CART351: Week 9

This third project took me a while to get a good developed idea. After going through all the numerous data possibilities, I decided to use slides (des disapositives) since my parents kept shoe boxes full of them. The slides I took date to before I was born, pictures my mother took. I thought it would be interesting to use older data instead of taking my own pictures with no purpose behind them and get them put into slides. They are pictures that both my mother and father took before and after they met around my age.

Following the idea of using slides as my collected data, I attached them into a curtain. I got inspired from other projects done with slides like lamps/lights. Returning to the idea of the curtain, it is to be placed inside a home and not in a public place to show the privacy of the images. When the curtains are closed, it brings the viewer close up in this personal and private space. Though when the curtains are open, you get a sense of the more social side of the piece but also becomes more of an object(curtain) than actual pictures (slides).

I used a total of 140 slides. I had to drill in 8 holes on each slide and tie them each with individual piece of string. It is a very long and tedious process that takes patience but I am happy about the result.

CART345: Week 9

Readings:

Simonowski. "Digital Literature: Interview with Noah Wadrip-Fruin".

Wadrip-Fruin. Screen (video), Talking Cure.

Utterback and Archituv. TextRain.

Knuth. "The Concept of a Meta-Font", pp. 289 - 295 of Ch. 15 in Digital Typography

The first text is really short but the main focus is on Noah Wadrip-Fruin's work including writings. I own the book the New Media Reader but I had not noticed before that he had edited a few of them and collaborated on others. A few of the links on the text were disfunctional, though I was able to see his piece called "Taking Cure" which is really a compelling work with enthralling visuals. Noah seems to have futuristic yet aesthetic view of the digital/new media world in his few writings.

The second link posted shows two of Noah's works. I would love to try out his piece called "Screen" since the user is almost inside the text itself. Interactive text along with a virtual world creates an even more fascinating experience for the users.

Following these works by Noah is Utterback and Archituv's piece called "Text Rain". It is a very serene interactive piece using text that falls on whatever is in front of the screen. It employs a different interaction in comparison to Noah's work because the text falls rather than already being placed on the screen(s). I find this interactive typography to be quite beautiful and really simple visually but works conceptually.

Interactive Typography : this website is an interesting and interactive way of learning about typographies.

I stumbled across this piece and found it really beautiful both visually and with the motion. The way is moves with the person interacting is almost flawless. Very creative interactions.

CART345: Week 8

Response and reaction to readings:

Maeda. Creative Code, pp. 81 - 95. [W]

Cho. Ch. 3 of Computational Models for Expressive Dimensional Typography.Alphabet Zoo, Letterscapes, Wordscapes.

The reading, as well as the letterscape and wordscape, showed good examples of what we can do for our upcoming project. It is nice to see someone create three dimensional letters in a different way that simply using boxes and spheres and linear edges but rather beveled extrusions and smoother looking. From a two dimensional shape to a sculptural form, he gave a personality to each one of the letters. The Letterscape project, I enjoyed playing around with it and trying it out, finding it to be quite creative since each letter is represented differently when clicked on. As for the Wordscrape, it is a continuation of Letterscape whereas they created different environments for the letters and form a one word poem. The interaction is with the mouse that reveals denotations and connotations of of words. It is built with processing, making it amusing and visually appealing to look at.

Muller. For All Seasons.

This seems like a very beautiful piece but I was not able to view it. From the images, it looks like an interactive piece with a wide range of visuals. I would of liked to know what program or language he used for the making of this typographic work. It amazes me how much can be done with just words and give them a whole new meaning. The first two images which look like grass are quite beautiful which means he must have really accomplished what we originally had in mind.

Here are two compelling links that I found with interactive pieces except most of them are analog. It is impressive to see the difference between the digital and analog as well.

Miles Blanco

Generator.x

CART351: Week 7

Response to reading:

"Database as symbolic form" - Lev Manovich

Continuing with the subject of database, this text begins by explaining in detail what are the different types of databases. The title comes from his idea of the database of the computer age as a new way of structuring our experience of ourselves and the world. This text really surprised me at how much one can talk about databases and the different types such as ones in movies (computer-based). There is a range of possibilities offered by the camera which is what makes it so rich in content. Vertov was able to merge database and narrative into a new form, and pushes this for other artists about to experiment with this.

Data Visualization

CART351: Week 6

Readings -

"Dreams of a New Medium" - by Aden Evans

This text slightly relates to last weeks readings about the computer and databases but this text by Aden Evans is a bit more complicating. I am having difficulty following what he is talking about with web 1.0 to 2.0, therefore it is hard for me to picture what he is discussing about visually. When he talks about virtual reality, it is unclear because I have read Baudrillard's text on virtual reality and cyberspace where he explains a different version of VR and its other facets. Thus, what exactly does he mean by VR?

