This week we had special guest Ian Campbell come in and talk to the class about VJ'ing and Video mixing, I added an example of VJing in the video below. This was a really neat lecture because I felt like Ian brought a refreshing perspective on his art form. During these lectures I found that a lot of the speakers, especially those who work with technology, had a tough time keeping our attention and keeping the class understanding of what's going on and what they are trying to do. Ian did a good job really explaining the basics instead of just jumping right into how he makes his huge creative masterpieces on the fly.
Reading material this week consisted of Sarah Abbott's work. Sarah's website (link below) was really easy and cool to navigate and I always appreciate a clean layout. Sarah Abbott is a Canadian film maker who's work primarily focus' on human rights, ethics and the environment. I never have had any thought about film as being very interesting for me personally. Film is such a diverse and such a different creative mindset as oppose to something like painting or sketching. Its using things that are already here and making them interesting and painting is creating something from nothing using your imagination. This site had me thinking about the difference between film as a art form compared to painting as an art form.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Outside In: The Story of Art in the Streets
A really really cool, and short, documentary about my favourite type of gorilla street art and that is Graffiti. Outside in is a 30 min long documentary following some of today's top street artists. This is blog worthy material! And what is a better definition of Creative Technology than a documentary about artist painting on walls put on a social video networking site and spread across blogs all over the world!
OUTSIDE IN: The Story of Art in the Streets from Patrick Simpson on Vimeo.
Art + Technology = The Future?
A really cool article I found talking about the future of Art and Technology! Its a short read but worth it!
http://bigthink.com/ideas/39060
http://bigthink.com/ideas/39060
iPhone vs Galaxy Nexus
The Apple iPhone is the juggernaut of the phone industry right now and every other company is playing catch up. Is the Galaxy Nexus the phone to de-throne the top contender in today's phone market?
Which is better?
Reading Four: Danah Boyd
Reading Four was “Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications” by Danah Boyd. Danah writes a small .pdf paper talking about Social Media and its broad effects on its users. This paper mostly refers to the current Social Network of choice; Facebook. In this paper (linked below) Danah goes from explaining just what a current day Social Network looks like touching on Features and Profile pages and also Friends lists. This was the first time in the class I could relate to the presentations we had--had up to this date. Facebook and Social Media as a whole are something that 95% of today's population under 60 would have some experience with. Rebecca did a great job in getting us to understand that Social Media is the biggest creative technology project our generation will know. Facebook collects so much data on its users and in my opinion that is the biggest part of creative technology; the users. Danah talks about this in the paper saying:
"Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially appropriate to say or what will be understood by those listening."
http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/SNSasNetworkedPublics.pdf
"Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially appropriate to say or what will be understood by those listening."
http://www.danah.org/papers/2010/SNSasNetworkedPublics.pdf
Swedish House Mafia LIVE @ Creamfields 2010
Nothing impresses me more than Electronic music! There is not a sound or song in the world that cant be recreated using todays technology.. Now isn't that mesmerising?
Reading Three: Sheila Petty
Sheila Petty was the next artist to present to the class. During this class I caught myself detracted by small things and keeping attention was difficult for me. I appreciate Sheila's FLASH designed website (link below) as its rare to see artists with fun/ easy to use FLASH websites. Sheila's site gives us information on a variety of things such as her current and past works, her education, her related work and her teaching work experience as well. I had no interest in this lecture, no offence to Sheila Petty, but I have no passion or interest in African screen media.
http://uregina.ca/~pettyss/
http://uregina.ca/~pettyss/
Here are the three YouTube videos I've selected that use creative technology:
Is Apples tunderbolt port worth upgrading for?
Apple fans have been questioning themselves about the new and shiny Thunderbolt port that is included in most of Apples new and upcoming computers and accessories. The speeds of the Thunderbolt port look promising but is it really worth upgrading for? And how "future-proof" is it?
You decide!
Facebook Profile
For one of our projects working with Social Media our group decided to create a false Facebook identity to understand the process of creating a Facebook profile but also to see the reaction of people when they received a friend invite from someone they didnt know.
