Monday, May 14, 2012

Lecture/Exhibition Responses


GAME ART
I attended Dr. Henry Lowood’s lecture when he came to the University of Nevada last month. He was able to define “machinima” for me, since I previously had no idea what it meant: making film with video game programming and graphics. Lowood explained his classification of machinima production into three modes: code capture, screen capture, and asset capture.
Code capture involves demo recording and replays in video games, initially showing up in the mid-1990 first-person shooters. This is a perfect reproduction of what the player does, without knowing anything about the player themselves. Screen capture is the recording of video, with the shot being fixed and unable to be edited without encoding or compression. This gives more information about the viewpoint or perspective of an event, and what the player sees rather than does. Finally, asset capture sees the video games as artifacts and places to “dig” for assets that could not normally be found. Explorers know how to look for abandoned or future projects that are not meant to be seen by the players of a game. This was done by the “Noggaholics” of World of Warcraft. They would utilize private servers, special tools, and exploitation to document any secret aspects they dug up.
What interested me about this lecture was the creativity and motivation these people had to create completely new worlds based on previously created virtual programs. Lowood stressed that these are a few ways that people are recording events in these other worlds. He stated that the Library of Congress created a History of Virtual Worlds, which documents events from 2008 to present day. This is very intriguing, because with the advances in technology we are experiencing today, video games and machinima are very much a part of everyone’s life. Just as there are ways to preserve other history through tape recorders, photographs, paper files, etc., there must be ways to preserve software of our completely computerized history. Lowood was able to open our minds to different ways people are trying to record this virtual history, because it should definitely not be lost forever.

POSTCARDS FROM THE GREY AREA - lecture
Secondly, I attended Kevin Kremler’s lecture on “Postcards from the Grey Area.”  His interest in the “grey area” is based on the fact that it is the undefined space between two aspects. The grey area has characteristics of different things without it ever being perfectly clear. He believes that things such as technology and science in art portray the grey area because they converge in a space between convenience and inconvenience. Kremler finds humor in a lot of art, and realizes the instinct of society to appropriate life, such as in reality television. Through “systems, efficiency, and problem-solving,” he wishes to let the participants of his art explore the grey area and work outside a system. He explained that he loves manual labor and tools because he can exercise problem-solving and see just how far he could push a physical piece of art. His artwork is very conceptual, physical, and kinetic. By interacting and personally getting involved with a piece, the viewer gets more interested and curious. I thought this was all a very cool way to look at art, and it is very interesting to build projects that directly involve the viewers and invite them to touch the art and participate. Kremler’s lecture, however, seemed a little disorganized because I wasn’t completely able to pinpoint what he was influenced by and what he just wanted to bring attention to. Perhaps that was the whole point, that his motivation and what his artwork is derived from is a “grey area” in itself.

POSTCARDS FROM THE GREY AREA - show
For my showing, I went to Kevin Kremler’s exhibition that was paired with his lecture for “Postcards from the Grey Area” when it was in the Sheppard Gallery. All of his works were representational of his idea of interactive, participatory art. He used technology in his pieces, in particular the one where the viewer could take a photo of themselves as if they were doing a Rockwell-style self portrait. This was also a unique piece because he invited the viewer to in essence take and print their own work of art. He also wired different televisions to show slides of a brain MRI, utilizing technology in art. In the most eye-catching work of the gallery, Kremler showed his abilities with tools and kinetic art. It involved two large beams, each with buckets on each end filled with colored sand. They were on a balance in the middle of the ceiling, so that when more weight was added to the end of one beam, the entire structure would raise and lower and turn according to the gravitational shift. The result of adding sand made a very colorful, random art piece all over the floor. The entire project relied on the participation of its viewers, which was really interesting. Kremler was obviously intrigued by the way his viewers acted and how their own unique personalities influenced their own experience with his works. 


Second Lifeee

Sooo here's my main outfit. It wouldn't completely load for the snapshot so I look a little naked. I also couldn't get my avatar to look straight ahead because she turned her head every time I clicked the snapshot button. This is probably for the better since I did not have very good Photoshop skills. While she had a face that looked similar to mine, all the colors were off and a little blotchy looking. That being said, I feel successful because I had to figure out how to get all the different aspects of her outfit and hair and it was quite a process!

And here's my second outfit. I picked the tiger avatar, then put mouse hands and feet on it, and some camo pants. I bought and built the Deadmau5 head, to make myself a mouse/tiger thing. I think it's pretty awesome.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Final Paper!


In April 2011, I went to the Nevada Museum of Art to see Leo Villareal’s exhibit Animating Light. I was taken to another world by some of his pieces, and he awakened my mind to the artistic possibilities of lights. So he was one of the artists I chose to explore in the digital aspect of art, and I was searching for someone who uses a similar medium for my second artist when I discovered Erwin Redl.

