Wednesday, September 26, 2012

E-Etiquette

Assignment #5: Go to http://eetiquette.com and pick three select quotes to re-post on your blog.

When in doubt: act online as you would offline.

Never forget: the web never forgets!

Don’t live each and every moment through your digital camera.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Media Art Teacher: Ozge Samanci

Assignment #4: Research a media art teacher and describe how s/he uses technology/media in his/her art class.

Ozge Samanci

Ozge Samanci was a professor of mine at University of California - Berkeley. She taught a special topics class called "Comics and Graphic Novels" that I took three times (to work independently with her concurrently with the rest of the class). Comics and graphic novels are traditionally known to be physically in print, but in the last decade, has emerged into a digital outlet.

Comics and graphic novels, as argued by Samanci, is both a medium and a genre, but also a form of visual narrative, like a film/video.

Samanci herself uses both traditional mediums (collage, drawing, inks, watercolor, etc.) and new media forms (digital, interactive, etc.) in her own art-making. While the other students and I focused mainly on using similar traditional mediums, Samanci used various new methods to approaching comics and graphic novels.

We were presented with different approaches to storytelling through watching short clips of films, experimenting with coloring in comics using Photoshop, and discussing other ways to understanding narratives, such as digital performances and animation or other nontraditional representations of comics/graphic novels (below).



"Planting Comics" on ceramic tiles



"Embodied Comics" using full-body interactive storytelling environments that functions as a comics generator

Technology in My Daily Practice

Assignment #3: Give an account about how you implement technology in your daily practice (2-3 paragraphs).

Being a child of the 90's, computers and technology have almost always been in my life.

My parents picked up using computers and the internet early in their respective jobs, and my own use of computers started when I was waiting for them at their offices, playing solitaire on one of the company computers. This eventually developed into using a personal email for the first time when I was 8, just so I could play online games like Neopets (virtual pets) and chat on AOL Instant Messenger.

Today (as in the date I am writing this blog, as well as today in the current times sense), I wake up using the alarms on my iPhone 4S, and I check my e-mail and text messages on the phone as well. Throughout the day, I use various phone applications as tools to find my way to places, or to order food, or to simply call. I log onto one of my four laptops to do similar, but more complex and advanced tasks. I play music through my iPod, my iPhone, my record player, and my laptops, using audiophile sound systems and headphones, and if I am making music, I am using loops to make tracks and other software to edit sounds. If I am working on my photography, I am either out using my two DSLR cameras, with multiple lenses, tripods, filters, flashes, etc. or at home reviewing the photos on software, printing some prints on a large format printer, and posting them on my personal websites and social networking websites (such as ~20,000 photos on Facebook), etc. Sometimes, when I read, I use a Kindle Fire or an iPad and I even play games on the internet, my PS3, and on my mobile devices. And the uses go on and on...

While I am well-versed and up-to-date with many technologies, I do maintain a good half of my lifestyle that is unrelated to and not requiring electronics, such as physical activities and travel. On the other hand, with the internet and other technologies available, all of those non-electronic experiences are still influenced, including, but not limited to the research and organization of ideas, information, and plans (i.e. booking plane tickets) and the purchase of related equipment (i.e. bike).

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

New Media "Gallery/Museum": Kickstarter

Assignment #2: Research a gallery/museum that focuses on new media and describe their program, the types of media that they employ, and some of their artists.

Kickstarter Projects

Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website for projects representing a myriad of endeavors, such as films, comics, technology, games, etc. Though Kickstarter is not technically a physical gallery/museum, it certain archives and presents new media projects, which brings me to ask the question whether or not new-media-art-focused museums even need to be physically located.

Image-48957-full

For one such project, named "Written Images," a generative art book was created and funded. The generative art book featured prints that would be calculated individually, making every single book and print unique. This project collected submissions of from over 70 new media artists that a jury then singled out to 42. These 42 artists submitted image generating software programs that were then used to produce the books and prints.



Another project, "Pixel Portrait Poster Project," an artist named Drew Wise uses pixels as his medium. The project was to create up to 800 8-bit pixel portraits, eventually combining them into an art print. Using user-submitted photographs, the artist uses 8-bit pixels to digitally create a portrait.

While there are many different kinds of new media artists mixed among the other creative projects, such as photographers that use modern digital photography equipment and software, and digital artists that use printing techniques and design software to produce various graphics and prints, there are also many unique new media projects showing up every week, making Kickstarter a host of contemporary projects, in all stages of progress.

Kickstarter also features curated pages from leading creative communities and organizations such as RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design Conferences), Sundance Film Festival, CalArts, and Etsy.

New Media Artist: Martin Wattenberg

Assignment #1:
Research a media artist and write about he/she uses media to create art. Observe carefully and be specific.

Martin Wattenberg

"My work focuses on visual explorations of culturally significant data. I'm constantly significant data. I'm constantly seeking new ways to represent information to create connection, insight, narrative, and beauty. My research interests include data visualization, collaboration, and collective intelligence on the web."

 

Martin Wattenberg came up from a Google search of "pioneers of new media art" and I began to investigate his personal website. I'm personally very interested in the visualization of data and it was a pleasant surprise to find that Wattenberg was both a scientist and a artist, using his knowledge of one to support the other (and vice versa).

He investigates the relationship between language and space, translating the data he accumulates from various research methods into physical artistic visualizations.

For example, the above images are from a piece named "Fleshmap" (2008). His collaboration with Fernanda Viegas resulted in "an inquiry into human desire, its collective shape and individual expressions." They surveyed several hundreds of people on their erroneous areas on their bodies. The result was tens of thousands of ratings and data that were derived into visual "maps" of sensual desire.

Wattenberg claims that his medium is "data visualization, a technology developed by computer scientists to extract insights from raw numbers This technique is ideal for investigating a world represented by digital traces, where truth is hidden in masses of information. The resulting studies take the form of web sites, prints, and videos."

I believe that similar to some other new media art, this medium can be considered controversial for several reasons. One of which is that there is no physical craft on the artist's abilities. Instead, there is an input of data into a system that outputs a visual image. However, museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, clearly believe that new media art is the creation of art in current times, using current mediums.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

An Introduction of Sorts...

Hi everyone! My name is Angie.

I received my B.A. in Art Practice at University of California - Berkeley. Because the art department was generally very loose about our curriculum, I was permitted to start and facilitate/teach my own classes in various mediums that were not offered.

As a result, I focused on a multi-medium approach to combining the narrative with the visual. This included comics and graphic novels (both digital and print), video and photography, and traditional art forms, such as drawing, painting, and ceramics. However, along the way, I realized at times that my students or peers were utilizing tools and mediums in new media that I was completely unaware of or lacked knowledge and skill in.

My experience with new media is spotted and sporadic. Despite UC Berkeley having a Center of New Media, its courses were limited to mostly graduate students. Instead, almost everything I've learned is a result of personal curiosity and research, and ranges from software such as Adobe Photoshop and Nik Color Efex, to social media such as Facebook and Kickstarter, to hardware such as wide-format printers and SLR cameras. My goal for this class is to gather my current knowledge to a more fluid level in order to translate and pass on my experiences to my students and other people, as well as attain new skills to utilize in my creative processes