Post-mortem

      For the project Dance Lab – the Legend of the Sun, we started working on the project by splitting it into two parts: animation and interaction (MaxMSP). For the current stage, we have almost finished animation and get our interaction patch working properly. For the animation part, now we have 12 scenes and a total time of 3 minutes and 52 seconds. And the final state of the animation would be approximately around 5 minutes including the interactive part that we haven’t made yet. As for the interaction patch, by multiplying matrices we can now realize the basic function that we were planning to do in the proposal:  adding controllable elements to the animation. And the rest part of the work is to contact our dancer and do the timing and adjust anything that needed to be adjusted.

We have now finished the process assignments of concept book and the progress report presentation. We found that forming the concept book did made a great contribution to our final project by giving us a chance to explore more elements and examples that can either inspire us or be used to build the project. By watching the video references, we came up with different versions of the story boarding to narrate the story and choose the best one that can demonstrate our idea of expanding the space by combining virtual and reality which contains several groups of either pushing the camera or moving the camera around. Since we are telling an Asian story and we have to be convincing to our audience that it is an Asian story by making a believable scene, a matter of visual language. We also did a research for the concept book. In the research we’ve learned what performance art is and also have a more clearly understanding of digital art. On the other hand, the article Performance and Technology Practices of virtual Embodiment and Interaction by Josephine Machon and Susan Broadhurst was very helpful to construct the project while dealing with the proportion of technology and human performance. This article helped us to make decisions in the project, like what we wanted our dancer to do in the project, and how we are going to make the animation that is convincing and will not overshining the performance.

     The second process assignment was the progress report presentation. We were focusing on user interaction. To accomplish the user interactive part, we mainly devoted ourselves in connecting max to Kinect and since we were making use of Synapse, we have to understand what each data means and how we could make use of the data.

      All the process assignments were helpful to our final project, they helped to push us do as much as we can in a certain amount of time and on the other hand, gave us a great chance to do researches not only on the theories that we are demonstrating but also the pre-exist projects that we can learn things from.           

Virtual Embodiment

       In Leila Shereen Sakr’s article, Virtual Embodiment, she discussed how the body is incorporating with the technology. She as well discussed the virtual and reality. The article pointed out that the boundary between virtual and reality is being pushed and the element that gives virtual such a power to affect reality is the human belief.

       The argument that “belief makes real” is very convincing and on the other hand very inspiring. Since the project we are working on is also focusing on virtual and reality.  From the beginning of the project we’ve only thought about the relationship between the virtual and reality as well as the blurred boundary, but Virtual Embodiment has broadened our scope of mind. It demonstrated the power of the virtual and how the power is working on and affecting people: “virtual possesses a reality only through interaction… virtual has a reality that can affect us… created by belief leading to subsequent action…” The article also pointed out that virtual stays virtual without the connection (interaction) to human, and it is the human belief that brings the virtual real. So take the theory into our project, we are dealing with turning virtual to reality through not only the performance but also the animation. And it is the animation part where we build our virtual world, so to enlarge the power of virtual, we have to have our audiences have a connection to the scenes and believe that the scene is an ancient Asian world where the story takes place.

      Virtual Embodiment is an article that brings us a lot of concluded ideas to think about and while reading, I do feel that it helped concluding the knowledge I have for now and broadening my scope of mind.

The Day After, Tomorrow

The Day After, Tomorrow, 2012

Dave Dyment – Toronto, Canada

Video Installation

       This installation was in zone C and has a wall of video monitors that were playing video clips of earthquakes, fires, floods, meteors, air attacks and other doomsday scenarios.

       The installation was placed in a rather closed space without light sources other than the lights from the monitors. The space made all the audiences staring at the monitors and watch the video clips about the doomsday. The monitors have different scenes of doomsday at the same time, which made the audience feel like they are watching a world-wide news that is showing the disasters around the world. On the other hand, the video clip itself is also well-thoughtful. It contains the destroying of landmark buildings. As the introduction of the work said, the video clips are not arranged randomly however geographically. By arranging the video clips geographic, this installation can bring a more realistic feeling about the doomsday by letting the viewers feel that all the landmarks, places that they are familiar with are all involved in the doomsday: they are all destroyed by different causes.

      The video clips and the whole installation with the dark closed space brought the viewers a feeling that facing the doomsday, we have nowhere to run, everyplace we know about is destroyed by different reason, which brings the viewer a feeling of frustration facing the doomsday. What I think this video installation is talking about is that human beings, although considered themselves as the most intelligence creatures on Earth, while facing the power of nature or the universe, human beings are still so small and fragile. If there is such a doomsday, what we need to do is to enrich our everyday life and be thankful of what we have today.  

