Author: yanwen

Where do you locate your interests along this spectrum?

I see my interests and creations more aligned with the category of “last word art”. My design works are mainly created with tools and rules that are already set up by previous designers, and my digital media creations are also based on the established form of creative coding environments and forms of expressions. 

What are some ways in which new technologies shape culture? What are some ways in which culture shapes technological development?

In my view technology and culture affect each other and develop depending on the influences that they receive from each other. Technology developments in fields including entertainment, daily workspaces, living environment, all have helped shape how the culture is like in the digital age. Similarly,  feedback and preferences from people as users decide what types of technology would continue to live on for further developments.  

We might aspire to make stuff of lasting importance, but when our work is technologically novel, it doesn’t always age well.

To me “doesn’t age well” might be either the technology that was once novel became familiar (or much more widely used) so the work is no longer novel in contemporary view, or the novel technology went discontinued and became obsolete. For the first scenario, all works should be viewed within its context. Even if the technology is no longer new, the work could still represent a turning point or important experimentation within the history of digital technology. For technology that became obsolete, it still preserve a part of the digital history and a possible direction that technology might have taken.

Compton’s “10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal Problem” talks about an aesthetic challenge that is often seen in creating generative content. While an algorithm might be able to generate different results, they may not always be perceived as different. Based on the purpose of the generative content, uniqueness has different levels of importance in determining the effectiveness of the generator.

“Perceptual differentiation” and “perceptual uniqueness” are the two criteria that Compton used to evaluate the generative results. “Perceptual differentiation” only requires the results to be not identical. In cases that need a large group of generative results without the need of highlighting specific characteristics, like a crowd of people or a school of fish to fill as background, differentiation is enough. While for cases that require distinct differences, like generating game characters, uniqueness should be taken into consideration while setting up the generative process.

To overcome the “10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal Problem”, we need to consider the purpose of the generator, whether the results should be seen as unique or simply identical, and adjust the constraints of the generative process based on the requirements.