Final

Here is my performance art final video.

Performance Art Final

Feel free to check out the rest of my videos.

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Peace!

Modern Day Animation

Modern day animation has taken fantasy worlds and brought them to life before our eyes. Pixar has been one of the most successful companies in its time because of their ability to create stories that are interesting to the viewer. they also do an incredible job of animating and creating these fantasy worlds through art. Unlike the production of Snow White Pixar has the power of computer animation at their finger tips. It is ignorant to say that production has become easier since the introduction of computers however. It is still a painstaking process. This time it's behind a mouse instead of a pencil.

Check it out: Pixars Creation of Monsters University

Snow White Production

Before the introduction of computer technology to animate for us producers spent significantly more time working on cartoon movies. Not only were they responsible for the script and storyboarding there were people in charge of drawing each scene. The scenes were created frame by frame. From there the scenes were placed together. Finally the audio and editing the film to final form. This short youtube video gives a new appreciation for the painstaking process. Snow white took over 30,000 frames!

Check it out: Snow White Production

Children Toys Turned Art Form

Anyone born in the late 80's to recent years knows about LEGO's. LEGOs are a small brick building toy that can be used to express the imagination in block form. LEGO has even opened a theme park dedicated to their little colored bricks. Nathan Sawaya is an artist who has taken the LEGO to the next level. With exhibits all over the world Sawaya has taken his creativity ad built some impressive pieces. The projects really speak to the kid in all of us. He isn't in to following the instructions in the box. Do you think you could one up his work?

The Fall of FM Radio

When I think of a warm summer night I picture myself cruising in my car down a back road twisting the dial on my radio to find my favorite FM country station. What if in the future we no had FM radio? This reality may not be to far off. In an article Published by Gizmodo (Norway to Remove FM Radio by 2017) Norway announced that they will be removing the use of FM radio. Instead they are going to move to digital radio. They believe that they can offer higher quality audio and a wider range of stations to their listeners. 90% of americans still use FM radio at least once a week but we could follow suit soon. It is not to uncommon for one to see others using pandora or Sirius Radio more than FM radio each month in America. Is FM radio dying? Norway thinks so.

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.

The Dawn of the Mac

In 1984 Apple Computers was a budding technology company. They were on the verge of releasing a new computer called the Macintosh. One order to advertise their computer they created a somewhat controversial advertisement to be aired during the Super Bowl. This was Apples first commercial for the new Macintosh computer. The ad is considered one of the most creative and influential of the decade. The advertisement depicts a woman spinning and throwing a hammer at a "Big Brother" figure in a dystopian landscape. The figure is representative of IBM the juggernaut of computer technology in 1984. The advertisement is a spin off of the book "1984" by George Orwell. The commercial was aired one time but it reached almost 50% of all American households. This was the dawn of what we now see during todays Super Bowls and the massive influx of creative commercials.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin is a Russina film made in 1925. This is one of the first films with clips cut and placed together to create a visceral response from the audience. The method of editing this film is known as montage. The clips are cut in 3 and 4 second intervals. Many regard this film as one of the most influential on modern film because of its use of montage. Much of the techniques that the director, Eisenstein, used are still being used today.

One of the most famous scenes is called the Odessa Steps. This is a scene depicting Russian soldiers marching and killing civilians as the descend a stair case. The scene has been remade many times.

Here it is (above) being copied in the movie The Untouchables. Much of this film is considered propaganda as Eisenstein was very much in favor of the Bolsheviks revolution.

The Future of Robotics

In todays society more than ever there are robotic mechanisms that are changing the way we work, clean, or even play. In most homes you can find a robotic vacuum called a Roomba.  In almost every factory in the world there are robots responsible for assembling parts for a new product. The human race has been able to take much of its man power and convert it to mechanical power through the invention and progress of these finely tuned machines.We can only speculate as to what is on the horizon for robotics. One product I stumbled upon earlier this week was a drone called Lily.

