Eyeo 2016 – Kyle McDonald from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

Kyle McDonald is a media artist who’s based in Brooklyn, New York. Kyle attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for AI and started a career in Philosophy/Computer Science. Kyle’s work has a lot to do with experimentation with visuals and how it affects the world. As a video artist, this resonates with me. Among my favorite works of art are Kyle’s “Exhausting a Crowd” and, more recently, “pplkpr”. Both deal with creating new visual statements and helping others develop different perspectives from these statements.

Something Kyle said that really stuck with me was, “If Ella Fitzgerald never sang a single song, and a bot synthesized her tomorrow, would it feel the same?…I think it might and that’s kind of scary.” Although this is a response to a question he gave himself, it still holds a lot of weight. It shows his internal struggle to aid in the advancement of AI at the expense of losing the humanity (basis of art). As artists living in an era of technology, I think we all should ask similar questions to ourselves in order to determine whether we’re guiding the tech for our artistic purposes, or if the tech is guiding us.

Kyle McDonald Website – kylemcdonald.net

Eyeo 2015 – Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec

For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll be talking about both Giorgia and Stefanie.

Giorgia and Stefanie are both ‘data visualizers’ by trade, but in contrast to many others in similar roles, they are not hybrid creatives/artists who have a computer science angle. They are both traditionally trained in the design & architecture disciplines and do not program or develop digital artifacts directly. Both of them are also public figures who have spoken at many conferences and festivals.

Both Giorgia and Stefanie have produced impressive results in their efforts to focus on the human quality and material reality of quantitive information and data, especially in traditionally technical contexts. Stefanie worked at Facebook as an artist in residence communicating the behaviour in through people’s relationship statuses. Similarly, Giorgia has spoken about the human meaning of data, and how the numbers are only a proxy for people and their actions: “[we both] work with data in a handcrafted way, trying to add a human touch to the world of computing and algorithms.”

Something I found especially resonant about their work was how they clearly positioned themselves as differentiated and unlike others in the business of dataviz. I believe it’s a particularly good example of embracing one’s areas of passion instead of following the trends of the mainstream alone.

Speaking to their presentation style, they both present real ‘in the moment’ documentation of what happened instead of process-fictions or overbuilt case studies. This is something I’d like to begin to incorporate more into my own work.

 

“Google to buy Syria in $3.2 Billion Deal”
“Selena Gomez: There’s a Big Difference Between Yasser Arafat and Me”
Those are just a few of the headlines generated by Darius Kazemi’s “Two Headlines” twitter bot, which pulls real headlines from the news and splices them together to get rarely accurate and often funny “headlines,” which it then tweets. Kazemi makes what he calls “Weird Internet Stuff,” small coding projects that usually take less than 5 hours to complete, and often generate fairly useless images, phrases, and information.

In his 2014 Eyeo talk, Kazemi discussed making art with code, and what it takes to be successful in this. He displayed a mathematical formula and called it elegant, but then warned that the things that make equations elegant–compactness, infinite expressiveness–are a red flag for procedurally generated art, and “the computer art equivalent of a Thomas Kinkade.” He showed a few fractal landscapes generated by a computer, and declared that while they were impressive, they were boring: very little was different between the landscapes, and a viewer could quickly spot the patterns going on. According to Kazemi, making good computer generated art takes more than just spitting out some image or phrase based on a randomly generated number; it takes Templated Authorship, Random Input, and Context.

Templated Authorship means not just displaying random information, but rather interpreting it in some way, like letting a random number be the x coordinate of a shape, or having a random word be searched in Google. This is simple enough, and something most creators of digital art already make use of. Filtering or finding the Random Input in a unique way is a great way to make one’s art more relevant. Like the “Two Headlines” bot, which takes its input from real news headlines, you should get your “randomness” from the world itself if you want your artwork to be a reflection of something meaningful rather than a series of random numbers. Finally, Context is what makes art mean something to viewers. Sure, you can make a bot that can randomly generate a word and then display its definition. But who would want to look at that? But if you put that information in the context of a Ryan Reynolds saying “Hey girl, you must be a because you are “, as Kazemi did, you have a pickup line generator that people could play with for hours, even if half of what it says makes no sense.

