Thursday, December 13, 2012

Final Evaluation

Final Homework (5) Create a final observation/evaluation entry: Revisit the content of our class and blog about your learning. Include in your musing a sentence or two about: If you were to visit another new media class, what would you like to learn next?

I definitely learned a lot about new media in this class this semester, which I was not anticipating, only because my artistic background is in new media. After participating in the discussions, which I deemed the most valuable part of the class, I must admit that I am a proponent for the use of both traditional and new media in the art classroom. Yes it is important to understand traditional media such as clay, drawing, painting and collage, it is equally important to be exposed to photo, video, and the abundance of affordable applications available on the computer and on phones that can be used to create art. The new media techniques and programs are not only relevant, they provide a somewhat level playing field for children making art.

If I were to take part in a second new media class I would hope to explore more of the applications available online that could be useful in classrooms, although it was important to study video, scanning, photography, printing and audio, I think it would be additionally helpful to be made aware of media we have no idea exists. In this new age of technology so many sites and programs are being developed that could be infiltrated into the art curriculums in schools, I try to keep up, but it is almost impossible to be kept aware of everything, and for students in the class who do not have interests in new media, they have no idea of the extensive programs available to them and their current or future students.

As I have said in class I think that in future semesters the blogs should be open to the members of the class, regardless of the students being hesitant about sharing their work, so much time and effort is put into the blogs, and it is a shame that we are not able to use each others blogs as resources for learning more about new media and new media artists. Additionally if we could be free to peruse each others blogs, we would have more time in class to have discussions instead of summarizing our blog posts.

This class is so important for art educators and is extremely relevant to the future of art education because our generation is at the crux of this boom of internet and technology. If I had room to take a second installment of this class I definitely would.
Homework #10 (2) Blog your suggestions for a Macy/Myer’s exhibition till Monday Dec 10 at midnight ON OUR CLASS BLOG. Include images or media files containing a general view and/or details as needed; also, add measurements, materials, title and a short blurb that describes the piece with all but not more than the information an anonymous viewer would need to enjoy your work. Feel free to make more than one suggestion, yet, since space is limited please be flexible for alternative viewing spaces or to make adjustments.- The gathering for the hanging in Macy Gallery will be on Tuesday at 1pm in Macy Gallery; please join me in meeting with Joy Moser, who is the curator of the show; hopefully we will be able to showcase all work either in the gallery or in Myer’s Media Lab.

Richard I discussed with you my reasoning for not having my project in the show, when I met with you on Tuesday at 1 in Macy. I felt that my painting and video needed to be displayed together and there was not enough room in the show to do so. I also wanted to finish it and it was not done in time.

7) Think about what you would like to present in a class exhibition and blog about it. MUST DO

Homework #10 (7) Think about what you would like to present in a class exhibition and blog about it.

As I explained in class, I was originally thinking about displaying a series of prints I did from our scanning exploration. Yet I am now thinking about presenting my final project, if it is done in time.

Grafighters

Homework #10 (5) Research 1 or (if you signed up for 3 credit points) 2 artists who have used electronics / coding / software in their work. Observe how they used it; how obvious that component is; and how creative they were in their approach. Blog about it.

I am not sure if this counts as an artist, but it includes art, electronics and is designed for children so I think it is pretty relevant.

Grafighters is a revolutionary new game that allows children to draw characters and upload them to the site by scanning them into the computer, once they are uploaded, children are able to customize their character's fighting style. Once their character's attributes are established the site enables them to come to life and take park in battles against other childrens' characters. I attended Syracuse University and had a friend who worked for the company in Syracuse, New York. The girl was in my Advertising design program and always discussed how she loved doodling as a child and still loves doodling to this day. She currently works for Grafighters drawing characters for the site.

Grafighters is a great way to mix the use of traditional materials and drawing skills with the imminent use of the computer and video/computer games. I am excited to see how the company has progressed since I started attending Syracuse, I hope it becomes a success because I think it is a fantastic idea!




"Our mission is to make games more fun by letting you play them with whatever characters you want. Imagine playing NBA Jam with a starting lineup of Abraham Lincoln, Batman, Larry Bird, yourself, and the drawing you did in class that day. Yes, this is actually happening."

For more information please refer to http://www.grafighters.com/ !!!

