Category: LookingOutwards

Happy Place by Jared Tarbell

Happy Place is a Processing piece formed by placing nodes along the perimeter of a circle and instructing them to move towards "friends" and away from non-friends. I can see from the source code linked in the web page that it is a fairly simple program wherein at each frame, each node moves then adjusts its position to find a "happy place" between moving towards friends and away from non-friends. All functions and objects are named accordingly, with nodes being called "Friends" and their movement adjustment function called "findHappyPlace".

Happy Place calls out to me because it evokes memories of working physically with charcoal despite being computer generated. It looks like a drawing formed by shaking a piece of paper with charcoal dust on it, which may very well be a physical analogue to this work. Happy Place is a textbook example of effectively complex because it demonstrates chaos created by a combination of randomization and simple rules. The "initial condition" is determined by random placements, but the resulting movement is dictated by clear rules. As Galanter suggests, this leads to chaotic dynamics even though the systems themselves are deterministic, and we see evidence of the butterfly effect and sensitivity to initial conditions in the images that Tarbell displays. Tarbell himself includes varying simulation results, such as when the group of friends migrate away from the circle entirely, or when two friend groups repel each other to opposite sides of the canvas.

Drawing Water is an art piece which uses water usage and accumulation data to create a piece illustrating the disparities between where water is collected and where it is actually used. What I admire about the project is that it is almost a passive-aggressive political swipe to reveal hidden truths of the environmental sector, because it shows that the creator is willing to speak out against the government through his art and is not afraid of what repercussions that may cause. I believe the algorithm used charted out where water was collected versus where it was used, and plotted it on a specialized graph with different shades of blue meaning either different collection methods or different types of water. The piece shows that the author does not use very complicated algorithms to accomplish his work, but uses them in a creative way to make it easy to read and understand. The work's effective complexity is in its data collection, and the artist has balanced order and disorder by presenting that data in an aesthetic yet revealing way to expose the hidden truth. At first glance, the numerous water paths on the artwork seem over the top and convoluted, but after some time it becomes easier to see which areas of the country use more water compared to which areas produce the most water. 

David Wicks, Drawing Water, 2011. 

http://sansumbrella.com/works/2011/drawing-water/

Anastasia Opara, Procedural Lake Village (2016)

This project proceduraly generates 3D-models of stylistic, fully-rendered buildings which are all thematically, tonally consistent but structurally unique. The produced objects look as if they could be used as assets for a video game, and their implementation could greatly reduce the amount of time which goes into creating immersive, unique gaming environments. I admire how well-rendered each of the iterations are, and how each of them look intentionally structured, as if made by a human. Each building is visually unique while stylistically homogenous, giving it a medium-low information complexity and a medium effective complexity.  I know that the algorithm was made in Houdini, a 3D animation software which emphasizes procedural generation. The procedure which Opara utilises includes four primary steps: (1) creating the sillhouette of the building, or blocking out its overall shape; (2) adding common elements such as doors, windows, chimneys, staircases, etc. (3) carving in wood patterns into the faces of the buildings, and (4) texturing, coloring, and shading, as well as slightly warping the house to appear crooked. Opara implements many restrictions, but allows for variety through the use of randomised variables which determine which elements will be included and in what fashion. I am impressed by this project's potential to save game developers a lot of time and money, while maintaining the same integrity of quality, and I am intrigued by how Opara's procedure reflects the process of building a house.

On her website, Opara provided an interesting quote which concerns how software is capable of subverting its creator's expectations, and therefore appearing to have original ideas of its own: "One of the most satisfying part was, when generating the final lake houses, the network would give me unexpected, but very creative results that I simply didn't anticipate or take into account when writing the rules. And those outcomes still had all the rights to exist and, in fact, looked extremely curious. If that was a person, who built the house, I would praise him for originality! Does it mean that the systems can be creative within the constraints that we give them? I like to think of Houdini as a student, and you are a teacher, who can put any information in a student's head and it will be perceived with 100% accuracy (for the worse or the better). And, as many teachers know, students have a tendency to really surprise you with the things they come up with."

Link to the  Project: https://www.anastasiaopara.com/lakevillage

Rain room by Random International 

This is a piece that I was exposed to at some point freshman year, and is one that I have continued to return to over and over again. 

Rain Room is a large interactive installation of downpour rain indoors that allows audience members to walk through it and stay dry. "3D depth cameras" places across the top beams of the structure track human movement and control the sprinkler grid, turning off the water in a 6 foot radius around a body.

What draws me to this piece, is its seamless integration of interactive programming, human gesture, and natural phenomena in a way that recontextualizes the audiences experience and interaction with the event of walking through the rain. It evokes a sense of whimsy and creates an experience of discovery and curiosity, 'the controlling of the weather' striking a balance between 'how does this work', and 'how do I work within it'. The disappearing mechanisms and simplicity freedom of gesture in interacting with the space make way for the fully immersive, interactive experience. The work is by Hannes Koch and Florian Orktrass and installed by Random International, the sheer scale of the piece and the venues it has been created in reveals a large team behind the actuation of the work itself. I would assume that this is formed from a combination of "off the shelf" and custom software.

