Category: ProjectToShare

“Artificial Arboretum,” by Jacqueline Wu, is an academic-mimicking documentation of images of trees (“photogrammetrees”) that are captured on platforms like Google Earth (though Wu mentions Apple Maps as an alternative).

I think one thing that is particularly compelling about this piece is that these trees are digital “replicas” of trees found in real life, but are nothing like actual trees due to the way they were captured. These trees are also documented in a scientific way, listing the species and location, but more interestingly, size, status, and date accessed, which suggests a new form of species identification in the realm of online universes (and that perhaps digital species will live separate from their real life counterparts). There’s also a slight comical effect in seeing these short stubby little trees in a virtual space (XD).

I found the documentation surrounding this project to be lacking, and I think I wanted some more discussion from the artist about what exactly makes the photogrammetrees trees (even though they don’t look like tree trees). The artist has tagged this project as ongoing so I am interested in seeing how this is carried forward.

Website: https://cargocollective.com/jacqswu/Artificial-Arboretum

Hilla and Bernd Becher’s work is one of my favorites in the medium and has greatly influenced many of my photography projects. Although a little dated, it is very relevant to the focus of this class, especially when it comes to the discussion of typology.

Working as a duo, the couple travelled around Germany (and later around the world) to photograph the abandoned industrial architectures after the war. They used a large-format camera to photograph these buildings in an objective, scientific, and deadpan manor. Their photographs have almost identical composition and are often organized in grids; they only take photos on overcast days to avoid the effect of lighting. Their work grouped together similar architectures and seem to highlight the distillation of the similarities of the design that those structures share.

I found their process and aesthetic to be profoundly interesting. The neutral, indifferent attitude in their documentation does exceptionally well with the subject of their project — the cold, indifferent industrial structures  that are unlike the typical subjects in the architecture photography that came before them.

(p.s. I remember seeing clips from Koyaanisqatsi playing at the beginning of last class. Samsara, which is also by Ron Fricke, is actually one of my favorite documentaries and could absolutely be another project that’s relevant to this class.)

The artist I want to share is Shane Fu, a motion designer/video creator who adds a new perspective and fun to a mundane city footage. Many of his works add imaginary space to the existing physical space by manipulating the footage and adding a small twist to it. Recalling our discussion on the assumptions we make for the camera/photos, his work definitely makes use of the illusion of 3D space on a 2D screen and people’s general belief in that photos/footages capture the ‘facts’ of the physical world — presenting awe to the audience who hasn’t challenged these assumptions of camera as much.

I find his works interesting because he utilizes not only visual effects/3d modeling tools to create his own imagination space, but also used object tracking to further persuade the viewers that this new space that he’s created exist as part of the physical world we inhabit. In a world where anything and everything can be easily recorded and shared online, not that many people seem to care as much about the truth of existence of what’s being presented to them on screen, but rather the entertainment or uniqueness aspects of what they’re viewing. Shane’s works satisfy these needs people show in the rapidly growing tech generation.

More of his projects on Instagram

(I know some academics have mixed feelings about wikipedia… but I really do think this a good article)

Stencilled on the walls of a cave in Argentina are human hands. Still visible today, the artwork, created in splattered reds, whites, and blacks, was completed between in the 8000 year span between 7800bc and 700ad; at its newest well over a thousand years old.

The wall of hands in Cueva de los Manos is personally fascinating and academically relevant because of the way in which the artists accurately captured themselves. The prehistoric paintings which I’ve seen, including those in the cave, don’t seem particularly interested in trying to capture the face or a form which distinguishes an individual. If we think about the time and skill it takes to acquire this skill (as well as the difficulty of painting on rough rock) it makes sense. But one might argue even skilled paintings and carvings in the past interject an artist’s hand, and place some emotional distance between us and the long dead subject.

I think these hands fascinate me because long before the advent of photography, these artists were capturing the human body in a way which mimics the objectivity I feel looking the the human face in a photograph. Indeed, to me they create an even closer feeling, offering up the hands of those long gone to compare my own same shaped hand to… stripped of the cultural trappings of difference in language, clothing, or time.

When considering the prompt of this LookingOutwards assignment, my first thought was looking at Brandon Ballengée’s work.

Malamp: Reliquaries (2001 – present)

Disclaimer: I am not someone with a lot of knowledge about “capture” in the first place, but I think biological staining techniques were among the first capturing techniques that gave us insight into structures that were impossible to see, even with magnification.

