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Showing posts with label Digital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digital. Show all posts

Friday, 14 February 2014

KNITRONICA

Sunday 23rd Feb at Big Hands Manchester , 1pm – 7pm

 

An interesting event coming up – a live experiment in a Manchester music venue working with knitting and sound, where I will be exploring the parallels between machine knitting and the Tenori-on. The event has been organised by Sam Meech who I am thrilled to be working alongside.

 

Sam has already explored a lot through knitting which you can see more of here. We will also be joined by knitter Iris Cooper. The event is part of the Whitworth Art Gallery Pub Crawl – a series of arts events in unusual spaces across Manchester.

 

It will be a textiles experiment, working with live music, sampled sound and knitting machines.  A unique ‘band’ comprised of  Tenori-on, a macbook, a hacked Brother 950i knitting machine, and possibly a couple of other music making devices,  producing cross-over sounds and stitches. Exploring the parallels between punchcards and musical structures, electronic sequencing and the knitted digital image.

 

A collaboration by:
Sam Meech
Marie Young
Iris Cooper

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Thursday, 23 January 2014

DIGITAL FUTURES - 5 - DISCUSSION

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Future everything event, our digi futures outcome will be a part of this event. It coincides with the assessment.

Speculative design, speculating the future.

Feminising technology and the body scans as a starting point.

From the scan we have a visual and a set of data.

How we inhabit spaces 109.com using DNA to re-create faces from gum and ciggi buts. Heather Dewey.

When going to a party we have to take a cake or bottle,this is what collaborating is, you have to bring something to the party!

The assessment will be on a body of work and a narrative and what we have done on this impacts in practice 3. Make, write and articulate how it links to my practice.

27th - 28th march FE conference.

Go though the FE website and see what we like about it and come up with ideas together

noma53.com 29th - 30th March.

Fabrizzio wants outline of our project idea.

Siobhan Murphy Royal Academy

We need to ask Chris to put the Facebook into moodle

Thursday, 16 January 2014

DIGITAL FUTURES - 4 - PAUL SCOTT

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Paul Scott Lecture

  • Cumbrian Blue
  • Artist involved in research throughout all of his career
  • Works mainly with ready made traditional ceramics
  • Graphics, painting and drawing were his background
  • Hot off the press book about how to print onto ceramics. Paul Scott & Terry Bennett
  • Book is about how to print and then he had an exhibition which was about why (Exhibition “are you sitting comfortably”)
  • Stoke on Trent Gladstone
  • Phd funded by MIRIAD bursary
  • Digital technology and how it can help artists
  • a-n.co.uk as students we have full access to their website, knowledge bank and artists talking section
  • Updates book ceramics and print, contemporary practice in ceramics
  • Megumi Naiton - artists work in special collections, i-phone series
  • Scott Rench - yosoh.com (studied at Edinburgh uni in USA)
  • Scott curates, writes and works to commission
  • Scott takes the historical and puts the contemporary in
  • Foot & Mouth plate, Ai Wei Wei plate
  • When we go on holiday we’d take photographs as souvenirs, back in the day people used to make paintings as souvenirs
  • Magazines and books, disseminate paintings and images out to the population
  • Ceramics copied by putting the images onto ceramic plates (images)
  • Designed landscapes, rich people moved a village and planned the landscape so that they could have a nice painting of their house
  • Blue & white ceramics goes East to West and vice versa
  • English potters copied Eastern patterns
  • His digital scan enabled him to re-visualise it at a larger scale
  • Pixels in mosaic and on screen - ceramic wall in Hanei
  • Putting ceramics back into nature to create full circle - ceramics tree
  • ceramic.co.uk - ceramic research centre
  • English style copper plates from Sweden
  • Can print from metal plates as etching or do a relief print from the actual plate
  • Laser engraved plates from digital artwork for when the engraves retires
  • Image of mosaic was has motorcyclists driving past which Scott like and incorporated into his works.
  • Ceramic engravers now usually make bank notes
  • Interested in the different languages between prints enplanes, engraving and digital
  • Digital technology allows us to access lots of information online and quickly. Interested in the way it is presented, instagram etc
  • Scotts work appeals to people who don’t understand contemporary art as they relate to the ceramic plates.
  • Look out for his talks on MIRIAD online

Thursday, 5 December 2013

BODYSCAN

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Today we each went to have our body scanned in the Righton Building at MMU. Here they analyse data taken from individuals body measurements and use it to compare high street sizes against what “should” be but will never be the average body size. they also have various equipment to make garments that are seamless for intense sports wear and other such activities.

