HW9.2 Scratch Experience and Classroom Connections

I enjoyed working with Scratch and I can see why an artist would be attracted to working with programming.  There are so many possibilities with the code if you know how to manipulate it correctly.

• Working with scratch can be summed up in three words: "trial and error."  I made many mistakes and had to replay my animation again and again to find where I had errors in the code.  Most of all, I needed time to work through the mistakes and teach myself.  Similarity, in an art classroom, students not only need instruction, materials, and motivation, they also need time to work with the medium and allow themselves to make mistakes.  This especially true when using new media materials because students will have less familiarity with them.  Giving students plenty of time to emerge themselves in the activity is essential for technology to work in the classroom.
• Although I did not choose to make a game while using Scratch, the ability to do so is a great application of the program.  I think it is a wonderful opportunity for artists to create interactive works of art, allowing their audience to truly be involved in the process.  Likewise, in a classroom it is important to remember that students will want to be a pert of the lesson.  Simply lecturing to a classroom will not inspire the same enthusiasm as creating a lesson that incorporates interactivity.  Allowing students to provide examples and ask questions during the instructional session will keep them attentive and add to their experience.

HW9.1 Scratch Project: Emoji Waltz

HW9.3.2 Programming Artist Research: Nick Briz

Nick Briz is an artist who uses programming to create algorithms for art and tear apart code in order to create glitches.  In his work, The Coldplay Song Generator, he used code to create an application which creates new songs based on the patterns and formulas of the band Coldplay.

The application can be downloaded on his website.

He also works with Glitch Art, which is a form of art that is interested in the visual results of mistakes and error in code.  Briz creates digital works that actively have "badly" written code in order to produce the glitches.  Because they are actively desired, the glitches cease to be seen as mistakes and become the focus of the work.  In order to make glitches appear in specific ways, the code must be written precisely, so although it is filled with "errors," it still requires extreme programming knowledge and skill.

From The Ground Up In Order, Embrace from Nick Briz on Vimeo.

Sources:

http://nickbriz.com/

http://artcopyright.interartive.org/coldplay-song-generator-copy-drive-sample-chest/

HW9.3.1 Programming Artist Research: Raven Kwok

Raven Kwok is a Chinese artist who uses programming to create works of art.  Kwok works with the programming software and language known as Processing.  Many of his works are studies on fractals and patterns, but others are playful uses of internet memes.

 
Sources:
http://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/115c8-and-edf0-by-raven-kwok-recursive-and-transforming/
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/07/14/if-you-like-programming-and-fine-art-you-will-love-raven-kwoks-work-made-with-processing/#gref

HW8.1 Sound Project

For this sound piece I recorded the sound of water running in the sink, myself eating crackers, drinking water, and pouring water into a cup.  I liked the sound of the crackers crunching and I looped them over and over as if I were eating a whole box of crackers.  The crackers made me thirsty so the rest of my project was associated with water and the fulfillment of thirst.

HW8.3 Sound Reflection

By observing the sounds around me, I have realized that sound is a constant stimuli and the brain has learned to ignore all but the most important noises.  As I type this blog post, my fingers are making tapping sounds on the keys of my computer and I can hear my desk shaking slightly with each sudden move.  These sounds are so common in my mind, that I have stopped noticing them except for the rare cases that I open my mind to them.

When I think of sound in the classroom, I am immediately reminded of the many tricks I have seen teachers use to quiet down a bustling group of students.  Teachers will begin to stage whisper, hoping their students will quiet in an effort to understand them or use the "If you can hear me clap once" tactic.  I have recently had a professor in a Teachers College class use a gong to call the attention of the class after a series of group discussions.  The gong was strange sound to hear in a classroom setting and it caught the attention of everyone in the room.  Teachers often use incongruous sounds to attract student attention, but there are so many sounds in the classroom that few of them can be seen as incongruous.  It is commonplace to hear air conditioners, heaters, footsteps in the hall, fire trucks and ambulances in the streets below, and construction workers on the sidewalks outside.  With so many sounds in the ears of a student, it is a miracle that any of them hear the teacher's lesson and remain attentive.

HW8.2.2 Sound Artist Research: Miya Masaoka

Miya Masaoka is a musician and performance artist who has worked with insects in some of her sound pieces.  From 1996 to 2001, Masaoka worked on The Bee Project.  She created a score that instructed how the sound in the work would be manipulated by a mixer.  The sound that she applied to the score, was the buzz of 3,000 live bees in a glass beehive on the stage of the performance space.  Distorting the sound of the bees in real time and projecting the result back into the room showcased the immediate power of sound work and highlighted the contrast between the wild, natural bees and the calculated, synthetic remix.

Masaoka continued to work with bees and created a short video, Adventures of the Solitary Bee.  In it, the sound of bees is overlaid with a musical score written by Masaoka and narration discussing the physical and philosophical life of bees.

