Groupe de Recheche d'Art Visuel

Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (GRAV) described on page 199 in the textbook seemed to me like the Justice League of Visual Arts much like Ansel Adams founded the Justice League of Photography with f/64.  GRAV was founded in 1960 by Julio Le Parc, Francois Morellet, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Francisco Sobrino, Joel Stein, and Yvaral.  They mainly worked with mediums focused in light and movement, usually in the form of kinetic art.

Like Adams' f/64, GRAV abides to its own manifesto.  Some points in the manifesto are the "creation of a new visual relationship between the object and the eye of the beholder...in which the meaning and the intervention of the artist are kept to a minimum."  Their purpose is to "attract the attention of the viewer, making him free to loosen it."

Here are a few examples of GRAV works.

In each work of art GRAV asks the viewer to step out of his inhibitions and engages the viewer.  The viewer must interact with the art and not just be a spectator.  This is a common technique with today's artist but in the 1960's ir was revolutionary.

Forensic Photography

Maybe I'm just naive but I didn't know there were agencies and programs out there that check for photoshopped / altered pictures.  I know there are experts that can tell if a photo has been altered but I assumed they just scour the photo diligently and find the flaws with their own eyes.  Accord to this CNET article from Australia, every digital camera leaves traces of digital noise or imperfection, somewhat like the camera's own fingerprints.

A team of forensic analysts from the University of Albany has developed a technique that measures the inconsistencies in a photograph's "noise" profile.  An example used is this photo of Tiger Woods holding a flamingo.  Tiger Woods has one distinct pattern of digital noise while the flamingo has a different pattern which is forensic proof that the overall photograph has been tampered.

There are other solutions available that can verify the authenticity of photos but they have been compromised by hackers which makes the team from U of Albany much more welcomed to the digital age and digital literacy.  For the most part, an image is obvious if it has been tampered with but there are images that are hard to tell and this technology can become very useful.  There are countless times where an altered picture has been use for hidden agendas like political conflicts by Iran and North Korea or conspiracy theorists who needs convincing of a particular movement and it is good to know that there are programs and experts who can call them out on it.

Happiness base on Tweets

Seeing this is the week where we are visualizing data, I figured this article is relevant to the second project.  In The Atlantic article, it reports a study that shows data visualization of happiness via tweets.  The tweets are tracked based on specific emotional words used in particular locations.  In this map, the red states are much more happier than the blue ones and gray states are neutral.  I'd like to point out that the map is not a political affiliation of the two major government parties running the country which was not pointed out by the author or the study.

As you can see, Hawaii is the happiest state and Lousiana is the saddest.  Also, broken down by city, Napa, CA is the happiest city and Beaumont, TX was the saddest city.  The author points out several trends based on the study.  Most of the poorer states are in the blue status and the richer states in the red.  The words use in the study were profanities like shit, ass, bitch, stupid, sucks and acronyms like lol and haha and positive adjectives like nice, funny and amazing.  This is somewhat misleading because the study does not take into account the context of the words used.  Phrases like "Aw Shit, just won the lotto, suck it, stupid job" would use three words that are deemed unhappy by the study's standard and "Nice, my dog just threw up his food on my friend's shoe" would be deemed happy.

Another flaw that the author points out are how cultures would deem happiness.  According to the study, Norwegian ancestry people are much more happier than African Americans.  This seems all relative.  One major thing I would have to agree with the author is the exclusion of the Spanish language.  Hispanics and Latinos are the largest rising demographic in the US but their voice was ignored because their language did not fall into the study.  According to the author, the study's findings correlation with nationwide surveys done by the Gallup polls that measured happiness but with the statistics found in the Twitter experiment, it just seems flawed.

This was a great example of how data can be represented in visualization and is open to interpretation much like the projects presented in class.  It's valuable information even if it's a little askewed.

What is music?

In this post, I came across a video of an artist who interpreted what the rings of a tree would sound like on a record player.  For those that don't remember what a record player is, this is a picture of one.

Bartholomaus Traubeck assembled a piece called Years that does exactly that.  Using a turntable, a PS3 eye camera, a stepper motor to control the arm, and a computer.  The program on the computer interprets the rings with its embedded piano sounds.  The particular ring in this video sounds like abstract piano music in an indie European movie.



This artistic music interpretation using modern technology reminds me of another piece that Takehito Etani, an innovative artist I mentioned in an earlier post.  In Pimp my Heart, Etani created a device that links the heartbeat of a human being to a car stereo system.  The heartbeat becomes the bass line for the streaming music.  Both Etani and Traubeck have thought outside the box and questioned, "What is music?"

