Final thoughts:

• impossible to find a visual artist i like (it’s mostly performance artists / choreographers / composers that i can think of – see below)
• a new program for graphic design – tear up the syllabus and write your own RTP?
• so i did a little reflection
• main thing – the idea of “form driven content” // get to know your materials // why do it

My own takeouts / thoughts from each class:

pattern (vera monar)

• hand computation vs computer
• plotter aesthetics
• how to use eyes better and not be restricted by default parameters and linear change

geometry (john and james whitney)

• threshold of perception*
• how to derive feelings from geometry
• sine wave as change engine

typography (muriel cooper)

• letters as more than static shapes
• letters interactivity
• form and animation vs. meaning
• how to read* – https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbuhevmpajcjda2/Bruno-Munari-The-Shape-of-Words-and-Poems-and-Telegrams-in-Design-as-Art-1971.pdf?dl=0

pixels (ken knowlton)

• pixel kernels (for blurring and sharpening) / dilation, erosion
• dithering
  
• image making technology*

image (jason salavon)

• videos / series of images / sorting images
• images as information* (titanic average frame color)
• averaging / mod

body (myron krueger)

• virtual body, reduced body
• what interaction does digital bodies allow?
• manipulation of time (delay) / space (scale)

glitch

• glitch != glitch aesthetics
• what is an image essentially*
• (still don’t understand jpeg)
• canvas to data url https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLCanvasElement/toDataURL

deformation

• slitscan http://www.flong.com/texts/lists/slit_scan/

Final reading:

https://flatjournal.com/cfp

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

—Walter Benjamin on Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus from Theses on the Philosophy of History, 1940

“What new cultures are emerging through the use of these media? What does it mean to be “socially” distant? And in a socially distant society, where does the burden of social responsibility fall and fail? How will media technology, and/or the related arts, change as a result of this halt?”

Implementation from class:

• Drone Tracking – Petri Dish – https://vimeo.com/440862215 // to be developed into live tracking system for outdoor performance

• Side View – Top View – Shadow Ratio https://vimeo.com/440862128

Artists I’d like to study:

• romeo castellucci (theatre)
  • striking visuals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOv3QsyJG2I
• anne teresa de keersmaeker (choreographer)*
  • algorithmic choreography https://www.rosasdanstrosas.be/en-home/
• georges aperghis (theatre / composer)
  • incorporating generative visuals in live performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biTGIRROgZA

    

    

• pichet klunchun (choreographer)
  • embodies algorithm / train muscle memory
• mark applebaum (composer)
  • composing movement  https://vimeo.com/34303981

Pending relating to class:

• learn about jpeg*
• windows of new york – generative building composition
• screen print layers (how to separate layer?)

More from class:

• pixels mode / min / max / median https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/Julius-Tarng-Recreating-Jason-Salavon–A4REwbIIrujcbNuvWEwcmux_Ag-4fZOUTs7QjrOa7z9mSk6Z
• video / drone
  • pigeons (Jaroslaw Kapuscinski) https://vimeo.com/276069485
  • motor bikes (hiroshi kondo) https://vimeo.com/334092219
  • aerial (Páraic McGloughlin) https://vimeo.com/259989412

*important points

---

 

If I must choose: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

Timing

Structure and choreography

 

Recreation: https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/XHxSMaGV3

An Informal Catalogue of Slit-Scan Video Artworks and Research. Compiled by Golan Levin.

http://www.flong.com/texts/lists/slit_scan/

3D timelapse slitscan

selected sentences from reading –

“Beneath our eyes there is being solved the most complex problem of culture: utilitarian form becomes pure creative form.”

A glitch is a mess that is a moment, a possibility to glance at software’s inner structure, whether it is a mechanism of data compression or HTML code.

A glitch is stunning. It appears as a temporary replacement of some boring conventional surface; as a crazy and dangerous momentum (Will the computer come back to “normal”? Will data be lost?) that breaks the expected flow.

more reading – Rosa Menkman ‘A Vernacular of file formats’: https://www.slideshare.net/r00s/rosa-menkman-a-vernacular-of-file-formats-4923967

lines (try to work with web GL) : https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/sketches/oI3UYiwzw

delay (save frames) : https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/mtj28ttGe

Reading:  dinner with myron http://2005to2007.fabrica.it/waitingforyou/files/dinner_with_myron.pdf

Recreating:

The point is…

I got as far as detecting contours but wanted to do live interaction (between two people, using glitch).

My rendition (video by Pichet Klunchun):
At first wanted to do posenet but didn’t work.

Thai dance = high art // what if pop?

(how to make the colors pop?)