What is particularly exciting about this project is that it proposes opportunities in the future to create work through computing that manipulates and simulates moments that really accurately mimic and expand on natural phenomenon in a way that changes the context of its experience, and creates truly wonderful moments. 

Tabita Cargnel calculated the movement of playing the violin and translated to a interactive piece where you move your limbs and "dance" to play the violin.

It's interesting to me because I played the violin for around 10 years, and although it is very technical, I've never seen it broken down/displayed like this. It's also interesting to recreate something very human, with technology, and how they map certain body parts to mechanical parts. In addition, it's not completely mechanical, there is still a human aspect to it; the mechanics are just aiding the experience.

I found the installation piece great because it utilizes the whole body to play the violin. (as I mentioned earlier, mapping different body parts to an object, that is unconventional) It also is very inviting and much more easier to play using this installation piece (which is funny to me, because when you learn to play the violin, it takes weeks, even months to play a nice sounding note). The way this is set up, it is more user friendly for the public, and there is no wrong way to play/dance/interact with it (while on the other hand violin is very strict with its technique).

The artist spent a lot of time understanding and calculating the mechanics of the violin. In addition, they were considerate of making this intimidating instrument "user/public" friendly. Re-imagining the violin. I like how the installation piece is fitted for one person, so it still has that solo/personal quality for the violin. Maybe for a suggestion, I'm curious how it would look like scaled up to a whole room. Rather than it be for one person, it is for a whole group of people (like a duet, or quartet, or even string orchestra). I imagine that it will look like a spider web where people crawl through, which sounds very interesting.

Tabita's recent works surround interactive installations, and bridge the gap between art and technology to "create honest and sometimes very literal pieces of work." (from her website) She was trained as a musician, which shows in some of her sound/music related works. She also studies robotics in college. It seems like her interest and music and technology inspires some of her pieces.

Quite frankly, I am not familiar with many interactive AND computational projects. However, I became more interested in learning how to code after I attended Robin's Sloan's workshop: Automatic Telling: A Cyborg Fiction-Writing Experiment (at the Studio). The workshop unfolded over the course of three days, during which the participants, coming from a wide range of disciplines--from game design to English literary studies-- sat down together on a long, continuous table to co-author, with the computer (specifically, an artificial neural network trained on artists' biographies and other corpora and developed by Sloan), a brief account of a fictional artistic movement of the late twentieth century: The Center for Midnight: A History in Fragments.

The tool that Sloan created, to me, promised a new way of thinking about writing, and challenged the sanctified position of the singular, genius author (now joined by a virtual "ghost-writer"). On a personal level, I wanted to believe that such a tool could help me get over my fear of writing.

Instead of supplanting the craft of writing, I strongly believe that this kind of tool augments our intelligence. Emerging from AI, AIA research, some propose is concerned with developing tools using AI to create "new cognitive technologies," or apparatuses that allow us to "explore and discover, to provide new representations and operations" of our own cognitive processes and intellectual frameworks (Carter, Nielsen, 2018).

Is this not the same intent with which Robin Sloan created his machine-learning-augmented text-editor? Have not all the objects (i.e. the quill, the pencil) and physical infrastructures (i.e. desks) through which we engage in the practice of writing been implicated in shaping the way we think about and feel writing (with our bodies and mind)?

Last year, teamLab's talk regarding their Borderless and Planet environments was one of the first momentous exposures I had to the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, and greatly motivated me to wanting to take this class as well (in addition to also seeing the student work showcase). teamLab describes themselves as "an art collective, interdisciplinary group of ultratechnologists whose collaborative practice seeks to navigate the confluence of art, science, technology, design, and the natural world." I believe that teamLab does develop their own custom softwares and scripts, to which they utilize across their exhibitions. I was lucky enough to just recently visit teamLab's Borderless exhibit on my recent trip to Japan, less than a month ago.

teamLab's Borderless is collaborative co-creation space for visitors to embrace creative and individualistic opinions and observations, while collaborating with strangers, families, and friends. At first glance, it seems to be just fascinating, exciting playground for young kids to frolic around and enjoy how intelligent of a world can respond to their each and every motion, however, upon further scrutiny and researching more into the mission purpose of teamLab, one can connect how each and every interaction and exhibit room space catalyzes some form of self awareness and discovery, in parallel with creating and existing in harmony with others.

There are many aspects that could be greatly expanded upon, and overall this environment space serves as a catalyst for many other monumental works and thinking to sprout from. Although extremely supernatural and mystical, which proves great delight to kids, I think it would be really interesting and beneficial if teamLab and/or other creators would be able to implement this sort of environments and interactions more seamlessly into everyday learning, rather than have it be an isolated experience that one would have to visit in order to be directly affected.

From what I gathered from their exhibit, it seems like teamLab is greatly inspired by the need to fill the gap between bringing together creativity and traditional classroom learning. In a growingly technological age where children can easily become more isolated, in combination with a culture that strictly enforces learning through traditional means of reading and writing, with right and wrong answers, teamLab aspires to facilitate a more organic, creative, and individualistic co-creating and learning environment.