Minecraft and the Art of Video Games

One of the most popular video games in recent years is Minecraft. Minecraft is a massive sandbox style game that allows users to explore and build in an 8 bit block based world. It is not uncommon for users to recreate their favorite real world buildings in Minecraft. There are multiple remakes of the Eiffel Tower, The colosseum, the space needle and even the game of thrones world. In fact a group of builders spent over a year to create the game of thrones world. Spending 20 to 30 hours a week the builders created the popular fantasy world from only blocks. The developers believe the map is about the same size as the city of LA. Wow!

Check it out: Game of Thrones Minecraft Edition

Ithaca Towers

As we near the end of the year it is easy to look ahead to New Year celebrations. Many of us spend time with friends and family as we watch the ball drop on television. The displays we see are art in their own right. Ithaca College is a small school in upstate New York. On campus they have two towers that can be seen from the town of Ithaca. In 1965 the maintenance workers began making lit displays during the winter season. At first the displays were of a Christmas tree and a cross. In recent years the workers have started to make displays that show the year. Even year on New Years at midnight the workers coordinate a light switch that changes the display of the numbers to the corresponding year. Another interesting use of technology to create art.

Check it out: Ithaca Towers

Here is my Art and Technology Final Project. It is a performance art piece. I have created a beat using household items. I edited the music using garage band and edited the video together using iMovie. It was filmed using an iPhone 6.

Art and Technology Performance Art

Pixelated Photo

Here is a pixelated photo of myself using the 8 bit digitizer.

Sheep Herding and Pixels

All electronic displays are shown as a pixelated image. Pixels are defined as, the smallest addressable element of a digital display. Pixels are square in nature and are often colored. Placing them in set patterns will create an image when done correctly.

 A group of men took to the hills to create their own version of a pixel image using sheep. By placing lights on the backs of their sheep herds they were able to organize them into coordinated patterns. They made moving images that depicted a game of Atari Pong, a fireworks show, and even a Mona Lisa.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw&feature=youtu.be

Kinetoscope and Early Film

Before the days of Netflix and internet streaming of movies there was the VHS and DVD players. Prior to those forms of film playback there was the cinema. Prior to the cinema was the invention of Kinetoscope. The Kinetoscope was not the same as a modern movie projector but would be the precursor to such technology. The viewer could look through a small peep hole and view a short film that was about 30 seconds long. This was one of the first inventions that had 35mm moving film.

 The first time the public saw these films was at the Brooklyn Institute of Technology. This was also the first time that films were understood as a frames per second calculation. The more frames you could fit into one second the smoother the film would become. Most of the films were very straight forward shots with some sort of action happening within the frame. this was the true beginnings of film making.

Moving Photos

In the movie series Harry Potter many of the still photos within this magical world are shown as moving images. Whether its a newspaper of a small family photo the directors give them a magical quality by allowing them to be moving images. In real life we are not fortunate enough to have these magical pictures but technology has brought us much closer. The invention of the Gif allows users to watch small moving photos that last for about 10 seconds. Some of the Gifs are snippets from a movie or TV show and they are even the focal point in many popular Memes. Technology has also brought us the invention of the electronic photo frame.

The electronic photo frame was patented in 2005 (http://www.google.com/patents/US6975308) and can be found at almost any large electronics store. By loading your photos onto the frame itself there is a running slideshow that is randomly selected from your photos.