Hi-Tech Museum

A tumblr dedicated to artworks found by Bryanna Ward, Kristen Wakamoto, Nathaniel Valerio, Philip West

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Title: Point Cloud

Author: James Leng

Post by: Nathaniel Valerio

Point Cloud is an Arduino structure created by James Leng that seeks to produce an artistic approach with regards to our daily interaction with weather data. Point Cloud is based upon the premise that weather is continually surprising us in our attempts to predict and control its various elements. Point Cloud consists of a sculptural form that is composed of thin wire mesh that is controlled asynchronously via an open source microcontroller called Adruino. The sculpture has its speed, smoothness, and direction of rotation adapted to a live feed of weather data. Instead of expressing numerical and concrete values, Point Cloud physically performs the data in which it constantly changes its form by shifting between stability and turbulence and expansion and contraction.

[hi-tech-museum]

Title: Liquid Space

Artist: Daan Roosengaarde

Post by: Kristen Wakamoto

Liquid Space is an interactive artpiece that reacts to people's behaviors. The artpiece itself can get smaller and bigger and flash different colors according to sounds and movements.  As like his other works, he emphasizes the interaction between his work and the viewer and allows them to create their own experiences with his artwork. He allows for experimentation as they can see first hand what happens with different sounds and movements they might possibly make. This artwork was first showcased in Japan in 2008 and most recently was shown in London, February of this year. This piece was made out of "tubes, sensors, LEDs, mechanism, embedded electronics and software." The atmosphere with interactive arts creates a different "futuristic" feel for people as people interact with the technology and create their own experience. Roosengaarde states that he wanted to "refine the technology so that it is invisible and interaction with the work is experienced as something natural" (V2).

References:

http://www.v2.nl/archive/works/liquid-space-6.0

[hi-tech-museum]

Title : Phototropia

Author: Manuel Kretzer

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Post By: Nathaniel Valerio

       Phototropia is a self-sustainable installation that was created by the Master of Advanced Studies class at the Chair for CAAD and was supervised by Professor Manuel Kretzer. This project was a response towards aspects of tremendous globalization, increased connectivity and digital identity. In creating such an autonomous installation, Kretzer produced an experimental architectural structure that can decay but at the same time be actively renewed.  Phototropia is an art piece that is composed of self- made smart materials.  It integrates such materials such as self-made electro-active polymers, screen printed electroluminescent displays, eco-friendly bio plastics and thin-film dye-sensitized solar cells into an installation that creates its required energy from sunlight. The project is user-interactive in which it responds to user presence through moving and illuminating elements.

[hi-tech-museum]

Hi-Tech Museum 

Artist: James Alliban and Keiichi Matsuda

Title: Cell

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Artists James Alliban and Keiichi Matsuda created this Interactive Media Installation called Cell.  This installation uses a blacked-out screen and four Xbox Kinect cameras to replicate up to eight viewer’s body image and movement at once. The viewer’s mirrored silhouette's are randomly tagged with personality traits. This gives the audience fictional personalities. These traits are randomly mined from cyber profiles that internet users have created. The purpose of this piece is to draw attention to the online phenomenon that people create fictional personas for themselves through online social media sites that don’t actually reflect who they are. This piece was created for the Alpha-Ville festival in 2011. It is now displayed on James Alliban's Website.

Post By: Bryanna Ward

[hi-tech-museum]

Hi-Tech Museum

Piece:Deep Walls

Artist: Scott Sona Snibbe

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This piece, Deep Walls, was created by Scott Sona Snibbe.  It is an interactive installation that consists of a camera and a large rectangular television screen that is divided into sixteen smaller rectangular screens.  As a viewer walks in front of this screen, his or her shadows are unknowingly recorded, making every viewer a participant in this work of art.  After their shadows leave the sight of the camera, the screen plays looping videos of their silhouettes on one of the sixteen screens.  Their recording will be replaced after sixteen new viewers silhouettes are recorded.  Deep Walls incorporates the audience and challenges their spectatorship, making them part of the creative process.  This piece, first created in 2003, has been displayed in various museums from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2003 to the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2008.  It is now displayed online on Snibbe's website.