Brandon uses a variety of biological staining techniques to see into structures of post-apocalyptic creatures. In his statement, he explains that by obscuring direct representation of the organism, he avoids representing these animals as monsters or otherwise exploiting them. But there’s nothing more intimate and revealing than showing your insides to the world, especially as a specimen.

A bit personal but I find this interesting because one of my biggest fears is seeing inside of my body, having every single part exposed. I think a lot about this, because I am very afraid of having aspects of a mutant in places I can’t see.  There’s a certain invasiveness in passive technologies, like MRIs, CTs and Xrays. So it makes me think a lot about when capture becomes invasive, unwelcome, or exposing.

I work on livecoded music pretty much everyday. Given its academic origins, I figured I’d check out its new literature to find something for this post. I stumbled upon an inspiring paper from Francesco Ardan Dal Rì and Raul Masu that designed two different systems for visualizing tidalcycles patterns and audio characteristics in real time. Livecoding visualizers aren’t new. What’s new (to me at least) is how they introduce the visualizer as a “score” and investigate its potential value to the performer.

One visualizer is focused on composition structure, and the other on sound characteristics. Both have I’ve been interested in making myself such a system for some time because in addition to helping the performer conceptualize what they’re doing, it serves as something more engaging for an audience to stare at than someone standing at a laptop for half an hour.

I find this latter function interesting, because few electronic instruments require the same kind of tactile and gestural engagement as traditional instruments, making for a fundamentally different (and generally duller) physical presence on stage. Audio reactive live visuals solve the “something to look at” problem, but they rarely solve the “I get to see what they’re doing” problem. I’d consider this paper’s efforts much closer to an actual solution, as the visuals are tied directly to pattern events in a comprehensible way. That they don’t touch on audience interpretation of the visualizers feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, but that investigation would probably have diluted the focus: it deserves its own paper.

visualization “Time_X” – this visualization focuses on pattern events over time

visualization Time_Z – this visualization focuses on parameters of pattern events

As far as critiques go, none of the content jumps out as lacking. They give a thorough review of existing tools/literature, and provide solid evidence and arguments for the value of their visualization tool. My biggest critique is the lack of documenting media. I could not find the code used, nor could I even find videos of the visualizations in action. At the very end, they do mention “the systems presented in this paper have been developed using FLOSS, and will be release in creative common,” but they didn’t put any link to it in the footnotes, which feels like a massive oversight. A fair amount was written about how the different visualizations influenced composing and what limitations were discovered during use, so it feels strange to me that they wouldn’t want to give the tool life past the paper and let others experiment with and iterate directly on what they’ve successfully argued as something worth exploring.

Many papers are referenced, but two main influences are established: Thor Magnusson’s “Threnoscpe”, an environment + visualizer best for drone music, and Ivan Abreu’s “Didactic pattern visualizer”, which the Time_X visualization seems like a very direct extension of. I’d dig much deeper, but this post is already far past 150 words, so I’d just encourage checking the tools out yourself. They’re both well documented.

References:
– https://nime.pubpub.org/pub/ex3udgld/release/1
– https://thormagnusson.github.io/threnoscope/
– https://github.com/ivan-abreu/didacticpatternvisualizer

 

 

Akiko Nakayama’s work primarily consists of her performance pieces that she calls ‘Alive Painting’.  What I love most about her live capturing process is a focus on the  ephemerality found within life.  Akiko describes her work as an ‘energy metamorphosis’ that also exemplifies our relationship within a space. There is a profound beauty in witnessing simple elements create such larger than life reactions. I appreciate her willingness to let external forces push the work forward while allowing the viewer a moment of reflection.

(For me, this work is also very reminiscent of the liquid light shows that were popular in the 60s and 70s.)

 

Akiko’s website:

http://akiko.co.jp/akikoweb/top.html

https://www.instagram.com/akikonkym/

 

 

 

 

 

Pigeon Blog (2006)

Pigeon blog is a bioart project by Beatriz Da Costa that attempts to retrieve and map accurate air pollution data by attaching air quality sensors to the backs of homing pigeons. The data was then distributed to a map that showed flight paths as well as changes in air quality. The project was launched to bring more awareness to the issue of air pollution in southern California, as well as to inspire more people to take science into their own hands with DIY tech and grassroots activism.

I found that this project was one of the closest things in my cmu education so far that matched up with the prompt of experimental capture, and what I like most about this project is that the choice to use pigeons is incredibly important to the data collection. Their mobility through cities and forgiving nature as trainable animals makes them the perfect vehicle for the air quality sensors, whereas other means would be too slow or call attention to themselves.