17 November 2014

Food, Art and Social Media

The concept of food in social media is one that most people are probably familiar with. Most of the times, when food appears on social media its a either in a facebook post detailing all the delicious food you will be eating, or have eaten, as seen in below.

However, when it comes to food, art and social media the bag is pretty mixed. Sure their are plenty of tumblrs detailing food, as far as I have searched, I haven’t found any artist who does what I want to do. However, I was inspired the project Pentametron. Pentametron uses twitter posts to make poetry. I just like the concept of a being that exists in the internet tweeting existential/funny things. My, subtweeting subs, looks to tweet sassy things about other subs based off of real subtweets made by celebrities and individuals. Examples of such ‘subtweets’ include:

Kim Kardashian subtweeting Amber Rose

Meek Mill subtweeting Chris Brown

Adam Levine Subtweeting…Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga subtweeting adam levine subtweeting her

How it works.

I plan on creating a database of phrases to tweet and a database of types of subs, their weights and the restaurant chains that make them. I will then have the sub tweet a random set of phrases either to the company or just as a status update.

For my second idea it is based on a project I did for my EcoArt class. For that class I created a series of photographs called sexting fruit. Basically the premise for that was again, based off of a social phenomenon, ie, leaked sexts from celebrities. With that concept in mind a created a series of fruits in compromising positions and then released the images in some text messages. I feel that programing a computer to send the sexts via twitter will also go along with the social media angle of the project. It will use the same weigh–> tweet concept as my original concept except fruit will be weighed in this case instead of subs. I am leaning towards my original concept with the potential of actually combining these ideas (ie being able to tweet just words for the subs and images for the fruit) as another possibility.

Assignment 13

This small assignment, which is due Wednesday November 19, is designed to prepare you for your final (self-directed) project that is due at the end of the semester. It forms part of a sequence of small “intermediate” assignments whose purpose is to make sure that you are on track, planning your project in advance.

Assigment 13-LO: A Looking Outwards.

Conduct a “Looking Outwards” in relation to your final project. Find your “precursors” — digital or otherwise — by identifying at least three projects by others that are somewhat/somehow related to what you would like to investigate. For each project, explain the way (however oblique it may be) in which that project is related to what you would like to achieve or investigate.

Be sure to consult with the professor or others about your area of interest. Others may be aware of search terms or specific projects that can help guide your thinking.

Assigment 13-Sketch: A Delineation of Thinking.

You are to begin thinking about a final project (which will be due December 3). Your options are:

Extend and polish your concept from Assignment 12, a “Networked Object”: that is, a provocative “networked object” that sends an Internet message when some condition is sensed, and/or which performs an action-in-the-world when an Internet message is received.
[OR] Obtain a sensor, actuator, Arduino shield, or other physical component which inspires you. (I strongly recommend the vendors AdaFruit.com and Sparkfun.com.) Develop a project which uses this component in an interesting way.
[OR] Some combination of the above two possibilities.
[OR] A 10-12 page paper about a topic, artist, or theme in new media arts.

In a blog post,

Describe two different ideas you have for a final project.
For each idea, provide approximately 100-200 words which describe what you’d like to make, and at least one drawing/rendering/photoshop/diagram/illustration depicting your concept.
Categorize your blog post with the category, Assignment-13-Sketch.

Be sure to consult with the professor about your concept(s).

Scaling your concept to what is both personally feasible and technologically feasible is one of the most challenging hurdles for new practitioners. Don’t be offended if the professor encourages you to reduce the scale or scope of your project. Some ideas simply require more skill, time, or money than you have available.