Tim Hawkinson

Homework #10 (6) Research 1 or (if you signed up for 3 credit points) 2 artists who have used sound in their work. Observe how they used it; how obvious that component is; and how creative they were in their approach. Blog about it.

Überorgan


Although Tim Hawkinson is typically a sculptural artist, he created an installation called the Uberorgan. When I was younger during a fieldtrip to MassMOCA I had the opportunity to experience this installation, and this experience has remained vivid in my mind for at least a decade. I did not remember the artist's name, or the name of the instrument/installation, I simply remembered the experience I had with the piece, which I would assume is what most artists aspire to leave resonating in the viewers.


What is the Uberorgan?


It is a giant self playing instrument similar to an organ or bagpipe that was originally commissioned to fill a 15,000 square foot gallery, although it ended up filling up six galleries. It was constructed out of primarily plastic, metal tubing and netting. When looking at it, it seems like it is an extremely large abstract, industrial sculpture. It is not until you hear the sounds it makes or see the actual self playing organ part with long sheets of notes feeding through it that the viewer would recognize that it is in fact an instrument.


The video does not do it justice, because it is so difficult to comprehend the size and magnitude of the piece on screen.





Although the Uberorgan self plays various songs, by reading notes on a specially designed spool of sheet music, it can also be played if put in a different setting. The Ubergorgan is a combination of a sculptural, audio and installation piece. When asked about the sound of the Uberorgan in an interview for Art21, Hawkinson said:

"For Überorgan, I felt that I was going to have a real strong physical presence, but I felt like it needed to also have this kind of audible component. They look like these, kind of, whales suspended in the air and hovering about you. And the sound is really biomorphic and sounds kind of like a bleating or a whaling sound. But it’s all based on a score that I put together, using lots of old church hymns. I have to refresh my memory—what did I use?—“Sailor’s Hornpipe” and “Swan Lake.” And there was an improvisational piece that I invited a guest composer in for—a friend that just kind of messed around with the keyboard. So, there was this score. And then it’s constrained to just a scale of twelve tones. You’re used to hearing a melody played in something that reaches up into other octaves. But in this case, anything that would go up into the next octave has to drop back down, and it further abstracts the original score and removes it further from certain recognizable melodies. So, then there were also a series of switches that filtered or reinterpreted the initial score."









Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Final Project

HOMEWORK #11 (1) Finish your final project and prepare it for presentation so we can talk about it in our last class on Dec 12.

One painting and 180 pictures later...


In addition to this video I presented the painting produced in this video.

The idea of transforming an existing work of an artist into a completely new work, with a completely different narrative is a really interesting idea. I think this could be a fabulous idea to work off of for a project for maybe middle school or high school aged children. 

Intro to Electronics for Art Teachers/Artists

Homework #10 (4) Share your experiences, thoughts, notes, learning about the workshop with Deren - Intro to Electronics for Art Teachers/Artists.

UNFORTUNATELY,  I was only able to attend part of the Intro to Electronics for Art Teachers/Artists seminar, yet what I did experience while I was there was inspiring. It was great having the opportunity to meet Deren and be exposed to the type of work she does in her program, it is always beneficial to have the opportunity to learn how others employ different media into art.

Although creating origami is not in my skill set, it was very interesting making and watching my peers create creatures and other 3d objects out of paper. Watching these creatures and objects come to life through the addition of motors and lights was incredible. Just seeing the expressions on all of our faces was priceless, I can only imagine how excited children would be to do an activity like this. Although I definitely appreciated this seminar, if it occurs again, I think it would be more efficient of people attending the seminar brought with them origami pieces they made at home, this would not only shorten the time of the seminar, it would give people who do not have experience with origami the opportunity to experiment on their own at their own pace. This would additionally allocate more time to the remaining projects.

The second project I took part in was experimenting with the positive and negatively charged play-doh. This was an interesting project and I think if there were different colors of the play-doh it could really be interesting in an art classroom. It would be a great collaboration with a science teacher, and if planned well, a project could be arranged to take place while the children are learning about positive and negative charge and its' effect on electricity. Additionally this gave me the idea that it could be a class project, to create a giant christmas tree and giant menorah that light up using the clay and lights. I believe there is a lot of room in school curriculums for projects that combine art and science. They are both very focused on experimenting and a joint project between the two classes could be mutually beneficial.

