Project 3

The idea with this project was to show off the age of one's clothing. There are two extremes in thought when it comes to the age of clothing: those who want their clothes to be new and the most fashion forward and those who want their clothes to be old/against the common opinion of new and fashion forward. Therefore, the project's purpose was to speak the date out loud on whatever article of clothing it was attached to. This would ultimately be an uncomfortable thing for the wearer but that is where the purpose lies. It is essentially a theoretical product as was pushed by the very cheesy advertisement design. While I had trouble altering the card's module, the actual product showed what I was intending.

Project 3

Basically, the idea was to repurpose discarded materials into a form of clothing. Specifically the necktie, a staple for the 'sophisticated man'. We wear ties to look professional and presentable for the most part; even the clean, flawless material of the tie plays into this social norm. I was hoping to see if, by changing the material and process in which it was made, I could create a wearable necktie that opposes this concept. I used old receipts that I collected, almost to an obsessive extent over the years, to build what would normally be a fashionable article of clothing out of what is pretty much trash. Supposedly ties can tell our audience a lot about us. In a similar way, receipts are very personal objects that reveal where and on what we spend a large portion of our money.

I appreciated the advice about making a series out of this. While I was researching I remember reading that the cravat (the ancestor of the necktie) was mainly used as a sort of convenient napkin or towel to wipe dirt and such off of the face/neck, which ties are pretty much never used for. The project could expand to having ties made from receipts from specific places, or even other discarded materials such as actual napkins, tissues, etc. that contrast the supposed inherent professional quality of the necktie.

Adventure Ho! Video

It's horrible trying to embed stuff on Blogger. Just click here to see the video.

In regards to the video and the performance, a few things went awry, most notably the sound. Our speakers we bought with DAMN money are basically the same caliber as the internal computer audio, but for some reason I keep entrusting in. As such, a big chunk of the game involving dialogue between myself and the game interface was cut. So I'll describe the game below as it should have, and for the most part already did, flow.

Adventure Ho! is a retro gaming experience that breaks through the game interface, creating challenges for the players to resolve in the real world, culminating in a final battle against the game itself.

It begins with the game creator (myself) introducing the game, which has a relatively simple set-up: a lowly peasant Thelonius must venture off after bandits who ransacked his village. Players will navigate through the game as normal at first, but it isn't long before the game becomes glitched and "shuts down." The game creator seizes the controls, only to find out the game has been glitched, and blatantly tells it so. The distorted computer voice tells him of that fact, and to continue playing the game as normal. However, he cannot play, the other audience members must do it for him. So then the game begins with the player now in some dank catacombs.

The first challenge beckons players to search under their chairs, where five members find five torn pieces to an incantation. Six lines of text tell them that challenges wait ahead, and they should be cautious and examine clues very carefully. The first letters of each line are capitalized, vertically reading 'DECEIT.' Typing this into the game will get you to the next screen. The second challenge involves finding two objects: one "ghoulish" and one "more booksmart." One is located on a bookshelf in the Lab toward the far right of the main stage, the other on the person of a spooky skeleton toward the front of the Lab. Both items are crosses, and they link diagonally with each other. The codeword is "doublecross," and once it is spoken, the game goes to the next screen.

The final challenge involves looking through a box filled with brown, rubble pixels. Inside of one contains a key, and the player who finds it gains access to the pixelized shield and sword. It's at this point that the game shuts down again and the computerized voice reveals that it is actually Thelonius, the character the players have been guiding through the game. Through manipulating the players, he has gained access to our world to wreck havoc. With that, a real-word Thelonius appears, in all his pixelized glory, ready to do battle with the shield-and-sword-wielding player, complete with a fighting screen and health bars. Just when things seem grim, the game maker pulls out a strategy guide, giving the player a code to allow them to fight in three dimensions, as opposed to the two only allotted by Thelonius. When the cheat code is activated, the player is able to vanquish Thelonius and is crowned the winner of the game.

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The game/performance touches on a couple different concepts, but I'll just focus on the costume character as it pertains to this class. The pixel suit character went through a few changes over time as my narrative for the game began to take shape. In the end, he went from being the big boss of the game, to the character that players had been navigating as through the entire game. The Thelonius character was your virtual double, the one you had control over, but ends up being the one you must fight at the end to win. It questions the idea of the virtual doppleganger, in how much your alter ego avatar is truly your own. The character is humanized by bringing it into the real world, giving it its own identity in relation to the players. However, there's also the idea that the Thelonius character was always conscious of itself, as it was the unidentified computer voice at the beginning of the game. It was using the players the whole time; as such, Thelonius is not so much a parallel character to the players but one that manipulated them. It calls into question the intent and identity of all virtual avatars, and their roles in our online wonderland.

Pictures from the Backyard Garden Taken Over the Semester +Smell Log +Wet Farmers Market + Mission-Statement for Project One

Compost Tea Aeration





tomatoes!


