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Grace Hopper: Queen of Code

This week, the DAMN class watched Queen of Code, a documentary about the legendary Grace Hopper, aka the Mother of Computers. It premiered online on Jan 28, 2015.

The film was produced by FiveThirtyEight for their “Signals” Series, and directed by Gillian Jacobs, known for her starring role in the show Community as Britta Perry. 

Queen of Code tells the story of Grace Brewster Murray Hopper. She lived from December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy rear admiral. She was one of the first computer scientists in the world, and was a pioneer of modern computer programming, as she invented the first first programming language COBOL, which is still in use today. During her lifetime, Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities across the world. A college at Yale University is named in her honor. In 1991, she received the National Medal of Technology. On November 22, 2016, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama (Source: Wikipedia).

Before the film, I had heard of Grace Hopper. She’s been mentioned in almost all of my computer science classes, and I feel like I have a pretty good idea of the basics of her life. Because of this, I found the film to be a little boring. However, if I hadn’t seen it before I’m sure it would have been interesting to learn all those things about Hopper--she definitely deserves a movie. I didn’t know about the Grace Hopper convention, though, and I will definitely be looking into that this coming year. 

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Shape of Water

This week, the DANM class saw The Shape of Water at the Angelika Film Center (SPOILERS AHEAD). It was released on December 1, 2017.

The Shape of Water is a film directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones,Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer. 

The Shape of Water centers around a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) who works at a secret government facility during the cold war. One day, an asset comes in from South America and is places in a room that she normally cleans. The asset turns out to be a type of lizard water man that was previously worshipped as a god before he was captured. The story then continues as the mute woman teaches the creature how to talk, and eventually helps it escape from the lab. They fall in love with each other, managing to have sex (to literally use the eel in a cave metaphor)  and in the end, the creature turns the mute woman into a fishwoman. 

Other works by del Toro are Trollhunters, Crimson Peak, and Pan’s Labyrinth

Personally, I loved the film. I thought the cinematography was great, the acting was phenomenal, and the story was even better. I did think it was a little weird that Eliza fell and love and had sex with the fish-man, but besides that, I really enjoyed it and would reccomend it to anyone and everyone. 

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Youtube Studios

This week, the DANM class took a trip to YoutubeStudios. 

Youtube Studios in New York City is a 20,000-square-foot space founded in New York City on November 6, 2014. It’s available to anyone with at least 10,000 subscribers on their youtube channel. One they reach that number, they gain access to the production facility’s state-of-the-art equipment, in-house experts, and educational programs for no cost. It’s the fourth studio to open internationally, after London, Los Angeles and Tokyo. It’s located on the 6th floor of Chelsea Market, accessible by it’s own elevator with an engraved wooden panel labeled “Youtube”. 

This particular studio is also the first of its kind to host a BrandLab where brands will have their own space to mingle — and perhaps do business — with video creators. This is a great way to promote business for both creators and larger corporations.  

When we first arrived, the class was greeted by a man named Ben, who gave us a quick blurb about the studio, asked us about our personal involvements with youtube, then gave us a quick tour of the facility. We were able to see the geometric architecture of the place, as well as all the nooks and crannies of the studio that were used for staff meeting spaces, but looked like sets. Some of these included a loft, a diner-like set, and a room that looked similar to one you’d see on the news, or the Today Show with a couch and a fake New York background behind a fake window. After our tour, we were able to play with some of their VR and Motion Leap. 

The games and activities that they had on these were the ability to pick a flower from some water with the motion leap, a program similar to animoji where your face is tracked and you can control an avatar on a screen with it, as well as the google tilt brush (my personal favorite activity of all time). 

Overall, I really enjoyed the experience, and it definitely inspired me to make my own youtube channel so that I could access the studio whenever I wanted. 

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Blade Runner 2049

This week, the DANM class saw Blade Runner 2049.  (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Premiering on October 6, 2017, Bladerunner 2049 an American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. A sequel to the 1982 film Blade Runner, the film stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford.

Set thirty years after the first film, Gosling plays K, a replicant (bioengineered human) who hunts rogue replicants. When he discovers evidence that a replicant has reproduced, he is tasked with destroying the child to prevent a replicant uprising. 

Through his investigation, he comes to the conclusion that he himself is the replicant that was born, and ventures out to seek his father,  Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford). However, the two of them are discovered, and Deckard is captured while K is taken in by the replicant rebellion who are protecting the replicant born child--a female whose childhood memories were given to K, causing him to believe that he was the one he was sent to kill. 