Beyond Pages

Another innovating idea during the 1990's that is complacent by today's standard is Masaki Fujihata's Beyond Pages on page 173.  In his art work is his take on the future of books and the relationship it has to reality.  The "book" is a touchscreen monitor that interacts with a pen that corresponds to the user's actions.  The screen displays book pages that will turn over and make the sound of turning over.  If you touch the apple object with the pen, a bite out of the apple is taken and a sound of the apple bite is heard.  There is a lamp beside the computer book and when you touch a picture of a lamp on the screen, the actual lamp will light up.  Same thing happens to the picture of a door.  When touched, a real door will open in the room.  At the time of conception, this must have been mindblowing and futuristic.  "What can technology come up with next?" must have been asked many times when viewers interacted with the tablescreen.

It may be  funny to laugh at how outdated this art concept is but it basically foretold our present technologies with everything touchscreen and interactive.  The Nook, Kindle, iPad, Note, Androids, iPhones, etc all can do what Fujihata has conceived and more.  Shanken states, "The artist seeks to provide a 'sensory tool to use in recognizing objects in a new way--similar to the system of a good poem, which opens people's minds.'"  I like to think our current and future technologies are still doing this.

Bodies Inc

This piece was mentioned in the textbook on page 156.  The description of the art seemed fascinating.  It allows the user or visitor to go to a website where you can create an identity or avatar online but it is limited to the same kinds of restrictions that occur in the physical world.  Restrictions of capitalism, bureaucracy, and fixed social categories are what constrains the freedom of a perfect avatar. The restrictions are decided for you.  So it is basically creating a character with flaws and limitations.

I tried creating an avatar in the Bodies Inc. website but it seems like an outdated webpage.  To my dismay, my browser does not support their service but I can imagine what I could have created.  I wish I could of gotten a chance to check out the website but there are plenty of online games with realistic experience embedded in their program, the main ones being Second Life and The Sims.  In those games, if you can afford the time and the money, you have access to a luxurious online experience or you can purposely play at "minimum" or disabled attributes to give yourself a challenge.  This may not be the same idea Bodies Inc artists had in mind but the concept of creating an avatar to the user's liking are the same.

The idea behind Bodies Inc may have been thought provoking at its conception in the late 1990's but now it's a norm.  There are even movies created in the past decade base on this premise.  Surrogate and Gamer are movies that questions how life would be if you vicariously live it through avatars.  Surrogate is the better one of the two but both are entertaining.

Color Blindness

This is a pretty neat simulator I discovered online.  It simulates what photographs look like to a person who is color blind.  I've had friends who were color blind and I would ask them what colors do they see and it was difficult for them to explain.  I think, eventually they get tired of trying to explain so they just say everything looks gray.

According to PetaPixel, a photography blog targeted at tech savvy photo enthusiasts, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are color blind.  There are three kinds of color blindness: Protanopia and Deuteranopia (both common forms of red-green color blindness) and Tritanopia (blue-yellow color blindness).  The website, etre.com, a design website, offers a converter that allows the user to upload a 1000 X 1000 pixel photograph to a color blindness perception.  It is a very intriguing look at how 4.5% of the population view images and life in general.

Here's my experiments with the program:



*All pictures were taking in my visit at a car show in Japan in 2007.

Wearable Tech

This portion of the textbook intrigue me, especially on page 126 that describes Steve Mann's WearComp.  Mann created several technologies, head gear devices that the user can wear that records the field of view and streams it live on the internet.  This device would be great for vlogging but what intrigue me was that "These devices raise questions about art, cyborgs, and surveillance in an era when augmented and virtual realities are increasingly being incorporated into the understanding of perception."  This quote reminded me of another artist who develop a wearable technology that records an abstract perception.

Takehito Etani created a device called "The Third Eye" that is mounted on the user's head that allows himself to view himself in "third person", much like how the protagonist is viewed in games like Grand Theft Auto and Batman: Arkham Asylum.  It's a very unique experience and experiment.  There are videos of Takehito wearing the device out in the city and he receives peculiar looks and mockery, even sometimes fear and anger.  That is where the reactions of these wearable devices intrigue me.  Like the book says, it raises questions about art, cyborgs and surveillance and in this video, people are not yet ready to accept these "third eyes" or "second skins".

41 MP camera phone

I am a fan of Nokia (I mention Nokia in an earlier post that added a template to do a 3D print of their phone case).  They use to be the number cell phone company in the world until Samsung and Apple shook up the market.  I love gadgets and I always research a phone, camera, computer and so on before I buy it.  I'm glad to hear that Nokia is still alive and kicking and coming up with their own version of smartphones that can compete with Samsung and Apple.