The important part is… getting a clear background

code examples: https://kylemcdonald.github.io/cv-examples/

video source: https://www.facebook.com/pichet.klunchun/videos_by

Sentence from The Shape of Words reading  – “A poem only communicates if read slowly: only then does it have time to create a state of mind in which the images can form and be transformed.”

Other artists mentioned in class: Jacqueline Casey, Ralph Coburn, Dietmar Winkler, Aaron Marcus

Interesting points on Muriel Cooper from this Google Talk by David Reinfurt – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_PGr5d9r7Q

 

The article “Words, Images, Tools and Ideas” would try to fulfil the following criteria:

1. It would make use of the tools, processes and technologies of graphic arts media as directly as possible and the tools would be integrated with concept and product. Many of these are in the workshop. In this case, they include a heavy use of all forms of photography and our computer graphics system for both images and typography
2. The author would be the maker contrary to the specialisation mode which makes the author of the content the author, the author of the form the designer, and the author of the craft the typographer / printer
3. Visual and verbal representation of the ideas would be synthesised rather than separate
4. Time would remain as fluid and immediate as possible, leaving room for feedback and change

Notes and questions regarding concept:

• Emphasise on process
• Mix digital and analog; print room next to dark room
• What does it mean now that we’re on screen? How do we emphasize on process?
  • How do we think in code when code isn’t visual?
  • Do we approach it with the abstraction? e.g. What’s an ‘if’ statement? What’s a for loop? What are the mathematical paradoxes? // Or do we draw/sketch out first?
  • Media is always influenced by medium? // Infinite loop between our perception and medium?
• Muriel Cooper influence on David Reinfurt – Doing the work and being aware of doing the work; interrogating what it means to be doing the work — questions assumptions that exist

Notes and questions regarding technical parts:

• How to get fill of each character? Calculate midpoint between all points?

Recreations

code: https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/sketches/02XfQgoEE

code: https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/sketches/Po4WCKKjL

Rite of Spring cover can only be seen from far away

More reading:

 

Other recommended websites and studios:

https://runemadsen.com/syllabi/programming-design-systems/

https://society6.com/tilmn/prints

This week’s reading:

 

 

Homework

This week’s homework is to recreate some of her work. I especially enjoyed the rectangle series because of their bold and minimalistic qualities. The composition (position and rotation), size, color saturation become very apparent when there is less to look at. As a result I chose to create the studies below.

For this first week I used p5.js

My personal takeout from recreating her work:

• It’s not the expected parameter to change because it’s not to achieve a perfect composition or symmetry
• Wonder if she starts by hand / learning to look closer at what parameters make it feels like she did this by hand?

 

Original:

Copy:

Code (click for variations): https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/GY7pdphNP

Surprising line of code (key ingredient?):

• The random number of squares in each of the 9 squares
• The difference in tightness between columns and rows

Feelings: shakey, vibration, buzzy, much like sound visualisation

 

Original:

Copy:

Code (click for variations): https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/0aVZOZOGV

Surprising line of code (key ingredient?):

• The perception of tightness comes from both sizes and positions, how to balance?

Feelings: abstracted waves, order in chaos, trying to make sense

 

Original:

Copy:

Code (click for variations): https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/9RMKkrqUM

Feelings: cracked, movement, unstable, trying to hold together

 

Original:

Copy:

Code (click for variations): https://editor.p5js.org/hellonun/present/JmoBStcKy

Feelings: overwhelming, pattern finding, lost, dizzy

 

Original:

Copies:

Feelings (very different for each variation): 1 watching it fall, 2 chasing, 3 holding tight in position while the other falls, 4 falling together

 

Other experiments: having done a few copies I tried my own. Here I tried to visualise the feeling of a tight fit that is almost perfect. And the two squares trying to fit together.

This may have been better if the square was actually different from the hole?

More favorites:

Relationship between the left and right side? What if these were off slightly?

Very right. Different levels of tightness gives different feelings? Left: rigid, fitted, can’t move, perfect. Middle: calculated rightness, structural integrity. Right: breathable, crunched. (are these all just relative?)

How to create this sense of depth in 2D?

Perfect overlaps. Unexpected blend? The high contrast makes me more dramatic. I got started on this last one but realised it needed to be drawn with points for the perfect overlaps. How does blend mode work?

READING

Computer Grass is Natural Grass: https://www.atariarchives.org/artist/sec5.php

Sentences from reading:

• It may take a life-time to develop a computer program to make one new communicating pen line which is meaningful for us.
• What my hand-eye draws is different from what the computer draws. A computer helps by offering new visual ideas. These ideas in turn enrich new hand work which generates additional ideas which extends my thinking about computer generated lines.
• That it is possible to use mathematical formalism and pure geometry while attempting a humanistic exploration to us is one of the primary advantages of the use of the computer as a drawing medium.