After being filled in by other class members about what they had experienced during the remainder of the seminar I feel like I really missed out, but thankfully they gave me a pretty detailed overview and I hope to explore drawdio own time!!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

progress with final project

Homework #10 (1) Further define and work on your final project. Due date: Dec 10. Add a paragraph about it’s current state on your blog.

Dec 4:
I currently am unsure what I am doing for my final project. When I rolled the dice, I landed on painting, video and environment. I am a little bit more comfortable with video after my previous project exploring the medium, yet I am still hesitant to use video in my final project. I was originally thinking about making a video of myself making a splatter painting, documenting the visual progression. I am currently vacillating between this idea and a few other ideas that would employ these three themes.

Dec 8:
Our conversation in class regarding plagiarism and how artists can manipulate other artists' work, making it their own, inspired a concept for the final project. I have posters of John French's photographs from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I love them because they are black and white, simply depicting fashion models in couture against a white background. I want to manipulate these photographs and make them my own. I plan to take pieces of transparent paper or mylar and place them over the posters. Using the mylar as my canvas with the posters visible I want to paint adding details and background to the existing composition. I want to use many colors of acrylic paint and paint in a cartoon-like, childish aesthetic. I plan to keep the models as my subject, yet making them my own.

Dec 9:
I have decided to add a photographic/video element to my project, I plan to take pictures as I progress, documenting the visual progression of the piece to ultimately create a stop animation film of the painting. In an ideal exhibit I would display the film next to the painting or series of paintings so that the viewers could experience not only the final work, but also the process, to better engage in my work.

Dec 10:
This is taking much longer than I anticipated, I think I am only going to paint one poster and make one video, as opposed to my original plan of doing three. I have also decided that I want to add a narrative element to my painting, by doing this I will not only manipulate the aesthetic of the photograph, I will give the painting/photgraph character and personality.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

how I would like to continue to work with video creatively

Homework #10 (3) Revisit our video class and your notes about it. Come up with 2 ideas about how you would like to introduce video through lesson plans in an art class (age: your choice); alternatively: 1 or 2 paragraphs describing how you would like to continue to work with video creatively; alternatively: what you have been able to learn about video as a creative material.

I would definitely be eager to explore video further, I really liked the end results of this project and would be interested to take my "minutes in nature" a step further. I would like to create a "video collage," I am unsure how to go about this but I would be interested in creating a split screen with several of theses "minutes" playing simultaneously, creating a more comprehensive "minute." I think it is interesting that in one minute so many different elements of nature in one back yard are affected. I imaging combining perhaps 10 of these minutes into one video could be powerful, although they each have a different subject and a different composition they are all from the same environment. Conceptually it would be ideal to film multiple locations at the same time, yet this is most likely not a feasible option, recording these videos sequentially (like the project I did this week) seems like an effective alternative. I do not have experience in video editing, but I think this would give me the opportunity to explore what video editing has to offer. 

Another way that I would like to explore video creatively is through time-lapse. I am always so captivated by time-lapse films, and aspire to be able to create my own one day. Although it has been done many times before I love the idea of creating my own time-lapse of cars in the city streets, or even clouds in the sky. Maybe I could create a time-lapse version of "minutes in nature" capturing an assortment of subjects in nature and how they are visually effected by the wind, sun, rain clouds and shadows. 

"Minutes in Nature" video project

Homework #9 (4) Our next class session will focus on video. As we have spoken in class, there are 2 ways of how you can approach this. The first: Find a video online that you would like to use as your template. Choose a sequence or the entire video and redo it. If you feel comfortable go ahead and create the video. Or just present your idea in next class. The second possibility: Create a video or idea of a video which consists of a single 1 minute shot that you don't have to edit or change. If you feel comfortable with the technology involved, go ahead and create the video. Or just present your idea in our next class.

When beginning my exploration of video I was eager, I came up with two ideas rather quickly, to record the sink as I was washing brushes, and to record my family's thanksgiving table. Both these ideas came to me through thinking conceptually, my first concept revolved around the idea of capturing the natural transformation and interaction of various colors and water. The thanksgiving dinner concept revolved around capturing the spirit of my family during the holiday through their candid actions and interactions with food. Being that I do not have experience with video, I encountered several issues that I did not anticipate. The most significant of these challenges was the idea that a camera when recording for long periods of time has a short battery life and a limited memory card, and the fact that it is hard to manipulate a scenario to appear the way you envisioned, especially with film.

