ISTA 301 Blog #6: Nosaj Thing: "Eclipse/Blue", by Daito Manabe

For this blog, I am taking a look at a project from "The Creators Project" website (http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com), titled: Nosaj Thing: "Eclipse/Blue" by Daito Manabe.  This piece, by Japanese technology artist Manabe (2012), utilizes music by California based musical artist Nosaj Thing, with the minimalist electronica track "Eclipse/Blue" with vocals by Kazu Makino, playing over projection mapped, reactive graphics designed by artist Takcom and coreographer MIKIKO.  The project was premiered on November 27th 2012 on The Creator's Project website and on YouTube, with collaboration and support from the Creator's Project.

The main focus of the technology used in the graphics is reactivity to the live performance given by the two dancers present.  The idea was to create a dynamic performance, with multiple dimensions which according to Manabe, that would be able to offer larger and more emotive emphasis upon the movements of the dancers.  Utilizing Point Grey cameras, effectively higher quality and faster Kinect like systems, the motions of each dancer could be recorded by the system, and graphics could be made in real time to accompany the choreography.

The entire organization of the performance piece comes with purpose and symbolism as well. The main focus of the piece is centered around the idea of a solar eclipse, represented through the placement of one dancer (the sun) in front of the screen which displays the reactive graphics, and the other behind the screen as the moon.  Thus, the moon dancer appears as a shadow through the screen, whereas the sun dancer is lit up through the use of projection mapping, set to match the music as well as follow the dancer around the stage in real time.

The project itself was not simple to organize either, with a team of about 20 people and other groups collaborating under Manabe as Creative Director to prepare the technological and artistic aspects of "Eclipse/Blue", requiring a great deal of camera work, graphical work, and programming to capture the movement and translate it into visuals relative to the theme.

The style of the graphics accompanying the music and choreography, is primarily a geometric style, using a great deal of black and white contrast, while incorporating instances of vibrant color in portions of the song.  In terms that we have discussed in this class (ISTA 301: Computing and the Arts), the piece feels similar to the Cybernetic movement, relying on technology and interactivity to produce new medium art and performance art, with slight generativity in it due to parts of the graphical display relying on the movements that the dancers make, and capable of changing with different possible motions or small variances.  No two realizations of this piece could be exactly the same, since the big factor in what graphics are displayed is what the dancers do.


The piece once again is Nosaj Thing: "Eclipse/Blue" by Daito Manabe, a beautiful performance art of dance, reactive graphics and projection mapping, summing up into a remarkable visual experience and technological feat all in one.

                                                            ~~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~~

Links: (video below, both on the creator's project website and on YouTube)

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/gallery/eclipseblue#.Um1zFfmshcY

Japanese artist and producer Daito Manabe teamed up with California-based m

http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/witness-daito-manabes-surreal-dance-experience-for-nosaj-things-eclipseblue-exclusive-video-premiere

ISTA 301 Blog #5: "3 Dreams of Black" by the Google Creative Lab (Aaron Koblin) and Chris Milk

For this week's blog, I am going to take a look at new-media artist Aaron Koblin's collaboration piece with Google Creative Lab and Chris Milk, "3 Dreams of Black".  Using WebGL in HTML 5 to create a combination of 2D animation and 3D "dreams", this web browser based work is an interactive film with the viewers capable of influencing the experience based on their mouse movement. They can use the mouse to travel in the direction they choose to explore the 3 different 3D worlds and 2D animation scenes, and generate tesselated designs and further "dreams" in the form of morphing 3D models of animals or through tesselating parts of the image.  These visuals are accompanied by another collaboration: music by Danger Mouse, Danielle Luppi, and Norah Jones.

It follows 3 "dreams" as the title suggests, using film, animation and graphics rendered in real-time to offer intriguing worlds and showing off what can be done with modern web browsers.  The general feeling of the piece seems to be the escape into other worlds, beginning with film from the first person perspective of a homeless man, then falling asleep and opening your eyes to an animated world, then further into a world being generated before you, with where you look spawning color into the world, and you are free to explore it.

According to the artists, this piece was designed to explore the heightened graphical possibilities in coding with HTML 5 and WebGL, which allow web browsers to produce visually spectacular displays utilizing the computers graphical processors without requiring additional software and plugins.  The goal also is to be able to explore the dreams of others, utilizing an editor available "to add to the dream" (quote from main website of the piece").