The group decided on creating a real life Dora the Explorer profile (link below), We found pictures of small girls who looked like the fictional cartoon character and found some basic information about the Dora character from Wikipedia. Overall I had fun with this activity because I never find myself on Facebook to goof around like I did during this project and I found that refreshing.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003510660623
The group decided on creating a real life Dora the Explorer profile (link below), We found pictures of small girls who looked like the fictional cartoon character and found some basic information about the Dora character from Wikipedia. Overall I had fun with this activity because I never find myself on Facebook to goof around like I did during this project and I found that refreshing.
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003510660623
In the Future...
This is a short video showing us 10 FUTURE technologies that are in the process of being mastered as we speak. Some of these ideas are really amazing and innovative!
The future of technology....is now.
Reading Two: Rachelle Viader Knowles
Rachelle Viader Knowles is a site specific video installation artist. This was the first artist presentation to the class and I found it to be very interesting but not my type of art form. Rachelle has a vast array of videos on her Vimeo profile and her website, most of which I watched on my own time. Her site has loads of information on current project, reviews she's done and links to other sites she posts on. I found her work to be very interesting and personal but personally I prefer to stick to canvas and a brush.
http://uregina.ca/rvk/index.html
http://uregina.ca/rvk/index.html
Poem and Bedspin (2008) from Rachelle Viader Knowles on Vimeo.
Speculations on the future of laptops
I really love these types of videos. This video makes some speculations on the future of laptops! Imagine a world where your laptop weighed nearly nothing and was very easy to carry EVERYWHERE! Who would have guessed 10 years ago that we would be where we are technologically.. Wow. I'm sure in 10 years time we will be leaps and bounds from where we are now!
Project Plan
Over the past few weeks we have listened to many different artists of visual who use various tools to display their work from projection, to display and even installation. One thing all of these visionaries have in common is the fact that they all are using technology of some sort to help the audience interact with their work. The message of their art is so important to them that they had to figure out a way to immerse the viewer with more than just a glace. Take for example a recent speaker we had to the class Mr. Ian Campbell. Ian is a Video Mixer, or VJ for short. Ian's view on both visual media and music is that they should coexist and they should compliment each other, that can only be done by using his VJ'ing tools to express the message he is trying to portray.
Its artists such as Ian Campbell that have me questioning what kind of art I would like to create. I would obviously want my art to be visually pleasing but what kind of inspiration could I find to really take the whole viewing experience as a whole to the next level. My inspiration really came from what I feel the most connection with when it comes to not only visual art but also audio entertainment as well. I began thinking of a topic that would capture peoples attention, something that would touch people emotionally to not only have a visual presentation but also an emotional connection so the viewer would feel that much closer to the art presentation.
For my project plan I wanted to have two large beams of light, preferably at or near ground zero of the 9/11 attacks for the first presentation, and then all across the United States and eventually most of the major locations across North America. The beams of light would have to be very tall and be visual for as high as possible to have the most amount of people see it. These two beams of light not only symbolize what was lost during the 9/11 attacks but what the attacks changed in the world. The messages would be from those who had loved ones in or directly effected by the attacks, these messages could be letters to the dead, memories of their lost loved ones or just their name and birth day. Any kind of personal information or messages could pass through the beams. While thinking of this fairly simple idea I thought that there was a way to make this project a lot more personal to the individuals looking at it. I wanted to use some type of projection large enough to display messages in the beams of light. I remembered back to seeing a video of some Graffiti artists who had hired a small airplane to use smoke signals in the air display their Graffiti names in the air so they looked like clouds and I remember thinking that this was an ingenious idea for getting your art out there. I also remembered back to seeing a video of an amazing piece of technology in
During the messages passing through the beams of light I would want some type of performance to be happening simultaneously. I find that music is a language that all people from every walk of life can relate to. I believe there is no one person one this planet that cant relate to music in an emotional way. This aspect of the presentation would not only set the tone for the whole performance but it would also be an interesting experiment to see which kinds of music make the viewer feel sad and which music made the viewer feel optimistic about the future.