Personally, I liked the movie. While it got to be a bit long, I liked the setting of a noir film in the technological future. I also liked the throwbacks to the original film, which I watched after I saw this one. 

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Halloween Edition: Killer Pumpkin Arrangements at the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze

Link to Article: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/10/great-jack-o-lantern-blaze/

Every year in Sleepy Hallow, pumpkins line-up for the 40 nights of the Great Jack O’ Lantern Blaze. 

A tradition that began in 2005, and has just completed it’s 13th year (ooh spookyy), the Great Pumpkin Blaze features thousands of uniquely hand carved pumpkins lined up along Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Every year, it features new and original carved masterpieces, and typically more works than the year proceeding it. While it was originally homage to Halloween and Sleepy Hallow’s history, it’s now become an integral part of the fall season. It even has it’s own soundtracks--Blaze: The Soundtrack, Volume I and II. 

According to The Blaze’s instagram, “Although only associated with Halloween as we know it today since the late 1800s, the tradition of gourd carving dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries in rural Ireland and England. People created jack o’lanterns for the old holidays of Samhain and All Souls’ Night when spirits were thought to be the most active. Grotesque faces carved into the objects were meant to frighten away any ghouls seeking to do harm.”

Personally, I think this looks like a super cool event. I definately want to take a look at it next year, and maybe spend the day in sleepy hallow to learn more about its history and, possibly, about halloween itself. 

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The Gehry Building

Link to Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAC_Building

Located in Chelsea off the highline, the Gehry Building was designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 2007. The building consists of a blue and white palette, and a twisted curvature unique to Gehry’s work. 

Frank Gehry is a Los Angeles based canadian architect. Born in Toronto in 1929, Gehry’s love for architecture started at a young age when he would build little cities out of wood scraps with his grandmother. He attended Los Angeles City College and eventually graduated with a degree from the University of Southern California’s school of Architecture. At 28, he designed his first building, a private residence for his in-laws neighbor.  Dubbed “The David Cabin,” the building features a number of asian influences. 

After moving to Paris, Gehry returned to Los Angeles, and went on to create a number of notable buildings, including his own residence in Santa Monica, the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium in San Pedro, the California Aerospace Museum at the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Downtown LA, and more. 

Gehry’s work is said to feature a trope in Gehry’s designs: a lower, twisted base, with a smaller imitation sitting atop of it-- clearly present in the IAC HQ (pictured above). 

I’m not very knowledgeable about architecture, nor do I keep up with it, but this building is absolutely beautiful. The combination of simple colors with the elegant twist is breathtaking and I really wish that I worked (or lived) in this building. Or really any Gehry Building.

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3 Exhibits: Chelsea Galleries

This week, the Digital Art and New Media class took a trip to the highline and Chelsea Galleries. From the 6+ galleries we went to, these were my top 3 favorite pieces of art. 

Up since June 2016, The Fancy Robot Lady Mural by Pixel Pancho was one of the first pieces we saw on our walk, and is located on 10th Avenue at 22nd Street. This piece, as I’ve been told, is reminiscent of steampunk culture. This means that it’s a piece that, “incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery,” (wikipedia). This genre is a subculture of Sci-Fi that’s inspired by the work of Mary Shelly (Frankenstein), Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth) and H.G Wells (The Island of Doctor Moreau, Invisible Man). 

Pixel Pancho is an anonymous italian street artist who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Albertina and then the Academy of Fine Arts in Valencia, Spain. He “specializes in large wall murals and by working constantly with an earthy color scheme to convey a more ancient feeling, Pixel creates robotic creatures inspired by different environments: the beach, the forest, the Sci-Fi universe” (pixelpancho.it). He learned the craft through his grandfather, who’s hobby was art. 

I like this piece because of the mix of the victorian look with the modern machinery. The juxtaposition is immediate and striking, and every time I look at the piece I see something I didn’t notice before. On top of that, when I look at this mural, I get a weird feeling that I can’t put my finger on. Am I weirded out by the machine face? Delighted? I’m not sure. All I know is that this piece is so weird and wonderful that all I want to do is keep staring at it. 

This piece by Zevs was featured in the Taglialalla Gallery. It features two, multicolored print maps dripping with paint. from the bottom of each entity to the bottom of the canvas. The colors of the lines of paint correspond to the colors of the continent they’re dripping from, and it looks like he’s very meticulous to make sure that none of these drips touch one another. 

