New Media Art in Context- Art 346 Fall

Jonty Horwitz is from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he studied electrical engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.  He is considered to be an artist, engineer, and entrepreneur and his artwork focuses on the aesthetics of art in the context of human perception.  His work such as the nano sculptures are meant to show that there are almost no boundaries between science and art due to the latest creations of technology.  The fact that these sculptures can only be seen with the naked eye is what Hurwitz was so fascinated by and motivated him to create these sculptures, even though they were eventually destroyed within seconds due to an unfortunate accident in the lab.  Hurwitz's catropic and oblique anamorphic sculptures are digitally stretched before being created and each one that he creates has a specific story behind the piece. His Savoy Cat was inspired by a story of superstitions and his first piece, Seven Generations,  is meant to make us think about the choices we make in our loves and how our actions can be determined in a way other than just looking at pure genetics.  Overall, Jonty Hurwitz loves to bring the concept of new technology and art together, as well as bringing a more personal experience into the artwork.

Steve Lambert's work includes street, internet, and performance art.  He has been an artist since about 1999 and made international news in 2008 for his replica of "the paper of record", the New York Times, which announced the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as other good news. This paper was released after the 2008 US election.  Lambert's work revolves a lot around the work of advertisements and aims for his work to create a mutually meaningful exchange so that it reaches the people outside of the gallery walls, and he tries to make his work fun pieces of art to look at and enjoy, even though there is a more serious message behind the work.  In the world of advertising online, ads tend to cover the sidelines of a webpage, Lambert's solution to this was to create Add-Art, which would replace advertisements with actual contemporary art when downloaded.  In addition to not wanting to see these ads, Lambert would also get distracted from other social websites, so he with the help of Charlie Stigler, he was able to create Self-Control.  This app is currently only available for mac users, and what it does is it blocks any specific website that may be distracting for someone, for a specific period of time, that once it is started cannot be undone.  Both of these apps are free to download and do with whatever the user wants to do with them.

Nick Yulman is a Brooklyn based sound and interactive media artist in which his work tends to revolve around 3 different contexts: installation art, oral history, and music.  His work aims to investigate the musical potential of everyday objects and mechanically manipulated instruments.  His work "Song Cabinet" is an interactive media piece that users can activate by opening and closing the drawers of the cabinet. This piece is a great example of investigating music's potential because people have control over how the 'song' will sound and these are ordinary objects being used. The objects used are meant to represent a specific location, which is labeled on the drawers, giving the piece a biographical feel since the objects are of the artist's personal collection.  Yulman's work "Animal Magnetizer" is an interactive musical installation that uses spatial sensing and automated acoustic instruments.  People can collaboratively control the mix of instruments activated through the presence of their hands and bodies. For this piece specifically, the interactive aspect if meant to inspire a playful collaboration among viewers and the arrangement of the objects in the space requires multiple people to work together in order to hear the entirety of what has been programmed for the mix to like as a whole.  For many of his musical installations, such as "Animal Magnetizer", Yulman uses the mechanical music system Bricolo, which allows digital music makers to incorporate robotics into their performance and recording setups.

A Different Kind of Cat

 

         Ever since the more recent version of Alice in Wonderland came out, I have been wanting to draw Tim Burton's Cheshire cat.  This picture took me about four days total to finish.  I started this piece a few days before I went on vacation with my family and as soon as I got back, I was able to finish the rest within a day.  My favorite thing about the Alice in Wonderland movies is the phrase "We're all mad here" and am really glad that I was able to make it a part of this piece.  This piece was done with only the use of colored pencils and was free handed with the use of another picture found online for reference in the placement of facial features and color patterns.

Hawaiian Sunset

         These sunset photos were taken with my IPhone during one of my family vacations to Hawaii.  Sunsets of any kind any where are beautiful, but there is something about watching the sun disappear below a horizon of water as the light reflects off of the water and cast shadows onto anything in front of it, such as any boats or clouds.  These types of sunsets are my favorite to capture any time I visit the beach.

  

Unity Game

       For this project I chose to create a simple maze in which a character would begin in the middle of the maze and they had to try to find their way out.  My underlying theme to this game is depression.  Depression is often considered to be an invisible kind of sickness, which is why there seems to be nothing wrong with the player or within the game itself.   I tried to show this sense of depression through the background music used within the game.  The music starts slow while the player tries to navigate through the maze, but once they exit the maze the music immediately becomes more upbeat, as if the player has finally overcome their depression.  This project was pretty challenging, which is also why I kept the game pretty simple.  I had the hardest time in finding the right script and then getting it attached to the correct GameObject and working correctly.  I had never scripted anything before this project, so I was able to just write it myself, I continuously had to try and find a good example on line for what I was trying to achieve in my game.

Drawings

My drawings are mainly done in the medium of graphite(pencil) with a few having been done with colored pencils.  I am still practicing mixing/blending colors with colored pencils. I have drawn multiple portraits, usually for and of the family, as well as other photos that I have turned into drawings, such as family pets(3rd photo).  Most of my drawings are free hand, but the perspective drawings (2nd photo) are done with a ruler in order to get the straightest line possible and some of the portraits are done using the grid method to make sure that everything is in the correct space and correct proportions, since I am still learning just where to put certain features relative to everything else, even if it may look weird in the photo or something.  Again these are only a few examples of my drawings, I also have a physical portfolio containing more drawings.

