Art Documentation: Lo and Behold, I am Become as a God

The following two videos documents the little berlin gallery space during the >get >put exhibit. The first video is an overview of the gallery space after the previous nights panel discussion, the second video is documentation of how people experienced "Lo and Behold, I am become as a God." Enjoy.

Lo and Behold, I am become as a God

The art opening went really well this evening! Little Berlin's museum goers contributed their voices and contours to the art piece. If you too want to contribute, you can go and visit little berlin's show called >get >put. The piece will be on display from now until the 30th of November. A link to the youtube playlist is here.

 

Title of art piece: Lo and Behold, I am become as a God

Short bio of my piece: “Lo” - the first letters ever sent over the internet. Meant to be the word "login," the internet crashed after the second letter was sent from UCLA to Stanford. These two letters have now come to symbolize "lo and behold" - giving weight to the significance of the internet's birth. I find M. Square's journey in Abbott's Flatland to parallel our human journey with the internet; experiencing the internet as a space for individuals to create new bodies, a place to upload our minds into a land that is eternally virtual and for the moment, virtually eternal. It seems that John of Patmo's Revelation has come true – his vision of a new earth, a new heaven, and our new bodies. John writes as if he saw the internet, “Lo, a great multitude, which no man could number of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues,” all spoke together (Revelation 7:9 KJV). This new medium may make us feel as a God, but it still reflects humanity's basic anxiety of death and our will to overcome it. We will to upload our minds into new bodies, into a land that might be eternal and endless. This art piece is our crowdsourced bodies and voices experiencing an ascendance, an upload, into a new dimension where all knowledge is available with a single download. I'll end with Abott's words, “Lo, the secrets of the earth, the depths of the mines and inmost caverns of the hills, were bared before me.”

Successful Blob tracking with Audio and Video Sync

I'm currently using the Xuggler wrapper for ffmpeg to record audio and video together. I had previously tried using GSVideo to do this, but it wouldn't work on Windows - only seems to work on linux... maybe mac? Anyways, I'm also using javacv to access opencv in a processing sketch. I'm still getting audio spikes, but I'm not yet sure why...

Does the sound of downloading make you want to upload?

I'm currently working on an art piece for the exhibit >get >put. The following video is a rough preamble to my piece. More to come as I begin constructing it this week and weekend.

Eye Tracking Interactive

A recent project I've designed and prototyped is an interactive that teaches kids and adults that their brains are hardwired to look for faces, motion, and changes in color. The following images and video show the first iteration of the interactive as it's prepared to be user tested.

Visualizing the Human Nervous System at the Franklin Institute

Last Fall I worked at the Franklin Institute again, developing another application with the Kinect. The interaction reveals the users internal nervous system. See the videos and images for how people interact with it and learn about the nervous system.

Prototyping Interactive Art at Elixr

The owner of Elixr, Evan, has been kind enough to allow me to prototype multiple digital interactive environments. I played around with two different spaces, the interior of the coffee shop and the sidewalk space outside of Elixr. The goal of these prototypes was to learn about how people behave around interactive art.

Taking advantage of their large flat screen plasma television, I began by experimenting with their inside space. The interactive simply turned any motion it detected via a webcam into colorful paint.

The second prototype turned the sidewalk into an interactive walkway. People left colorful paint trails as they walked across the sidewalk.

 

My Brain and Nervous System

I've been continuing my work with the Franklin Institute further developing applications for the Kinect. One possible application is a projection of the nervous system on to the human body while also delivering content about the brain to the user.

Show Me The Smiles

Beginning my research on interactive digital art and its impact on urban foot traffic, I prototyped and observed people reacting to Show Me The Smiles. As people walked by and looked at the screen, their faces were replaced with obscenely large smiley faces. Some people stopped to play and photograph themselves with a smiley face. Others walked by with a simple glance and continued on their way. I've posted some pictures from today's prototype in front of the UArts Terra building.

myFace: Interactive Art For Those With Faces

myFace is an interactive art piece I've been working on. It's been prototyped on the industrial design department's welcome screen and is now on display to the entrance of Terra Hall. More videos and pictures to come.

My motivation was to create an art piece that evolves and grows with each passing observer. I had also hoped to reveal people's emotional states when they do not have control over how they are perceived - an intrusive concept in this day of editable text messages and emails. This art piece has had a polarizing effect on its observers. One group refuses to step into the space where interaction occurs and the other group can't seem to leave that space. At the same time, this piece imbues the space in front of the screen with a digital memory, allowing observers to know who has passed through the space.

Changing the Mall Experience

Building on last semester’s studio project, I’m exploring creative and alternative uses for retail spaces. Specifically, I will bring attention to vacancies within malls by intelligently attracting people to stop and engage with a space they are normally diverted from. An underlying goal is to prove that foot traffic can be retained near vacant store fronts with the addition of interactive displays.

Painting with Movements

For a show that's coming up this Saturday, I've been working on a few pieces of interactive artwork. This piece is probably the most fun.