Zevs, also known as Christophe Aghirre Schwarz, is a french street artists. His technique is called “liquidation”, referring to the dripping present in each one of his works. He’s been active since the ‘90s, and is considered one of the pioneers of French street art. 

I like this piece for a few reasons. First, of all, I love the use of all the simple colors. He uses very basic, child-like shades of green, blue, red, and yellow, which remind me of small children. That, with the combination of the dripping, makes the piece looked like it was, in fact, made by a child. Basically I like it because it’s a professional piece of art that’s simple. I’m into that. 

The final piece I’ll be talking about is this piece. I can’t figure out which gallery it was from, and google is yielding no results, so I’ll just describe it and tell you why I like it for now.

This piece features the head of a woman, viewed from above with a staircase emerging from her skull to the point where it covers her eyes. Arguably, the staircase could be coming out INSTEAD of her eyes, but to me it looks more like an overshadow than an emergence (especially because of the perspective). The piece is greyscale. 

I like this piece because I know it’s supposed to be some sort of metaphor (probably). I’m not sure what it’s supposed to be (the mind is deeper than you think, etc.) but it’s simple looking (I like simplicity as you may have noticed) so there’s so much it could be. Alternatively, maybe the artist just wanted to make a stairway coming out of someone’s head, and that’s why they decided to paint this. It could mean so much, or it could mean nothing, and I find something silly about that. 

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FIT Museum: Force of Nature

This week, I took a trip with Cynthia to the Force of Nature Exhibit at the FIT Museum. 

Located in the FIT Museum from May 30, 2017 to November 18, 2017, the Force of Nature exhibit features premier designers whose works are, themselves, forces of nature (pun intended). These designers include Alexander McQueen, Rick Owens, Charlie James, Stella McCartney, Pierre Hardy, Yves Saint Laurent, and more. 

The purpose of the exhibit was to show how fashion is influenced by nature and vice versa. The pieces are from all across time, ranging from the mid 18th century to present day, and all feature some sort of natur-y aspect--whether it be a pattern, a materiel or an overall concept of the piece. 

A few pieces worth mentioning from the exhibit are:

These shoes by Pierre Hardy (2015). I’m a shoe aficionado, so seeing these made me REALLY happy, and I had to put them into my blog post. While their base is an elegant heal, the rest of the shoe is more fun and flowery, which I really like. I’m not sure how they would look on, but as an art piece I think they’re wonderful. 

This dress by Alexander McQueen (2009). I’m a sucker for red so this piece caught my attention immediately with its dark and *dangerous* coloring. Besides that, I love the combination of the modern straight dress with the 17th century “poof” for lack of a better word. It’s a nice modern twist on an old look which makes the dress both eye catching and mesmerizing. 

There was also a dress in the shape of a splash, but I was unable to find a photo of it online. It was a black dress created by heating up acrylic sheets and manipulating it to look like a large splash of water. It was really a beautiful piece, and I can’t even imagine the work put into it. 

In addition to the dresses, there were also a few videos in the back of the exhibit. These videos featured students of fashion discussing their innovative ways of making fashion more sustainable through nature. One of the videos even featured a company in the process of making fabrics out of algae, so that the clothes we use, when we’re done with them, can become compost rather than trash and environmental waste.

 Overall, I thought this was a really beautiful exhibit, and I really enjoyed looking at the way that nature has influenced fashion.

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AES 2017

This week, I attended AES at the Jacob Javits Center

Wednesday:

On Wednesday morning, I was up bright and early to pick up my registration before my first event. 

9am: The first event I attended was “Crash Course in 3D Audio”. Going into the conference, my knowledge of 3D sound was extremely limited, so I thought this would be a good way to learn the basics of the subject. From this talk, I learned that there are 3 types of audio: Single Channel, Binaural Stereo, and Ambisonics. At this point, all the information was going over my head because I was a bit late to the room, and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Luckily, this was corrected as the day went forward, and I now have a better understanding of these terms. 

10am: At 10am, the exhibitions opened, and I went and walked around before my next event. Funny enough, I ran into the Hear Now Festival booth, and met Juan and a Tisch professor who’s name I believe was Ellen. Juan told me about the Binaural event Cynthia mentioned to me last week, and I added it to my schedule.  

