Final Project: Second Life Avatars

I had an extremely challenging time with this project.  It was really difficult for me to figure out how to use the template and have everything line up.  I made the mistake of merging my layers too early in Photoshop.  This became a major problem when I uploaded my file to second life and realized that my face did not line up correctly.  I found this project interesting though and I would like to try it again sometime in the future to achieve a better facial alignment.  In spite of my difficulties, I thought it was pretty awesome to have a virtual reality final.

Project 7.2: 3-D (Virtual Space)

This was my first experience with 3-D modeling. Even though SketchUp was a pain to use at times, I found this project to be fun as well. My original sculpture was of these flowers sealed in a jar.  It is symbolic of how the future is always a mystery. The flowers are healthy and everything seems normal from their perspective looking through the glass of the jar. However, they will eventually run out of room to grow in the confined space, preventing them from reaching their full potential. People have no idea what will come of the future, what setbacks may arise, and how they might be affected because of them. This is why it is important to enjoy the present while you can.

Three Art Events

Place/No Place
Stephen Galloway, Nevada Museum of Art

Stephen Galloway is a photographer and instillation artist based in San Francisco. Galloway has a truly unique style of nature photography. He incorporates abstract elements to his work. Scan based images compromise the majority of his works. There were five pieces in his exhibition. The first one was selection of photographs of these boulders where the subject of each photo was the void in between the boulders. The next was a diptych of a stone path with moss on a white background. It seems that Galloway used Photoshop to create the perfectly white background. The next piece of work was actually a skylight. He took a photo looking upwards through a canopy of pine trees, printed it, and applied it to the skylight to give the impression that the exhibition space is actually in a pine forest. Through this exhibit, he wanted to demonstrate how nature's existence is irrelevant to it's human definition and interpretation. It simply exists.

Possession
Various Artists, Sheppard Contemporary

Having walked past Sheppard Contemporary for years having never noticed it and never hearing of it, I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the works inside. All the art was enticing, but one artist who's work stood out to me the most was David LaChapelle. The series featured in this exhibition was Earth Laughs In Flowers. This is a series of 10 large photographs where LaChapelle draws inspiration from the vanitas paintings, a type of traditional Baroque still life painting. Vanitas is a Latin word which translates to vanity. These paintings have traditionally commented on the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of earthly goods and pursuits. They usually featured wilting flowers to represent the mortality of life. One piece that stood out in particular was one called America, which can be seen in Fig. 1. LaChapelle used the vanitas style as a starting point, but by adding contemporary elements, created a social critique of modern society. This piece comments on the superficiality of American pop culture.

Fig. 1: America is a commentary on the superficiality of American pop culture.

Story Generating Apparatus
Benjamin Poynter, Knowledge Center

Benjamin Poynter is a candidate for a Master in Fine Arts here at the University of Nevada. According to Poynter, he sees the world in a pixelated, two-dimensional form which has inspired his style of art. His genre of work is indie art video games that have profound messages attached with them. According to Poynter, there are two kinds of video games: narratological and computational. In a Permanent Save State created by Poynter is an indie mobile game available for download for android phones. It provides a highly critical commentary on the human rights violations produced by Apple and Foxconn, the company that manufactures Apple products. This narratological game chronicles the afterlives of seven laborers who committed suicide. It was available in Apple's app store, but was later removed due to the critical commentary it presents.

The main purpose of the event however was to highlight Poynter's new work titled Story Generating Apparatus. It is a game in which the viewer is immersed into a virtual reality modeled by Poynter all from memory to replicate a mall in his hometown that was a site of meaningful memories for him. Since the mall is no longer used, he wanted to recreate it so that the viewer could experience the setting and the memories that Poynter experienced there.

Reading 6 Questions

Do you agree with the author's statement that there is a trend towards externalization and objectification of the mind's operations?  Why or why not?

What do you think is more engaging for someone viewing a work of art: physical interactivity or mental interactivity?  Why or why not?

Final Writing Assignment

The ever-growing presence of digital media in the world has led to a large, diverse group of artists that identify with this relatively new style of art.  The great thing about digital media is that it allows practically limitless creativity compared to the more traditional art mediums.  This was quite evident when looking through the various artists and noticing just how different each artist's work was from another's.  The two artists I ended up chosing were Jason Van Anden and Christian Marc Schmidt.

Jason Van Anden

Anden is a self-proclaimed new media activist, artist, inventor, and robot maker who is based in New York City.  His education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Syracuse University as well as attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  What is unique about Jason is how he uses technology to create living art.

Anden's Neil and Iona, which can be seen in Fig. 1, is the work that I chose for him.  Neil and Iona are "emotional sculptures" according to Anden.  Through the use of sculpture, drawing, robotics, and software programming, two beings were created that can interact not only with one another, but the audience as well.  They interact using movement, sound, and hand-drawn facial expressions.  They can essentially be considered sculptures brought to life through animation.

Anden found inspiration for Neil and Iona while attending group therapy sessions.  While reflecting on the behavior of the other people in his group, in order to better understand his own behavior, he noticed that they often repeated their behavior just like a loop in a computer program.  This inspired him to portray these patterns by developing code to animate these sculptures.

Fig. 1: Neil and Iona, an interactive exhibit created by Jason Van Anden.

Christian Marc Schmidt

Schmidt is a designer and new media activist based in Seattle.  His education includes a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design in New York City and a Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from Yale University.  He has a diverse array of design disciplines including print, environmental, and interactive designs.  He has also completed various media installations.

All Horizons is the piece that I chose for Schmidt.  He selected 150 photographs under a creative commons license in which the horizon was the subject.  The photographs were then arranged serially and shown in progression with one fading into another, into another, and so forth.  As the video progresses, the horizon slowly descends lower and lower on the screen.  Schmidt stated that he wanted to reflect a universally shared perception and experience of space that are not limited by where someone lives or their culture.

Fig. 2: All Horizons by Christian Marc Schmidt.

Discussion

These two artworks are quite different from one another.  First of all, Anden's work incorporates an element of interaction that is noticeably lacking in Schmidt's work.  Another is that Neil and Iona is a combination of animation and sculpture while All Horizons is a combination of photography and video.  In spite of these differences, these seemingly different works of art do indeed have some similar traits.  They both feature a combination of art forms.  Also, both incorporate moving pictures.  The hand-drawn facial expressions of the robots can be considered moving pictures and All Horizons is a slideshow.  These artworks have symbolic similarities as well.  Both allude to the fact that there are inherent similarities shared by all humans.  I attempted to contact both artists, but unfortunately neither of them responded.

References

http://rhizome.org/profile/christianmarcschmidt//

http://rhizome.org/profile/jasonvananden//

http://www.christianmarcschmidt.com/

http://www.smileproject.com/

Reading 5 Questions

Do you believe that the digital revolution signals a growing obsolescence for visual art?  Why or why not.

Is there a significant difference between the code-based nature of digital media and the image-based nature of both photography and film?  Why or why not?

Project 6: Interventionist Media

For this project, I wanted to comment on today's medical system.  Many people resort to researching their health problems themselves online.  Our medical systems main focus is on treating people with medical emergencies and keeping them alive.  In my opinion, our current medical system should pay more attention to chronic conditions that afflict millions of undiagnosed people and on improving quality of life for those people.