Reading Response 11

Marie Sester's artwork consisted of projects that involved architecture and the issues of surveillance and propaganda. The core of her works does involve human interaction and how they react with the messages that are being told. A lot of the reactions tend to be either uneasiness and escape or acceptance with a small performance of the audience themselves.

I thought her work was interesting because it reminded me a lot of the works I saw from my Time Based class. It especially reminded me of the Surveillance Camera Players because their work involves the already built-in system of cameras all over the city. I've never really thought about surveillance cameras outside of stores, in which I would usually point at them or wave out of curiosity if there was really a person on the other side.

Reading Response 10

This article was an interview with Tom Igoe and his views on physical computing and his students' works. There is a strong emphasis between technology and design in all of the works that he talks about. He believes that there is an importance of artists collaborating with people other than artists in order to add strength to their own work. A lot of the works mentioned were complex yet simple in the interaction and design.

I thought it was amusing that some of the works he thought were great examples of physical computing were commercialized products. It does make sense though because it has an optimal amount of people understanding and interacting with technology. In such a case, the Nintendo Wii is one of the best examples of this in the present day with the technology simulating real life actions on the screen. Also, considering how much more the simple piece of technology can do, many have hacked the remote for other purposes like simulating actual fishing in World of Warcraft.

As interesting as all of this is, I know that I don't have the physical capabilities to do a lot of this on my own.

Video + Processing

Okay. After toiling with video for a week...I've determined that I dislike video and processing. That does not mean I dislike webcams and processing...yet. I'm just EXTREMELY frustrated that I can't come up with ANYTHING creative with video and processing that hasn't been done by my classmates or the examples in class. Then, when I do come up with something barely creative, it's either shot down by my inadequacy of code or my deadbeat 6 year old desktop here. >_<

So for now, I raise a white flag and be satisfied with whatever I came up with the webcam assignment. -_- I'm sorry Professor Carlsen.

reading response 9

The interview of Ken Rinaldo was about his works which involved a combination of art and science. He programmed his sculptures to interact with the artists as well as the animals and plants living within it. He talked about his ideas behind each work and how the audience reacted to it.

I thought the whole interview was inspiring as I was thinking about my own final project in this class. As much as I'd like to work with machinery, I don't know enough about it or have the capabilities to manipulate it to my will. Although at this point, I'm thinking of the game controllers that I currently have at my disposal for this.

Reading Response 8

The reading was about how computers interpret the information given through a camera and what could be done with it. It then gave examples of the different techniques that could be used to detect motion and the code for it.

I liked how simple the techniques sounded in theory, although I'm not quite sure in practice. Since there's only one lab on campus with cameras, I'm a little hesitant on working with video. But, from my past experience with playing with the libraries in processing, it would be fun to get something to work with it.

Reading Response 7

These reviews were about the artwork in the sonambiente art festival in Berlin, all of which had something to do with the use of sound. One of the groups involved in the production of this festival was Tesla, which gives artists a space to experiment with media arts. There were some pieces in the festival that involved sports, especially soccer, or as they call it, football with either the sound that the ball would hear or the audio recording of the televised game. Others involved walking through the artwork in order to hear the different changes in sounds, which may or may not be pleasant to listen to.

Most of the works were impressive and looked interesting to even try some if I had a limitless budget and knowledge of programming. Although the pieces I did find interesting were the ones that involved modifying already made objects and using them to manipulate and interact with the piece. It seems plausibly complicated to code something that is so simple to use yet so complex in the possibilities.

Reading Response 6

The reading discussed the influences of visual media, such as video games, on people due to their interactive nature. Bill Nichols takes Walter Benjamin's article about the essence of art when it is mechanically reproduced and adds in the factor of time and how it affects art. He uses the example of a montage, many of us are accustomed to now in film and shows, to explain how it created new art forms and ways of seeing daily events in life. It gives new meanings to simulated objects and how we as humans can treat them like they were real. Unfortunately, there are limitations to the amount of control humans have over simulations, breaking the reality formed within it. Later on, Nichols talks about the copyright issues of video games and how it is just a tool to create what the user makes out of the limitations of the code and who remains the creator of the object within the game. In the end, the creators of the video game won the right to their works under copyright and patent laws.

I thought the article was interesting because most of my life was spent playing video games that were simulations like the ones explained in the text. A great example would be how I couldn't part from neopets until I did cold turkey because I felt physically attached to my pets like they were real minus the ability of being able to touch and feel them.But my generation and the future ones will be used to thinking of simulations and interactions with the computer to be like reality. We're used to talking to our friends over instant messanger and playing games with people all over the world that it deeply affects the culture of our society.

Reading Response 5

"Responsive Environments" is about Myron Krueger's exploration of interactive digital art through various projects. Each project showed an development from the last one concerning the ways the audience reacted to the space and how the work changes during the interactions. It went from a user communicating and interacting digitally with the audience in a separate space to the computer interpreting and reacting to the audience based on sensors. In the end, the author describes a virtual reality world in which it would try to emulate everything in life through computers when people communicate. In the end though, when creating such interactive pieces, the artist has to guess how the artwork would impact the audience and deal with the changing possibilities that he or she may have never considered while creating it.