This post is about Nokia's press release that they will now have a 41 megapixel phone.  They release a preview of this technology last summer with their Nokia 808, the last phone that will have their Symbian operating system.  Some say Symbian is outdated but that's not the point here.  The 808 has the 41mp phone.  This is a little misleading though.  The phone camera does not necessarily take a photo that is 41mp that would cover up an entire wall if printed out.  Instead, it is a technology called PureView that diminishes visual noise.  The PureView produces great images in low light.  What results is the PureView system taking incredibly high-res images by combining up to seven pixels into one eliminating the visual noise found on other mobile phone cameras.  In other words, according to The Gaurdian, each pixel can be determined from the information provided by the redundant pixels, thus eliminating much of the flawed data.

Here is a great review of the 808:



It is really impressive to be able to zoom and still see a very clear picture that is not pixelated.  Editing and cropping won't cause the photo to lose any pixel data and still look beautiful.  The 808 is last years phone and was basically a test run for the PureView technology.  Nokia has now confirmed that the technology will be added to their newer lines of phones, one being called EOS.  This is great news to people who love to take photos and edit them as well, hence the relations to Art and Technology.  If you can't lug around a DSLR everywhere you go, PureView can save you time and space.

Video Games are Art

A few blog posts ago I mentioned three video games that can be considered art to me. This post will validate video games as art.  According to All Things Digital, an online technology news source, Big Fish, a video game developer based in Seattle, WA, has partnered up with The Museum of History and Industry (located in Seattle as well) to create an installation that deconstructs the year long process of making a video game.

The installation displays the brainstorm of a game called Fetch from creation to sketches to final product.  Ann Farrington, the museum's creative director, stated visitors are drawn to the creative process of game making and are astonished to how many sketches are involved in character and stage designs  In the video embedded, Brian Thompson, the game's art director, and Ann are interview about the installation and discuss the process of game making and describes visitors reactions to the museum's display.




Anyone interested in game making and game designing can visit the museum and check out the installation.  It will be available till September of this year.  Visitors can get a firsthand look at how Art and Technology can be combined to create an aesthetic and interactive experience (Separately, Art and Technology can create the same experience but together, the experience exponentiates).  Plus the installation acknowledges Seattle as being a big part of the gaming industry and culture.

Movies

The 24 Hour Psycho by Douglas Gordon on page 91 intrigued me. It is a rendition of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller that forces the 109 minute movie to play entirely in 24 hours.  In a critique of the art piece, "it essentially takes the timing out of Hitchcock's bag of suspense-building tricks".  To me, suspense thrillers and horror movies would lose their fear tactics if the director or editor left out the sound effects and ominous music.  Maybe with more well done movies like Psycho, the angles, edits and acting can build fear and suspense, but all the cookie cutter formulaic horror movies are too dependent mood music and "sudden sounds".  Even in the original Psycho, during the shower scene which is most iconic of the movie, the moody music and sudden sound were added for build up of suspense and fear.

I know that is not the point of the critique but I feel the same effect of stripped off suspense would happen if the music and sound was cut out instead of slowing the movie down until it plays in its entirety in a 24 hour span.

I feel that the reverse could possibly strip the movie magic.  For example, Zack Snyder's 300 lasted 117 minutes but for the most part of the movie, he added a lot of slow motion to the film.  So much so, I felt that it distracted from the story.  If the movie was cut in regular speed, it would have lasted under 100 or 90 minutes.  The textbook states it can be argued that "technology reproduced art lacks the aura of an individually handcrafted original...[and] conflate conventional notions of originality, creativity and objecthood".  This may be a knock on 300 but it was an entertaining movie as much as Psycho.  If Psycho can be expanded to 24 hour to take the timing out of Hitchcock's movie tricks, I suggest, that the timing can be taking out of Snyder's tricks if 300 was played in 24 seconds.

Vector Map (Tweetpings and Idea for the Project)

This article seems relevant to the new project of Vector mapping assigned in class.  From a Wired.com article, the website displays all the tweets of the world in a lit up, mapped out fashion in real time. The map was designed by web designer Franck Ernewein.  As expected, the main countries that are well represented are the United States and most Western European countries.



This isn't the first time infographs have use Twitter data to display revealing information but it is very interesting to see the tweeting data in real time.

This Twitter data mapping has inspired me to come up with a similar idea.  The best idea I can think of is something that I'm familiar with but do not know much about is the rate of Filipino migrant workers, called Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), who travel outside their country to find work.  They make up a decent portion of the GDP of the Philippines.  They have a great impact on the country's economy.  I have relatives and friends who had to leave their home to find work outside the country to be able to support their family in the Philippines.  It would be real interesting to find out how many leave their home country and where they go to find work.  Being prior Navy servicemember, I've traveled both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean and it was really astonishing to meet these OFWs.  Filipino's are all over the world!