judyjxl

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 / 

blanket;

Above is a screen recording of blanket; and its responses to different user inputs.

Concept Statement and Bibliography

Research Topic: 4. Contemporary art and design often looks at the idea of constructed binaries, such as man/woman, soft/hard, straight/gay, dirty/clean, organic/synthetic. Considering the history of these ‘pairs’. How can art and design interrogate these binaries and offer new insights?

We all live in the digital age. Everything is at our fingertips, almost anything can be done with computers nowadays. We live in comfort and dependence upon this powerful entity of technology. What seems to be a blossoming bond between human and robot can easily turn sour without careful control over the potential threats it poses.

I decided to build upon my previous assignment and take the main concept of technology providing shelter and comfort for our modern society to another level. In this case, my final artwork consists of a C program that is able to interact with the user in a computer terminal through user input. The program simulates a living creature in the form of a mini computer which dwells in your electronic device. It starts by prompting the user for their name, and subsequently asks them if they need a blanket, which is a continuation of my previous project. A quilt has connotations of warmth, comfort and protection. However, too much usage can lead to suffocation and deathly consequences, which parallels our dependence on technology to run our daily lives. Depending on the user’s input, the creature would output different responses, seemingly making it seem alive and conscious.

The process of developing such a program consisted of cycling through many previous ideas which were discarded. Initially, I was going to create a straight-forward continuation of my first project – physically sewing together a small sample piece of the quilt I centred my poster around. It was intended to consist of a fabric base, but with electronic wires stitched into the piece instead of normal thread. However, I ultimately decided on creating a computer program as I wanted this artwork to comprise of audience interaction, which explores humanity’s relationship with technology on a more intimate level. The user would be able to directly interact with a digital interface without the elaborate extensiveness of programs we use everyday such as social media etc. I stripped down the premise of interactive applications to the bare minimum, reminding the audience of the basis of our technological era and how dangerous such a simple program could be.

I planned out the initial skeleton of my program to include what would happen and what type of input it would take in. This was followed by coding the actual program and testing it. I decided on taking in user input in the form of words, which seemed like the most natural response for a user to input. The program reads the words, otherwise known as strings in the C language, from input, which the user types into the computer terminal, and subsequently executes decisions based on conditions in the program’s code. Errors were picked up when I compiled the program and subsequently fixed. I also asked some friends to test out the program and give me feedback, which helped me discover some errors in the code and missing chunks, ultimately allowing me to develop and improve the final product.

What ultimately is conceived is an interactive program which reminds the user of the dangers of technology in a subtle manner disguised under a friendly, simulated digital entity. It’s a stripped down version of interactive software, taking in user input and replying with a mind of its own, with messages laced with questionable undertones.

Just remember not to get too comfortable.

Bibliography

Burgess, Matt, ‘In Pictures: Artwork Made From Coding’, http://factor-tech.com/3d-modelling/1089-in-pictures-artwork-made-from-coding/, 2014.

Sauser, Lauren, ‘Creating Art With Code’, https://www.codefellows.org/blog/creating-art-code/, 2016.

Epler, Mathew, ‘An Artists Journey With Code’, https://generalassemb.ly/blog/an-artists-journey-with-code/, 2016.

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 /

Even more progress...

I documented all of the compilation errors and progress on how I fixed and improved my program. Errors that were fixed included editing the appearance of the ASCII art, changing variables and revising what I wanted my program to print out and how it interacted with the user. I edited the programs responses to the user inputting their name as well as the later inputs of ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 /

More Progress...

Testing was consistently done every time I updated the program with code, and it was observed that the ASCII art wasn’t printing out correctly so I had to change the code accordingly. After experimenting with the character array, I was able to get the program to print out the image of the computer correctly.

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 /

Progress...

I decided to code a simple program in C which would take in user input and produce the respective output. I wanted to simulate a ‘living’ computer in which the user would interact with.

I started out by drawing up some ASCII art to provide visuals to my project, which I would subsequently print out into the terminal.

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 /

Artwork Inspiration: ‘Ameba’, Raven Kwok, 2011

“A code-animated amoebic creature created using Processing.” - Kwok

http://ravenkwok.com/ameba/

Artwork Inspiration: ‘Big Brothers Are Watching You’, Raven Kwok, 2014

“Big Brothers Are Watching You started as a feasibility test on controlling multiple Windows thru Processing and Java’s Abstract Window Toolkit API. Flocking behavior was later integrated, adding a lifelike texture to the Windows GUIs. All Big Brothers appear as cute Windowed creatures with innocent cartoonish eyes, but continue to stare at your cursor, seemingly tracking your cyber behaviour for some unknown purposes.” - Kwok

http://ravenkwok.com/big-brothers-are-watching-you/

These artworks were quite interesting as they were centred around ‘living’ creatures that interacted with the user. ‘Ameba’ required the user to take care of a virtual, simulated pet that you had to feed. ‘Big Brothers Are Watching You’ similarly integrated a living creature which instead, ominously tracked your every move and followed your virtual and physical presence with its eyes, watching you from the shadows of the digital realm. 