After struggling with this project I began to think about the videos we had seen in class. I was very inspired by Laia's film of the caution tape blowing in the wind. Being that I believe natural occurrences are more aesthetically enticing than those planned or constructed, I decided nature would be my subject, and similar to Laia I focused on how the wind effected my subject. Through this exploration I captured a multitude of "minutes in nature" on my camera and iPhone and chose to post several of my favorites.














I was struggling to keep my hand steady while recording, I do not happen to have a tripod. As a solution to this problem I placed my iPhone on the ground and recorded these two videos. The end results happened to be my favorites, because they captured the fleeting clouds and my curios dog sniffing the phone.





3D santa!!

Homework #9 (1) Sign up for a tinkercad.com account and create a 3D model of your liking that you could later on (you don't have to) print with our Makerbot-Replicator. Tinkercad has a very good start-tutorial which will make it easy for you to get first-hand experiences. Push this as far as you would like it to. The goal of this assignment is to have an experience, to intrigue your imagination and include 3D printing in the repertoire of your creative thinking.

I made Santa using 3Dtin, after struggling with tinkercad!!

Monday, December 3, 2012

Charlie Behrens


Homework# 9 (5) Research an artist who uses video creatively and write a blog entry about it.



On Charlie Behrens's about page on his website this information is provided..
"Charlie Behrens came to graphic design and video art via a background in the music industry. Since graduating from the FdA Design for Graphic Communication at the London College of Communication with Distinction in 2012, his work has been twice featured by It's Nice ThatIdN, Computer Arts and The Polis Blog. He was also featured on the Boston Globe's blog.

His video art pieces were screened at the prestigious CGAI cinema in A Coruña, Spain in November 2012 and he will be featured on Canal+ TV Show l'Oeil de Links, in December 2012. In early 2013Poejazzi are releasing a smartphone app of poems visualised by acclaimed video artists which will include a piece by Behrens. He is currently editing the Brighton-set feature film My Accomplice which is due for release in early 2014.

He lives and works in Hackney, London."


http://www.charliebehrens.com/About-Contact


Similar to the ideas of creating art using the glitches in Skype that Jesse mentioned, in Behrens's video "Algorithmic Architecture" creates a video featuring the glitches in google earth. 




Algorithmic Architecture from Charlie Behrens on Vimeo.



He explains:

"This short film is inspired by Kevin Slavin’s talk at the Geneva Lift conference last year Those Algorithms Which Govern Our Lives. It uses the weird nuances of when Google Earth doesn’t register 3D images correctly as a metaphor for how our cities’ architectural landscapes are being altered to suit the agendas of a myriad of computer algorithms…"


3D Printing

HOMEWORK #9 (2) Think of possibilities of what one can do creatively with 3D printing and create a blog entry that focuses on it.

3D Printing gives artists, designers, and everyday people ranging from extensive to no computer skills at all, the opportunity to create three dimensional objects with the click of a button. With the abundance of easy to use, affordable, 3D software it is easier than ever to print as long as you have access to a 3D printer. Those with a comprehensive understanding of software are able to create intricate designs on the computer, and those who lack skill are able to download templates manipulate them, or even print them as they are. Regardless of skill the 3D printers allow people to make objects without having to carve, sculpt, glue, cut or chisel. This new media is almost the modern day sculptor, physically producing the designs we the "artist" create.

The possibilities are endless. As long as the printer is large enough and the 3D model is created accurately in the software, any object can be created. Children can print their own legos, fathers can print their own replacement parts, mothers can print their own cookie cutters, if every family had a 3D printer in their homes in the future it could change the role of shopping in our country. People could potentially print the objects they need, instead of going to a store and buying them. Potentially with the use of 3D scanners a faster way of inputing a design in the software opposed to creating manually, average americans could reproduce anything in their home, pick a color print it, then assemble or add wiring if necessary.

It is very important to include 3D printing in the art classrooms today, because it is an emerging media that's boundaries are yet to be pushed. Children need to be able to utile to software and the printers in order to fully explore the potential this media has.