Project Proposal

Here is the proposal, please follow the link
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VkSbDBoPng06pYcsWhn5o6FbK_rgQhFLDXZ2o3ca4f8/edit

Feedback, feedback, feedback

     From the history that FEEDBACK, the exhibition, has show to the audience, feedback, as an important element of digital art. As Norbert Wiener implied in 1940s using “cybernetics” that feedback plays an important role in a communication system. While, at this stage, digital art could be a branch of communication system since a crucial part of digital media is to either take feedback of itself (earlier approaching by pioneer artists) or the feedback from the audiences (later approaching). Wiener also summarized that the three central concepts that were crucial were communication, control and feedback. According to the projects that have been mentioned, all of them could be take down to these three main parts that take information out of messages that are been passed through the open system.

    The article has given a brief idea of how each project in the history had been constructed which is very helpful to build our own project. The projects that are related to mixture of video and real time video taping of the audiences were pretty inspiring. It showed we could not only use the connect as the port that takes the feedback of the people, but also a camera that can combine the feedback and make the project more interesting.

    Also from the article we know that as well as any other forms of art, digital art is also connected to almost any aspects of contemporary social life and that made the digital art itself more thoughtful and added more value to the project itself. The relationship between the art and technology is also tight. As a matter of fact, it is the technology that brings the possibilities to the artists that let them do whatever they wanted to do, and I do believe that in the near future, with more developed technologies we could expect more diverse that the unknown (for now) technology could bring to the artists.  

Can video games ever be art, or say Art?

      In Brian Moriarty’s article he argued that whether video game could be art or say sublime art.  

Video game is different to any other medias: video games emphasizes the interactive between the game itself and the player, while other type of medias that are already regarded as sublime arts are medias that do not have such properties. And because of these specific properties, video game has been pushed to the debate of being art. Video game is also different from other new media arts. Although they both emphasize the importance of interactive, they interactive in different ways, as Brian has mentioned, “… Games as a series of interesting choices…”, and the choices made by player made the video game a whole piece. The thing that Jason VandenBerghe pointed out is very interesting and convincing, “… Our performance of play is the sublime art… The game remains a game”. For video games, the players are a counted and significant part of the video game itself, and I can’t agree more that it is the player that made the video game a sublime art. But for video game itself, I think video game could be art, but sublime art? Maybe not yet. Although video games are made by piles of great art works, 2D and 3D, as well as coding and design, as a whole piece it could not be called as a sublime art while missing the player. How could we appreciate a video game without playing or watching people playing it? A video game could not be literally watched or read, so it could hardly be showcased in art galleries or any other museums for people to appreciate the artistic factors that video games have been inspiring people. For the moment, video game, as pointed out by Brian, is kitsch art, not sublime, and with the player playing it, it is so called a sublime art, and form a new kind of sublime art.

     Hope that in the near future, we could have a gallery especially for video game showcasing, since video game, from the day the name appears, a great many of crews has devoted themselves to make video game artistic.

[Audio Walk] Artists Statement

Group: Anne Feldman, Katherine Kwan, Danning Lu

Our response to sound is demonstrated in four different ways, physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally. Our audio walk uses elements from the four different types of responses to create an interesting narrative carried our solely by audio. The participants will be split into two groups, each taking a different route and experiencing the walk though two different characters.

Some keynote sounds include everyday sounds that are often unconscious to us. These include footsteps, wind, students talking in hallways and other sound elements that can be heard around the York campus. Sound signals heard through the walk include sounds of an elevator and cell phones ringing.

Different parts of the walk will affect the participants in different ways. Through the narrative of the two characters, we hope that both scenarios will create a physiological effect. This will be carried out by music, creating an increased heart rate due to the fear and excitement of an unknown situation. This is also related to the behavioral effect, as the fast tempo in the music will motivate listeners to feel rushed, due to the situation they are in. The psychological state of participants will be affected by the story of the character whose shoes they will walk in through conversations they are having throughout the walk. These conversations will allow the participant to get inside the character’s head, and hopefully feel a similar emotion. Cognitive effects will be noticed in areas where many sounds are present at once, and each participant must choose what sounds to focus on.

We wanted to put a playful twist on the assignment and create a walking tour that told a story. Through focusing on the four ways we are affected by sound, the class will be able to participate in the world of the characters we created, and see where they end up. 


For my part in the group, I did the editing of the original sound tracks made by Katherine. Also the field recording of the background sound.