Something I admire

Poweronoff by Danja Vasiliev is a representation of the business a web surfer creates by just loading ads on their computer. The participant is placed in a room that has all the appliances that are part of a meager life, but none of them have power, only a laptop running on battery power. The participant’s only option is to load ad banners on the laptop, and then the amount of revenue crated by loading the banners is converted to watts and used to power this person’s life.

It helped me grasp the value the came from simply looking at an ad banner, by measuring the value in watts. The application of the monetary funds from ads as your lifeline was really creative and gave the project a futuristic and dystopian feel to it. Next time this project is made is should incorporate how your interests are sold to ad companies so they can show you ads your more likely to click on, maybe the longer you surfed, the more valuable the ad banners became. Also I wished the artist wrote a bit more on how he came up with the ad prices.  This is part of the movement of activists, artists and hackers (like LulzSec) who want to remind their audience of how big corporations are a part of our everyday life without us thinking about it or questioning it.

 

Something that surprised me

Boarder Bumping by Julian Oliver surprised me. Oliver noticed that cellphone networks do not obey territory borders; He created a smartphone application to collect the data of cell phone boarders, and put the information together in a map.

At first I was disappointed in this project because I thought this was something that should only concern the carrier companies. That’s not the case; really it is challenging the integrity of national borders. (This is also related to another awesome project by Chris Pinchen about how cellphone towers are disguised as something like a tree or a wall)

 

Something that could have been done better

‘i am swimming in a pool’ by Gordan Savičić is a reinterpretation of alvin lucier’s well-known audio masterpiece ‘i am sitting in a room’, A submerged hydrophone is used to pick up audio waves the come from people swimming in this pool. The people swimming in the pool are wearing waterproof headphones that are streaming the sound of the bottom of the pool.

This project disappointed me because it seems like something very complicated and expensive to set up, when the user experience wouldn’t be extremely fulfilling. Judging from the photo of the project being preformed, people were just dunking their heads in the water for a quick listen with only one person getting the full experience.

This project was by Gordan Savičić who usually has a really interesting and original point to his projects.

 

One project that I admire profoundly

Compressorhead is basically a 3-man, er, robot rock band that plays contemporary music in ways impossible with human instrumentalists. This group brings new meaning to the term heavy metal, as the machine team is literally built of heavy metals with wires, actuators and computers. Compressorhead proves, or rather, disproves, the notion that truly great music, or art in general, must be produced with the direct hand of human beings. These robots do things humans simply cannot in their present form – clashing drums with four arms, strumming guitars with 40 fingers, or even playing exactly the same way every time. The idea that derivative works can create further derivative works in a way that challenges the inherent limitations of the creator opens whole new world of possibility, and this, is why I find this piece profoundly inspiring.

Built by RoboCross Machines, Germany.

One project that surprised me

OMOTE is a rather odd project, to say the least. In essence, it demonstrates one use of real-time face tracking technology coupled with projection mapping onto the face being tracked. The result: an artificial visage attempting to subvert its living host face into expressing its own image. The projection displays and warps the host’s face into robots, slime, reflective metal, cubist fracturing, and other human faces. The real-time renderings are uncanny to say the least, especially since it deals with the subject of human faces – one wrong twitch, one odd wrinkle at the wrong place, and the whole thing becomes abominable to look at. This is not what surprises me though – what surprises me is rather the relationship between the user and the projector. The user can never really know what her face looks like as his or her eyes are shut. Ultimately, the user whose face is being tracked is subject to whim of the artist controlling the projector.

Created by Hiroto Kuwahara and Paul Lacroix, 2014. Additional help by Nobumichi Asai, Jin Hasegawa, and Takashi Ishibashi.

One project that could have been great but disappointed me

Out of Control by Visual System is great. It certainly is an impressive monolith of light and metal, and as described by its creators, this piece depicts the awesome fury of the “Super Machines” that are to come in the near future. However, for me, it does not quite hit the mark. This project presents a flashy light-show that tells the story a “Super Machine” fighting to survive against a virus threatening to corrupt the machine to oblivion. The primary reason I do not see this piece as great is because it both incorrectly portrays what the plight of a supercomputer against a virus would look like, and the fact I do not think it does enough to show what a supercomputer would do in order to fight against such a virus. I understand I may be somewhat shortsighted or naive here, especially since this video shows only a teaser of a digital art installation, not a supercomputer fighting a virus. Even so, perhaps the real reason I do not think this piece is great is because I fail to see how, without the description provided by the artist, one is supposed to deduce that this gigantic light-show is representative of a futuristic “Super Machine” battling a virus.

Created by Team Visual System, 2014.