As a speaker, Kazemi made excellent use of examples, both by showing the audience pictures of what he was talking about and by actually running some of the random-generator programs he spoke of right in front of them. He spoke about video games and tweets, things many young people today can relate to, but what really stuck out to me was the way he talked about elegance, coherence, and even general quality: these things must be considered undesirable when trying to make procedural art. Despite the fact that these are often considered positive traits of an individual work, striving for them when writing your code will yield results that are constrained, unoriginal, and boring–everything art shouldn’t be. I know I’ll have to fight my basic instinct as an artist in order to follow Kazemi’s advice, but hopefully my work is all the better for it.

Here is a link to Kazemi’s website, which contains many examples of his “Weird Internet Stuff”.

And here is the video I watched of his presentation:

Nicky Case is an artist that chose video games as a medium. In their own words: “They make interactive explanations, to help people understand the world, and interactive stories, to help people understand themselves.” Nicky Case created “Coming Out Simulator”, a short game, or virtual social experience, which tackled hard themes like public sexuality, religion, and mental illness.

Case impressed me on many levels, one way was in his understanding of the strengths of video games as a medium, which he explained during an interview about “Coming Out Simulator”: “One thing I do think games are particularly better at is getting across the sense of decision. Like, a heavy decision, a choice. Games are probably the best-suited medium for that. Like, the way text is best-suited for getting across abstract ideas; … You can get players to actually feel the weight of their decision-making.”

After Coming Out Simulator, they made “Parable of the Polygons” and “How a Terrorist is Made”. They asked themselves: “One: why do normal people do bad things, two: how can we make the world better, and three: where can a single person fit in all of this.” In all of these works, these incredibly complex problems involving social interaction, and social grouping/flocking/schisms were quickly dissolved with simple but eye-opening gamey interactive animations.

Nicky Case accomplished something that I often struggle with: making their audience, their players, understand and empathise with a complex issue or emotion through decisions and gameplay.

website: http://ncase.me/

Coming Out Simulator: https://ncase.itch.io/coming-out-simulator-2014

 

– Gene Kogan. He is a programmer and artist interested in generative systems, artificial intelligence, and software enabling self-expression and creativity. The talk is mainly about machine learning and neural networks. He teaches a course called ml4a(machine learning for artists) that helps artist utilize machine learning in their artwork.

– I most admire his work on teaching people about machine learning. It really helps bringing more people into this wonderful realm, and opens up possibilities for non scientists. Also his algorithm of creating handwritten characters is very interesting to me.

– One sentence that struck me is when he said “If you’re ever in a hurry to learn something, sign up to teach it”. I found it insightful and makes me think about how learning really works.

– He presents by showcasing and explaining projects he made. The images and videos he shows are really impressive, but I still do not fully understand the technology behind them after listening to his explanation. Maybe he does this deliberately to lure listeners to his full-length courses.

– Link: http://www.genekogan.com/about.html

See more on her website.

Anouk Wipprecht is a fashion designer who incorporates technology, electronics, and modern designs into her clothing (often dresses). For example, creating an Audi-inspired, headlight-infused, parking-sensitive dress. I really enjoyed seeing how she used her skills, her views and her method of thinking outside the box to send a message, or create a vision, that is more striking and memorable than, say, generic models for events like car shows or concerts. Going back to the Audi example, how she “hacked” a car into a dress. Or how she repurposed football shoulder pads for a (female) singer in a halftime show at the Super Bowl.

She presents her work very straightforward, almost too quickly, but effectively (with plenty of documentation and little stories to keep us interested). I love her wording sometimes, like “Hacking a car”.

“For me, this is the poetics of technology,” she said, which I’ve never heard someone talk about technology like that. I like how she uses all kinds of technology, from interactive (sensors) to constructive (3D printing, mechanical parts) to sensory (sounds, lights, atmosphere). She combines them or uses them individually to make powerful pieces. I’d love to see her works (in action) in person! It’s a shame all of her works are temporary (since they are to be worn once).

Eyeo 2016 – Anouk Wipprecht from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

• Briefly summarize the person’s bio, perhaps with a bit of supplemental Googling. Who are they? where are they based? What did they study? How do they describe themselves and what they do?

Anouk is a Dutch designer who travels a lot, so I would only tentatively call her ‘based’ in Amsterdam, LA, and SF. Her personal website boldly declares “What does fashion lack?” and answers it with “Microcontrollers.” In her lecture she calls herself an interaction designer (interesting, interaction designer first or a fashion designer? She doesn’t elaborate). On her website she is a designer, engineer, curator and lecturer – in that order.