10:15am: The next event I attended was “Will VR be a game changer?” I had a lot of hope for this panel, but unfortunately it was very dry and I didn’t get much out of it. I was also getting hit with a crazy wave of sleepiness, so that could have contributed as well. 

10:45: “Audio Tools for Immersive Audio” was more interesting than I thought it would be. It overlapped with two other events I wanted to attend, so i ended up hopping from one to another. This panel took a step by step look at the tools to create immersive audio, including Pro Tools, and one that I’d never heard of called Sound Particles. The man that was demoing the software, Nuno Fonseca, was the same man that spoke this morning at the first lecture I attended. As he was explaining the software, he began using the same terms as this morning (Ambisonics, HTRF, etc), and I finally began to get a grip on the terms I’d heard earlier. Not only that, his software looked DOPEEE.

11:15: “Creating Sounds from Scratch” was one that I’d wish I’d had more time for, but am also not worried about that because the two speakers here were just plugging their book. Aka, I can go and read the book and learn everything that they talked about at the conference. In the 15 minutes I spent there, however, I did learn a bit about the history of synths, and learned about an instrument called the Moog Theremin. It’s an instrument that, based on the position of your hands to the machine, becomes higher or lower in volume, and higher and lower in pitch. Your left hand controls the volume, while your right hand controls the pitch. The closer you get, the softer the volume and the lower the pitch, and the further, the louder and higher pitch. 

11:30 “Spatial Music: Producing, Performing, and Publishing Music in 3D” was where everything really came together for me. I finally understood that channel meant that there was one sound, coming from one location, coming from one speaker. I learned that Binaural sounds usually entailed measuring at person’s head relation transfer functions, or HRTF, because everyone has a unique measurement, like a fingerprint, and what sounds like the back of the room to one person can sound like the left of the room to another if the HRTF is not the same. I also learned that Ambisonics in the 1st order include sound from up, down, left, right, the 2nd order included another 5 microphones, and the 3rd order included another 7 (unless the point was that after the first order you keep adding microphones... every presentation included this diagram: 

). After that, the speaker, who works for a sound company called Ossic, went on to explain some case studies that his team had done to record 3D sound with a microphone that had 32 microphones built into it. This was mentioned to be earlier, but understanding what it was now and seeing it in context really helped. 

He then went onto explain companies that offer stereo sound (Soundcloud, apple music), 1st order ambisonics (Youtube) and high order ambisonics (Envelop, a new venue in CA). In an ideal world, he said, every company would offer high order ambisonics through their platform. 

After 12:30, I had another 3 events, but two of them were not in the places they were supposed to be, so I ended up walking around the exhibition. I saw a lot of cool products, and booths, such as the Black Magic and Cannon booths, and then decided that I was in the market to buy a microphone. I won’t be buying one now, but with that in mind it make testing all the mics more fun. 

The final panel I was planning on attending was back in the basement, and I was barred from it. Confused why, I asked the guard, and she said that I had a green badge, and not a pink or grey one. Turns out I shouldn’t have been able to go to any of the panels in the first place. So, I decided I would try again on Thursday morning to go to the panels I wanted to attend, and if I was barred again, come back on Friday night for the special event that the Hear Now Festival was putting on, since I could actually attend that one because its a special event. 

Thursday:

On Thursday, I officially came to the conclusion that I would only be able to go to special events panels. I had wanted to go to a podcasting panel in the morning, but the guards were up, and I, unfortunately, had not gone through with my plan to photocopy my badge and make a pink version so that I could attend more panels. 

Luckily, there was a special events panel going on at the same time, so my trip uptown had not been in vain. It was called “Bearing Witness: The Music of Star Wars--Archiving Art and Technology. 

The panel was what you’d expect a panel about archiving be-- really dry with the occasional cool fact or moment. For me, those moments where when they played the uncut version of a number of Star Wars cues. They had been cut for the movie, but the entire track had been released for the soundtrack because the composer “wanted to create a listening experience.” It was pretty cool, but two hours was a long time to hear about how they transferred tapes to digital and how the software was out of date, etc. 

Friday:

On Friday after class, I attended my final AES 2017 Event. Funny enough, it was called, “Audio Tonight: A Story-Tellers Cabaret” and featured a short story, VoiceScapes Audio Theater, "Mark Twain", and Binaural Shakespeare. 

It was a really cool experience. I’d never heard anything Binaural before (except binaural beats) and when your eyes were closed, it really did feel like the actors were moving around your head. It was really cool to hear this in action after learning about it all week. Not to mention how awesome everyone’s voices sounded.