The body scan give you a vast amount of data about the shape and size of your body, it’s quite a fun experience, a little depressing though! You end up with a beautiful graphic drawing of the shape of your body. We could also look into having this image split up into steak pieces which we could then cut on a laser cutter and make a half sized model of ourselves.

After we each had been scanned, we discussed with Annie that since we all had the same data to start with, we had to go away and discuss what we could do with this as a starting point for the Digital Futures Option. We had a chat about what we could do with this and agreed that with the assessment coming up next week for us each to write a reflective piece about the body scanning session and how it can link into our individual practice and also in any way collaboratively. We will each write roughly 300 words about this and post onto a social network to share to spark other ideas and conversations. Rather than think together at this initial stage we thought it best to start with our own practice and see what may come from that, then move on from there.

Sunday, 1 December 2013

SYNCHRONATOR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SYNCHRONATOR – The SYNCHRONATOR device transforms your audio into a composite video signal, compatible with all video equipment supporting composite video input. With 3 audio inputs and 1 video out, the SYNCHRONATOR device enables you to visualize your sounds on each of the primary color channels of the video signal.

It adds video sync pulses and color coding signals to your audio, effectively disguising the input as a composite video signal. The device is powered with a 6V adapter and features a color/b&w switch as its only on-board controller. Other manipulations are done solely with the audio input.

Stills of video above and video of visuals on vimeo here: http://vimeo.com/channels/synchronator/7834070

Taken from: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/category/idevices/

http://www.synchronator.com/device.html

SAM MEECH KNITTING DIGITAL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam Meech is an artist based in Liverpool. Sam usually works with vies but has recently shifted his practice into digital knitting. Sam was struck by the parallels between punchcards and film reels, stitches and pixels and he began to relate them in terms of digital imaging such as textiles. Sam has outline a series of experiments for himself over the course of 6 months. He will be collating and sharing research around a field of artists working with knitting/digital, working with knitting groups to document his practice and create discussion around digital textiles creating a large-scale knitted banner for the 8 hour day movement (Punchcard economy) which will be exhibited this December in FACT Liverpool and lastly developing and proving the concept of knitted animations in an approach to moving image textiles.

http://knitting.smeech.co.uk/

http://punchcardeconomy.co.uk/

TENORI-ON & PUNCH CARDS

 

 

 

 

 

The Tenori-on launch in Berlin. The Tenori-on was designed by Toshio Iwai & Yamaha in Japan. Toshio is a visual artist and has spent most of his life finding ways to make music accessible to people in visual languages. Toshio was inspired by a hand-cranked musical box which payed the song happy birthday. The box works by running a punch card through it. He played the tune at the launch and then turned the card around and played it in reverse. He began to question the holes in the punch card and asked which way was the top and which was the bottom? He transcribed the visual element of one musical device into another. I’m interested in using the Tenori-on “punch card” patterns to run through a knitting machine to create knitted musical visuals, also to see whether you could link a Tenori-on to a computer that would knit the patterns in real time as you created the music.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thingstocomerecords/2401331806/in/set-72157604458710437

PHILLIP GLASS REWORK APP BY BECK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed) is an interactive tour through the amazing new REWORK_ album, produced by Beck that remixes Philip Glass’ music. The app includes eleven interactive visualizations corresponding to eleven of the remix songs, along with an interactive “Glass Machine” that lets people create their own music inspired by Philip Glass’ early music.