If I am understanding correctly this text, he wants to erase the gap separating the user and the computer. He plunges into this historical methodology by examining web 2.0 in terms of both the medial and the ways that it generates a different relation to mediation. Like many new media technical dreams, his idea of web 2.0 evokes a desire for immediacy. Also, the Web then "becomes a reflexive nest of perspectives on itself". So far, this is the most I have gotten out of the understanding of this text. I would of liked it if he would of explained more in detail what he meant by dream of the digital or technical dreams, is it how people want to interact with the Web? Nonetheless, this was still an interesting text to read but I wish I would of understood it better.

CART351: Week 5 (Project)

Php Project 1.2:

Since I did not know nor understand php, I decided to pair up with katherine. We came up with plenty of ideas of what we wanted to do, what data to use but when we started trying to do it, nothing worked. We decided to finally keep it simple and do our best by creating a search engine specifically for Flickr data. You type in whatever keyword you'd like and press click, it will show you all the Flickr images that have that keyword tagged in it. We wrote the code so that only 99 pictures show up since it will lag if there are too many photos. It is pretty simple but we are happy we managed to make something work. The data may not be the most insightful but it is interesting to see what random images come up with whatever keyword of phrase you type in considering Flickr images are photos that people posted themselves on their page.

Here is the link:

Flickr Search Engine

CART345: Week 6

Response/Review of Readings:

• Bolter. “Seeing and Writing”, ch. 47, pp. 679 – 690 in the New Media Reader. [W]

Bolter developed a concept of writing space which he explained in this text. He shows how the acts of storing and displaying text that are inseparable, are now torn apart by technology, thus coming up with new ways of dealing with and understand text. The media infiltrate the act of writing, resulting in creating their own necessity as media. I found it to be a very complex and detailed text, and he does prove a point because digital media has completely modified the way we perceive writing and how we write as well. Bolter suggests that seeing is not so innocent, nor are subjectivities so stable.

• Vanderlans and Licko. "Ambition, Fear".

I think it is important to know the different methods for which designers and artist use digital media for their work. New media is constantly evolving, leaving no room for boredom for these designers. Since we are just beginning to explore all the facets of the computer and its capabilities, the work that generates from these artists almost resembles caveman paintings. As mentioned in the text, "we are once again faced with evaluating the basic rules of design that we formerly took for granted". In order to create a design using the computer nowadays, one most know both specifically and formally what to use and what not to do. Thus, this is an exciting time for designers to create different types in the abyss of new media.

To check: Nick Sherman Design


This video does not really relate to the texts but I thought it was a nice addition to what can be done with letters in an analog form and how typography can be manipulated to represent something else:



This is also a different way of playing around with typography, mainly letters in this video, quite beautiful. The background sound is the voice of someone saying the letters that are being placed:




Lastly, here is a very powerful text about language relating to the project we are currently working on:

CART351: Week 5

Reading Responses:

- Michel Foucault. Discipline & Punish (1975), Panopticism

I had read the text "Docile Bodies" by Foucault in my CART theory class last semester which I thought was very interesting, and we compared it to Deleuze's "Postscript on Control Societies". In Discipline and Punish, Foucault focuses on historical documents but his issues become relevant in modern day society. He exams the social mechanisms of change that occured in the prison systems where he challenges the idea of prisons are being a form of punishment. Similar to the Docile Bodies chapter, he focuses mainly on the body and power where the prison is a form of discipline like schools and hospitals. The system creates disciplinary environments to create none delinquents and a controlled body. In all, Foucault says that discipline creates "docile bodies", bodies that function in factories, military's and schools.

Following this idea, the "Panopticon" relates to Foucault's theory of a disciplined body by designing a prison where all prisoners are under surveillance without knowing when they are being watched. Jeremy Bentham created this with the idea of power in mind; cheaper prison with less staff, and the observer would have all the power. Foucault invoked the idea in his text by refering to the Panopticon as a metaphor for modern disciplinary societies where there focus is on observing and normalizing.

- The database as a genre of new media by Lev Manovich

This text makes a good point when stating that the computer age tells no story, rather it is an accumulation of individual items with each the same significance. The author goes through the different types of digital storage medias and how the Internet constantly grows forming new links. Then he moves on to talking about a different kind of new media such as video games that follow no database logic, instead, they are ruled by another logic. Hence the term algorithm is introduced. This is where the player must execute an algorithm in order to win. All in all, computer culture does not have the same status as database and narrative. In some way, all new media objects are databases because they organize material on different levels.

- The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science Computing: Cultural Analytics an interview with Manovich.

Briefly, in response to this article,

- William Gibson on Google - nyt

We are use to being cradled by search engines but we forget that they are only tools and need us in order to function. "We perceive much of our world through [Google]", this statement is quite powerful and discouraging when we think people can't think for themselves. It is true that we never imagined artificial intelligence to look like Google where empires and nation-states use to be the evolving structural unit, except they were not being the center of human like perception. This text also refers to the first article about Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon design since it is a metaphor in digital surveillance but does not really suit an entity like Google. They are both two difference kinds of human surveillance. I do agree with the author of this article when he states: "Nor do I take much comfort in the thought that Google itself would have to be trusted never to link one’s sober adulthood to one’s wild youth, which surely the search engine, wielding as yet unimagined tools of transparency, eventually could and would do".