Overall, this was a really fun week, and it culminated in the best way at the Cabaret. 

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Charlie Rose Show on Podcasts

First off, Charlie Rose’s voice is awesome. He should be a voice actor or something. 

Anyhow, to the podcast. Overall, I thought it had a lot of useful tips and tricks. The main takeaway that I got from it was definitely that a podcast needs 3 things to be successful: They tell a story, they like the narrator, and they’re learning stuff. I listened to this with my own podcast idea in mind (a zombie apocalypse parody called Please Don’t Eat My Brains) and I think it really helped with understanding their points and how I can tweak my idea to be just right. 

Another idea that I thought was particularly interesting was how podcasts are so intimate. I never thought of it that way, but I guess it is very different from watching TV, where you just watch a bunch of people on a screen. However, the argument that they make where it’s “someone in your ear” could also be made about radio. Personally, I think that the two are more similar than the podcast made them seem. I’m not a professional in the business or anything, but as a plebeian and consumer, besides the content of radio and podcasts, I think they’re equally as intimate with someone in your ear. All the points that they made, about how you listen while you do the dishes, or garden, or whatever, can also be applied to radio.

Finally, the interview made me think about how our free time is constantly being split between TV, learning things, radio, books, and now podcasts. It’s like we have to divide our free time up to do things we like to do which is honestly more stressful than having work to do. 

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NPR's ON THE MEDIA: What's So Bad About Being a Replicant

Link to Podcast: http://www.wnyc.org/story/whats-so-bad-about-being-replicant/

Narrated by Brooke Gladstone with special guest Alison Landsberg, this podcast premiered on Oct. 6, 2017. It’s about the new movie Bladerunner 2049, based on Philip K. Dick’s story, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” 

In the podcast, Landsberg presents the question, “Do the memories we have need to be real for us to take them seriously?” and proceeds to answer it by saying that, “authenticity isn’t as important as how we use them or how they shape our worldviews.” I was skeptical when I first heard this. If you know a memory isn’t real, it doesn’t matter. It never happened, so the emotions behind it are completely fabricated and irrelevant. Because of this, for your fake memories to matter to you to the point where you want to save a bunch of aliens, you have to be a certain type of person that values justice, love or whatever over the truth. Arguably, you could be programmed to be like that, but if not, there are a variety of factors to consider before you get to someone who works with their fake memories with little to know questioning of their emotional investment into them.

However, as the podcast went on, I became a little more convinced. Landsberg made the point that in Total Recall, the main character decided to save a bunch of aliens because of his implanted memories. She takes the stance that it’s all about action, and that the authenticity of memories is ultimately irrelevant. 

There was another part of the podcast, where some character mentions that she remembers learning to play the piano, but isn’t sure if it’s her memory or not. As Landsberg says, what matters is that she can play it beautifully.

That was something that threw me off a little. Knowing how to play the piano is way different than saving an alien race, and brought me back around to my original point of all the variables that have to line up to get a person who feels that their memories don’t matter, it’s what they do with them. I’m definitely interested in reading Landsberg’s Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture to see if she covers this idea at all. 

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Banner: Ai Weiwei

The previously mentioned exhibit by Ai Weiwei, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, also includes a number of banners placed around the city of New York. One banner in particular, Banner 105, was particularly interesting to me.

The banners were created “by cutting black vinyl to make images appear in the portions that remain. Their play of positive and negative space is analogous to the often-ambiguous status of refugees and migrants.” First off, I never would have thought of the space as a parallel for the status of refugees and migrants, and I think it’s a very creative and smart way for Weiwei to approach the subject, and turn it into a visual concept apart from the picture itself. The layering is an incredible idea on his part, both physically and metaphorically.

According to the Public Art Fund website, this photo was taken at a “Shariya Camp in Iraq, where displaced Christian, Yezidi, Shi'a Turcomen, Arab, and Shabak ethnic minority communities and religious groups have been forced to flee after being targeted by ISIS.” Ai felt particularly connected to this idea, and more involved with the people at the Shariya Camp, “once able to leave the oppressive conditions he faced in China.”  