The idea for the REWORK_ album came together during a conversation between Philip Glass and his friend and new collaborator Beck. The pair recruited producer Hector Castillo (David Bowie, Björk, Lou Reed) to help assemble a collection of remixes of Glass’ works by a list of critically acclaimed artists including Beck himself, Tyondai Braxton, Amon Tobin, Cornelius, Dan Deacon, Johann Johannsson, Nosaj Thing, Memory Tapes, Silver Alert, Pantha du Prince, My Great Ghost and Peter Broderick. To complement the album, app developer Snibbe Studio (creator of Björk’s Biophilia app) created the REWORK_ app to give fans an interactive musical experience.

Taken from http://www.adafruit.com/blog/category/idevices/

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

TENORI-ON DIGITAL FASHION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little Boots is an English electropop singer-songwriter and DJ. She started her music career in a band called Dead Disco but with each of the members of the group wanting to do different things they soon broke up. Little boots started to record her own music which she shared through social media and is well known for her youtube posts of her using the Tenori-on when it wasn’t a well known piece of equipment. Recently Little Boots has been working with New York based Michelle Wu to create a wearable visual of the Tenori-on. The dress is fitted with LED lights to mimic the visuals of the Tenori-on. It is fitted with an SD card reader which loads pre-programmed shows so that the dress dances with pre-configured choreography that fits the particular song playing.

http://createdigitalmotion.com/2013/11/wearable-visuals-little-boots-dynamic-led-dress-like-tenori-on-fashion/

Monday, 25 November 2013

CODING REFERENCES

References from Alex who is an account manager for a radio station

Codeacademy.com - Has online tutorials

Types of coding - My SQL, Java, CSS, HTML, Flash

Augmented reality, Zen coding, HTML 5, PSD tuts, Web tuts (tutorial sites)

W3 Schools - wikipedia for code

References from Jessica Hische’s website (Letterer, Illustrator & crazy cat lady known for her silly side projects & occasional foul mouth!) - http://jessicahische.is/heretohelp

  1. A List Apart A wonderful site covering all things relating to the web with well-written articles by the field’s top practitioners.
  2. Codecademy
  3. Code Academy
  4. CSS Tricks Chris Coyier’s excellent and extremely helpful site with articles, code snippets, and other goodies.
  5. Don’t Fear the Internet A site I created with Russ Maschmeyer to teach basic HTML and CSS to Non-Web Designers.
  6. Kirby CMS I use Kirby as the content management system for my website. It’s amazing.
  7. Method and Craft Web-centric interviews and articles “exploring the creative mind and beauty within each pixel.”
  8. Microformats A resource for semantic HTML in general and microformats.
  9. Mozilla Developers Network An open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform. Top online documentation for HTML, CSS, JS, DOM.
  10. Awwwards Pure web candy.
  11. WordPress Codex A massive site full of articles and forums as well as extensive documentation of all Wordpress features that is relatively easy to read and learn from.
  12. Zeldman Web Design news and information since 1995.

Thursday, 21 November 2013

Digital Futures - 2 - Moodle etc!

With Chris Meadows.

Moodle is only really useful to tutors, students can ask for things to be set up but cannot set thing up themselves. Various platforms can be embedded into moodle for others to see which is about the most useful thing for our group. Before the meetings today Chris had thought about different platforms that might be of some use to the group and categorised them into 5 sections as follows

  • Connect - Twitter, Email, SMS, Padlet, Facebook
  • Collect - Delicious & Deiigo (Online bookmarking with tags and public collections), dig, stumble upon, interest, google drive, dropbox, box.net, flickr
  • Curate - scoop.it, storify.com (Links all the various platforms)
  • Conclude - Blogs, Journals
  • Co-ordinate - Eventbrite (e-tickets, map, email list, print off attendee list, analytics)

Other useful platforms:

Google hangouts - similar to Skype but you can have multiple people talking at the same time.

Padlet - Brainstorming, organising tool, you can link out to a Facebook page

Mindmup, Mind meister, freemind, x mind, simple mind, my note - Main Map creator

Sketch book pro, Notability, Ink pad.

Pocket - Bookmark tool to read websites later.

if this then that - automation tool which makes recipes to link different platforms and perform different automated tasks

LinkedIn Groups - Handy to get involved as you can get jobs from this.

