I have to say that this was a difficult project all together… Having no knowledge of Html, I found this to be a very daunting assignment, and I know others felt the same.
It was good to learn basic web design, but I would have liked to have known more on the front end.
you can see the page at the following link:
The major themes of Digital art that appear are artificial life and intelligence, Telepresence and telerobotics, database aesthetics , mapping and data visualization, ‘Net’ activism and tactical media, and gaming and narrative hypermedia environments. As well and body and identity.
There have been multiple forms of artificial life and intelligence developed over the years. Varying from basic computer interfaces, to visual audio and physical interactions. Though there is no ‘True’ Artificial Intelligence yet, it can more easily be understood as “Grey Wear”. Meaning that the program operates within a designated set of parameters, and then the computer will make a decision based on the variables on hand to make a decision. But the specifications can be selected and changed by the user.
A user will interface with an artificial intelligent installation and the sculpture will interact with each person and can have an individual response to each person, some remember the people that they meet through image recognition. As a result, you interact with it and it interacts with you.
Telepresence and telerobotics are now commonplace. Today we can view multiple locations from around the world at the same time. You can even check on your dog whose at the day kennel, on your cell phone, while you are at work. Using this same technology you can effect the environment that the camera is in, from watering plants, to surgery to, feeding your cats.
We’ve all seen the results of net activism with the past election. Thousands of people blogging messaging emailing and truly just plain spamming, voicing their opinions and trying to bring you to their side, or at least further secure you on their side. Things have changed from standing on a street corner handing out fliers, to just clicking a button and 2,000 emails go out saying how you are trying to save the rain forest, or the last african white rhino.
Video Games are have pushed the limits of the technology industry since their conception, always needing more memory and more power to drive their graphics engines. They are no longer just for the kids, and have been used in forms of rehabilitation, and has even been linked to reducing the chances of alzhimer’s.
The digital age is upon us, we are no longer living in just a physical world, but we are just now beginning the exploration into a new one, which breaks down the idea of time and space. That by delving deeper into it we will grasp a stronger understanding of the world around us.
This is was my final project for my digital art class.
Overall this was a fun project, though very involved and laborious…
I have learned a lot thru trial and error and would look forward to
further experimenting with stop motion animation
This is a test shot from a recent digital art project…
the main video is taking its time uploading to Youtube,
but I wanted to has something to turn in.
In all this was a very difficult and time consuming process,
from designing and building the model, to working out timing for the movements, building the layout for the set, and of course editing…
The model was built out of copper wire twisted and woven around itself for stability, yet allowed for movement,
the eyes were made from red Leds, and thumb tacks were used on the fee to allow for the figure to be stable while walking.
Animating the figure walking across the screen was the most difficult.
I have included pictures documenting the process and a couple of “Blinkie” (thats the name of the character)
this is an abject self portrait done for my digital art class…
its made up of a compilation of various works of mine as well as various influences..
Q1: The use of Text in a work of art does not always comment on the media. Many times it the image that captures our attention first, then the text clarifies it.
Q2: The context of the top Image is spoofing those in power. The context of the Image below is addressing those in power and control of money.
Q3: Propaganda is the use of multiple messages aimed to influence the behaviors and opinions of large masses, and to steer them into a specific direction.
The best possible way to describe digital technologies as a tool and as a medium, is to set a parallel to painting. Which part is the tool? Which part is the medium? Truly it is both.
To break it down, the tools in digital arts and technologies is much like a paint brush and paints, as well as the other supplies. By manipulating the various colors and applying it to a canvas an image is created. Now taking this concept and applying it to digital tech, you have computers, circuitry, monitors, cameras, scanners, task specific computer programs, wiring,motors, networking, the internet….. etc. All of these are digital tools that have been refined over the years to make analog tasks easier. Used in various forms these tools are able to perform various tasks, the result being purely visual, interactive, passive, and even physical.
As for a medium…. Painting is considered a medium, but it is not confined to oil on canvas. Painting as a medium includes vehicles, model making, design, as well as various other crafts. Its just the general concept that in order to paint, you must only paint on a stretched canvas. This is true with digital art and technologies. People generally expect something digital to be on a computer, shown through a monitor. You mention digital art to someone, they think of a computer. But what artist are now expressing is that digital still means that it is using a computer in one form or another, but how it is being presented and view and interacted with, has developed outside of a box.
It is by bringing the viewer to a wherever the artist wants. Weather it be interacting with a bicycle in a virtual city. Or having a wall filled with LEDs showing images of people walking on the street outside. It is Digital technologies that have crossed over the boundaries of tool and medium.
Hidden on a bridge next to an underpass, standing over a pile of trash. A pair of giant eyes stare into you, a larger than life face coming out of nowhere telling you to OBEY. Big Brother is telling you to conform. But the opposite is achieved… You no longer want to OBEY, you want to REBEL!
Computer technology has changed over the decades since ENIAC & UNIVAC. And from those origins Digital Art has formed its own presence in the modern world. Building on the foundations of Photography , Sculpture, Design, and even Music, New Media has become a regular part of our every day lives without most of the world even knowing it.
New Media, as its know it today, does not resemble the digital works of Duchamp, Moholy-Nagy, and Csui, but their influence is still experienced today. Looking at early digital art, with todays eyes, you would immediately notice how rough and over complicated they were. Think of the early video games that only had the range of a few pixels to form a figure and field, extremely rough by todays standards. It was these early digital experiments that brought about digital media as we know today.
Vannevar Bush envisioned an information kiosk based around a desk and microfiche viewer, allowing the user a rich resource of knowledge with minimal amount of storage. This idea gave form to the internet as we know it today. As a resource, the internet allows users to share information and communicate freely with others around the world. Its availability twenty four hours a day seven days a week, as opposed to libraries, allows users to refer to artwork, literature, politics and general rants and raves of users from next door to the other side of the world.
Though it was not just the artists working toward this new medium, there we companies such and Rand and Macintosh that began developing software as well as hardware. Before long the availability of the personal computer became a reality, and the general public were able to experiment with computers in their own homes. With access to such a resource people were able to manipulate not only artistic works easier, but text as well. By changing fonts and the color of the text, advertising took a whole new direction. Suddenly a designer is able to manipulate and vary a broad range of images, instead of a limited by a few that the artist must design from scratch on a piece of paper.
Another influence of Digital media, is that of Hollywood. In movies today it is almost impossible to see a film that has not had some digital manipulation. This is not only shown in movies, but in commercials as well. And with the tools available today, viewers can hardly tell where reality begins and the effects begin.
Today, we take digital art and its presence for granted. To understand that its taken decades of artists working with or off of engineers and scientists, working with the various materials and tools that are begin constantly being developed, digital art will always evolve. Its the curiosity of the artist thinking ” what if I could make it do this” that changes the hammer into a screwdriver.
Ive created a scanner camera based on the designs of Mike Golembewski’s article from “Make Magazine”.
This is only the beta version, and with some tweaking will become a fun photographic toy.
Using a Canon CanoScan Lide500f, some foam core board, and a 4x magnifying lens. Oh and a stack of Lego blocks to adjust the height.(see images)
I was able to take some pictures with the scan cam, but due to the scanners light, lens flares were generated. This will have to be resolved by either changing the settings for the scanner via programming, or bust the thing open and disable the light all together.
After messing around with lens flares and settings, I still wanted to focus on the manipulation of time that is inherent with this type of system. I removed the camera cover, and placed several ball bearings on the scanner glass. As the unit was scanning I shifted the platform causing the bearings to roll around the surface. The ball bearings became distorted as the sensor passed over them, some repeatedly.
Homemade Digital Camera by TheDukeofDenver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
