A.

"ARTISTIC SURVIVAL RELIES SOLEY ON CONSTANT DOCUMENTATION" - Jenny Holzer

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Random(poety);

Amelia Carter, 2015

What stated out as a grand idea about the power - both real and perceived - of our word choices, and the sense of autonomy that we feel when we write, speak, think, or are creative, became a very simple poetry bot. Different keys are assigned different parts of speech - N for nouns, V for verbs, etc - even punctuation! As you type using these keys, random words are drawn to the screen, giving you limited control over the content of your poem, only the very basic form. As some of us may not remember all the parts of speech from when we learned them in elementary school, the help! button at the bottom of the screen contains a full index, as well as some helpful basic grammar reminders. 

Also as you type the line length changes, creating a different poem with every keystroke. Whenever you feel your poem is done, you can hit the enter key and a jpg labeled “myPoem” will be created in the processing folder. In a perfect system, perhaps even a web based one, you would have the option to share this jpg to your Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook. 

In an even more perfect word, the sets of words you would be pulling from would be a bit more specific, perhaps from Wittgenstein, or Marx, or even from a source of the users choosing. Controlled randomness in writing and creative work generally has always been of great interest to those who make such work, and hopefully Random(poetry); can help explore that even more with future iterations. 

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Category Midterm Project: Visualizing Time

When presented with this project the first thing I thought of was this clock I found by chance a few years ago and have kept book marked ever since - the slowly changing and repetitive gradient is strangely soothing. I wanted to play with color and time in a similar way with my own clock, hence the slowly changing colors over the course of the day. I was also really interested in the ritual of winding old pocket watches, how the clockwork itself changes over the day and has to be reset. That’s why the size of the actual clock face keeps growing all 24 hours. The background of course also changes, using colors of the day and night skies to fade between. Ideally this fade would be timed to real-time sunrise/set data and there would be more things happening in the background that give you an idea of the weather outside but that gets into dealing with weather sites APIs, and I wasn’t sure exactly how to do that in relation to this project. Hopefully I can add those later, because 5:00PM in December feels a lot different than 5:00PM in July, which I want to be able to express. 

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Future Self, 2012

Aluminium, custom electronics, Metrilus 3D cameras, LEDs, brass rods

1200 x 1500 x 3450 mm

MADE space, Berlin

supported by ABSOLUT Vodka

While there is definitely a performance component to the initial concept of this piece, there is also a great chance for audience interaction once the dancers and musicians have left. Anyone can stand in front of the sensors and interact with the layered curtains of light, as we can see at the end of the video. The code has taken into account movements on all sides, so as to make it easily accessible to anyone in the audience. As it says on their website “viewers are bound together –in the moment– as an ethereal, illuminated presence.”

The main force behind the piece was the studio rAndom, as well as with the help of choreographer Wayne McGregor and scored by Max Richter for the performance aspects. It was commissioned by MADE space, who brought everyone together. It was said that the code took at least a month and I believe around another month to get everything working properly with the hardware. McGregor then worked with his dancers and the work for a few weeks - to get the hang of such complex algorithms and how they wanted to interact with them.  

I can’t be 100% sure how the code was created, but it definitely seems like something that would be done from scratch in the Processing environment. rAndom has done some other similar works before, however, so they may have used bits and pieces from their own original code. 

When I first saw Future Self I immediately thought of artificial intelligence, and this work as a way of giving them a less artificial platform on which to exist. Stuart Wood was correct when he said there is something special about the use of light to mimic life, and even more so when you see two forms, representing two people standing on opposite sides of the piece interacting. This interaction was the most interesting part for me, and would be amazing to see replicated by an A.I. on the one side and a physical human on the other. 

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Silly String Color Space, 2015

Made using the Processing Environment 

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Silly String Color Space (2015, Processing)

A Generative Art Piece using Bezier curves an way too many variables. Randomness is your friend.  

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Code and The Critical Engineering Manifesto Response

Before college, I was under the impression that all Engineers and Computers Scientists had turned to Math and Cold Hard 1s and 0s so as to hide their abysmal writing ability beneath lines of code and formulas. Now, of course, I know that I shouldn’t be surprised when someone can write as eloquently about learning to code as Charles Petzold, or that an Engineering manifesto can read like poetry, but I still marvel at it. After just reading the Communist Manifesto for another class, I greatly appreciate how modernly this declaration of policy is written - less than a page of concise bullet points. This is a manifesto for the people, even more than Marx’s. We are all Critical Engineers, weather we be Artists, or Scientists, or just everyday problem solvers. Everything is a machine, as #6 explains. 

We are all Critical Engineers, and just by means of communication, Coders, and that gives me some hope for this class.

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Sunny Day: PVA15 Week 2 Assignment 

Character, Mrs. S wears rose tinted glasses but still doesn’t find the world very fun, not until you click your mouse anyway! 

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unnamed soundsculpture from Daniel Franke on Vimeo.

This was one of the most interesting things I saw made in the Processing environment - not necessarily because of its content, but because of the implications of how you can use the system. I’d be very interested in seeing how something like this could work in connection with things like the Oculus Rift or in real time. 

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true inspiration