Erwin Redl
Erwin Redl was born in 1963 in Gfӧhl, Lower Austria. He actually studied electronic music and composition in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts before moving into the visual realm. He moved to the United States and graduated in 1995 from New York’s School of the Visual Arts, where he studied computer art. He now resides and works in New York. I contacted Redl asking how much his electronic music background influences his work, and whether one preexists or if he makes them together. Within two days he replied with a great explanation of the relation between musical and visual media:



it is an integrated, synaesthetic process where I play with abstract structures, geometries or proportions that apply to both media simultaneously. I am not working with songs or images and then match them. It’s all pretty abstract and very sensual at the same time.”



Nocturnal Flow (2005)
In his works, Redl composes genuine computer codes to program LED lights. These lights either hang or are mounted on a structure, but almost all of them are arranged in a square grid. Some of the pieces change colors according to these programs, such as his “Fade I,” which transitions between red and blue, or “Nocturnal Flow,” an 85-foot-tall brick structure in Washington’s Paul G. Allen center that changes colors according to sensors that read the ambient weather. Some of Redl’s other pieces remain a single color, but rely more on their structure for artistic impact. In many of his “Matrix” pieces, the viewer can actually enter the structure and be almost engulfed by the hundreds of small, bright lights.

Matrix II (2000)
Erwin Redl’s works have often been large scale projects that either take up an entire wall or room. In “Dots,” hundreds of bright white fiber optic lights hang in a line along the upper corner of a room, and in “Crystal Matrix” the lights in a room turn on and off and change colors to an electronic soundtrack that plays. He has done a few different versions of “Fade,” and has so far completed fourteen different parts to his “Matrix” project. For this particular paper, I focused on “Matrix II.” Completed in 2002, it is now on display at New York’s Riva gallery. This installation is a 36 x 36 x 12 foot room that is filled wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with green LED lights. They are arranged in a grid that creates a sort of optical illusion, making all the corners appear to recede and diminish away from the viewer. People are invited to move throughout the room and lights to enhance their “digital experiences,” as Redl hopes to accomplish. It produces a level of interactivity in the way that many artists attempt to convey with various participative systems. I have never personally experienced this piece but I could imagine it being mesmerizing and a bit dizzying, but quite an adventure in thousands of tiny piercing green lights.

Leo Villareal
As previously mentioned, the artist whose work really enlightened me was Leo Villareal. He was born in 1967 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. He has a BA in sculpture from Yale University, and was part of the Interactive Telecommunications Program in New York’s Tisch School of the Arts. The renowned “light sculptor” works out of New York but has installations around the world and is represented by Gering and Lopez Gallery (New York), Conner Contemporary Art (Washington, DC), and Galeria Javier Lopez (Madrid). In 1997 he brought a large metal platform with 16 blinding strobe lights to Burning Man and it served as a sort of beacon to campers. With its positive reception, this “Strobe Matrix” inspired Villareal to delve into the art medium he utilizes today – LED, strobe, fluorescent, and neon lights mounted on structures and often covered with translucent Plexiglas. He generates algorithms that turn these lights on and off or cue random color transitions. Some of his works consist of only white lights that flicker or assemble and disperse, and some of them have vivid colors that change spontaneously in quiet ambiance. Each piece creates an “aura,” as Walter Benjamin would have called it, that represents Villareal’s voice but also has the ability to transform randomly and be interpreted differently by everyone. They range greatly in shapes and sizes – from fluorescent tubes to 2-foot-diameter circle mounts to entire walls and ceilings. Whatever their variety, all of Villareal’s projects have great movement and portray endless energy and genesis of life.

Multiverse (2008)
Among widespread exhibitions, Villareal has ornamented the San Francisco Bay Bridge for its 75th Anniversary with his stunning lights, and he recently used the entire downtown-facing façade of the Tampa Museum of Art for his piece “Sky.” His most appalling work to date is “Multiverse,” a display of 40,000 white LEDs that line the walls and ceiling of a concourse in the National Gallery of Art. This complex light sculpture is unique to Villareal in its extravagance and the fact that his viewers are for once not stationary and rather move through this piece. The work I chose to discuss further in this paper is “Diamond Sea,” which I had gotten a chance to see in person. It is a 10 x 15 foot rectangle of mirror-finished stainless steel that secures 2,400 white LEDs into a tight grid. The lights are programmed to slowly dim and brighten, giving the piece an appearance of rolling, twinkling waves in a shiny abyss since the piece is displayed in a dark room. Though he has many ambient, colorful pieces I was attracted to, “Diamond Sea” was simply entrancing. I could not find an e-mail address for Villareal, however I e-mailed the Gering and Lopez gallery to ask how to contact the artist and also where any upcoming exhibitions would be. I have not yet received a reply.