This piece finds itself similar to the style of Generative/Algorithmic art (generative in the most basic sense) we did in class for our first Homework Project, as the main focus is that with a set of rules and possibilities in the code of the project, interaction with the piece gives it different itterations and realizations, almost impossible to exactly replicate.  It is Digital Art though, paralled to the functions of a videogame, being a dynamic, interactive graphical experience, with the twist that it comes with a graphical editor to make landscapes for the project as well which you can share with others to experience in a similar manner.

As a piece of "art", I believe that the combination of a world which can generate and change depending on how you progress through, tied to light story elements and the idea of dreams, all linked by the music, is a very successful work.  It truly is awe-inspiring visually, and conceptually, showing what can be possible in the future by making web browsers turn a computer into a practically open source videogame console or graphical rendering platform, as envisioned by the artists found in Google Creative Labs with Aaron Koblin and Chris Milk.


The piece can be found here: http://www.ro.me/
as well as on Aaron Koblin's website: http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work.html

~~~~~~~Nathaniel Hendrix

Blog #4: Rudy Rucker's book- "The Lifebox, The Seashell, and the Soul"

This weeks blog is based on the book in the title:  "The Lifebox, The Seashell, and the Soul" by Rudy Rucker.

1) In the book, Rucker talks about Wolfram's Four classes of computation:
                           
          Simple Computations -    Class 1:  Uniform and consistent

                                                 Class 2:  Periodic, alternating patterns, repetitive

          Complex Computations - Class 3:  Chaotic, seemingly random, messy
                                               
                                                  Class 4:  "purposeful" seeming, complex with
                                                                unpredictable patterns

Examples of Class 1 and 2 computations in the real world include things such as the pattern in which bricks are laid to form a wall, a simple Class 2 computation, in which the pattern continuously repeats, and if carried on forever, would not change.

For class 3 and 4 computations, we can look to the veins of a single leaf, where there is no symmetrical pattern, yet observation shows that there is a semblance of a pattern in the way that the veins branch out to make a system within the leaf, making it a complex Class 4 computation.


2)  As I am in a Statistics class this semester (ISTA 116), a simple computation that we can do using a statistics program such as RStudio (programming in the "R" language), is random number sampling in data sets.  Taking milliseconds to compute by the computer and program, the process is feasible, and it is also unpredictable, as for example, in a data set with 10 points in it, each point may have a 10% chance of being displayed if sampling the data set for 1 data point out of the 10 present, though there is no way to guarentee or accurately determine which data point would be selected.  This can also be as simple as a coin flip, where there are 2 possible outcomes, the flip itself takes little time, and the outcome is a supposed 50-50 chance between head or tails.


3)  Based on the excerpt from Rucker, the difference between class 3 and 4 computations seems to be that where class 3 computations are characterized by complete randomness and utter lack of pattern in the results of the computation, class 4 computations are more closely related to class 2 relations, in that they produce patterns, though limited before changing over to a different pattern, and patterns in this sense are still relatively unpredictable unlike in class 2 computations.  Also, class 4 computations give a sense of purpose, as if patterns were meant to be made as in class 2 computations, but run the computation further and it will stop the pattern.  This makes class 4 computations far more intriguing than the jumbled mess that is seen as class 3 computations.  Still, it can be difficult to tell between the two, as the difference is based on opinion of whether or not someone sees a partial pattern in what a mess computation, so there is difficulty in distinguishing the two with the fairly vague definitions they hold.

4)  Continuous-valued Cellular Automata are computations in which cells like those used in other cellular automata are not limited to simple interger values such as 0 and 1, but can hold any number of values of real numbers, increasing the complexity tremendously.  Where the Game of Life CA allowed for a simple CA with only 2 possible states for each cell, according to Rucker (direct quote), "a continuous-valued CA might have four billion possible states per cell", based on the idea that computer programs commonly allow for that many values in a real number.
Compared to Elementary cellular automata as well, continuous-valued CAs can be far more complex, where ECAs are the simplest forms of cellular automata, cvCAs can be seen as systems which may be more related to real life than the 256 different versions of ECAs studied by Stephen Wolfram.  Rucker sees ECAs as to simple to model real life, where the shear number of possiblities in continuous value CAs is more valuable for real life application or study of the complex world we live in.



