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PROPOSED CREATIVE INTERACTIVE PROJECT

My proposed interactive media art piece would be an installation that illustrates the violence of animal agriculture. I would have podiums set up, one with a hamburger, one with a glass of milk, one with an omelette, etc. Each would have a weight detector, so when lifted by a participant it would launch a projection in the room that graphically illustrates the cruelty that went into the production of the product they have chosen. In alternation, to also demonstrate the environmental impacts of animal agriculture, a projection that illustrates the amount of water that is used in the production of the product. Thus, these images would differ from one viewer to another depending on which product they chose as well as at what time they chose it, while still communicating the importance of these issues in different ways and to different people.

05. Questions: Artificial... Intelligence or Stupidity?

What Last class we looked at works by Myron Krueger as well as woks by David Rokeby. What were the common concerns that motivated the 2 artists to develop their work and what type of work was it. Describe the similarities and divergences of their installations.

to be answered

Describe the work of Ken Feingold. what was hes comment on Artificial intelligence.

Feingold’s work seeks to deliberately disturb the interaction between the user and the computer, he wants to annoy the user.

The installation Yuppy ghetto with watchdog was radically different in the way it used interactivity. Describe how this installation used interactivity to involve participation of the audience in a sort of theatrical set up.

to be answered

#question

05. Notes

Roy Ascott - “The Cybernetic Vision in Art”

Changes in technology = Changes in values

the artist is faced with 2 possibilities: either continue to do their art without acknowledging changes OR face the realities and explore these changes within their art.

Ken Feingold

seeing the relationship between user & computer as a symbiotic affair

deliberately disturbs the possibility of one to one interaction between user and computer, seeks to annoy the user.

JCJ Junkman

puppet head w/ buttons flying around. each button has a sound effect when clicked.

user is interacting & getting annoyed

Hell (2013)

two cybernetic machines having a conversation. each has a personality and conversation seems logical until response become repetitive and never-ending.

Martin Spanjaard

Adelbrecht (1992)

Robotic ball, thought it was a god.

Interrupts human conversations with mumbling and imposing itself

Irritating & Uncannny, “Artificial Stupidity”

David Rokeby

Very Nervous System (1988)

third generation of interactive sound installation, movements of the body create sound and interaction

Wants to go against the way the computer if functionning

Controlling or free? Controls the intention, but there is freedom in how that intention is achieved

The Giver of Names

analyzes objects through shape & colour and spits out sentences inspired by the analysis.

creates very unconventional sentences

Border Patrol, collab w/ Paul Garrin

interested in walls and bordes (Koreas, Berlin Wall, Mexico-US border)

cameras follow you around the exhibition in a way that you are always looking into the camera.

Paul Garrin

politically active Video Artist

“Yuppie Ghetto with Watchdog” (1990)

#notes

04. Questions

The Architecture Machine Group was a group directed by Nicholas Negroponte, who also founded Wired magazine, that studied issues of communication between humans and machine, interfaces that allow the user to manage lots of data and the idea of machines controlling their environment.

The ArcMac took on the name of the MIT Media Lab in 1985, and grew to be one of the most innovative and important labs in the field of technology, multimedia, sciences, art and design. The SEEK project studied the benefits of computers in urban environments. The project consisted of Gerbils who were placed in an environment of plexiglass blocs that were continuously rearranged by robotic arms. The behaviour of the gerbils was observed as they reacted to the changing environment.

Negroponte contributed with Alan Kay to present to the world the One Laptop Per Child Project. This project seeked to

#question

04. Notes

Nicholas Negroponte

Launched MIT Media Lab in 1985

Funded “Wired” magazine & wrote columns for it

Founded MIT Architecture Machine Group (1968), which studied issues of communication between human and machines, interfaces that allow users to manage lots of data. *The department of Defense helped to fund this research. This group grew to become the MIT Media Lab.

The intention with the Architecture Machine Group was to create a machine that would generate architecture. Out of this came out “SEEK” in 1970, who’s goal was to control the environment.

SEEK: studies the benefits of computers in urban environments. Gerbils were placed in an environment of plexiglass blocs that were rearranged by robotic arms. The behaviour of the gerbils was observed as they reacted to the changing environment.

Looking art the dehumanizing effects of computers intensifying the dehumanizing effects on urban environment.