One of her biggest commercial projects was an audi Dress collection that utilized new Audi car tech.

Her Audi dress collection doesn’t seem to offer anything entirely insightful or new in intelligent environment and wearable interaction design. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop…but while I really loved the abstract concepts she was talking about, I feel the transition from that to the concrete products lost a lot of the insight in translation. In the audi project  on a different article she had mentioned that she believed ‘the notion of virtual reality is to limited to screens” and not enough with everyday objects and the environment…..that’s great! I love the idea she’s getting at – but her audi dress had no virtual reality component! The car did! So if that’s what she was trying to achieve….I’m afraid her dresses are just really futuristic in medium – not interaction.

When she said ‘biomimicry’ I was really hyped up – I wanted to see how she’d use biotech to make intelligent ‘dresses’ or as she considers it, the “environment”. Maybe even a bio-machine-learning-augmented-generative-adaptable dresses.  The summary said “Her designs move, breath, and react to the world around them. She is interested in new ways we can interface — and builds micro-controlled garments to provoke her generation,” but I found that claim to be only superficially true on a lot of her bigger sponsored projects (especially the advertsing car show dress line for audi)

She cuts all the designs close to the body because it shouldn’t be the machine in control, or the person, but rather a symbiosis. She does so through “wireless biosignals” that will allow the dress to react to changes and environments.

2 years ago, she worked with Intel and medical ED with a camera and phone to record what the user was paying attention to. The dress became a ‘research entity’.

 

Some of the soundbytes/phrases and concepts she brought up that caught my attention:

She wants to help the process of “Gamifying fashion” to make wearables fun and accessible. I think she definitely achieved it in one particular project wherein she makes a ‘Unicorn horn’ fashion accessory for ADHD studies – allows the child to be a child not a subject to be studied. The fashion medical wearable with a camera allows for discrete monitoring whenever brain activities spike for when children’s attentions get caught. The video records get sent to the lab for later review.

 

Unicorn Wearable Uses Neuroscience to Help Kids

I think she really sells her work well as “symbiosis of tech, fashion and the environment”

Also well noted, she says “fashion does not equal ‘clothing’… but fashion is too analog”  she wants it digital and “to play a part in the social, public, and personal space.”

But my favorite was one saying “I keep everything open source…keeping it private – bullshit!” YEEES – share the knowledge.

What strategies do they use to present their work effectively? What can you learn about how to present your own work?

Good questions. I’m afraid I couldn’t see much of a structure to her presentation. Case in point – a well structured presentation would have informed listeners about what they’re going to hear and why. In this instance, I had no idea where she would go after one project after the other. There was less to teach so much as just her talk about her work in more depth and some of her philosophy that informed decisions.

anoukwipprecht.nl

labs.codame.com

• Embed their lecture video. If possible, additionally embed a video of one of their projects that you admire.
• Label your blog post with the Category, LookingOutwards-01.
• Title your blog post with the title: nickname-LookingOutwards01, where “nickname” is your login identity on this WordPress website.

Milica Zec (pronounced Milizza like pizza) is a self proclaimed “film and virtual reality director, editor, and screenwriter.” She’s based in New York City although she grew up in a war-torn Serbia. Her experience with the bombings there influence her most well known work, Giant, a virtual reality “movie.” Zec also spend 9 years working with Marina Abramovic as a film-maker and installation designer.

For me, the most compelling aspect of Milica’s work is how she uses the immersive qualities of virtual reality to explore an entire narrative with very deep emotional implications. I’m also interested in evoking an emotional response with the virtual art I create rather than a “wow that’s novel” response. According to reviews of Giant (I haven’t gotten around to seeing it yet), she was quite successful.

Because I want to work with memory and sensual recollections, I think that an immersive experience like virtual reality has more to offer than still images or even video-art. Indeed the natural progression from photographs to videos to vr is apparent with Milica’s work as it straddles the boundary between movie and full immersion.

Milica’s Website

Eyeo 2016 – Panel: VR/Experience – James George, Winslow Porter, Milica Zec, Alexander Porter, Kamal Sinclair from Eyeo Festival // INSTINT on Vimeo.

