Recent Posts
Research Critique: Hypermedia and Aspen Movie Map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5Oj4S_x2Cc
Aspen Movie Map was created by Michael Naimark together with Peter Clay and Bob Mohlin the late 1970’s. It was a groundbreaking interactive virtual tour of the real world city of Aspen, Colorado. In this simulated environment, users can navigate the streets, go inside selected buildings, or even change the seasons between fall and winter. After researching, I think that this Read more →
Research Critique: Lynn Hershman, "Deep Contact", 1989
Deep Contact (1988) by female artist Lynn Hershman Leeson is one of the first interactive artworks using touchscreens. Marion, the girl in blue in the video, calls out to visitors: “Try to reach through the screen and touch me. Touch me! Try to press your way through the screen.” Depending on the part of her body touched, a personalized narrative will unwind.
Research Critique: Aspen Movie Map, Michael Naimark, 1979
The Aspen Movie Map was Naimark‘s first exploration into what he refers to as “surrogate travel,” in which the viewer is transported virtually to another place. And it is considered as the beginning of Google Map’s street view.
There were several cameras installed on a car to capture front, back, and side views of streets, and the car Read more →
Peace can be Realized Even without Order
Many example artworks we covered in class today have shown artists tend to bring entropy to a system, “the more chaotic the better”, while engineers like to bring things under control. e.g. John Cage’s Variation 5, Robert Rauchenberg’s Soundings, Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, etc.
Here is an interactive work by Japanese collective teamLab, which presents a reverse narrative. The 80 independent Read more →
Research Critique | Robert Rauschenberg's Soundings, 1968
When the observer enters the space in which “Soundings” is installed, he enters a darkened space. Looking around, the observer sees his own reflection in the silvered panels. Sounds made by the viewer will trigger light points to illuminate parts of the silvered panel revealing coloured lithographs. The work is intriguing, alternately bewildering or for Read more →
(My) History of Multimedia
Invariably, we all have varying notions and memories of (our) history of multi-media. In plotting (my) history of multi-media, I recall early art & design lessons where an experience of art making left an indelible mark on me.
Decadry – a 1980s/1990s method of letter transfer.
This was (for me) the earliest form of multi-media, together with paper collages it formed Read more →
Variations V
Variations V by John Cage is an early example of a dynamic art works that changes in response to real-time stimuli. The work builds upon the ideals of “The Cybernetic Vision in Art”, put forth by the British artist Roy Ascott.
First proposed by the American mathematician and philosopher Robert Weiner, the concept of Cybernetics is largely concerned Read more →
Research Critique: Soundings(1968) & the idea of Cybernetics
Norbert Wiener defined “Cybernetics” as a mechanism dealing with communication and control among people, nature and machines. To be more specific, this control is the feedback that depends on the actual performance rather than the expected and still one.
Soundings, whose catalysts, defining as triggering changes in the spectator’s behaviors by Roy Scott, are the silvered panel at Read more →
The Intervention Point: John Cage, Variations V
“Variations V” was an audio-visual performance. Billy Klüver set up a sound system of photocells, reacting to the movements of the dancers. When the dancers cut the light beams with their movements, and the sounds were controlled. And on the background of the stage, film footage by Stan Vanderbeek and television images by Nam Jum Paik were projected. Read more →