“If we want an optimized urban environment we would have to do it in conversation with a machine.” Negroponte

Allan Kay

“The key to progressive civilization is cooperation.”

Computer era is similar to the revolution of the print press, but we are at the point where we don’t use them to their full potential.

we only use computers for its secondary ability to imitate old media, instead of using it for science and creating new medias.

the economy doesn’t want consumers to learn about new technology so products focus only on imitating old media instead of presenting new media.

To identify if we can call this “age of computers” a revolution we need to ask ourselves: Are things better now than they were before?

#notes

04. Project Proposal: Wafaa Bilal

The artist I will be presenting for the mini-lesson is Wafaa Bilal. Bilal, born in 1966 Iraq, is known internationally for his online performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and international dynamics. He is also an Associate Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

His work is mostly centered around international politics and dynamics, specifically by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds – his home in the “comfort zone” of the U.S. and his consciousness of the “conflict zone” in Iraq. The Internet is a big part of Bilal’s platform, and he also uses his own body as a medium. Bilal seeks to challenge the viewer out of their comfort zone and face them with realities that are more sensitive through his subject matter that centers war, conflict zones, and double standards within eastern and western culture. The fact that his work is interactive pushes this discomfort even further as it puts the viewer in the center of these political statements, which is different than the works we have seen in class so far, which mostly focused the interactivities on the viewer adding creative components to the work.

Presentation Outline

· Bilal’s Approach to Interactivity (techniques, mediums, philosophy…)

· The statements he makes through his interactive works

o Iraqi politics

o International dynamics

o War, and more…

· Significant works and their specific interactivites, their messages, their impacts

o Domestic Tension

o and Counting…

o 3rdi

o Technoviking

o Maybe more as I continue my research.

Guiding Questions

· How are Bilal’s works interactive?

· What is Bilal’s approach to interactivity?

· What is he trying to communicate through his work?

· Why does he choose to make interactive media art?

Key Words

Wafaa Bilal + Interactive, Iraq, Internet art, Iraq war, NYU, Tisch School of Arts, Iraqi-American, Interactivity, Youtube, Installation, Twitter, Online, Interactive Media art, Performance, Installation, Family, Brother, Death, Al Qaeda…

Bibliography

Wafaa Bilal, Official Website, http://wafaabilal.com/, 2016.

Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun, Wafaa BILAL, Kari LYDERSEN, 2008.

Wafaa Bilal, Official Youtube Account, https://www.youtube.com/user/mewafaa.

How Popular Media Misrepresented a Controversial Artist, Monica LABELLE,http://fnewsmagazine.com/wp/2008/04/wafaa-bilal/, 2008.

#minilesson

03. Questions: AI vs Cybernetics

Cybernetics and AI are similar in the way that they both stem from the concept of intelligent machines. Both fields seek to recreate a mechanical brain, but the difference between them is how these machines process the information. AI seeks to interact with the world as it is, and processes information that is given to it. Cybernetics, on the other hand, wants to interact with the world to achieve goals, and processes information from more than one source. Allan Turing first hypothesized a universal machine in a paper in 1936. He also came up with the Turing Test, or Imitation Game, which is a test to detect artifical intelligence. ELIZA is the first machine that is said to have passed the Turing Test.

#question

03. Notes

Realism: World is one way, in one objective state. The world is discovered, we interact with the world as it is. (AI)

Constructivism: Shared understanding of how the world is. The world is invented, we interact with the world to achieve goals. (Cybernetics)

As humans we learn from more than one teacher, more than one book...

Similarly, in cybernetics machines learn from more sources than just the designer.

Allan Turing

1936: hypothesized a universal machine

1950: invented the test for artificial intelligence “the imitation game”.

#notes

03. Presentation prep

Our ‘kubik’ concept inspirits spaces with an arrangement of water tanks, light shows and electronic beats. Stacked up tank-walls illuminated in different colours are composed to a piece of stunning architecture, which interacts with the music and mood of the audience.

Since 2006 the ‘kubik’ idea has been celebrated in over 22 cities and transformed for audiences from 200 - 8000. This synaesthetic concept and unique object of design generates a vibrant sensation for the audience and has been celebrated in the following cities:

Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona, Berlin, Bucharest, Eindhoven, Frankfurt, Dubai, Warsaw, Lausanne, Milan, Hamburg, Larz…

Who? Balestra Berlin, launched in 2006.