----Nathaniel Hendrix

Using Processing: ISTA 301 Blog #3

In accordance with the assignment, I have gathered together the products of my work with the Processing language as described by the D2L post :

1)

size(800,600);

background(0,26,130);

{noStroke();

fill(250,100,100);

quad(0,600,0,500,800,500,800,600);}

fill(255,255,255);

stroke(2);

ellipse(400, 300, 600, 600);

line(400,60,400,500);

fill(125,125,0);

noStroke();{

ellipse(300,50,150,50);

ellipse(500,50,150,50);

fill(120,0,125);

triangle(400,60,150,250,650,250);

fill(0,125,150);

quad(0,120,188,0,89,600,400,466);

quad(800,120,622,0,711,600,400,466);

}

fill(0,0,0);

ellipse(400,500,50,50);

This is a static image using multiple shapes (3 quadrilaterals, 3 ellipses, 1 traingle, and a line, with a random color assortment).

2) In order to make this static image active, and have it refresh at 60fps, you take any background and size functions, and put them in the void setup() function using {}, then you put all shapes and put them into the void draw() function using {}. This forces the image to refresh rather than just be drawn, though it makes the exact same image in this case.

void setup(){

size(800,600);

background(0,26,130);

}

void draw() {

{noStroke();

fill(250,100,100);

quad(0,600,0,500,800,500,800,600);}

fill(255,255,255);

stroke(2);

ellipse(400, 300, 600, 600);

line(400,60,400,500);

fill(125,125,0);

noStroke();{

ellipse(300,50,150,50);

ellipse(500,50,150,50);

fill(120,0,125);

triangle(400,60,150,250,650,250);

fill(0,125,150);

quad(0,120,188,0,89,600,400,466);

quad(800,120,622,0,711,600,400,466);

}

fill(0,0,0);

ellipse(400,500,50,50);

}

3)  As an example of the beginShape() and endShape() functions, I made this and gave it a red background:

It uses 22 vertexes, and began by plotting out the right side, then looping back to draw a mirror image on the left side. The red is extra.

size(1000,1000);

background(255,0,0);

beginShape();

vertex(500,100);

vertex(505,250);

vertex(575,300);

vertex(550,325);

vertex(555,350);

vertex(560,375);

vertex(620,400);

vertex(570,410);

vertex(550,420);

vertex(550,475); 

vertex(560,500);

vertex(500,550);

vertex(440,500);

vertex(450,475);

vertex(450,420);

vertex(430,410);

vertex(380,400);

vertex(440,375);

vertex(445,350);

vertex(450,325);

vertex(425,300);

vertex(495,250);

endShape(CLOSE);

4) Using a "for loop" to draw 15 rectangles:

I chose to do the placement using variables, though in an increasing manner, and used random color assignment (between cyan and lime green), using a random interger.

 size(1000,1000);

  background(255,255,255);

  smooth();

 for (int i = 50; i < 750; i += 50) { 

  float y = random(39);

  

  if(y < 20){

        fill(0,255,255);

  }else{

        fill(51,255,51);

  }

  

      quad(i, 40, i + 50, 40, i+50,i+90, i, i+90); 

  }

  

This concludes the playing around with Processing Blog. 

~~Nathaniel Hendrix

ISTA 301 Blog #2: Conceptual Art: "THE IRON CURTAIN"

On the topic of Conceptual Art, defined by Sol Lewitt as occuring when "the idea becomes a machine that makes the art", I found a piece by Jeanne-Claude and Christo, French artists of the 1960s on, who devised many ideas together with this principle in mind. One such idea ended in what became "The Iron Curtain".

Up for 8 hours on June 27th, 1962, the "curtain" was a pile of horizontally placed oil barrels set to block a small side street in Paris, "Rue Visconti", which used the following confusion, stopped traffic and blocked communication as the true art of the temporary installation (proper permits were apparently obtained for this through the city).

The wall was constructed specifically using 50L oil barrels of various brand names, such as BP, SHELL, and ESSO, with no alteration to the barrels whatsoever, leaving rust, leftover oil and original paint with brand names visible to make up a massive blockade of rust and worn color.  This style was closest to the works of the followers of Dadaism, taking average things and displaying them in a manner which participation from those who see the "piece" are the ones who truly can classify it as art, such as Fountain by Marcel Duchamp, the urinal taken off of the production line and placed in the middle of an art exhibit.

While not as biting nor questioning of what "art" is, the "iron curtain" was part of a protesting movement against events such as the Berlin Wall and joined protests of the Algerian War that were echoing throughout Paris, with the common interest of demonstrating the kind of disconnect and confusion that erecting simple walls to block small streets could cause, as what was happening in Germany at the time. The name itself is a direct reference to events at the time with the rise of Russia in conquering its neighbors and forming the real "Iron Curtain" as a buffer zone between the western world and itself, making the piece a fairly heavy political statement for the time period connected to the state of Europe during the 1960s. The use of oil barrels in particular aludes partly to the Algerian War for independence from colonial France, where a major perk of France owning the country was the oil present, but also relates to the large pushes against oil companies in the 60s seen mostly in the United States with environmental concerns rising. Then again, Christo and Jeanne-Claude also seemed to have an affinity with oil barrels as building materials as seen in other much larger pieces done throughout their careers, thus it could be that oil barrels were just their preferred medium.

