Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Midterm Project: Living Trash Reef
For my midterm project I am working on incorporating arduino into my sculpture. My sculpture is based on the form of a coral reef, made out of different plastics, mainly bottles. My concept is to have the reef lit up by LEDs that are bright when a viewer looks at it from afar, but when the viewer approaches, using infrared sensors to monitor proximity, the lights would turn off and the piece would start to shake. I am fascinated with the idea of using 'trash' to create art and furthermore drawing out issues of conservation, global warming, recycling, and human excess and waste through this medium. The idea behind the movement is that nature is beautiful and perfect without human interference, and humans bring with them ultimately destruction for nature. I had a lot of troubleshooting to do on this project, and thus I am not near completion at this time. I bought an Arduino Uno and Adafruit PMW servo shield this break, which I was stoked to get started on, but I immediately encountered a problem uploading to it. The error message showed the serial port was already being used when indeed it was not. I looked into the problem and tried to uninstall and reinstall the program multiple times. I tried in the terminal a Kill 140 command that I learned about through the forums, but again to no avail.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Excercise 2
Part I:
It's hard to make out, but the two leds are blinking at different rates.
Part II:
I changed the code to:
digitalWrite(led, HIGH); // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(4000); // wait for a second
digitalWrite(led, LOW); // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(7000); // wait for a second
}
Part III
It's hard to make out, but the two leds are blinking at different rates.
Part IV
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Week 4 Readings
Interactivity and Agency in Real Time Systems:
This article embraces the idea of process as art as well as supports creation of interactive systems to display that process.
If artists create work that are truly interactive, where the systems created have agency and conscience choice, will the artists give up control of their pieces and the message they might be trying to express? Do artists need control over their pieces to be considered art?
What is the line between art and experimentation in robotics? Is there a distinction?
Seven Ways of Misunderstanding Interactive Art:
Although I had not been aware of many of these misrepresentations of interactive art, I had asked one question in the previous reading that was addressed. Huhtamo portrays the artist as still being pivotal and relevant in interactive art.
On Totalitarian Interactivity:
Lev Manovich presents an interesting argument on interactivity being a tool for manipulation. At one point in the article he talks about the trade off of mental interactivity, being the old 'interactiveness' of a person interacting with a painting, yet as we discussed in class that idea of interactiveness is limited as the subject (the artwork) isn't sharing in the experience of reacting or changing in any way to the viewer. Although much of what interactiveness is now is 'reactive' art, the idea of complete interactive art in the future can be some cause for concern in terms of manipulation. However, this could be said for most advancing technologies that, in the wrong hands, can do some damage to unaware peoples. We cannot blame the technologies for the wrong uses, rather the people using them. Societies should be taught to be critical and aware in order to avoid such a disaster.
Tangible Bits:
This article was an interesting look at new and emerging technologies that were at the forefront in 1997. I can see how some of these ideas have developed and have become commonplace since that time. The section on GUI to TUI intrigued me after reading Manovich's article. Manovich would be horrified at the reality that the ultimate goal of these technologies is to surround users in every way at all times. It is an exciting prospect as well as an unnerving one. These technologies will ultimately be designed and used for corporations in attempts to push messages even further into consumers faces. When I think of ambient media in the periphery I think of advertisements. Although this technology comes with these consequences, there is no way to stop progress, nor should we try, it can be an instrumental tool for artists and social services.
How have we advanced further in these interfaces since the time this article was written?
What is the new interface frontier?
When are we going to see an ad on the moon's surface?
This article embraces the idea of process as art as well as supports creation of interactive systems to display that process.
If artists create work that are truly interactive, where the systems created have agency and conscience choice, will the artists give up control of their pieces and the message they might be trying to express? Do artists need control over their pieces to be considered art?
What is the line between art and experimentation in robotics? Is there a distinction?