I chose this particular banner for 2 reasons. 1, it featured a woman, and 2, her head isn’t completely covered by the hijab. As a woman myself, I tend to favor women over men when it comes to artistic pieces, so that’s 1/2 of why I chose her. The other reason, is that her hair is partially showing. While sometimes, that’s just a personal choice, or simply a way that certain woman like to wear their hijabs, I like to think it’s something different in this case. Maybe the woman believes in wearing the hijab, but as a form of defiance against ISIS, is showing her hair to show that she is not afraid. Or maybe I’m reading too much into this. Either way, it stuck out to me out of all the banners I looked at. 

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Washington Square Arch: Ai Weiwei

This week, the DANM class took a trip to WaSquaPa and viewed the work of Ai Weiwei, including a giant steel cage he carved and places under the arch. The piece, by Ai Wei Wei, is a 37 foot tall steel cage that features the silhouette of “two united figures” that was placed in the park on October 12th. According to the website, “Their outline takes its form from Marcel Duchamp’s 1937 Door for Gradiva, created to frame the entrance to Andre Breton’s art gallery in Paris,” as Duchamp was a great influencer of Ai Weiwei’s work. 

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese-born activist and artist currently based in Beijing. He is internationally known for his work, and lived in the United States while attending the University of Pennsylvania, University of California, Berkeley, Parsons School of Design, and Art Students League of New York. Due to his father’s illness, he returned to China, where he established, “the experimental artists' Beijing East Village” . He is married with one kid. 

The first time I saw this piece at the park, I asked myself why someone put a giant cage under the arch. Then mentally, I went into the logistics of how they would get permission to do that, so when I found out that it was an art instillation, everything made sense. That’s the only way a giant cage could be put up in New York. For art. 

On one hand, I think it’s a really neat piece because of what a statement it is. A giant, 37-foot carved cage in the middle of New York is bound to draw some attention, which is definately did very quickly. It’s also a great way to bring attention to the problems immigrants have been facing for the last few years. 

On the other hand, I’m really curious as to why he, first of all, chose a cage, and second of all, why he decided to place it under the arch, rather than in another location, or of a different shape. Some of the description of the piece mentioned that he was influenced by Duchamp, and that Duchamp used to hang out in the park, so it’s a kind of homage to him, but I wonder if that’s all there is, or if there’s more to the story. 

The Good Fences Make Good Neighbors exhibit will be in the city until February 11, 2018.

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Paper Trail: An Animated Collage by Jake Fried

Link to video: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/10/paper-trail-an-animated-collage-by-jake-fried/

A new media trend I really liked this week was called Paper Trail by Jake Fried. 

Jake Fried is a stop motion animator living and teaching in Massachusetts. His work is internationally known, and has been featured at the Tate Modern, Sundance Film Festival, Adult Swim, and Netflix. 

Paper trail starts out with a bunch of paper scenery and caves and random images layered on top of one another. As the video continues, it becomes black and white, and images are constantly placed on top of one another, changing the individual pieces in a way that changes the entire image as a whole. This continues on for the entirety of a minute, with colors occasionally coming back and images layered in and out of the piece. 

I don’t have a lot of experience in viewing or making experimental animations, which is why I think I like this piece so much. Not only that, but the pictures eventually start to look like Fried is drawing on top of them, and that the entire animation just becomes one drawing morphing into another and then another somehow. I wondered about this because if it was, and he was drawing in what looked like inc, there was no way that he was able to erase the ink to get the white back, so what was he doing? I looked for a video or explanation on how he makes these pieces, but unfortunately I was unable to find one. 

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Artist Vandalizes Virtual Koons Sculpture

Link to Article: https://hyperallergic.com/404143/sebastian-errazuriz-jeff-koons-snapchat/

One of the demos that I really enjoyed this week was the article on Sebastian Errazuriz and his “vandalization” of Jeff Koons’s virtual reality sculptures, written on October 5, 2017. 

Errazuriz is a New York based Chilean artist with a degree in design and an MFA from NYU. A self proclaimed “artist, designer, and activist,” Errazuriz has his hand in a variety of subjects and arts, including those in the political, experimental, fashion, and vehicular industries. 

The article, titled, “Artist Vandalizes Virtual Koons Sculpture, Questioning Silicon Valley’s Fake Public Space” focuses on a recent piece Errazuriz did with an app he created, ARNYC. While the article's title claims that Errazuriz tagged the Snapchat version of Koons’s work, the reality is a bit simpler than that. 

Using his personal studio, CrossLab, he created identical sculptures to that of Koons, and then added his own tags on them, “vandalizing” the work. He then placed them in the exact same places as snapchat placed Koon’s work, and the rest is history. 

