I’ve never used OpenFrameworks before, and up until this Looking Outwards, I wasn’t clear on what it was. After seeing the large variety of projects created with it, I am very excited to learn it.

My interest in animation led me to look at a library of animated GIFs created in OpenFrameworks. I was looking of giphy.com which had a lot of submissions by Adam Ferriss. a BFA student at MICA. I was particularly interested in the following GIF (link):

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This GIF, although computer generated, has a sense of material, in the way that it references drawing techniques (contour lines). It also reminds me of the shape of an ink line on paper. I aim to make work like this, work that is referencing very organic, physical phenomena. However, I really wish this GIF would have been seamlessly looping. Every time it restarts so abruptly, I am reminded of how it was created. Transitions are never as abrupt as they can be on screen.

Next, The Color Project at IFP Media Center. For this project, the artists selected movies filmed in a city. Then, they got the recording locations of scenes in the movie and plugged each location into Google Maps.  The maps are displayed in a grid, and are synchronized as they zoom in closer and closer to each location. Eventually, the whole map is filled with a field of color, and the whole grid is filled with a color palette that related to the city being filmed in.

One of the things I enjoyed about this piece was its presentation. This is not software for any users besides the artists involved.  It was not presented in browsers or as an application; the piece was presented on 27 HD screens. This is an awesome piece: Information visualization, Open frameworks, and Art.