Sources:
http://www.miyamasaoka.com/interdisciplinary/skin_insects/index.html

HW8.2.1 Sound Artist Research: Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier is an artist who uses sound and recordings in his work.  Several years ago, I became aware of his work, I Am Sitting in a Room.  The original work consisted of Lucier sitting in a room with a microphone and a tape recorder.  He narrated a pre-conceived statement into the microphone saying, “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice...” and so on.  Once he finished speaking his statement, the recorded tape was played into the room while being recorded on to a new tape.  Then the new recording was played and recorded.  This happened again and again for forty-five minutes.  At first the recordings sound like faithful portrayals of Lucier's original statement.  Eventually, like a document that has been photocopied far too many times, the recordings begin to develop distortions.  Certain frequencies began to emerge and are made more prominent with each new recording.  By the end of the work, Lucier's original statement is no longer decipherable.  The recordings result in a droning static hum that represents the ambient sound existing in the room.  Lucier's work is especially interesting due to his speech impediment.  As a man with a stutter, Lucier was familiar with oratory distortions and may have been inspired by them.  His stutter makes a small appearance in I Am Sitting in a Room, but is erased along with the rest of his speech in the final product.

Sources:
http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2015/01/20/collecting-alvin-luciers-i-am-sitting-in-a-room/
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2014/10/17/356999444/what-art-and-the-game-telephone-teach-us-about-copying-speech?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2041

HW7.2.1 Video Artist Research: Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is one of my favorite artists and he often works with video in his art.  I love many of his video works, especially those that deal with video surveillance and include live video of the audience as they interact with the work, but for this post I will focus on Revolving Upside Down.  In a famous quote from an interview with Ian Wallace and Russell Keziere, Nauman said "If I was an artist and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art."  This is an interesting concept that immediately drew me to Nauman and is clearly seen in many of his videos.  Nauman often used video as a means of simply recording his actions as an artist in the studio.  He would perform extremely banal actions, such as walking seen in the video below, but because he was an artist in the studio, he considered the actions to be art.

Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square

In Revolving Upside Down though, Nauman rotated the video camera so that his normally mundane activity, pivoting on one foot, appeared as a gravity-defying act.  The camera recorded his movements upside down and completely changed the affect of the work.  Nauman utilized the camera as more than a neutral observer and allowed it to influence the final work.

Click to see Revolving Upside Down  

Sources:

http://www.vdb.org/titles/revolving-upside-down

http://whitecube.com/exhibitions/bruce_nauman_inside_the_white_cube_2012/

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/120629?locale=en

HW7.1 Video Creation

For this assignment I recreated a clip from the movie, The Blair Witch Project

Click to see the original video

HW7.4 Impact100 Project

For our project, Nina and I created an online ballot that allowed 100 people to vote on the specifications of our final work.  The ballot allowed voters to decide the medium, color scheme, theme, orientation, size, number of works in the series, and the final method of presentation.  Nina and I were inspired by the current political election and we wanted to see if the democratic process that we trust to decide the leaders of our country could also be trusted to create art.  The results of the voting process are shown below:

Based on the winning options from the vote, the project is a series of 5 works created with pen and paper in warm color tones focusing on the theme of Radical Self Love.  The works are 10inx10in squares and will be posted around NYC.  

I find it interesting that within each category, there was very clear winner.  Every winning option had at least a 12% lead on the next strongest competitor and the largest margin was 37%.  The public had a clear majority opinion so I felt reassured that we were creating a work that would please the most people.  

Nina and I used watercolors and pens to create washes in warm color tones and draw out phrases that inspired self love.  We focused on ideas of inner strength and personal fortitude.  Since the public had voted that the works would be displayed around NYC, we made each phrase address the viewer directly, hoping that strangers who saw the messages would be moved by them and develop their own self love.  The dots and dashes that accompany the phrases are the words "self love" written in morse code. 

Once we created the works, we printed them so that they were 10inx10in and we posted them around NYC.

HW7.2.2 Video Artist Research: Andrea Fraser

I saw Andrea Fraser's piece, Projection, two years ago at the Tate Modern museum.  I thought it was an intriguing use of video because it obliged the audience to participate in the work without their explicit knowledge.  Projection consists of two screens on either side of a dark room, on which videos of the artist are projected.  Fraser is shown sitting in a chair, looking directing at the camera, and talking.  Only one screen is active at a time while Fraser is shown taking part in a one sided dialogue based on transcripts of real psychotherapy consultations.  She takes on the role of both a therapist and a patient.  After she is shown asking questions and writing down notes as a therapist on one screen, she appears as a patient giving answers to a seemingly different set of questions on the other screen.  During this process, the audience is standing between the two screens, changing their orientation as the work moves from one screen to the other, mentally trying to connect the two sets of videos, and being directly addressed by both characters so that they also become the therapist and the patient.

