Electronic Media Studio: Introduction to Interactivity and Computation
60-210 • Spring 2021 • Prof. Golan Levin
As an inter dimensional gas station, I wanted to create a spot separate from the actual reality of the world. It is a place where the hidden and beautiful aspects of the world come to rest and have fun. It is a secret spot where only a certain type of person can reach. I wanted to also create a space where the size and shape of things can combine and move in different ways like the subway entrance and the cars.
This was a really fun and new process that I haven’t experienced. I found that using just a single figure to insert would be simple and nice but just not my style. I used the two versions of my past project this semester to combine their two features with an ongoing pattern. By cutting out the inputs and outputs in specific parts, it became really difficult and time consuming. But overall, this was super fun and I will definitely be using this tool again in future video projects.
This tool was really fun to play around with. The possibilities are pretty much endless and it’s pretty consuming to keep going every time you reset it.
I think this was a super cool way to really animate faces and how they would be seen in motion. I don’t know if it emulated my friend Oliver’s face that well, but I’m sure with a more front view picture, it would be different.
Daniel Ambrosi, Infinite Dreams (2020).
After looking at the dozens of pieces featured on these websites, I ultimately chose this piece because of how it made me feel. Lately, within my art practice and just looking art, I forget how much your feelings can be emulated by color, texture, tone, etc. First looking at this piece, I suddenly got a such a familiar and warm feeling that reminded me of a certain summer night that has had a really big impact on me.
Obviously the colors really caught my eye at first, but looking further into the piece, you can really see the impact of the details within each square. I almost just feel as if I want to live in that world of cubes and colorful squares like a maze.
For my bitsy game, I wanted to recreate a childhood memory when I was around 10 or 11 when I was in a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a huge family trip with cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone you could name. When arriving, I remembered the vivid smell of cigarettes and old perfume walking through the hotel surrounded by slot machines and poker tables.
However, for this game I wanted to have an arcade instead of a casino to combine one of my fever dreams of being stuck in an arcade. The game first starts with an outer point of view of the arcade on a rainy day. As you walk through the first doors of the arcade, it leads you to another hallway that leads you to mysterious building which so happens to be this never ending arcade starts. But in terms of this bitsy experience being game, it is more of a visual experience that is supposed to counteract how you feel walking through each of these rooms.
As you keep walking through each room, there is a certain exit that the avatar must find in order to move from each room to the next. You will see lots of text as well as color. Hopefully it is not too overwhelming because the graphics can hurt your eyes a lot if you stare at it for too long. But at the end of the experience, you will see a game over screen, not implying that the game was over but that you are stuck in it.
When we were first introduced to the topic of crypto art and NFT’s, I was amazed by how many artists were on the platform and variations of art are being produced every day. I was really interested how the system worked and the benefits as well as the disadvantages the world of crypto art had. After reading the following readings explaining the process of crypto art and how negative the ecological and environmental factors play into it.
The platform itself seems like a really great community for small artists as well as for people of color who have a smaller voice to put out their art to the public and make a name for themselves. It removes a lot of the negative factors that top tier art galleries have against smaller artists such as racism, sexism, etc. After viewing many of the NFT sites myself, it is almost overwhelming seeing the amount of art pieces within only one type of platform. Behind these websites, I would never expect how negative the impacts are in this kind of art processing, which really shows how many people are not informed on impact this has on several different issues.
Personally, I don’t know if I would necessarily take part in the NFT phenomenon. I feel that I don’t know enough yet to actually purchase or sell art on that platform as well as the guilt built up after reading the articles on how bad this art world affects the environment and community. But also, the NFT community seems like such an effective way for small artists like myself to really put their work out there in hopes of someone finding it and enjoying it. However, I definitely don’t know how others can do this so often without realizing the cynical and horrible effects of crypto art.
“Black on White Möbius IFS IV”
Made by Johan Karlsson, his page
“Falling Upwards into the Giants”
Made by Black Sneakers, their page
Made by Noah, his page
Made by NEURAL HAZE, Neural vaporwave NFTz aesthetics.
After browsing many of the NFTs on several different sites, I’ve come to see so many variations of digital and physical art made within the community. Out of the hundreds I viewed, these four caught my eye with their movement, color, tone, etc. Two of the NFTS were found on Hic et Nunc, and the other two were found on SuperRare and Foundation.
Within many of the amazing artists within the NFT community, I’ve come to see how several artists present their work to the public and how their style carries throughout their work. But also I’ve realized how impersonal some of the work is on these websites. Since they are mostly based on aesthetics and graphics, I’ve found really beautiful visuals but with little to no meaning? However, on #BlackNFTMonth, I did find a lot of purposeful art that represented very powerful symbolism and imagery.
Out of the websites that I viewed, I felt that Hic et Nunc had the most art variation and style complex. It also had a lot more of abstract art that I could read more into than just solely aesthetic art. But I did enjoy both SuperRare and Foundation. It was super fun to browse around and see the extent of how art can be distributed and seen to millions across the world. As for every artist, I never really seemed to remember certain names, but it does seem like the farther you go down and scroll, the more variation you see within the pieces. I’ve also noticed how different and similar a lot of the art pieces can be compared to each other. Styles such as geometric shapes, animation and cartoon with people, and just unique visual stances, a lot of the pieces were jumbled on top of each other, making it harder to focus on one. Overall, I had a really fun time scrolling on these websites and finding some really cool art.
