Inspirations this week.

Both my inspirations this week are games made in scratch along the same lines as my final project.
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/ms_program/138051
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/OJY321/40995

inspired

My first inspiration this week is the new Apple Siri for the iPhone. It's pretty incredible stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4D4kRbEdJw

My second inspiration this week is an old video from apple 24 years ago that predicts siri quite astonishingly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8&feature=player_embedded#!

more inspirations, just hanging out on this here blog.

My first inspiration this week is the Music Generator from Tone Unit from max msp. It takes 4 songs and generates music based off the 4 put in.

http://toneunit.com/music-generation

My second inspiration this week is called Noodle Bot. It's a series of patches that can be used in ableton live. I chose this because it shows the versatility of the program in use with other programs.

http://cycling74.com/project/nwdlbots-pronounced-noodlebots/

This time, on Inspirations

My first inspiration is a compilation of super slow motion videos. I chose this as an inspiration because by merely slowing it down it brings it to be an art form of sorts.



My second inspiration is a good example of the type of things we did in Theory and Practice last year. It uses processing to have the projections change based on the movement in the area.

Next inspirations.

My first inspiration this week is from a video game called Team Fortress 2. This game started as part of the orange box for xbox 4 years ago. Since then it has developed into one of, if not the most community driven games ever. At first they started updating the game and keeping it very hush hush until the release, but recently have been implementing community made aspects into the actual game. Even more those who's submissions make it into the game get paid for when that is purchased for use in the game. Still more impressive is that the game is completely free. You have the option of purchasing things through the game with real money to quicken your advancement, but there is absolutely nothing that is only accessible through purchasing. The most impressive part though is just this past week the game announced an update where, through the game you can make, tweak and submit things for in game play, all for free, and if they get chosen to be in game, they pay you.

My second inspiration this week is the throwable panorama camera ball.

blog.makezine.com/archive/2011/10/throwable-panoramic-ball-camera.html

the video is much better at explaining it than I so I'll let it do the talking

Online Curator

Processing is a free program for all major operating systems that allows anyone to manipulate their computer in ways before unimaginable. It doesn’t actually change the computer, but it allows the user to program software, plugins and applications that can do nearly anything the programmer can imagine, as long they can figure out the code to make it happen. On top of this it can be used to make images, sounds, videos, and games and because of this many programmers have learned how to utilize the software and make it into art. Due to it’s tremendous capabilities Processing offers many options to artists that are impossible through conventional art forms, therefore making it an influential new media.

Strata
Robin Lawrie




Strata is an art installation that was made by a group of people working with processing. The artists took pictures of famous religious paintings and made them appear to shatter and get destroyed. They took these pictures paintings from churches and cathedrals and went over the whole image and sliced it into hundreds of tiny triangles that they could then manipulate separately from the rest of the painting. They then went about changing the picture into a 3D object, resembling mountains, and then had all the triangles explode outward. Once completed they installed it in churches and cathedrals again, probably so it could have some deep rooted, break free from religion message.



Oasis
Yunsil Heo and Hyunwoo Bang



Oasis is a really neat piece, being part art, part toy. It involves a screen underneath a layer of black sand. When the black sand is pushed away to reveal the screen beneath tiny aquatic animals come to life and swim around their environment. As you expand or condense the area the life forms either become more crowded, or are given more space and more life forms will grow. Another neat aspect is if you apply sharp movement to the screen, the life forms will react as though they were startled fish. I'm not sure exactly what they did to have the lifeforms understand their boundaries, but it's pretty neat either way.


Visual Complexity: 
Mapping Patterns of Information
Manuel Lima
 

Visual Complexity is a book by designer Manuel Lima, which is filled with information pattern maps. These are images generated based off data, which allows people to have a visual reference of what the data means. The book is filled with these images that can be anything from olde fashioned family trees to inspirations and other artists works that "evoke and translates networks." The reason I believe that this is art, is because the book is filled with these brilliant little visual maps that are thought provoking, even only at a glance.

ElectroPlastique
Marius Watz
VIDEO

ElectroPlastique is a piece that was developed by Marius Watz and tends to be more of what I think of when I hear "video art." It is merely colors and shapes moving, bumping into one another and changing because of it. This can be done through processing using algorithms and mathematical equations. This technique can also be used with video feedback, which can lead to some very cool effects in your art.

Body Dysmorphia



Body Dysmorphia is a project using Processing and the Microsoft Kinect. It is not so much art as it is someone just experimenting but I chose to include it anyways to show what it can do. The main reason it can be used as art is because it promotes interactivity which turns any piece into performance art, whether the person interacting knows it or not. He goes through several different phases including a semi-invisble camouflage, more fluid movements and a oil painting like filter. Processing can be used with the Kinect to do all sorts of things, which makes the combination of the two a unstoppable duo.

Photoshop Mashup

My mashup started primarily because I was looking aimlessly through creativecommons.org and came across the picture of the astronaut driving the lunar rover. I found it at NASA's website, which interested me because I found out that everything NASA has is public domain unless specifically stated otherwise. I knew at once that I needed to incorporate him into some sort of race. I started out with pictured from nascar, but couldn't find one where the street was the right angle.  I then started exploring the idea of having him driving past a bunch of jockeys in a horse race. Again no luck finding one where the ground was at a proper angle. After that I found a nice road picture on flickr of a road that had a good curve. I had the idea of having him zip past an Amish buggy, but I couldn't find a picture that worked, and it's probably for the best that I leave religion out of it. I found the awkward carriage jockey and decided to use him. After putting the pieces in place I realized that his hand was awkwardly doing nothing so I flipped it, making him wave, which still looked weird so I fashioned his hand into the finger.
The biggest issue I had with this project was the lighting. Since the picture from the moon was taken on the moon, where there's only one light source parts of the astronaut are completely blacked out by his shadow. Since I couldn't change the lighting on him to fit the project, I had to change the lighting on everything else to match him. That was difficult because the jockey and the road both had different shadow schemes too. All of the shadows on the ground are fake, as well as the wall shadow because the road's picture was taken at approximately noon. On top of this I had to fashion the front right tire out of the front left tire because it was completely blacked out as well as clear out the wheels on the buggy and put speed spokes in there. After that I added some smoke around the tires to make it seem as if he were accelerating very quickly. The very last thing I did was flip the image horizontally, which put the buggy on the correct side of the road to be driving on, and the astronaut on the correct side to be passing him. It turned out to be a pretty difficult project, which amounted from a simple idea of putting an astronaut in a race. Personally (and I'm not one to usually toot my own horn) I think its hilarious.
If forced to explain it in today's society, which is so bent on figuring out hidden meanings, I guess I would have to say that this is a portrayal of modern technological advances happening so quickly that older still useful methods are being thrown to the side, disrespected. The astronaut speeding past the jockey represents how quickly technology advances, and the fact that he's flipping the jockey off portrays new technologies as being disrespectful and or ignorant of old methods.