Looking at these bitsy games made me so unbelievably excited for our next project. I really loved the short narrative games I found, and a lot of them were touching in a really beautiful way to me. I was especially drawn to the heartfelt, poetic messages and worldbuilding that the two games novena and i had another dream about you last night achieved, and the support and sense of community that they fostered in the community’s response to these games. Others like SPACE RAT and onion detective 2 were much more light-hearted, but still gave me the same hopeful and wholesome feelings as the others did and I really enjoyed the fictional worlds they created.
Category: Uncategorized
peatmoss-LookingOutwards3
https://bitfuzz.itch.io/the-falling-star-bitsy-poem
https://haraiva.itch.io/under-a-star-called-sun
^^ Two of the games I looked at that stuck with me. I’m a sucker for star and astronomically themed games, but honestly I liked these for a lot more. They’re good showcases for the stuff you can do in Bitsy I think, with the pixel art, the music, and the interactivity. In particular, Under a Star Called Sun displays a good game design element of highlighting what you can interact with/advance the story with. I think thats super smart and helpful when the game has limited pixels!
Monday – NFT Immersion
https://www.hicetnunc.xyz/objkt/6197
When I was looking at the different NFT marketplaces, I had a lot of mixed feelings about the work being sold and their worth and I really had no idea what kind of criteria I needed to use to judge these artworks. Although a lot of them show good craftsmanship, I wasn’t convinced if they were worth the cost of the energy they came with. I felt some disdain for pieces I felt lacked any type of originality or meaning, but I don’t know the original concepts of them. One that I chose, Celebrate Everything, had the same style and color choices that many online title the “Corporate Art Style.” This type of style, characterized by geometric figures with oversized and colorful limbs in utopian settings, is used by dozens of large corporations to appear vibrant and friendly, but lack any meaning when it’s used simply to make a flowery appearance.
Minniebzrg-NFTReading
Artists are guaranteed copyright and moral protection over their artwork and identity. A problem that people aren’t aware of concerning NFT’s is that there is a network of investors who are paying with soft money and buying crypto-power. It is interesting how the money that was used to buy Beeple’s work was a result of doing business with other pieces of his work. It makes me wonder whether people are buying artwork for its purpose and artistry or for capital gain. The relationship between NFT’s and the real world are a bit hard to discern at the moment.
In the system, there is something called proof of work that is like a little puzzle that the computer solves. The process of “mining” is like a competition of trying to solve puzzles and get a “coin” through mining. There is no federal oversight for the amount of energy consumed by these “mining” endeavors. NFT’s are also not protected as intellectual property. It seems like NFT’s are a danger to many parties but the whole idea of making money off cryptocurrency is a fast and easy gain that people turn to. Furthermore, people don’t try to understand the hidden networking behind it and participate without much conviction.
Before reading these articles, I felt indifferent toward cryptocurrencies because it seemed too difficult for me to understand and something I would never participate in anyway. However, the problems seen in these articles make me wary of the mysterious and unregulated system of cryptocurrencies. I think I would still participate in currencies that are more environmentally friendly, but other factors also concern me such as the deep networking behind the money and use of artists rights.
shurgbread- NFTImmersion
The 3 Truths- Maxwell Step
Still_Life_02-primerrender
Night Shift- Mason London
Elon Musk Collectible-nyI took images that span the spectrum of NFTs. Starting with the piece that I dislike the most is the Elon Musk collectible. There is nothing inherently wrong with collections or archives of cards or books or whatever the collection may be of, but the image is of no interest to tell a story or connect with somebody on a level deeper than a novelty. It is a funny moment in internet history and the piece clearly seems to be just a way to share that reference in a baseball card type of way. The artist does not say anything about Elon or referencing the platform it exists on. I find this weirdly placed against the other 3 images because while the other 3 can exist on somebody’s social media or even an online gallery showing; Elon only makes sense as an NFT baseball card. A gallery of celebrity baseball cards doesn’t provide philosophical or even technical interest beyond the fact that it can only exist as an NFT. The others I have less of an issue with because they use the NFT system as a way to try and make work that they have already sunken practice, time, and overhead into. It is also not lost on me that the majority of the work shown both here and the etherium based platforms are entering the Instagram trend of digital art where there’s a million of the same slick, shiny, highly rendered psychedelic images. While on the other end of the spectrum there are pieces that require no skill at all like a woman eating various fruits in front of a camera. While there are many artists trying to experiment with the in-between etherium based platforms are not interested in placing them front and center.
What I saw on these sites was concerning. Yes, I was able to find meaningful, skillful work that speaks to me such as Night Shift and Still_Life_02. What concerns me is the jarring amount of art that rides the wave of being controversial or trendy and existing only with the new platform because it’s new and flashy and shiny rather than artists who weren’t making money before suddenly given a new opportunity. The big fish are garnering a lot of attention very quickly and many people will enter NFTs and never make their gas fees back. All of this, not even mentioning the ecological side effects is scary.
shrugbread- Animated loop
This is a loop that uses rotations using millis and the animLoop library to increment the rotation. The modulo tool was also used to arrange the units in a checkerboard pattern offset in timing by rotation. There are also circles to squares in the midway points of the canvas. There is a slight visual glitch where the trails made by the rotating objects doesn’t exist when the rotation begins.
minniebzrg-LoopResearch
I really like this particular looping design that David Whyte created because it reminds me of Mongolian patterns. I included a reference image below of a pattern that is pretty common or familiar to me. The interesting thing about this is that not all lines or loops are going at the same speed. The image still loops, however, which is super confusing but intriguing at the same time. I like that in only several instances you can see the pattern so it is never complete.
Cindy Suen created a looping animation based on the song ‘Team’ by Lorde for a performance on The Voice. The production company stated that they were trying this new visual approach’, for the show. This shows how music can be incorporated into the art. While music is an art form itself, I like how Cindy Suen puts another medium of artistry through generating gifs.
Apart from the creative and practical concept of this, I was mindblown at the effortless looping of this specific piece. There is so much ingenuity from the creator because there are so many pieces moving around that it keeps your focus on different parts of the video and entertained for a while.
peatmoss-Exercise04
peatmoss-Exercises03
(: Nested Iteration :
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/dHsan-oGY
Triaaangle-
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/FzHRdaQre
Seven Circles-
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/zMn6XOkdj
Fishstick Sick Flips Simulator 2021-
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/WioXrasjO
Schotter Composition-
Code: https://editor.p5js.org/noonmarkart/sketches/6NS9cRd0W
Monday – Readingo2
Kate Compton’s “10,000 Bowls of Oatmeal Problem” introduces the interesting idea that random generation, over a large set of possible outcomes, can eventually start producing outcomes that lack “perceptual uniqueness,” despite having different, randomized qualities. She described this through an example of 10,000 unique bowls of oatmeal. Although they would all be technically unique in their arrangement of oats, for example, over that large sample size many of the bowls would share many similarities and may only differentiate in one aspect.
In some situations, this phenomenon might actually come in handy, when doing tasks such as random map/environment generation, where one would want the different parts of the map to resemble the other without much noticeable change. In other scenarios, however, such as generating unique 2D designs, one would have to overcome this problem. Possible technical strategies could be to limit the number of possible similar values such that minute differences, although still technically different, wouldn’t fall under the same group visually. Another possibility would be to increase the amount of possible outcomes such that there would be more variation naturally.