Category Archives: looking-outwards

amwatson

14 Mar 2015

Shadow is a collaborative movement piece that uses three drones equipped with LED spotlights to cast light and shadow on a lone dancer.  As the piece progresses, the drones move across the space, turning their lights off and on, causing dramatic changes in the performance visuals.

I really like this piece.  In drama, we often worry that the inclusion of media will be distracting, or merely serve to contribute nothing to the piece but spectacle.  In this case, however, the media is used to excellent effect.  The 3D movement of the lights serves to create a performance that’s dramatically different than a traditional piece, and notions of computation are crucial to the synchronization of the three drones.  Light can have an enormous impact on how the audience experiences a piece, and using drone tech to experiment with synchronization and movement is a culturally rich endeavor.

I don’t know what I would criticize.  It’s a really great concept, so I think if anything, I’d like to see it explored further.  It would be interesting to see what effects would be created with 10 or 100 drones.  And maybe this is a little cheesy, but it’d be interesting to use this tech to make a dance piece about drone strikes and culpability.  I’d at least like to see it tried.

This piece is a joint effort between Elevenplay, a Japanese dance company, and Rhizomatiks, an art studio focused on using media and data in their work.  The project is the beginning of a series of collaborations between the two, exploring the use of drone lights in dance.

OccultUs is a performance piece that integrates the physical world with the virtual one.  The audiences member sits surrounded by noise-making gadgets with an Oculus Rift headset, and is led through a virtual space with audio accompaniment by the gadgets that surround him.

I’ve been itching to learn more about virtual reality, so I found the piece and its aims really interesting.  Currently, consumer virtual reality is a mindblowing experience yet still has a lot of limitations, and so combining the virtual world and the physical one is a great idea.  Furthermore, I think it’s important to experiment with the new platform, and discover what’s possibly from an artistic perspective.  That being said, I’m not sure how compelling the installation ends up being.  Audio for virtual reality is already very possible, and it’s not clear physical sounds really count as marrying the two worlds.  I would love to see this idea taken and applied to sense VR is not as good at replication, such as touch, or trying (I know it’s hard) to integrate visuals from the room into the VR experience.

This piece was created by Simon de Diesbach at ECAL with the support from Alain Bellet, Gael Hugo, and Christophe Guignard, and attempts to immerse the user by combining the virtual and the physical world, “two distinct realities”.  The installation seems inspired by the advent of the Oculus Rift, and the potential of the young technology.

Zack Aman

13 Mar 2015

How to Make (Almost) Anything

How to Make (Almost) Anything is a class at the MIT Media Lab that focuses on machine fabrication. They worked together to build a modular CNC machine kit out of cardboard that basically provides several axes of movement as well as hold points that can hold items such as pencils.

There are two things in particular I like about this project: that it exposes something relatively opaque, and it’s potential for creating new projects. It makes it very clear how CNC routing happens — the individual components that control motion and contact are easy to understand on their own through the modular design of the kit. Regarding the utility of tool, I loved seeing them work on cardboard and styrofoam. These are materials that we all get in abundance in packaging and then have to figure out to dispose of. I’d love the ability to take packaging that is otherwise bound for the trash or recycling and have the ability to easily repurpose it as a creative material.

I’m drawn into the project because of it’s apparent simplicity. The machine looks like something I could assemble. It heavily reminds me of the PrinterBot kits, which are similar in concept (though for 3d printing); however, I watched my colleagues spend way more time trying to assemble the PrinterBot kits with no small amount of frustration. One thing that I would like to see is a clear on-boarding process that makes it easy for people to assemble the kit, which I think would be in line with the democratizing drive of simple, cheap fabrication methods. The question they need to answer effectively is: “Is the money I save with a kit worth the potential frustration of self-assembly?”

Satelliten

Satelliten is a project that maps the paths of satellites in a low-earth orbit onto an actual atlas map by using a set up similar to the CNC router in the project above.

The single thing that draws me into this project the most is the juxtaposition between automation and the old school, decidedly analog book the paths are drawn onto. There’s something about that and the way it’s documented that just feels right, as if the book is somehow being updated to reflect our newer, digital world.

Beyond that, it’s a pretty simple concept with straightforward execution. I enjoyed watching the square get darker and darker with time, which made me wonder if darkness would be a reliable (and explicit) way to look at satellite traffic across the world if the drawable area were bigger. I’d like to see more some more variation, perhaps if the color could change over time or if different colors were used for different types of satellites. It may also be worth conveying altitude or speed to show how different kinds of satellites fly.

This work is reminiscent of weather patterns, and in fact bears a lot of similarity with Epic’s hurricane visualization. The Quadrature folks explicitly state that they are interested in outer space, so it makes sense that they would visualize satellites, an item that are beyond our normal thoughts and perception and yet clutter our atmosphere and have an increasing impact on our daily lives.

ypag

12 Mar 2015

Bernoulli Ball Blower
“Many learners ignore the label copy and just play with the ball, walking away with a fun memory but no better understanding of the phenomenon “
This project demonstrates use of augmented reality to visualise the invisible paths of forces. Users can interact with the system real time to understand the classic Bernoulli Ball Blower setup. The camera is tracking its position (color blob tracking) and feeding that information to the processing program, which then renders the visualization that illustrates areas of higher and lower air pressure.

Screen Shot 2015-03-12 at 1.02.39 AM

Gravity Well
Gravity well is result of pull of gravity by a mass in space. Gravitational forces form a funnel shape around a mass. If the weight is heavy as a planet, the time space fabric is streched and there is steeper curve. This concept is demonstrated by “Gravity Well”. Using augmented reality the motion of the rolled ball is replayed. the facilitator now slows down the motion of the ball to explain the physics behind it. I find the project quite interesting since it touches upon the ability of augmented reality technologies in learning application by “slowing down” laws of physics that govern our world.

Screen Shot 2015-03-12 at 1.02.48 AM

Reference: http://mw2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/augmented-reality-for-interpretive-and-experiential-learning/

ypag

11 Mar 2015

Stranger Visions
We are not careful about our DNA trail. We do not understand how much infromation our DNA carries about us. People are careful about privacy policy of their internet accounts but not careful about their DNA trail. Stranger vision is project of constructing 3D images of strangers using DNa that they leave behind in varius public samples. This is speculative project that combines forensic sceince and modrn fabrication technique to initiate conversation about culture of biological surveillance

Reference : http://deweyhagborg.com/strangervisions/

VictimLess Leather
It’s a stitch less jacket grown completely using tissue culture. This project by Oran Catts is example of domain experts in field of biology using their expertise as medium to create art pieces that speculate future. This project demonstrates usage of tussue culture in future.
Screen Shot 2015-03-12 at 12.58.26 AM

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victimless_Leather

ypag

11 Mar 2015

PATAKK

gif1

I’m interested in the process of using 2D elements to create an illusion of depth. This GIF by PATAKK creates an illusion of an organic motion in 3D which is similar to a creature. The GIF is monochrome but manages to convey the feeling of surface texture of this ‘imagined’ creature.

Reference:http://patakk.tumblr.com/post/104544050040

Happy Birthday to me
gif2

This GIF is quite unusual. I like choice of colors and surface texture of face and balloon depicted in the gif. This is also quite different that other gifs I came across. the face is merged with the background. The gif is subtle and weird at the same time. You don’t expect the face to open and the ballon to quietly fly away. The motion is looped in order to create an illusion that the mouth opens and keeps on spitting a balloon. Looping of the gif does not seem obvious but more real.

Reference: http://zolloc.com/post/110081062589