ping pong my portraits on (again)

ping pong my portraits on

Artist Post 2

Software Structures by Casey Reas

http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/

Casey Reas (b. 1972) is a Californian born digital artists who currently works and lives in Los Angeles, California.  There, Reas works as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.  Reas received his masters degree in Media Arts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his bachelor’s degree in Art at the University of Cincinnati.  In 2001, Reas collaborated with Ben Fry to publish a program for digital artists that is an open source for programming languages,  as well as an environment for creating images, and animations. His piece Software Structures (2004) is part of a larger collection that explores the relationship between naturally occurring systems and those artificial ones. His attempt is to compare the similarity to the human systems, but also to signify the quantitative bounds which these systems have.

            Upon first viewing the animation, it appears that the lines in the piece move at a random momentum, and in no defined path. However, after viewing the piece for an elapsed period of time, it appears that they have specifically programmed and repeated movements that one is able to predict. The beauty of this piece though, is that Reas did multiple works, which are both similar and different to one another to form the same line structure (when one disregards the shadows).  I find this to be a metaphor to how people view human life. In the end we are all, pretty much, cells, and there is no arguing that. However, at the same time, no two people are the same in beliefs, attitudes, ideas, intelligence, etc… So, while we all may be made up of the same basic elemental structure, we all view the structure in different ways. Reas shows this through the different animation of Software Structures, when he adds shadows to some, but gives them each the same ultimate resting point.

            My only critique of this piece was the immense leap (and honestly I was pushed) I had to make to relate this to human life. I understood from the title that “Structure” implied genetic structure, but I had to read the description of the piece to understand the symbolism Reas was going for. I think if he juxtaposed a DNA molecule or something to that nature, then it would have been clearer and easier to understand the message that Reas was attempting to convey.

Overall, I think this is a profound piece, and I would be quite interested to see what else he can do with his and Fry’s program.

Lock Trace

portraits

Remix

Here is my final. Thank you everyone for your feedback!

remix remix

Digital Remix

B+

Chris Robinson

June 13, 2011

Art 214

Digital Remix Project Assessment

For my project I decided to focus on the outdoors, and the aspects, which I love most about it. My major component of this picture was a shot I took of the St. Mary’s River during a snow day in 2010. I then added the Presidential Range of the New Hampshire White Mountains as my background of the picture. The right side of the foreground is a picture of a beach I found on Wikimedia Commons. I then used a classmate’s scan of a piece of wood to create a walkway on the left side of my foreground. Lastly, I added a photo of a shack in the woods that I took while I was skiing in Lake Tahoe, and combined that with a classmate’s scan of a tapestry to make it look like this was a portal to another dimension. The last image in the picture is of a man “laying out” for a Frisbee, which I found on Wikimedia Commons. I incorporated this to reveal to the viewer what I consider to be the most fun things in life.

Ultimately, I was using this remix to reveal my idea of paradise: a combination of water and mountains, with winter’s snow and summers sand only a step away. I included the shack in there to convey a mindset that I do not need material in my life to be happy, but it is where I am which makes me happy. I incorporated the Frisbee player because ultimate is my favorite sport to play when it is warm out. Having him in the direction of the beach implies I would rather do that activity when the weather is nice. If you notice, the shack is all the way to the left, and it contains many images related to skiing, like the front steps composed of skis or the ski company stickers on the outside walls of the shack. The reason that this is on the left side of the image is to explain to the reader how my favorite activity to do in the winter is ski. I have the picture basically split in two, with snow to the left and sand to the right to symbolize my conflicting interest. While I love both environments and activities equally, I am at odds with myself over where I ultimately want to be.

The project itself was a great opportunity to get used to the basic tools, and techniques of Adobe Photoshop. I now feel confident enough to combine images, and make the ultimate picture appear to be semi-realistic. I feel like the part most lacking in my image is the realism of the mountains in the background. I tried to make it like they were there in the picture as the legitimate background, but I feel like it is easy to tell it is pasted in. I think I had the most trouble with this was do to the position of the sun when I took the two images. The sun was on the right for the photo of the mountains, but my main image (the one I took by the graveyard) the sun was on the left side. I am also a little disappointed I couldn’t get the sand and snow to mix better. I tried to brighten and blur it, but it still looked forced. I thought about playing with the transparency of the snow right next to the sand, however that would have made everything in that layer more transparent.

Overall I feel like my work is acceptable, but is definitely in need of improvement. I am eager to hear what my classmates have to say about it, and the tips I can get in order to have a final piece I can call my own and be proud about.

Blank Carbon Copy by Motomichi Nakamura (2005)

Motomichi Nakamura is a digital artist, residing in New York City. Over the years he has traveled the world to work on his various digital media project. His work is done on only black, white, and red pallets where he paints and digitally produces his abstract characters.  His 2005 work, Blank Carbon Copy (BCC), is done on a white pallet with the objects (the hands) colored in black and flashing in red when a mouse is dragged over them. While BCC is not a graphic depiction most of Motomichi’s work depicts scenes of intense violence and sexuality. Along with his work with Rhizome, he has done digital artwork for many commercial companies, including MTV2. His piece, BCC, can be found here on the Rhizome website.

Blank Carbon Copy is a flash animation on a white pallet, with a large hand all the way to the left of the animation, and hands increasing in size from left to right next to the large hand for a total of four hands in the animation. The sound associated with this image sound quite similar to typing, which leads the viewer to associate the piece with a computer. By the association of the computer, most viewers back in 2005 (when the piece came out) would generally relate the computer not as a word processor, but as a means of browsing the Internet. Along with the sound, the motion of the fingers can also be symbolic as typing on a computer, or a social network. Also, the way that the hands are arranged from smaller, to larger reminds the viewer of a cell phone signal, like the bars on the old Cingular Wireless commercials. Combing the arrangements of the hands along with the sound, it also leads the viewer to think about texting on a cell phone as a means of communication. I think the title Blank Carbon Copy, is the implication that nobody travels to see or meet people anymore, because many are able to simply sit in front of their computer and meet people all the same. The red flash over the hands is the artist expressing his feeling that social interaction weakening due to social networks.

The only critique that I have of the piece is the artist’s use of space. The hands, to me, represent people. I feel that Motomichi is implying that people are not communicating as well with one another. A better way to depict this is to allow more space in the animation and move the hands further apart from one another. This being done, it would be able to better symbolize the decline in personal communication. Overall I thought this was a brilliant piece which subtly expresses the artist’s personal opinion about the internet, and new forms of communication.

more photo savaging

Before

After

Photo salvaging

Before:

After:

Digital Remix

I kinda like stuff that has to do with the outdoors...

Final Project

So here is what I'm thinking:
1. An insider's guide to St. Mary's (Shoe Tree, 7 Wonders, the Point) and things to do/that happen there.
2. A tourism website to Baltimore. Again, an insider's guide.
3. A site which depicts different aspects of a decades culture (fashion, television, Hollywood, music, etc...)
4. A page on ways to procrastinate doing work (watching television, playing frisbee golf, napping, etc...)
5. A site on Harry Potter, and a visual interpretation of each book aside from what is on the cover.

Personally, I really like the idea of doing with St. Mary's, but am game for anything else someone would throw out there!

images

links

Ultimate Frisbee
test post