Title: Kubik

Year & Place: Launched in Berlin in 2006, and since then has been reinstalled in many cities across the world.

Interactivity: The interaction in this piece works with the music playing and the mood of the audience, as the changing colors set a new tone to the environment of the installation. Furthermore this installations in itself is an event and people gather to experience it collectively.

Appreciation: This piece particularly attracted me because when I first saw I thought to myself, I want to experience this. I love the idea of color and sound interacting together and setting the mood for the audience, rather than the audience creating the mood themselves. Creativity challenging our behaviour rather than our behaviour challenging creativity is a concept I very much enjoy.

http://balestraberlin.com/

http://www.ecue.com/references/themed-entertainment/kubik-installation.html

http://design-milk.com/kubik-installation-in-berlin/

#presentation

02. Film Questions

What Pask associates interaction with in the human behaviour is dancing.

The musicolor machine is a performance oriented system where a musician plays a melody which triggers a system that shines colored lights on a screen. While the musicin interacts with the system, the machine “listens” to the key he stays in and switches the color system to a different key, promoting the player to follow it across the board and play different frequencies.

He says that collaboration is comparable to love, amity.

The interactivity in cybernetics is more of a continuous looping of the messages between the two subjects where as AI works more in a way that receives a message, processes it and transmits it back, without much continuity in the interaction.

Light reacts to the frequency of what is typed and stays lit up as long the frequency stays consistant.

Oblivescence is the intentional avoidance of learning.

#question

02. Notes

”Defining Interactivity

Non-Interactive: when message is not related to previous message

Reactive: related to only one previous message

Interactive: when there is a relationship between many messages

Interactive Art

Art that involves the spectator in a way that gives the artwork its purpose, VS traditional art, where the interaction is purely mental. Requires an action from the viewer.

In some interactive artworks the machine and the audience work together in a dialogue. So, no interaction = no experiencing the artwork

Proto Interactive Objects

Zoetrope

Mutoscope

Kinetoscope

Music Box

Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, Rotary Glass Plates and With Hidden Noise considered one of first modern interactive artworks. “The artwork is not complete without the perception of the viewer.”

Happenings (1950s-60s)

Began as a challenge to Futurists & Dadaists, turning into performance art movements. Required viewers to actively participate in each piece, with the belief that “art could be brought into the realm of everyday life.”

Involvement of the viewer

Concept of the ephemeral

Confront & dismantle conventional views

John Cage, Allan Kaprow

Cybernetics

“The scientific study of control & communication in the animal and the machine.” Norbert Wiener “The art of effective organisation.” “The art & science of manipulating defendable metaphors” Gordon Pask “The art of interaction in a dynamic network”

Gordon Pask

“Learning to learn.” Devises his own learning machines (CASTE), “not interested in what the conversation is about but how it is taking place.”

Colloquy of Mobiles, 1968. Cybernetic Serendipity. “Through cybernetic machines we will find things that go beyond our expectations.”

#notes

01. Interactivity in Habigrame Télétude and Turcot: La route devenue architecture

In Habigram Télétude the interactivity is the whole piece itself. The hanging jackets invite the users to wear them, which is the first level of interaction. Then what happens is that the movement the users make in the jackets create another level of interactivity where the movement affects the video projection. As the users move around in the jacket to locate where the cameras are or how they are affecting the video projection, it creates a whole interactive cycle where the user interacts with the jacket, the movement interacts with the video projection and so on, causing the user to interact with all three mediums at once, the jacket, the movement, the video projection.

In Turcot: La route devenue architecture the interactivity happens in a series of steps between the user, the sculpture and the video feed. The users interacts with the puzzle-like sculpture of the turcot interchange, rebuilding it by moving the pieces around. The changes are then reflected in a video representation of the real-life interchagne on the dome-like ceiling, which gives the user a sense of reality. This then promotes more interaction with the puzzle pieces and gives the users a feeling of hands-on productivity, similar to being their own architect.

#question

01. Defining Interactivity

To me interactivity revolves around the concept of action and reaction. For something to be interactive, there needs to be an action, posed by one subject, that produces a reaction in the opposing subject, and so on. This leads to two (or more) subjects sharing these reactions between them and creating an interaction. In this light, interactive media are media-based subjects that produce reactions in an external user.This leads to the users responding to the media subject and creating this interaction between media-user and media-software.

#question

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