 

 

  

 

Henna

        I have always loved henna, or Mehndi, designs that are used in India and a few other middle eastern countries.  All of the designs shown here are done by me and on myself.  I have mentioned  the Mehndi culture in a previous post with a little more background on the use of henna. The first photo is of a fresh henna stain while the last photo is a fully darkened stain.  The other two photos are during the drying process of the henna paste before it is removed to reveal the fresh stain.  When I do the designs I am often using at a reference photo, I may not copy the design exactly but it at least will get me started on drawing the design and going from there in doing what I want to do in order to make the design more of my own.

Real Life Video Game- Mario IRL

     In this class project, a total of five games were chosen and based on the popular Nintendo game Mario Party and its mini-games. My group consisted of three people and we chose the mini- game Hot Rope Jump to bring to life and renamed it as Jumping Over Poverty.  These games that we recreated were recreated in the sense that they brought more awareness to certain things going on in the world, ours being about the poverty line and how hard it can be to stay above it.
   Shown above are our characters that participants of the game can chose from and to wear while jumping and trying to stay above the 'poverty line'. These characters that we choose are Podoboo, Thwomp, Baby Bowser, and a Koopa Shell.  As the hosts of the game, my group members and I wore a green or red shirt and blue painter's suits as overalls to resemble the Mario brothers, Mario and Luigi.
   Below the characters to chose from are a few pictures from the event and a few of the groups of people that participated.  We were surprised that we got anyone to play because we began to spread the word of the event so late and close to the date of the event.  This event of Mario IRL was actually quite successful, with each group getting a few groups of people to play their games.
   Overall planning this event and getting the costumes and game materials put together it took a lot of time and patience in order to finish everything well and on time, but in the end it was worth it because the event was actually successful in getting people to play and join in on what we were doing.  I know that some groups had issues with their group members and working in the group as a whole, but I believe that my group worked well together, and because we worked well and each did our part in the project we were able to finish all of our pieces and obtain everything we needed for our mini-game.

Photography

These are a few photos that I have taken over the years. I don't necessarily consider myself to be a photographer in any way because it's not a main focus of mine when it comes to my art work, but I do have a good handful of photos that I have taken that I really like and are proud of, and these are just a few examples.  Some of them have been run through a filter through apps on my iPhone.  I like to find photos that maybe don't have the greatest composition to begin with and then add the filters to add to the photo and make it look better in its overall composition.  I love flowers in bloom, these are a main focus in my photographs when I do take photos that aren't for the sake of capturing a memory on a family trip or day with friends.  I mostly take color photos, I don't really create black and white images, mainly because these photos are taken with my iPhone and by putting them through a b&w filter, any sort of color captured in the photo that made it beautiful, for me, is now gone and it becomes something of a simple photo rather than what the original coloring and lighting brought to the photograph. As seen in the first picture though, I will create photos where the background is black and white and the foreground of the photograph is kept in color.  These photos can be very powerful when highlighting something specific in the foreground, or even background, of an image.
When I do take photos, good or otherwise, I like to take them of just about anything even though a primary focus does tend to be flowers, because they are just every where and so beautiful when in bloom and I really like to capture that moment, especially on a sunny day.

Video Projection

       For this video projection project I wanted to create something that could work with and be displayed in pretty much any space.  Because of this detail I knew that I had to chose a design or picture that was relatively simple, and yet it would still add to the space.  I love the Mehndi (henna) cultural designs that are used in India for ceremonial purposes, but it has become popular as a form of a temporary tattoo here in the States, so there are many different types of designs to choose from.  The three designs that I chose for this projected video were found on the internet and hand drawn by me, as well as being slightly altered from the original.  It is a stop-motion video, meaning each time something appears it is a new photo, each being created in Adobe Photoshop and put together in Adobe Premiere.  Although I created something that I knew could be put almost anywhere, the spot that I did choose was a more secluded area, but I knew that people still went by and through that area all the time, so even though this may not be a place that is out in the open for everyone to see and notice, I knew that it would still be seen because of how many people actually walk through this secluded area.

Haunted Audio Tour

This Haunted Audio Tour will begin on campus next to Morrill Hall on the opposite side of the Sarah Fleischmann building and end in front of Lincoln Hall after walking along the east side of the campus.  This tour will take about 10-12 minutes.

Before we begin:

Take a look at the map in order to learn the route of this Haunted Audio Tour.  We will be beginning this tour on the west side of Morrill Hall near the Honor Court on campus.  Listen to to the audio to learn where to go next, when to stop (and listen), and where the tour will end. Specific directions will not always be given as to where to go next, so it is best to learn the route well in order to know where to go when you are told to continue moving. This tour is meant to be walking, at a normal pace, most of the time with only a few stops before reaching the end destination.

There is a round of screams at at the end of the tour in order to signal that the tour is over.