Sources: 

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/display/andrea-fraser

http://www.outset.org.uk/england/projects/outset-frieze-tate-fund/outset-frieze-art-fund-2008/

HW7.6 Self-evaluation Selfie

As a self-evaluation for the semester so far, I am going to break down the various things I have learned:

• Technological Art Media: 
• This class has taught me how to use many art media that I had never really handled before including, scanners, digital collage, and stop motion animation.  Although we have not dived deeply into any one art form in this class, we have skimmed the surface of many different types of technological media and I have a better understanding of New Media Art as a whole now.  The research into artists who use technology has also allowed me to understand actual artists' take on the form, and not just my own.  
• Teacher Difficulties:
• By listening to my classmates' past experiences as teachers, I have come to learn the difficulties that are inherent in teaching new media art in schools.  The lack of resources and technical instruction needed make technological art more difficult in some ways than traditional art to use in a classroom.  The most interesting difficulty I have discovered is the inaccessibility of technological art for students of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.  If students do not have access to computers or cameras or iPads at home, they are less prepared to use them in class.
• Technological Art Opportunities:
• I have learned that technological art offers certain opportunities that traditional art media does not.  Technological art materials are often a one-time up-front cost, such as purchasing Photoshop or some other computer program, while traditional art materials, such as paint, run out and get old with time and have to be continuously repurchased.  Technological art also has multiple possibilities for display including online or in physical galleries.

HW7.3 Video in Classrooms

Video has great potential in classrooms because it allows students to view themselves and evaluate their performances firsthand.  Students are often asked to give presentations or speak in front of their classmates in order to develop their public speaking skills and share their work with the rest of the class.  One downside to this practice is that students must rely on outside observations to understand how they were received.  Instead, teachers can use video to record a student's presentation and show them exactly what can be improved and what was done well.  Alternatively, students who may otherwise be unable to present in front of a crowd, such as students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, have the ability to use video to record themselves presenting and share the recording with their class.  Video has the potential to help students evaluate themselves and create accessibility.

In an art classroom, video allows students who are not adept or comfortable with traditional media to view themselves as an art medium.  Painting and drawing require skill and technique that may discourage some students from utilizing them,  but most younger students have interacted with video their entire lives and, thanks to modern technology, creating a video can often be as simple as pushing a button on your phone.  Since the methodology of video is so simple, the medium lies within the subject of the video.  Therefore, students who choose to make videos of their own actions take on the responsibility of the medium and control the work.

HW6.5 Impact100 Progress

One of the major projects for this class is the Impact100 project.  For this project we must create an art project that involves 100 people.  Based on the election year frenzy that we are currently in, my partner, Nina, and I have decided to create a democratic piece of art, guided by the decisions of the majority.  We have created an online ballot, where 100 people will vote on every detail of our ultimate art work.  The size, theme, medium, etc. is all voted on by the public and whatever receives the most vote will be reflected in our art.

The idea of this work was also inspired by the methods that will be used for deciding our final project for this class.  Our final project will be assigned based on the rolling of three dice.  Each die has media or themes on it that will affect our project.  The entire project is based on chance.  For this project, instead of relying on chance, we wanted to give the decision making process to the people.

Screenshot of the ballot

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Logo created by Nina

HW6.4 Photography Lesson Plan

Activity: Students will take a series of three photographs which create a chronology or narrative.

Age of Pupils: Middle School Students

Objective: Students will explore digital photography and learn the art of storytelling.  By limiting the series to three photos, students must be concise and deliberate in their choices.

Materials: Digital Cameras, Photo Paper, Laser Printer

Discussion Questions: What are the parts of a story? (Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action), How many words do you need to tell a story?  Can you tell a story with only images?

Implementation:  Cameras must be handed out to all students and students must have at least an hour to plan and shoot their photographs.  Once the activity is completed, there should be a break for the teacher to print the photographs.  Then the students should order their photos and display them.

Follow-up: Allow students to examine their classmates' photographs and write their own stories based on the narratives in the series.

HW6.2 Stop Motion Video Documentation

While making my stop motion video, I documented my process and materials so that it can be recreated.

This is the camera and the light that I used to create the stop motion video.  The camera is mounted so that it does not move during the process.  This makes it much easier to control the changes in each frame of the video.  The bright light also helps to keep the lighting constant throughout the process.

These are the stars of the production!  A piece of fabric, an embroidery hoop, and my collection of embroidery thread were all used to create the video.

I used a magenta colored embroidery thread and an embroidery needle.

This was the setup for the filming process.  The camera is set to look directly down onto the fabric and hoop.  The light is mounted onto the computer so that it stays constant and does not create a shadow.  

To create the video, I used the iStopmotion program.  I alternated between moving the objects and taking photos of the scene to create frames.  Every twelve frames was a second of video.  I took two identical photos of each frame in order to slow down the video and have it move more smoothly.

HW6.1 Stop Motion Animation

This week, I made a stop motion video.

Link to better quality video

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Here's an old stop motion video I made years ago...