 

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

DIGITAL FUTURES - 1 - INTRO

6 - 9th May = symposium...

of our work and how the digital has contributed, led etc. There will be a keynote speaker, a “poster” presentation or pecha kucha style perhaps, it can be whatever we want it to be.

12 + 19 Dec, 9 Jan, 3 + 10 March = Independent study days. Next week we will meet with Moodle Guru, Chris Meadows to help us maximise our use of moodle. We should set up a dig futures blog or space where we can all talk to one another.

DIGITAL IN DESIGN

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Code Creatives (http://www.codecreatives.info/) project which is a part of MIRIAD. Projects are based around skills development. Year long project to look at how to use computer coding in creative projects.

Derek Trillo - http://www.insightimages.co.uk/

The flow of life: Architectural photography as populated spaces.

Produces pictures which are aesthetically pleasing.

Cross over of architecture and urban design.

Light trails photographed of people walking.

Justin Quinell bridge - long exposure, Terrence Chang 2010.

Derek combines several takes of the same space with people moving mourn the space and makes them into one images - Is it a true representation?

Oscar Ryalander (?) image made up of 52 negatives in 1857 - this is an old concept.

Digital constructions showing the flow of people challenges the notion of photography.

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Sally Morfill - http://www.artdes.mmu.ac.uk/profile/smorfill

Cerebral

Interest in movement and space

“I’m wary” collaboration with Mary Maclean 2001

  • Movement of the viewer in the space is what is important
  • 2 viewpoints to move between to find the right and wrong way to view it.

Sally asked 2 people a question and they had to discuss this whilst they had motion sensors on which recorded the X and the Y axis. From the information gathered she creates a vector image and reproduces into vinyl. The motion monitored that Sally is interested in is the hand gestures people use whilst talking. The vinyl is displayed as the final piece with the text discussed next to the vinyl.

David Ogle - http://www.davidogle.co.uk/

The value of site and technology drive to abolish distance. Fundamental to his research is value. Artworks and buildings, the experiences of things. The telephone and aeroplane shrink distances and have conquered space. “ All distance in time and space are shrinking” Technology shrinks distances but does it bring value to the experience of something? To look at an image of the Sistene Chapel on your computer, what is the value compared to experiencing the real thing? Things which are scarce and hard to reach are the things we most value. What we struggle to conquer elevates the worth for instance climbing a mountain. Kittler 1999 german, “any medium can be translated into any other”. Site specific installations based around the idea of drawing - quite ephemeral. Walter Benjamin 1935 “In even the most perfect reproduction...”

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Ben

Uses a non-visual way of communication data to a user. Arduino tongue - plate put onto mouth which sends data to your tongue and creates visuals in your head. Audio scanning - 3D environment, 1D sound - you can make anything into a button. He records a space using a ball which links up to the computer which the software remembers, then if anyone moves near this space it makes a sound - i.e. it is a button. the user knows through audio where the space is and so is being fed information through a non visual form. 3D sound - 3D world - is the current project he is working on using 2D dots as the visual. the blue dot is your ear and you move this around which changes what you would normally hear if you were in this virtual 3D environment.

Genevive Say - http://genevievesay.com/

The stream project wired - dancer and choreographer. Interested in exposing the inner workings of the body and brain through dance and performance. Neuro feedback - brainwave data, heart rate and respiratory volume. This info is fed back to the user so they can respond to it and help. i.e. reduce anxiety etc. Footballers use it to get into the zone before a game. Initial experiments proved not to have good relationships between the art and the science, the equipment was restricting for the dancer, the sounds weren’t very nice to respond to and there was probably too much data. They introduced a new technology, the mind wave headset.

Brain - Mind wave - wifi - laptop - midi interface - lighting desk

So the computer controlled the lighting desk with the signals given from the dancers brain. Various lights were used in the performance, fairy lights, light bulbs, theatrical lights etc. When the dancer went into a meditative state it was an alternative focus so the lights would change accordingly. To control the cognitive states the dancer was given certain tasks to perform like reading a newspaper, doing some mathematics etc. which in turn would change the lighting in the performance.