Diamond Sea (2007)
Both Leo Villareal and Erwin Redl utilize their own computer codes to program transitions in their artwork. The medium of light is not used commonly in art, but both of these men have mastered the degree of stimulation it can produce. Though Redl’s “Matrix II” does not incorporate sound, it is important to note that some of his pieces do, and his work is very influenced by music. None of Villareal’s pieces involve sound, which is probably a good thing because the visual movement is already so enticing. For “Diamond Sea,” as with all of Villareal’s works (with the exception of “Multiverse”), the viewer sits or stands stationary while watching the ever-changing lights. This is almost the exact opposite of how “Matrix II” is experienced, since the lights are stationary while the viewers are able to explore different views and angles by moving throughout the piece. It seems, however, that both projects allow for exploration and adventure – “Diamond Sea” is just more directed by the artist and the exploration is within oneself as it is watched.

Redl appears to use basic colors in the majority of his pieces. I believe this is extremely successful since his lights are very uniform, bright, and pinpointed in their grid. Visually, this has a huge impression because the eye focuses on these simple, tiny LEDs and can produce illusions or overwhelming stimulation. Rather than having extreme definition between lights, Villareal seems to generally use larger, more blending and colorful effects. In “Diamond Sea,” one can see that the tiny monochromatic grid may resemble Redl’s work. However, the fact that they are so close together and dim randomly, combined with the reflections off the mirrored background, produces a more spread out, blurred light effect. Though the two artists use the same medium and digital strategy for programming transitions, the few contrasts make for a very different experience while viewing each of their pieces. Erwin Redl and Leo Villareal are both pioneers in the artistic field of light, portraying the beauty of “controlled randomness” in nature through new age digital technology.


Works Cited:


"Leo Villareal." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Villareal>.


"Leo Villareal:Bio." Leo Villareal:Bio. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.villareal.net/bio.html>.


"Leo Villareal." San Jose Museum of Art. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.sjmusart.org/content/leo-villareal>.


"Portfolio Erwin Redl." Paramedia.net. Erwin Redl, 2009. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.paramedia.net/portfolio/index.htm>.


"Erwin Redl." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Redl>.


"Erwin Redl." Computer Science & Engineering. University of Washington, 4 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/art/ErwinRedl/>.


"Erwin Redl." Lights on Tampa. City of Tampa, Art Programs Division. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www.lightsontampa.org/p/artist/erwin-redl>.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Crowdsourcing!

Hey guys, sorry it took a while for me to get this done and posted. I hope I didn't inconvenience you in any way. Here's my idea: HowYouAreAlive.com. The first impression when going to the site would be a simple page that just asks the viewer to upload a photo/video or tell a story about something that makes them feel "alive." Then after navigating away from the home page, one could view a gallery of these submissions, read stories, read about the goal of the site, or log in to the site with a username. By creating an account with the site, people could join interest groups and follow what other group members are posting. The goal of this site would be to just see how differently everyone looks at life, and what unique things make people feel truly ALIVE.


Monday, April 23, 2012

Crowdsourcing Participation

#1: I participated in the Collected Visions crowdsourcing project. The links to search images and write a photo essay were not working. So instead I just uploaded my own photo that others could search and write essays about. They ask to know basic information about the photo you upload and the background story for it. I emailed this site with my submission and information. Here is the screen shot of that e-mail:


#2: I participated in Sarah's crowdsourcing project: myamazingbutt.com. Here is the screen shot of my image I uploaded:




#3: I participated in the Man with the Movie Camera crowdsourcing project. I imitated scene eight, with the oncoming train shot. Since I didn't feel like putting my life in danger by actually filming an oncoming train, I interpreted the suspense and movement with an oncoming skateboard. I took the video with just my mobile phone, as I've been doing all semester. Here is the screen shot of me uploading the video:


Sunday, April 15, 2012

Reading Questions 4/16

Participative Systems Question:
At what point is the artist actually detached from his or her work because of its own interactivity? For instance, if the computers in "The Lovers" somehow evolved and interacted to create something remarkable and unexpected, would this still be considered the artist's doing?

Crowdsourcing Question:
Do you feel like projects such as crowdsourcing are more like an artistic display of the public's creativity, or more like a survey of society and its opinions?

Thursday, April 5, 2012

This is my music. My passion. My lifestyle.

Here's my screen shot of my YouTube mixer. It's a little small and messed up, and the title didn't get included in this but I promise it's there, I just had problems doing a screen shot on my Dell. I had a few problems with this project and needed a lot of help, but I fell in love with my idea, and I feel that it definitely represents what I wanted it to even if it's not perfect. The top video should be played first, because it is the longest and serves as a soundtrack for the rest of the mixer. It was really hard to try to get everything to sound good together, but I did what I could. This project was meant to convey a feeling of nostalgia for those who are as deeply involved with the electronic dance music scene as I am. For some of us, it's not just the type of music we're into, but it's also our inspiration, basis for emotions, home for memories, and it is our lifestyle.