I thought the article was interesting because it walked you through the thinking process he had in developing these interactive art pieces. It showed a lot of possibilities of how to get the audience to participate and how the computer can interpret data from them. It seems a lot more exciting when you don't know the outcome because different people can come up with so many possibilities and reactions to it.

Reading Response 4

The reading was about improving human comprehension through streamlining the thought process and using computers. Like the last reading, it suggests creating a real-time thinking computer to aid humans in finishing tasks faster and present it in different ways for those who think differently. The whole purpose is to find the weaknesses in critical thinking and remove them in the future with technology. In the end, they want to be able to use computers to help in long and short term situations through its programs and suggest future actions from the results.

I thought the reading was okay because it made sense where they were going with this concept but it'll be a long time before it can actually be produced and executed. I don't even expect this to happen within my life time considering what we've already accomplished within the short span of 20 years. Also, considering that there are many different types of people with extremely different ways of thinking, it may be harder to create a computer that could provide the same aid to the different schools of thought.

Along with that, I believe that it may not be wise to go this route in computer programming because it may in fact hinder the productivity of human thinking. Even now, without the aid of computers, some humans can not even do basic arithmetic. Would computers really help people think better or just make us all lazier to even think for ourselves? Unfortunately, only time will tell if this is the fate of humans and computers.

Reading Response 3

The reading was about the interaction of man and computers and how it would benefit productivity in the future. Computers and humans think, speak, and work differently, but by working together, they can make up for each other's weaknesses. The article goes on talking about the different man-computer symbiosis examples and the problems that exist currently between achieving such examples. For example, the author was considering the ability to make a computer able to understand humans through speech instead of a typing through a keyboard. It would be critical if the higher executive could make real-time decisions instead of having to go through the hassle of imputing it himself or having his assistant do so.

In the second article, it talks about communicating through machines and how we would be networked through similar interests instead of by chance of meeting in real life. It would save lots of travel time and increase productivity because only what is relevant would show up through the console.

I found it interesting about how much thought was put into this idea and that in today's world, most humans depend on computers to accomplish tasks and communicate. The more we depend on them, the less we can do simple "clerical" work because we don't need to think about them anymore. I find this especially relevant to simple math considering that most of us rely on calculator to do anything beyond simple arithmetic. So in that case, most of my generation are used to the idea of using computers as a tool to quicken our productivity.

Also, I thought the second article was a bit strange because most of my generation probably already does all of this through instant messaging, texting, or forums. We're so accustomed to this that we don't know how to deal with people outside of our interests, therefore making us all socially awkward and intolerant. So it wouldn't make too much sense to be completely dependent on this idea of complete communication through consoles but rather a mix since it is more comfortable for humans to interact face to face.

Reading Response 2

I liked the fact that this was a refresher in programming concepts that I already learned in Creative Computing through Alice. The problem is that Alice just let us drag and drop functions instead of typing it all out in hard code, so that might be a harder transition than from nothing at all. I do realize that anything beyond inheritance in the wikipedia article is something new since I don't think that Alice was that complicated. Otherwise, everything else was a clarification of the ideas used through the sketch that we had to make for this week.

On another note, I wished I got my textbook sooner than a couple hours ago. It would of made programming the night before a lot easier.

Reading Response 1

http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eferguson/adw/programming_languages.shtml

I enjoyed reading the history of programming because I always knew of those languages but never knew how or why they were developed. Unfortunately, I know nothing in any of them because they looked way too daunting when I was a kid and was watching my brother tinker with our computers. It’s hard to imagine how old some of these programming languages are and how it used to be a tedious task of 0’s and 1’s. It makes you appreciate how much simpler programming and coding has become over the past decades.

http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/text.html

I never really thought of art and programming together as I always assumed my way of thinking was far from my computer-inclined brother. It makes a lot more sense now when I think of it in the context of software and how they work hand in hand for new art mediums. Out of the three programs mentioned, I’ve only worked with Flash MX before this class. Considering the descriptions for Processing, Flash MX and C++, I would have to agree that Flash has the least amount of programming needed to make a work of art considering that all I’ve made out of it were small animations.

Program on Rice Balls

This is for week 1's assignment.

How To Make Rice Balls (the super simplified way!)

Get the Rice cooker, Cup, Rice, Water, Rice Ball Mold, Spoon and Seasoning
Take out the inner pot of the rice cooker
Fill the inner pot with x cups of rice
Fill the inner pot with enough water to cover the rice
Empty the inner pot of the water only.
Fill inner pot with ½ cup of water for every cup of rice
Place the inner pot back into the rice cooker
Cover the rice cooker
Plug in the rice cooker
Turn on the rice cooker
Wait for the rice cooker to finish cooking the rice and it will automatically turn itself off.
Let the rice cool for 10 minutes
Uncover the rice cooker
Scoop out rice with Spoon
Fill the rice ball mold with rice
Pack the rice in so it sticks together firmly
Pop the rice out of the mold
Place the rice ball on a plate
Repeat the last four steps until you are out of rice
Cover the rice ball in seasoning for taste.
Clean the rice cooker, cup, rice ball molds and spoon

Enjoy!

Testing...

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This blog is for my written homework in ADA 385.