Post By: Bryanna Ward

[hi-tech-museum]

Title: Mood Meter

Artists: Javier Hernandez and M. Ehsan Hoque

Post by: Kristen Wakamoto

Mood Meter, created by two graduate students Javier Hernandez and M. Ehsan Hoque, is  an installation that shows the overall mood the of MIT community by gauging people's smiles through four different cameras placed all throughout the campus. It was used during MIT's Festival of Art, Science, and Technology to oversee the mood of the event. This real-time data enabled the artists to answer crucial questions about happiness and its value to the community as a whole. Using this information, they placed this data on graphs in order to see people's moods from different parts of the campus and compare them. This installation consisted of cameras, projectors, and different software and algorithms that allowed them to recognize faces and smiles and place smiley faces and sad faces on top of the different faces that were shown in the camera and project these onto a screen. They also integrated a website that allowed visitors to the site to see the four different areas that the cameras were installed in.

[hi-tech-museum]

Title: LG Plasma Arc Display Panel - Burn Baby Burn 

Artist: Aussie50

Hi-Tech Museum Artwork posted by Philip West

This video created by Aussie 50, a youtube user, explores the beauty of taking technology that is used everyday, and created an interesting spectacle through the means of destruction. The best TV used happened to be an LG TV, other brands shortcircuted and were rendered useless. This is created by connecting a HV (High Voltage) output transformer to the cables in the edge of the panel. The destruction of this TV is different and mesmerizing mostly because no person would ever think to do such a thing to a TV, yet Aussie 50 did just that and created the artwork seen here. 

[hi-tech-museum]

Title: de/Rasta - Oscillographic Synthesizer and Computer Interface

Artist: Kyle Evans

Hi-Tech Museum Artwork posted by Philip West

Kyle Evans made this artwork possible with the use of an old cathode ray tube television, more commonly known as the tube TV. This performative art takes a simple TV and turns it into a piece of technology that allows the user to manipulate the sounds along with the oscillator combinations of the TV. Overall creating a performance that audiences have never seen before. This artwork is derived from both the oscillator concept of Ben Laposky and electromagnetic work created by Nam June Paik. The electromagnetic effect is the main cause of the disruption of the sounds and oscillator combination. The ability to remove this tube TV out of its normal means of use has created an interesting artistic spectacle only seen here. 

[hi-tech-museum]

Our Mission Statement

The mission of the Hi-Tech Museum is to provide an enriching and collaborative experience that seeks to inspire and promote creativity. Being foregrounded in versatility, we seek to push the boundaries of traditional art. We advocate innovation and seek to create an environment where ideas and opinions can be freely expressed. This will allow visitors to our museum to use their imagination when engaging with the art pieces in order to drive creativity. For this reason, each piece will first be presented for the viewer to analyze and interpret on their own.  A full description involving the creator's name, title of work, purpose, and process will be provided below each piece, after the viewer has had a chance to examine the piece on their own. Our hope is to familiarize art lovers with a variety of software and technologies employed to create new media artworks. As a modern museum, we seek to bridge the gap between traditional art and new media art, inevitably producing a combination of exhibits that appeals to audiences of all generations. It is our duty as a museum to implement cultural solidarity to promote art as something that not only inspires us as individuals but also binds us together as a community. We challenge viewers' spectatorship by providing both physical and virtual galleries that contain interactive pieces. We seek to incorporate the audience in many of the artworks, making them a part of the creative process. Museum visitors with little knowledge of arts and science can improve themselves by walking into the Hi-Tech Museum and appreciating modern and contemporary art, such as sound art installations and interactive displays. We are a museum that values all aspects of an exhibit and therefore we are adamant in our efforts to enrich our audience. We seek to educate the majority not only in the conventional aspects of our exhibits but in their history and inspiration. It is our aspiration to be open sourced in which we are accessible to everyone, whether through a physical or virtual environment.  For this reason, our exhibit is completely free for our viewers. People should feel like home at the Hi-Tech Museum because they can use computers and monitors to check out software-based artworks and look up answers to frequently asked questions regarding biography of artists and underlying technologies of products. Active spectators whose curiosity is aroused should come up with interesting ideas out of artworks they have seen and give feedback to the museum in person and through our online surveys. The Hi-Tech Museum is a community-based institution. We are dedicated in satisfying the artistic needs and demands of our community. We encourage viewers to create different interactions with the artworks they discover. We live to inspire and teach art. We hope to continue to educate, inspire, and entertain individuals of all ages as well as regional and international communities by providing audio tours and spreading free online art videos. In return, we hope to assert ourselves as an institution that is dedicated in displaying all forms of art that embodies the qualities of creativity and innovation.