Category Archives: looking-outwards

John Choi

26 Feb 2015

Multi Robot System for Artistic Pattern Formation by Disney Research (2012)

While this project doesn’t feature a particularly artistic title, it does demonstrate a novel concept for multi-robot coordination.  The basic idea is simple:  show a picture and have a bunch of small mobile robots scuttle about to imitate the picture.  The result can only be described as a swarm – a multitude of miniature 2-wheeled contraptions fuzz about until a formation resembling the picture emerges,  It really reminds me of orientation day for freshmen at Carnegie Mellon University – a bunch of students stand in formation to show the letters C, M, and U.  If you ask me, the biggest way to improve  this project is quite obvious: add more robots.  And when I say “more,” I mean a lot of robots, so they look a bit like Miles’s KeyFleas.  And also, a more artistic title would add a nice touch.

Papillon:  Expressive Eyes for interactive characters by Disney Research (2013)

Papillon, meaning butterfly in French, was of particular interest to me because one of the biggest things I am doing with my own robots is creating expressive faces.  Using a light projector against a round surface is a novel idea of showing eye expressions on a toy.  However, this method does have some limitations.  While this does allow the shape of the face and the eyes to be more round and humanoid, it might look a little weird to have a really humanoid eye and see the pupil move without the sclera (background whites).  Also, the individual “cells” on the eye are very easy to see.  Not necessarily a bad thing, it does have the possibility of making the robot unbearably cute.  As a comparison to my own robots, I’ve done two things to create expressive eyes: the first one being 3-color LEDs, and the second being an Android phone.  Using the first method, emotions were emulated with different colors on the LED; for example, blue meant happy and red meant angry.  Using the second method, I had a far greater range of expressions available, as using an Android phone gave me full control of several hundred thousand pixels; I could actually control the shapes of the eyes as well as the color.  I think Papillon combines the best of both of my methods, making it possible to have expressive shapes while still retaining the same glowing aura of an LED.

 

 

 

 

mileshiroo

26 Feb 2015

The syllabus for Paul Soulellis’ graduate course at RISD Experimental Publishing Studio is on NewHive for anyone to view. The topic of the course is the “circulation of work in a post-digital space”, and its central question is: is posting (always) publishing? Experimental Publishing Studio is organized in 6 sections: Substrate (nothingness), Versions, Dispersion, Transduction, Balconism, Manifesto. Included in the syllabus are links to readings, lectures and other content. The syllabus was met with both criticism and praise. One Twitter user said: “to publish course content on a commercial, unstable platform is not necessarily a choice for prosperity.” I think this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in experimental publishing. The Dispersion section is a good overview of contemporary net art.

Irony and Utopia: History of Computer Art was a course offered by Beau Sievers (currently a cognitive neuroscience PhD student at Dartmouth) in 2010 at the free New York based art school BHQFU. Like with Paul Soulellis’ course, the syllabus for this course is freely available on Beau Sievers’ personal website, with links to readings, videos and artworks. The course is a comprehensive overview of computer art history, and is organized by topics like Computer Music, Virtual Reality, amateur and sub-amateur, weak gestures, defaults and crowds. The Virtual Reality section is of particular interest to me. I might refer to this syllabus for my final project research.

This is unrelated but I just found some good Vine accounts:

Ryan Trecartin: https://vine.co/u/912316181317304320

K8 Hardy: https://vine.co/u/1164283982054060032

Matthew Kellogg-Looking Outwards 7

Memory of a Broken Dimension

In this project by XRA, the player explores and reveals a three dimensional world. I appreciate this piece because it drew me in with an interesting graphics effect based on glitch art. I am usually not interested in glitch art, but in this project I found that it was a very interesting effect for revealing a world which is then explored. I would definitely be interested in playing this game to see how the story unfolds.

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This project by Filip Visnjic projects a game onto a canvas in a gallery. It is a simplistic platform style game with no end game or aim for the player. It illustrates the mechanism of a game without the necessary elements for a game. I like it because it attempts to display a video game outside of where video games are normally found, on consoles, computers, and phones. The formal setting of the gallery for me contradicts the idea, look, and feel of a retro 8-bit style game. I also appreciate the levels being painted onto an actual canvas. I feel it adds to the juxtaposing effect of the game in the gallery by making it appear to be a simple piece whenever the projection isn’t there.

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Matthew Kellogg-Looking Outwards 6

For my final project I hope to make a novel interactive game. My reasoning for this is that I started programming and drawing because of my interest in games. My hope is to design something abstract, aesthetically pleasing, and with focus on interaction.

rymdkapsel

Martin ‘grapefrukt‘ Jonasson (Grapefrukt Games), made a game with crisp graphics, solid gameplay, and a consistent design. In the game you work to expand a base while also building up an army of minions to defend it. It is also necessary to generate energy

I like it because it uses very simplistic shapes to create motions which are all very much related to the gameplay. There is subtle motion that floating objects take that draw the player’s attention without distracting.

shooting

I also enjoy the gameplay (as is illustrated), because I enjoy the RTS genre whenever I play. I like this game because it abstracts everything away from the setting of building a civilization and hold to the elements.

EGO

Stefano D’Alessio and Martina Menegon, created an interactive installation that draws users in with abstract symbolic representations of the body.

I enjoy this piece because of the simplistic design, in both visuals and technologies incorporated. For it to be so simply designed and to evokes such strong reactions from users, impresses me. I also like the smoothness of the animations, especially from the glob of squiggles into the stick figure.

sejalpopat

26 Feb 2015

I came across a few interesting papers related to editing photo and video, creating a painterly effect computationally, and applying specific styles or textures present in some source image to another image. I think I will be coming back to this paper for reference a lot, Algorithms for Rendering in Artistic Styles. The authors explain a huge range of approaches in a really easy to read style and explain many of these in detail with pseudocode. For example, one style they try to automatically apply to images given varying levels of information about the surface of the object in the image is hatching:

 

 

Other helpful papers I came across were Image and Video Based Painterly Animation and Video Textures. The latter paper describes video texture to be a medium “in between” video and photography because while it isn’t a static image it is meant to stream a “continuously infinitely varying stream of images”. I’m imagining an endless moving painting with smooth subtle variations in motion.