 

Theo Watson is an artist, designer, and experimenter who received a BFA from Parsons School of Design in Design and Technology, and is currently based in Brooklyn, NY. His works are inspired by the curiosity and excitement of his audience, which leads to the production of impressive interactive art installations in which people can immerse themselves. He founded Design I/O, a creative studio specializing in the design and development of such media, continuing to push the boundaries in the possibilities of an art-and-technology intersection. Having personally been interested in and inspired by the dynamic possibilities of art and technology, Theo engaged me as a listener to his lecture and as a fan to his projects. My goals as an artist have long stemmed from my experiences as an child when I was an avid fan of digital media: cartoons, animations, videogames alike. It is especially encouraging for me to see Theo’s execution of immersive environments that transport viewers to seemingly a wholly different and stimulating and reactive world. Being an environmentalist as well as an aspiring illustrator with more design-leaning aesthetics, I am fond of his works ‘Funky Forest’ and ‘Connected Worlds’, both of which integrate amazing, streamlined graphics with a scientific importance of how humans can affect the earth; the process of creating ‘Connected Worlds’ as detailed in the lecture show the amount of thought, love, and experimentation that went into the installation, as well as the series of troubleshooting involved. It was interesting to hear about how every detail implemented was formulated from an either artistic, practical, or ideological reason. For instance, Theo and Nick discussed how they wanted to steer away from mindless interaction by implementing a rewards-like system to the ecosystems, where the children have to grow trees and put effort into planting seeds and nourishing plants to attract rarer creatures, while learning how to effectively manipulate water flow to sustain different biomes; this reflects the necessary care and effort that citizens should put into caring for their habitats around them in order to coexist with other species. Another notable dialogue from the lecture were the multiple times which he admitted, “–and we never thought this would work but…”, indicating how through the problem-solving that came with the creation process were the innovative, almost impulsive solutions. There is something very human, down-to-earth, and realistic about the presentation and his approach to the project: about how such large-scale, time-committing installation would present troubles along the way, and how one can just try things for the sake of trying things, oftentimes leading to unexpected and beneficial results. ‘Connected Worlds’ seamlessly implements art, technology, environmental worldviews, and the arduous but rewarding journey of bringing a dynamic, interactive space to life.

Theo Watson’s website//

Maria Scileppi

Maria Scileppi is a the founder of the creative agency 72U, focussing primarily on the crossroads between creating narratives between art and technology. However, her true skill is in being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Scileppi is a fearless experimenter and thrives on multidisciplinary collaborations.

Maria attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then went on to become an associate professor at Chicago Portfolio School, before venturing to Venice, California where she is now based.

Within listening to the first few minutes of Scileppi’s 2015 Eyeo presentation, I was completely hooked. She is a patient, ambitious, and exciting creative – a truly inspirational woman that I know I could learn a great deal from.

During this talk Scileppi I really tried to pay attention to her tone, and I noticed that she crafter her speech very effectively. Her overarching themes were collaboration and experimenting, and she tells the story of how these tools are incredibly powerful by telling smaller stories, similar to chapters. While listening to the talk, it’s clear that she is a seasoned story teller, even from the tone of her voice. She speaks slowly and always explains her vocabulary, even if it may seem self-explanatory.

Her stories about life at 72U shed light on the incredible benefits of working collaboratively, and what it takes to do so. She notes that it may not be applicable to every project or every person. It works best when there’s high emotional intelligence, and an openness to fail and learn. The idea of teamwork will make a lot of people cringe, but Scileppi beautifully explains how much potential there can be (and backs it up with a project about a chef and a sword-swallower).

“When you collaborate with another human, you extend your reach as a create. Because the first thing two collaborators make is this third space, and this third space is where the magic happens.”

She also discusses the idea of process and being human. In design, professors, clients, and recruiters are often far more interested in seeing the process than the final product. Were the creative decisions arbitrary or intentional? Was the road to this product bumpy or successful? What was the first idea and is any part of it in the final product? What did you learn about yourself and about your work? These are the types of questions that can be answered through reflection and process documentation.

“Since then a light went on inside of me. And I switched from being a maker focussed on an object or an end result, to a maker focused on the process of making, and I really like this space because it feels really human.”

Maria Scileppi is a creative that now has a permanent spot on my radar. I’ve already looked into the applications for spending 12 weeks at 72U. Being uncomfortable and vulnerable is hard to do in any circumstance, it can be even harder professionally. In your personal life, you’re putting yourself and your emotions on the line. In the professional world you’re putting not only your reputation, but also the time and money of others. Maria explains that so long as you can learn from your mistakes, grow as a creative, and continue to collaborate and experiment, then there’s nothing to fear.