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Ralph Mills - http://theantimuseum.wordpress.com/about/

Field archeologist and writer. The anti-museum. The land of lost content in Shropshire has lots of everyday things. The museum has no labels so the viewers can make their own experiences up. The problem is we don’t capture the stories the viewers think/make up when they see these things. We are all curates. Ralph has done his phd research into things/objects. Museums how things in glass cases what value do these objects have. They all have meaning to the people who put them there but what do they mean? Everyday narratives - Crookshanks. Ralph has begun to create a virtual museum in which he records objects so that they can be viewed in 360 degrees (he did this with his iphone!). He is looking into producing photo kiosks which you can go to use to record your own objects to be stored in the museums and galleries. Trying to capture the personal values in objects. In the Q&A it was brought up about Oxfam, where people would write narratives about the objects they donated to the shop.

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Anthony Rowe - http://www.squidsoup.org/blog/about/

Founder of squidsoup.org His particular interest lies in mixed reality immersive experience. He has looked into combining the digital world into a physical space. A programme he has developed which people can interact with brings digital animals to life, if you stick your arm into the projection they walk up it. If projected into sand, the software can detect of people have made a high barrier that the animals can’t walk over and so have to walk around. If two bugs meet they would magic up a bigger bug. The software was used at Glastonbury, one of the animals was invincible, kids get quite physical with the interactions, young adults too. In the Infestation project where a room was full of digital bugs and real bean bags, kids would try to demolish the creatures whereas older people would have a more calming effect from being in the room. squidsoup.org/infestation No one really went in and looked out for the projector, all people would instantly start to interact with the projections.

Ocean of light - Uses light, volumetric, it has volume in the space. The piece is an environment that you can walk into. the creation was influenced by a modular system found at the Zurich Train Station. They were able to lend the prototype to experiment with to inspire their creation. However people saw the object rather than the context as it was beautiful and intriguing. their invention became more organic and allowed you to interact by walking into the piece. Ephemeral space can be created and destroyed there and then. Submergence

Thursday, 7 November 2013

OPTION CHOICES

My choice is between Object & Context and Digital Futures.

Unit ends, 6-9th of May, the aim is to create and event to draw students and staff in to see what you have researched/practiced.

Object & Context.

3 projects throughout the option. The tutor, Ian has in the past designed objects for other people. He says it is all about the context. Objects don’t exist without context. Ian designed a compass for children which rather than having specific measurements on it it would just draw small, medium and large circles. Kids are more interested in drawing any sized circle rather than a specific sized circle. You have to design the experience you want the person to have. Freedom ought to make you more creative but limitations/constraints are in fact the things that make you more creative.

Ian is a collector. You have to shift the context to have a new perspective - clay cup = plastic cup. In India, some guy collected light bulbs as he liked the object for it’s aesthetic quality, yet he didn’t have electricity to use the bulb for it’s designed purpose. Ian’s father was one of the illustrators of the eye spy books.

Emotional response is the prime motivation, the value of things is hidden. (Get Your Bits Out - maybe the exhibition is about the stories rather than the objects - see Peter liversidge)

Reading objects - urban semiotics constructing narratives.

Scenario modelling - design user experience / close observation / after dance

Incorporation - modify / practice / feasibility

1 - Photographing things. What is the difference between an artist and a designer doing these things?

2 - In house out of house difference

3 - 3-4 weeks propose a feasibility study

Digital Futures.

Collaborative or individual, but at the end of the option you have to share your work in a digital symposium at the architecture shed which will open in february and will have between 60 to 100 creative business’ in.

  • Sustainability is important, cities, communication, craft, development, exploration, narratives etc
  • Scaleless, seamless, edgeless
  • Staff research, hacking knitting machines
  • Preparing you for jobs that don’t exist

Diginmmu - education, business, research.

Alex Russel - Textile Designer.

repeatless.blogspot.com

Printed textiles and surface pattern. Generative practice exploiting randomness using actions in photoshop and illustrator. Repeatless project - coding in processing cloth of gold being generated as we speak.