The purpose of this project was to use creative technology to symbolically represent one of the worst terrorist attacks in the past 20 years. The emotionally connection that North Americans have with this event is unprecedented. This is the perfect canvas for a social experiment into the connection between the human mind/ emotions and art/ performing arts. The words being displayed on the beams of light tied to the music during the presentation could almost be related to Ian Campbell's with work Vj'ing. The ethical or culture questions that would be raised during this experiment are quite obvious. The fact that this art exhibit is related to such a historic event in the United States' history it would most certainly raise a fair amount of discussion and rehash some issues or conversations that people had once or possibly still have about this topic/ issue.
As "for out" as this idea may seem I think it would be a very fun and touching topic to look back on and use some technology to try and see the reactions we get from these new research methods. Using this idea as my project plan has the potential to turn into a world wide phenomenon; With the power of You Tube and other social networking sites the view of my creative technology project would be seen across whole cities by viewers in person and possibly millions more online by anyone who chooses to record any of the messages or the whole presentation and put it on You Tube. At the core this idea has such an emotional tie to it that it could not simply be dismissed.
Graffiti artists use amazing new technology!
These California based graffiti artists use amazing new technology to take their names to the skys. The idea was based came from the fact that the artists were sick and tired of having their street art taken down in the streets so they put their art somewhere that the police and government couldn't take it down. Some of these artists names are: Saber, Auger, AWR, and the 7th Letter crew
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Artist Profile: Kina Grannis
Over the past weeks we have learned so much about so many different kinds of creative technology and creative means of expression. From seeing the African screen media presented by Sheila Petty to the creative technology used in Visual art and new media with Rachelle Viader Knowles; we really have seen such a vast amount of creative tech being used in art. For my artist profile I have chosen to focus on an artist by the name of Kina Grannis. Kina is a 26 year old singer/ songwriter who found massive success with the online community using YouTube and through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Kina won the "MTV O Music Awards Best Web-Born Artist" in 2011. What makes Kina such an influential artist in the category of visual art is the fact that Kina dedicated nearly 2 years of her life on filming a stop motion music video done entirely in jelly-beans. Kina's cleaver use of YouTube to make her music distribution so easy that she doesn't need a major record label really reminded me of the work we discussed in the "Working with online video" class as well as some of the subjects we discussed with Rachelle Vider Knowles and the immensity and influential capacity of online videos in our day and age.
Kina Grannis grew up in Mission Viejo, California and that's where her love for music began. Kina began her musical career as a piano player but soon made the transition to the violin, an instrument she would play throughout high school. By the age of 15 Kina had taught herself how to play the guitar and this was the instrument with which she fell in love. In 2007 Kina was asked by staff members of the University's Thornton School of Music to produce an album with their music industry department and later that year Kina came out with her first album: Sincerely, Me. On
On February 23rd/ 2010 Kina released her current album, Stairwells. Many of the songs on this album were featured on Kina's now infamous YouTube channel. On November 3rd/ 2011 Kina finally unveiled the long awaited stop-motion music video for the single "In Your Arms". This viral music video used 288,000 Jelly Beans and the video took nearly 2 years to complete. The video for "In Your Arms" spread like wildfire; accumulating nearly 1 million views within the first three days. Today the video has nearly 5 million views, 67,286 likes and 13,837 comments. "In Your Arms" took 22 months, 1,357 hours, 30 people, 2 ladders, 1 still camera, and 288,000 jelly-beans to make. Kina Grannis is not only a true talent but also a very smart entrepreneur who understand the ins-and-outs of the YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Social media community as a whole. Kina's easy going attitude matched with her contagious smile makes her an enjoyable internet King pin of music and entertainment.
Sources:
http://aarising.com/aprofiler/kinagrannis.htm
http://www.beatweek.com/music/musicianinterviews/3175-kina-grannis-interview/
http://www.kinagrannis.com/?page=bio
Other Links:
Kina Grannis - In Your Arms (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOu0DuxFAT0)
Kina Grannis - Valentine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=840NbiFF1zM)
Kina Grannis' Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/kinagrannis)
Kina Grannis' Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/kinagrannis)
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