Seven Ways of Misunderstanding Interactive Art:
Although I had not been aware of many of these misrepresentations of interactive art, I had asked one question in the previous reading that was addressed. Huhtamo portrays the artist as still being pivotal and relevant in interactive art.
On Totalitarian Interactivity:
Lev Manovich presents an interesting argument on interactivity being a tool for manipulation. At one point in the article he talks about the trade off of mental interactivity, being the old 'interactiveness' of a person interacting with a painting, yet as we discussed in class that idea of interactiveness is limited as the subject (the artwork) isn't sharing in the experience of reacting or changing in any way to the viewer. Although much of what interactiveness is now is 'reactive' art, the idea of complete interactive art in the future can be some cause for concern in terms of manipulation. However, this could be said for most advancing technologies that, in the wrong hands, can do some damage to unaware peoples. We cannot blame the technologies for the wrong uses, rather the people using them. Societies should be taught to be critical and aware in order to avoid such a disaster.
Tangible Bits:
This article was an interesting look at new and emerging technologies that were at the forefront in 1997. I can see how some of these ideas have developed and have become commonplace since that time. The section on GUI to TUI intrigued me after reading Manovich's article. Manovich would be horrified at the reality that the ultimate goal of these technologies is to surround users in every way at all times. It is an exciting prospect as well as an unnerving one. These technologies will ultimately be designed and used for corporations in attempts to push messages even further into consumers faces. When I think of ambient media in the periphery I think of advertisements. Although this technology comes with these consequences, there is no way to stop progress, nor should we try, it can be an instrumental tool for artists and social services.
How have we advanced further in these interfaces since the time this article was written?
What is the new interface frontier?
When are we going to see an ad on the moon's surface?
Monday, February 17, 2014
Towards a Performative Aesthetics of Interactivity Reading POST #1
Simon Penny's article was very intriguing and had a lot of relevant new information (to me) on how interactive art and the digital platform in general has developed as well as some historical context. I found this information after wading through a lot of long-winded writing, very heavy technical jargon, and condescending tones at points that I didn't find very appealing.
His views on desktop interfaces are interesting and the first I have heard about this issue of 'constraining' interactive possibilities. I wish he would expand more on this point.
His point on the neurological development of generations with this new technologies was very intriguing and related to me as growing up most of my life with 'modern' technology. I wonder how the world, and our brains, will continue to change as more and more technology grows and becomes widely available.
His views on desktop interfaces are interesting and the first I have heard about this issue of 'constraining' interactive possibilities. I wish he would expand more on this point.
His point on the neurological development of generations with this new technologies was very intriguing and related to me as growing up most of my life with 'modern' technology. I wonder how the world, and our brains, will continue to change as more and more technology grows and becomes widely available.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Excercize #3: Chris Surgue's amazing interactive art
Chris Sugrue is a highly esteemed experimental artist and programmer that focuses on installing interactive exhibitions. Most of her work explores the relationship between human and machine interfaces and plays with the increasing possibilities of interactions with technology in the physical world. She received her masters of fine art in design and technology from parson's school of design.
Chris Sugrue's works explore the nature of humans, inter-human relationships and societal constructs, as well as the nature of technology and our relationship to it. Her systems create art through programming reactions from human interactions. While some of her pieces like A Cable Plays, have a more blatant metaphoric element, most of her pieces are playful with a much more subtle message. She engages the viewer with the possibilities of our ever-increasing technological world.
I first became interested in Sugrue when I saw her piece Delicate Boundaries, which imagines a world inhabited by physical digital creatures that can interact with their surroundings. The idea was novel, engaging and excites the viewer by the possibility of digital interaction. In the video of exhibition she reveals the computer screens can sense where the viewer touches and also senses where the viewers arm is located so that the "bugs" can travel on the viewer by means of projection. The piece takes elements of our natural world and digitizes them, which breaks down these 'delicate boundaries' of nature versus technology. I believe within the piece she means to construct technology as being 'natural'. The piece imagines the future integration of technology in our natural world.
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