Smell log
9am-coffee, hazel

9am-Clean – soap

9-11am-rotting vegetables and meat – compost tea, bucket that breaks down organic matter while submerged in aerated water

11am-moldy vomit grease - (bucket collecting sink water collects everything, food scraps, that goes down drain; plumbing problems)

12pm-wet dirt, sweat – Frisbee

2pm-Chicken- chick-fil-a

7pm-body odor- laundry

8pm-shrimp, boiling broccoli, fresh dill – dinner

9pm-moldy vomit grease - (sink bucket water)

Farmers Market







Mission-Statement for Project One

Digital Natives, DN, invites all local residents to submit images or messages along with a detailed, or purposefully ambiguous, description or image of the message’s intended site. These submissions will be later assigned a marker that will be installed in the designated space and indicated on the Submissions Map found on DN’s home page. The maintenance of these markers will be continually updated within the DN’s blog and the Submissions Map on the DN’s home page.

The potential of Digital Natives, a rich community generated derive crossing physical and digital spaces,rests in active and thoughtful submissions and adventures of its users.


email images and descriptions to: Digital.NativesARGIS@gmail.com | Digital Natives

Wearable Presentation

Ursitti Questions -Late

Ursitti Questions
What is non visual aesthetics? What is the value of aesthetics?
“puts the body back into the visual – it has the potential to make the gaze less distancing,colonizing and voyeuristic – the touching eye, hearing eye, maybe this is the contribution. It grounds you in the here and now, in three dimensions plus time.”
Non visual aesthetics can include of wider variety of sensory information that layers possible interpretations.
What according to Ursitti is the relationship between scent and the gallery or museum?
“scent as something that contaminates the pristine white cube with evidence
of the body social – the visceral.”
Gallery’s and Museum offer a structured experience which aligns with many institutions, a neutral area without distracting visuals, sounds, or smells.
What sort of contradiction would an artist who deliberately does not document his work have to live with?
“his drive not to document the work in order to enable direct experience...It is a paradox in a sense to make work that is invisible within the context of art which in our culture is focused on the visual.”
Fine art is centered on a visual experience, without imagery an artist is resisting a dominate practice which shapes the institution.
How does the museum sanitize aesthetic experience?
Museums attempt to create a neutral zone that guards work’s context from distracting senses. A sanitized, blank, environment facilitates a focused and analytical experience.
What are some examples of how aesthetics carry political and social values?
Political and social values compose culture and aesthetics are linked to its cultural origin. ALL Aesthetics are inevitably shaped by subtle or overt cultural stimulus. Political and Social values frame what “is” and “is not” allowed to integrating within a aesthetic's discipline.
Comment upon Paul Virilio's statement that we are losing the ability to engage with the aesthetic because of the technology and this in turn has made us lose the ability to engage full stop with what we are looking at in front of us in the real world.
How information is mediated affects interpretations.
Quick and ever present media privileges a large volume of easily digestible information. Art’s that attempt to offer aesthetics based on experience are challenged by a viewership that gages work based on brief and shallow engagement.
How did Clara Ursitti integrate the scientific information she learned into her art practice?
Ursitti learned of that synesthesia is a common method for sensory perception and interpretation. Installation that engages with connecting a many senses compounds the variety and impact of gallery experiences.
The other day we discussed whether smell was more felt or less mediated than vision. Maybe what where we should have directed the conversation was to the role of language as a mediation for vision vs language as a mediation for smell. Comment upon this.
When I think of this I consider how smell is depicted, as wavy lines.

Additional Project One Process & Research -Late

A Derive Guided By a Stranger


Suite Venitienne (1979)
wiki
By chance, Sophie Calle met a man at a party in NewYork by chance. After learning he was going to Paris she decided to follow him secretly and document his stay. She surveilled the man closely, taking photograph and a keeping a journal of everywhere he went. She also staged photographs of herself in places he had been. Ultimately, the man, Henri B., discovered her and confronted her asking her to please stop - or so the story goes, Calle’s work is somewhat mysterious and the actual circumstance of the event is not proven.


The GridBook



library catalog
Download PDF Version

The Grid Book includes a few interesting chapters on the history and form of maps. The chapters on maps describe an evolution based on cultural needs and tastes, things like religion shaped the world; the holy trinity was thought to have described the spatial relationship between Europe, Asia and Africa and this was reflected in a particular style of maps that form these continents in the shape of a large cross.

Google Street View Time Lapse - 360 Degree Panorama
Time Lapse - 360 Degree Panorama Youtube
How it Works
Creative use of street view images within a time lapse.

Audio Geo-tag
broadcastr-audio geotag
nytimes broadcastr

This is a project that geo-tags user submitted audio samples at location that can be listened to using an app in the specified location.

"about
Broadcastr is a Social Media platform for location-based stories. It enables the recording, indexing, listening, and sharing of audio content. Just like in human memory, every story is bound to a place.
Whether dishing last night’s details to friends, uncovering local lore, perusing restaurant reviews, listening to travel guides, tuning in to citizen journalism, contemplating oral histories, or sharing hilarious anecdotes, Broadcastr amplifies all our voices. Users can take a GPS-enabled walk as stories about their surroundings stream into their headphones, like a museum tour of the entire world. Users can record their own content, create playlists, follow their friends, and share on Facebook."-broadcasr

Introduced to this project after finishing Project One. Its interesting to see a similar application that used audio rather than imagery. There is actually one submission in town!

