Interactivity and Computation • 60-212
CMU School of Art / IDeATe, Spring 2022 • Prof. Golan Levin
This work uses ML to produce images of the artist sleeping. And it’s then made into a kinetic installation where the bed sheet moves from time to time. This work applied ML on a physical installation. It rendered the complex data with a a simple but very effective kinetic installation.
Shy Garden Eel
My creature is inspired by garden eel. I want to make a creature that takes a similar form to a garden eel and shared the same kind of shyness and unexpectedness of its behavior(check out this video on garden eel to see how it moves in the sea, it’s super cute).
The user interacts with the creature with mouse press. Whenever the mouse is pressed for a certain random amount of time(to add a bit of shock factor to the interaction), the creature will come out and follow the user’s mouse position. And when the mouse is released, the creature quickly retreats back to its place. Through the interaction, I want the user and the creature to both be a curious observer of each other.
I think the form of the creature can use more work. Maybe it can have more complicated patterns, instead of just gradient circles.
Still pictures
I like the organic/illustrative style of this generative work. And it’s very speculative, it makes the viewers wonder what images are being fed to the algorithm to generate this image.
This work reminds me of the bookshelf scene in Interstellar. A very effective way of establishing a scene through loops and repetition.
This works reminds me of James Turrell’s light installations.It has successfully created a sense of space, depth and flatness in an interesting/contradicting way.
Question 1A:
I consider the hair accumulated in my shower an example of effective complexity. It’s pretty much total randomness in that you don’t really know how much hair is in there, the shape is totally random. But it has certain expected features (it’s made out of hair, is denser in the middle, has less hair on the outer part, etc).
Question 1B: Problem of Uniqueness
My problem is actually about the question itself: “Does it diminish the value of the art when unique objects can be mass-produced?” I think value really shouldn’t be at the center of the discussion with generative art. For me, value comes from exclusivity, ownership, and scarcity, and a big part of generative art is about its ability to dismantle such things in art. With generative art, we shouldn’t be looking at the value of each individual mass-produced unique object/works; the focus should be the mere realization/appreciation that mass-produced uniqueness is made possible through generative approach.
link: https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1486519
The inspiration for my generative landscape is vaporwave . I mainly want to recreate this style(vibrant, color and atmospheric perspective) with generative coding. The mountain is generated from perline noise, and the color is randomized with a random seed. And the bird’s location is also randomly generated. A new landscape will be generated when ever it’s refreshed.
I think the randomized color is especially successful for this project. Some thing I wish to improve on is implanting this in a 3D space with WEBGL.
link: https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1476010
This is a relatively simple loop animation. While it is a seamless loop, it wasn’t as visually interesting/illusionistic as I had hoped for. A another problem is that after running for a while it becomes really laggy. I think’s it has to do with how I wrote my for loops, and I’m still working on improving this.
screenshot:
Animated GIF:
Link to OpenProcessing: https://openprocessing.org/sketch/1475909
I initially wanted to make a geometric clock that uses polygon to represent second/minute/hour. But I didn’t continue with this idea because it’s too simple and doesn’t have much meaning to it.
I then continued to brain storm and settled on the idea of creating a clock that triggers the feeling of anxiety/frustration with the passing of time. The inspiration of the design comes mainly from this picture: 
This clock is meant to make people feel anxious. I tried to make it so that it captures the feeling of me running out of time and feeling frustrated(eg. when the deadline of a project I barley started is hours away).
The most challenging part for me was to figure out how to make the lines seem random enough, while still maintain some type of order. They needs to still have some level of legibility so a person can still tell time from this clock. I initially wanted all the points to be at a random location, but that ended up being too chaotic. As a result, I chose to map the points into a circle instead.
Comparing the historical timekeeping devices with our modern ones, the modern standard clock is actually the most abstract. Historical “clocks” emphasize more on the idea of passing, while the modern clocks make it seem that time is a loop.
The work I selected is Rain Room by Random International. This work is an interactive installation that allows visitors to walk through a downpour without getting wet as motion sensors detect visitors’ movements as they navigate through the space. Although I’ve never got the chance to visit this work in-person, I still really enjoy this work. Walking through rain without getting wet seems to gives the visitor a sense of control over rain. The experience of walking in the rain is replicated in an indoor space can encourage some interesting reflection on our relationship with technology and environment.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sktrJ8R0Wzo
Additional Information: http://www.digiart21.org/art/rain-room
Rain Room is equipped with 3D motion sensors that track movement underneath the water valves. When it senses a person walking inside the piece, the sensors turn off the water valves for the area around that person. This effectively creates a circle with no rainfall centered on that person, which follows them as they move around the piece.
Based on the artists, “the idea originated in a three-second spark that came up during a discussion where we had looked at a (too) complicated process of printing information with water onto very large hydrochromic surfaces. It seemed that we somehow shared a curiosity to see how it would feel to be immersed in a rainstorm that wouldn’t physically affect you. So, we just knew, we had to do this. ” It then took four years of research and development and support from Stuart and Maxine Frankel and their Art Foundation to develop and build the first Rain Room, which was shown at the Barbican in 2012.