Month: October 2019

I choose to browse through A companion to Digital Art, edited by Christiane Paul for this reading assignment. For me, digital art seems quite appealing not only for its aesthetic aspect, but also the technology aspect.

 

As defined in Wikipedia, digital art is an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. In fact, the name and definition have undergone several changes since it exists. From multimedia art, cyberart to new media art and digital art. It is getting more and more effective in our daily life without being noticed. Digital art can be seen in every detail in our life, such as graphic design posters done by computer software, 3D modeling in videos and games, not to mention all the fantastic special effects in movies and advertisements. Although it is not well-appreciated in today’s art market, it has become “the art of our time, thematizing complex challenges for our life and societies”, according to the author.

 

Due to the time constraint, I only choose one chapter to focus. I was attracted by the chapter 14 The Cultural Work of Public Interactives, which is written by Anne Balsamo. Public interactive is broad definition of technological devices in public space used to offer the audience an experience of digital mediated communication. In this book, the author approaches the definition of interactive art from three aspects, as an art form, a mode of public communication and a manifestation of multiform pervasive computing. Interactive is basically conversation, a conversation between human and human, human and machine or machine and machine.

Fluxus

Joseph-Beuys (Installation art)

Developed from 20th‐century art networks such as Fluxus, installation art, media art and some other genres of art, public interactive is different from normal interactive art as it involves a combination of technical, aesthetic and social domains. However, the core of the public interactive art is still a designed interface to allow human and machine to interact. The main location for this kind of public interactive project would be city streets and urban screens. It has multiple and contradictory impacts on social cultures.

 

As for the art and design part, public interactive involves the creation of a good interface between humans and technology. It needs to organize the massive inputs and outputs and carefully design the processes. I like how the author describes the aesthetic and art of the interface as a term, “Look and feel”, which “is one of the key characteristics by which public interactives make sense to human users”.

 

There are some more content involves in this essay, like the genres of public interactive and some useful examples. In all, after reading this part of the book, I have some basic understanding of this new term public interactive, which also helps me better understand the interaction between humans and technology.

 

Future World Exhibition, located in the Singapore ArtScience Museum, is known as Singapore’s largest permanent digital art gallery. It aims to create an environment that allows visitors to immerse in art and science and to explore the possibilities of combining technology, art, and nature. There are a total of 16 cutting-edge installations in the exhibition where visitors can interact and play with them. The future world was done by a group of ultratechnologists called teamLab, who tend to explore the relationship between humans and nature, and between oneself and the world through art.

The whole exhibition provides multiples ways of interaction between the visitors and the artworks, including body movement, physical touching, drawing and so on. It is a fantastic place to get in touch with cutting-edge
technologies for both adults and children. During the tour, visitors can explore the relationship between humans and nature. For example, in the first artwork, visitors can see the change of four seasons in one tour.

The Sketch Piston was interesting to play with. The visitors can create small cute animals by tapping and constraint their path by drawing lines. The combination of animals and the city in the whole picture also explores
the way that humans and nature interact with each other.

Through the whole exhibition, the one that impressed me most is the Crystal Universe, which use over 170,000 LED lights to create a space looks like a universe. Visitors are able to walk inside the space and immerse themselves into the astonishing light show which gives them a sense of being surrounded by stars. The use of mirrors on the ground expands the whole space and I really felt like walking inside an endless place when I
first go in. The design of a curved path also helps provide a feeling of endless space as the visitors cannot see the other side when they walked into the center. The light show and the sound effects associated so well that create an atmosphere of mystery. Besides immersing into space physically, the visitors are also allowed to control the light show by the panel next to space or by downloading a mobile app. After researching about this artwork, I found out that the visitors’ movement can also affect the performance of the light particles, which is another way to interact with the artwork.

In all, during this field trip, I was impressed by the different ways that technology can combine with art and the ways that people can interact with the artwork.