AG Class -Late

I had an interesting group discussion. The AG students where open minded and interested in the nature of conceptual art and how it functions, concept is paramount in execution and form. The group had experience in journalism and seemed to appreciate creative communication skills particularly educating a public audience. Overall, the AG students seemed to find the time-lapse in the grocery store most successful as an insightful gesture in terms of public relations, connecting people with methods and information efficiently.

I was a bit nervous about describing how conceptual art functions considering its connotations, explaining briefly how this style strives for meaning out loud was personally reassuring.

Blind Guided Smell Tour -Late

Experiencing a guided blind smell tour was an interesting approach to smell understanding. I was surprised how hesitated I felt being guided in a familiar place. At the smell sites, I realized I had a limited vocabulary in describing smells; i could only describe the smells as the scent of objects, wet concrete. I thought the most distinct smells came from a rusted steel sculpture in front of architecture (I could almost taste a penny in my mouth) and a unmarked vent beside a dorm emitting a warm slightly moldy? odor.

Early Project One Ideas -Late

- I proposed to the class a kinetic arrow that pointed directly to a particular point in space, along earth’s orbit, that corresponded to a particular day/point in orbit. Rather than counting down an annual event one could watch the day/point in orbit approaching. I was considering ways to make the arrow out of light (narrow spot-light) that grew based on the distance of the day/point in space. I thought that linking calendars and compasses would be interesting. However, after explaining the project out-loud a few times the piece seemed at best a uncompelling piece of public art and at worst a closed gesture based on a pedestrian understanding,

- I was also considering making a handheld audio device that directed users around via headphones. The device would sense the users location and direct users around with audio clues describing the landscape with non-direct language. However, this work seemed like a museum audio tour functioning as a work of art.

- also I was also considering another handheld device that functioned as a dowsing rod, handheld wands used to mysteriously find resources underground. I imagined a device that could dynamically change how it was balanced thereby directing the user. Users would hold a simple palm-sized device that became top-heavy (forward, back, left and right) at certain moments gesturing the user to move in a particular direction. The device would need to know the exact location of the user and have a weight system that could orient itself creating a top-heavy effect, something like balancing a broom on your finger, according to the user’s location. The location could be determined using GPS or a loose relative awareness based on the beginning of the journey using the user’s acceleration/time. I was mostly thinking about adapting the functionality/form of a compass. However, i did not put the time into connecting a gps to an arduino microcontroller, making any sort of dynamic balancing system, or programing a relative positioning system using an accelerometer.

Campus Map -Late

For the campus map, Kelsey and I made a map marking books in the library using pictures with just enough detail to know a particular book’s general area. The library already has an efficient system for locating book. Using pictures that reveal only small clues of the a books location emphasized the process to find a books location and those books that may be found along the way.

Jing and Renate’s provided a map that had a general outline of building and repeating pairs of initials lined along the outside of the buildings. Starting in the parking lot of FAC it was somewhat apparent the initials were the initials of signs clarifying the parking space. After the parking space the initials became a bit more cryptic and we were unsure what signs the initials described. Using the general outline of the buildings the map was navigable but we were unable to pin down what signs was being abbreviated.

Jing and Renate’s map engaged with language well, forcing one to scan a space in terms of layers made of possible names given to those objects creating the space.

In Town Derive -Late

I traveled up the hog town creek as far as I could before stopping when development made it impossible to follow the creek. I’d searched the nearby bed for sharks teeth on occasion without ever wondering for more then a few hundred feet. Determined to head as far north as possible, I walked in the creek and around the wood beside the creek. The creek carved an interesting path that snaked. The most interesting feature would be a 10-15 foot shear wall the river bank had carved into the earth. It is unusual to see vertical earth in Florida so standing over the edge of this eroding drop was a great feeling. I eventually had to stop at a neighborhood that seemed to redirected the water beneath the ground connecting it with a storm water system.

This American Life -Late

This American life talked about mapping using the five senses. Side walk cracks and nuances in the neighborhood were mapped using sight, modern background noise were defined using sound, an electronic smelling device identified smells.

These projects are easily defined as works within map making. Overall the projects were interesting. With varying degrees of artistic methods, the projects observed and evaluated the world to discover meaning through interpreting relationships. I thought mapping the soundscapes of uniquely modern background noises was an surprising glimpse into the impressions our surrounding subtly impose on us.

More Stuff being built

Performance was semi-disastrous, but still hilarious. Video up later today.

rudy's - Wearable Project Process

Helpful Websites

Getting Started with Processing and Data Visualization
Processing 1.0 Code Tutorial on Data Visualization

Shape of a Song
Warpaint
Interesting examples of data Visualization using Processing 1.0

Leah Buechley Accelerometer Shirt
Leah Buechley tutorial using accelerometer


Switch2Health
Watch that records exercise performed throughout the day and allows users to earn points by loading information from the watch to the products website. I thought the concept was interesting but required a more visual way of looking at information.