When asked why he did it, Errazuriz stated that it was a, “symbolic stance against an imminent AR corporate invasion” and that, “It is vital to start questioning how much of our virtual public space we are willing to give to companies. Right now such sculptures exist in a realm dominated by social media corporations, offering us ‘free’ services that we voluntarily join. Nevertheless, with time, the boundaries between reality and virtual reality fade. The virtual world, where the majority of our social interactions take place, becomes our reality. Once we begin experiencing the world predominantly through AR, our public space will be dominated by corporate content designed to subconsciously manipulate and control us.”

I really enjoyed reading this article. I like the way that Errazuriz is protesting (I’m not sure if that is the right word) the extension of corporate claim on augmented reality in almost the same way as past artists have through graffiti on the augmented work. I also think that he does make a very good point about corporate content taking over the world of VR, and think it’s going to happen sooner than we think. However, while I like what was trying to do by using a tagged version of the original piece, in a way, it’s just promoting the corporate content. By “fighting the power” in the way he did, he encourages other artists to do the same, but in a way that pushes corporations to continue adding content to AR in order for it to be vandalized. Essentially, it’s free advertising for Koons’ work in a way.

Bottom line, I think it’s a great idea, but could potentially propel exactly what it’s trying to prevent. 

[zaynadanm-blog]

3 Exhibits at The New Museum

This week, the Digital Art and New Media class went to the New Museum. There were three exhibits that I especially liked, listed below!

*I don’t remember the title*

To be honest, I didn’t understand a lot of the references in this poem and had to look them up in the poem’s footnotes (not pictured here). Before I even read the words, the aesthetic of the piece drew me in. Purple is my favorite color, so the glowing purple light on the window was something I found very pleasing to look at. As for the poem itself, I thought it was super funny and pretentious at times. However, I think that was the point.

HELEN JOHNSON: ENDS

I absolutely loved this piece!!! The patterns on top of patterns on top of pictures completely drew me in, and on top of that, everytime I look at the piece, I see something that I didn’t see the last time I looked at it. Johnson does an amazing job of layering her work in a way that’s both interesting and pleasing to the eye. 

PETRIT HALILAJ: RU

Ever since I saw this piece, I’ve had the desire to animate little characters walking. They would be tiny, puny birds with large legs and move in a very bouncy way with curves legs and bodies leaning back. 

On a separate note, I thought that it was really cool how the artist essentially made life from so much ruin. He went around, finding the destroyed objects, and went on to make birds out of them, as well as a forest-like environment, as well as a water-like mirror. I thought that was an extremely interesting thing for him to in a way healing the damage by creating something new and beautiful from it.

[zaynadanm-blog]

Ken Perlin’s Lecture and Future Reality Lab

This week, DANM class went to the Future Reality Lab to hear Ken Perlin speak and learn about the things that they are doing there.

First of all, the talk was amazing. Ken started out talking about the future of technology and how every 14 years it changes. He started in 1993 when the internet first became a household norm, the most recent was in 2007 when the iPhone came out, and the next one will be in 2021 when wearables become mainstream. He then showed us the microsoft glasses he encountered at a conference this year, and went on to explain a theory that he has. 

The prediction is that our generation, and these next few years, will be the last time that we have any type of conversation or interaction that is person to person. What I mean by that, and what Ken explained, has to do with the adaptation of wearables into our society. If I’m taking to my friend, and we’re both wearing a pair of glasses that are basically computer screens, it’s likely that neither of us will fully be present in the conversation. Maybe my friend will be reading an article during our conversation, or I’ll be texting another friend, etc. For both of us, there is now a third person, a screen in between us. Maybe we both can see the images between us, or maybe it’ll be a one way image. 

Regarding this, Ken also brought up another really good point--the fact that this is something we don’t even realize we’re missing. For example, he said, take the 1970s before the common usage of cellphones. If you made plans with your friends, you just went. Because there were no cellphones, no way to contact your friend, you would just go. You didn’t think about cancelling or changing your plans, you just accepted that you would go and that was that. 

The idea here is that you don’t even realize the things that you may one day find so necessarily and hard to live without. And these things that haven’t been brought mainstream, or maybe invented yet, are outside our thought processes. We can’t even begin to comprehend the things that wearables will allow us to do, let alone, as one student brought up, the controls/ UIs for them. Not to be cliche, but the possibilities are endless, and honestly, I’m excited to see what the future holds. I could listen to Ken talk about this all day and would love to learn more.