Lily is a professional quality camera crew built into a flying robot.  It is capable of taking 1080p HD videos all while tracking your every movement. Lily is connected to a remote tracking device that the user places on their body. The user can change the angle and distance that the camera follows its tracking device. This camera is revolutionary for filmmakers as well as the average joe camera user. Costing only $799 buyers can create professional quality action shots anywhere they please. This is an incredible advancement in camera technology for the common man.

Video: Introducing the Lily Camera

Grids in Art

If we look at the most rudimentary forms of organization we can see resemblances to grids. Whether its the streets of Rome or the motherboard in a computer it is easiest for the human mind to line things up in a 2 axis linear fashion. We often see grids in art because it draws the human eye better than any other shape.

We find grids in a very tightly organized fashion in art such as the picture above. The grid gives the artist an ordered sequence in which to form their drawing or painting. In fact in beginning design classes all over the country students are being taught how to grid a smaller photo onto a larger canvas in order to keep proportionality. There are also grids in a much more abstract and disorganized fashion. The photo below illustrates such.

While this photo does not have the same direct order to it as the above painting we can still organize a grid. The form of the grid gives the viewer a pattern for their eyes to follow. In the second photo the eyes are initially drawn to the large white bar in the center. From there the viewer moves left and right in a linear manner following the many boxes created.

Flip Book Video

Here is the video of my 400 page flip book.

Art and Technology in the News

Technology has become so common place in our society we almost don't notice it. One way that we can use technology in an eye catching way is through art. Whether thats the use of a robot to paint a picture or using a microscope to view electron micro pictures we are advancing the integration of art and technology everyday. I recently found an article titled "Using a Laser as the World's Most Powerful Paintbrush" in the news.

This article talks about a man named Ben Tricklebank who was testing out new concept of art using a powerful laser projector on a California valley floor. Tricklebank bought the laser off of eBay for $600 dollars and the rest is history. He spent the next few months using the projector as a form of temporary graffiti that he could place on the landscape. Most laser exhibits are reactive to the environment such that if the viewer interacts with the lasers the exhibit will change. Ben had an idea of placing a new environment onto the existing one.

Blade Runner Comparisons

The movie Blade Runner is loosely based off of the book "Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep". The story places us in a dystopian future where androids are human like killing machines that have infiltrated society. It is the job of one cop Rick Deckard to find a band of Nexus machines that are in his city. The film is based in Los Angeles in the year 2019. The landscape is filled with high rise buildings and pitch black dark clouds. If we compare the depiction of society in the movie to what it is now we can see a few stark differences as well as some similarities. Because we are only 4 years from the setting of the movie we can make very accurate comparisons.
Flying Cars: While we are in the process of creating a self driven car we are far from the flying vehicles that are shown in the movie. The closest thing we have right now compared to flying cars is a overboard being developed by Lexus car company. This is one facet incorrectly represented.
Cultural Influences: In the streets on Los Angeles we find a mostly Japanese  influence on the cultural. Much of the side conversations are in Japanese. This isn't completely inaccurate as the U.S. has seen an influx of immigrants over the years. However the biggest representation is more Latino than Japanese.
Pollution: An interesting comparison that the film makers have is that of the pollution. In the film we see many of the buildings spewing dark fire and smoke from their roofs. While this is inaccurate as to what our buildings are like now it is a very interesting point on how pollutions is now. Global warming and the push for a more sustainable lifestyle is very prominent in todays society. Is the caused by the predictions in the film?

Photograph In Time

The first pictures ever recorded were done on a camera obscura. This was a small box completely shut out from light except for one pinhole. The back end of the box was fixed with a plate that had bitmen coating. This chemical coating would change color with the introduction of light. This camera had an exposure time of almost 8 hours. As we look forward in time we begin to see cameras with exposure times of only a few minutes and much clearer photos. This came with the revolution of the technology for the camera. New chemicals and wisely crafted camera bodies helped speed the process. Even in todays age we continue to see a progression of the technology involved in photography. In todays era you can take a photo with an exposure time of a trillionth of a second. The colors in the photo are incredibly vivid and you can store thousands on a small card placed into the digital camera. It is truly an incredible feat to see how far we have come in photography.