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 /

Inspiration: Garden Robot, Code + Robots

Made with Code is an initiative by Google to encourage young women to code. This was a program I stumbled across called ‘Garden Robot’ which was an interactive game where you dragged blocks to “code” a program for a robot to water plants. The video above is a screen recording of me playing the game.

I thought the premise of the game was quite interesting and reflected on my thoughts from assessment 1 - the ‘binary’ of humans and technology.

https://www.madewithcode.com/projects/robots

[judyjxl]

/ assessment 2 / 

Artwork Inspiration: 

‘Infinity Weft’ by Jer Thorp and Diane Thorp

“How can a textile function as a digital object?This is a central question of Infinite Weft. The project is a collaboration with my mother, Diane Thorp, who has been weaving for almost 40 years – it’s a chance for me to combine my usually screen-based digital practice with her extraordinary hand-woven work. It’s also an exploration of mathematics, computational history, and the concept of pattern.” - Jer Horp

https://www.jerthorp.com/infiniteweft

[judyjxl]

don’t get too comfortable.

// adad1002 assessment 1 final poster //

We all live in the digital age. Everything is at our fingertips, almost anything can be done with computers nowadays. We live in comfort and dependence upon this powerful entity of technology. What seems to be a blossoming bond between human and robot can easily turn sour without careful control over the potential threats it poses.

I explore the relationship between humanity and technology through a poster overloaded with too much information, too much data that overwhelms the viewer in its entirety of vibrant clashing colours and bars reminiscent of those exhibited in a television glitch. I used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate a single image of an intel processor to create an artwork that acts as a reminder in itself of the power and dangers of technological advancements. As the viewer absorbs the information and settles in, they are greeted with the words “don’t get too comfortable” buzzing in the centre of the poster, acting as an eerie reminder that questions the viewers relationship with technology and just how comfortable they really can be in this digital age. 

The poster itself also simulates a quilt, with stitches bordering patches red, green and blue prints that fabric real-life intel processors. A quilt has connotations of warmth, comfort and protection. However, too much usage can lead to suffocation and deathly consequences, which parallels our dependence on technology to run our daily lives. Thus, it urges the viewer to question and find a safe balance in a world of pending chaos, and not to get “too comfortable” just yet.

[judyjxl]

/ progress /

8x speed of editing process on Adobe Photoshop.

[judyjxl]

/ experiment /

playing with photoshop ...

((very subtle changes with the last two))

[judyjxl]

/ progress /

I used an image of an Intel Xeon X5650 Processor and proceeded to edit and ‘glitch’ the image in Photoshop. The glitch effect was achieved through playing with the saturation, masking and changing the colour levels of R,G and B.

[judyjxl]

/ experimenting /

Another idea was to create a poster which resembled a quilt. Quilts have many annotations such as comfort, warmth, shelter and safety.

However, "too much” comfort can lead to dangerous consequences such as immobility, dependence and suffocation. This encapsulates the relationship between humanity and technology - symbiotic and beneficial, yet dangerous and risky.

Many quilts are constructed of pieces of small square cloth that are stitched together, and this resembles pixels on a screen.

[judyjxl]

/ artist/artwork inspiration /

LoVid (Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus)

http://lovid.org

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/aug/15/artist-profile-lovid/

Fishy Panoramas of Untangled Webs

Quilt

[judyjxl]

/ ecologies /

wk3

[judyjxl]

technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master

Christian Lous Lange

[judyjxl]

/ experimenting /

trying to “glitch” an image

maybe in the horizontal glitches, add html code

add string to the rest of the glitch to resemble the merging of traditional and digital

try and find the middle ground: a world where technology and humanity can co-exist in a symbiotic relationship (which hopefully is where we are right now)

[judyjxl]

/ artist/artwork inspiration /

Nam June Paik, “father of video art”

TV Garden, 1974

Søren Kierkegaard Robot, 1996

TV Buddha, 1974

Video Fish, 1979-1992 : http://www.newmedia-art.org/cgi-bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000011747&lg=GBR

TV Cello with Charlotte Moorman, 1971