Officially though, to get the project approved by the city of Paris, a use for the wall was listed as a manner of creating dead end roads and blocking off streets for construction work (not very practical or safe solutions to say the least).

In the original project description submitted to the city of Paris to authorize the installation of such a wall, it was stated that the concept of the curtain could easily be applied to the rest of the city. In various renditions, the "iron curtain" could have relatively high entropy, while always being a wall of oil barrels, the original plans by Christo and Jeanne-Claude also included the possibility of using 200L oil barrels rather than 50L ones, and had no specific requirements beyond volume for the barrels.  Beyond that, the differences between streets would contribute to the entropy by not allowing for uniformity of stacking the barrels in order to cut off the street.  Thus, every subsequent "Iron Curtian" could vary greatly from the original based on where the barrels were obtained, what they looked like, how they were stacked, and the place the wall existed as an installation.

In the end though, any rendition would be a piece of Conceptual Art, relying on the reactions drawn to it to truly create the "Art", and give it a meaning.



Sources (only one): www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wall-of-oil-barrels---the-iron-curtain

ISTA 301 Project 1: Algorithmic Art

First Post! Mandatory congratulations: http://i.imgur.com/rfEjwTF.gif

For one of my classes, "Computing and the Arts", the first assignment of the year was to create a piece of "Algorithmic Art", or at least, quasi-algorithmic art, as within art, the formal definition of an algorithm is corrupted to still include some aspect of random variation between realizations of the piece.

What the piece truly is, is a rule set for people to follow and create a form of art, like a directed drawing class, where the only differences between pieces come down to what the instructor allows and individual abilities of the artists making the art.

In my scheme of rules, I wanted to be able to have a greatly varying sample of material to base the art of of, thus, I took an idea from examples of generative art in the class, where the main portion of the piece is taken randomly from photo websites like flickr.com, so that the chances of multiple renditions being based on the same image were slim (very slim).  Another big aspect that I incorporated, which in my previous art experience in AP Studio Art stood as one of my favorite and most used styles, was utilizing randomly placed lines to create sub sections of the image and work each section as if it was a different piece itself, varying style, color and the such to get a conglomeration of sections adding up to one whole image, with this being a prototype visualization based on an earlier draft of my rules (by me):

Quick rendition based on early designs of my quasi-algorithm

The medium of digital art proved to be the easiest to use in order to incorporate random aspect to the rule set which would, while in some cases rely on the artists decisions in small aspects, would keep the rules more uniform and allow for more possibilities in creating entropy and yet reigning in the various possibilities that could take affect with art done in other mediums such as ink or graphite, which were considerations, but took into account too heavily in my opinion, personal skill with said mediums, as well as paper, so a digital canvas which could be adjusted accordingly was the best option.

The biggest objective in my rule set was to accomplish this style of splitting the image, and using both drawing by the artist and the original image (not present in the example above).  I also wished to vary the art by allowing the artist to place the lines where they wished, though I set the amount and rules to where they had to be placed and how much they needed to intersect to make enough sections to work with. However, the amount of sections could vary significantly based on the artists placement and decisions, though limited significantly.  From there, the piece moves in the direction of treating different sections differently based on numbering in a reading method (right to left, top to bottom), which then allows later rules to affect each cell and applies either fills or blackouts to break the image up, between the artists sketching and the original image.

Overall, the entropy within the rule set comes from the random image, and the choices made by the artist in where the lines cutting up the image go, leading to very similar renditions, yet all formatted slightly different, giving it a decent level of entropy. While nothing comparable to the Dice game used by Mozart in randomness, it is similar to how the dice game will always make a functioning musical piece, as the art will always be an image partially drawn, and partially covered in a geometric fashion.

And that is what I wanted to make, as it is a style that I personally have used to relative success and love.  I had a great deal of fun with the project, and being creative, though it was tough at times figuring out what in the world I should do. This is what ended up happening.  I suppose you still stick to what you are comfortable with in the end.

~~Nathaniel Hendrix~~