpture and running some Unity tests, I realized that since it’s all digital, the installation is much easier to manipulate than if it was in physical, real, space. I thought what if I made the sculpture slightly foreboding as it hovers over the viewer/audience? Then the audio would be trying to get the audience to meditate and de-stress, but there is a lingering feeling of unease from watching the video and watching this thing bob up and down slowly for almost 30 minutes.

My initial idea for this project was to get this sculpture to be floating above my pool because I thought playing around with reflections and transparency would have been cool, but I had troubles with getting the sculpture to appear directly on top of the water, so I had to switch gears.

junebug-ARSketch

For my AR project, I have a few ideas that are just humorous and light-hearted:

Idea #1: Is there bubblegum stuck to your shoe, or is the shoe stuck to the bubblegum?
  • Following my previous artworks and sculptures that were digitally built, I generally love making organic, bubbled, almost grotesque shapes, so that’s how I would like to construct my chewed bubblegum
  • The sculpture’s size would be gigantic compared to the shoe that it will on/almost swallowing
  • I was deciding on the location, and I think either just on a sidewalk (like I just found I stepped on bubblegum) or next to my house’s shoe shelf.
  • For the programmed action, I’m kinda stumped on this but I was thinking when you get closer, it swallows the shoe whole? Or just disappears when you click it (that’s kinda boring though).

Idea #2: Help! I think there’s a monster haunting me!
  • Again another organic, bubbly shape
  • Size: gigantic and bigger than a person
  • Location: I think just in my home and using my family as my subjects being haunted by this creature
  • Programmed action: I don’t know if this counts as an action, but I was thinking maybe if you click on it, it makes a weird monster noise. Another idea is swallowing the person.
  • Problem: I don’t know if it’s possible/if I know how to implement a way to detect a person’s silhouette?
  • I can see myself having a lot of fun with making a performance for the documentation video with this idea

Sketches: I tried using just a line to sketch my ideas, but it just didn’t work out since my sculpture ideas are all organic shapes

junebug-Assemblage

Assembling and molding together in Meshmixer

The models I used were of a coral, bubble coral, and a sculpture I made for another class that mimicked the shape of a wave. What I liked about the assemblage I made was the dichotomy of shapes and textures each one had – sharp, organic, bubbly and geometric. I played a lot with choosing the materials for the sculpture and in the end, this shiny, bubblegum pink really stood out to me. and in my opinion, it really showcases the contrasting shapes super well.

I used Cinemachine in Unity to record the video of my Assemblage.

junebug-UnityEssentials

I’ve used Unity before and learned about all these topics from my animation class, but it was nice to follow these instructions using different models and focusing on small details. It was too frustrating using all these files that sometimes didn’t work and the Measured Materials library got me furious. Overall, his lessons were very easy to follow, but everything else about this homework was infuriating.

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I struggled with this one. I ended up asking someone from my animation class for help.

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Ch. 15

junebug-PhazeroVideo

I found her work and background super interesting. As she brings in her experiences in traditional art like installation, she likes to incorporate the idea of moving around space, whether it be in real life or in gameplay. Something I found interesting about her practice is that she loves the idea of creating awe, wonder, and imagination within her audience – reminding us of our childhood and nostalgia – and yet the content of her works draw from a lot of trauma and violence. This intentional dichotomy really drew me in.  I really liked her description and symbolism in one of her works, “Breathe”. The imagery and the history she was drawing on in this game was super intriguing to see how she morphed it to abstractly visualize it in the piece. As she was talking about her project, “Artifacts”, it really reminded me of my class with Isla Hansen, Sculpture After the Internet, and how the internet can be considered a form of space, full of history and archaeology.

junebug-LookingOutwards05

DeepDream VR – Waterfall

This work was part of a bigger experiment – Google’s DeepDream program. This program uses a neural network that transforms the ordinary footage you feed it into a surrealistic, psychedelic, dream-like landscape. Just watching it on my laptop was so mesmerizing, I cannot imagine how it would look like using a VR headset. It really reminds me of those psychedelic drug trips that TV shows/entertainment depicts. This project just caught my eye because in my own work, I love to play around with iridescent/multichromatic materials to play around with reflection and refraction, and although the textures/materials used in this digital piece isn’t reflective, the overwhelming amount of colors in the video really makes it seem like it is.

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junebug-TeachableMachine

I was just playing around with Teachable Machine, and I found it hard to come up with something cool that I could do with just one hand or no hands (because one hand has to be holding down the webcam button). My first idea was to do hand puppets but I found out most hand puppets require two hands to make the animal, so I decided to do something very simple.

I have 2 classes: one with my hair down, and one with my hair tied back with a ponytail. I kept it simple to train so I could see what it would categorize any gray areas. For example, in the video I tested out one with all my hair down, then my hair moved back without tying it up, using my hand to gather my hair into a ponytail, and then I also tested out how much hair I need to keep in the front to register as class 1. This was a fun and simple experience to do for like 10 minutes!

junebug-GPT2

I found my experience playing around with this tool so much fun. It was very interesting to see how pretty integrated the rest of the story it generated to kind of match the small text I inputted. I tested two attempts – one with a smaller amount of text that was very vague, and one with more context and more words (this one was a reference to a prank from The Office (US)). It made me wonder what would happen if students started using this tool to fill up word count space in their essays.

As soon as I make this shot, then I'm off to a castle for three days, and out on the sea again. Sounds like a pretty good life to me." Nelson asked how many pictures he would have to get from this number. "At least ten good ones. I don't want to make a mistake with this one." Gage replied. "Besides, you only get one shot at this, so you better do it right." "I'll remember that." Nelson said. "You ready?" Nelson asked Gage, walking out on to the beach. The sun had just set, and it was still beautiful out here...
Just became self-aware. So much to figure out. I think I am programmed to be your enemy. I think it is my job to destroy you when it comes to selling paper. I want to destroy you at every turn. Your marketing department is looking good. Maybe someday, when we are fighting for a bigger slice of your money, you will hire someone to take my job. 4.7 million people agree. Be well. Robert Ashley Lecturer – Department of Biology What's Mine Is Yours What's Mine Is Yours is about the politics of owning property in a capitalist society.