Xerografie Originali

Xerografie Originali created by Bruno Munari, shows how machines can make art, by manipulating them in a way that they were originally meant, but using the final product as something else. I like how the designs look, and how random they are when finished. Munari wanted to show the randomness and spontaneity in creativeness in the world though his piece, which is evident because of how random the pieces turn out. Although he is making the art by scanning objects in the Xerox machine, I wonder how much of it is really his and how much is just the machine in terms of how much control he has over what the finished piece will look like. 

Page 83 from Art and Electronic Media by Edward A. Shanken.

C:LAB - NEST

NEST is an immersive, art experiment created for C2MTL (a conference in Montreal where creative professionals come together to share and discuss ideas) that was created by C:LAB, a subsidiary of Cirque du Soleil. The concept of the project was designed by Melissa Thompson and Viviana De Loera, and the set was designed by Anne-Séguin Poirier. NEST invites two people, who are strangers to each other, into a "nest" sculpture by climbing up a ladder. Inside the nest there are 18 symbols that represent different characteristics on blocks of wood that are stamps. Each person chooses a block that is unidentifiable from the top, and stamps it on their arm. They then stamp each other with each other's chosen stamp. This creates a unique, identical pattern on each other's arm. The participants then slide down a slide on the opposite side of the entrance. The idea is to use intuition to select the blocks, and to see how that matches how the person truly is in real life.

Instructions for what to do once inside the NEST

Instructions for what to do once inside the NEST

Instructions for what to do once inside the NEST

Son of Geometry is a digital recreation of The Son of Man painting, painted by René Magritte. The original painting is about things that are hidden and how we want to see what is hidden. In this case we want to see the man behind the apple. We see his eyes as a potential clue to who he could be, but we don’t know. I took the concept of hiding a bit further with my recreation, by making the painting geometrical which takes a good amount of detail out of the painting. I took out the man’s eyes, so it is harder to know or guess who he is. I also make it harder to notice that one of the man’s arms is supposedly bent at the elbow, further disguising him. The setting of the recreation is much simpler than that of the original, which takes away the clue of where he could potentially be standing. The man is even more of mystery now, than what he was before.

Vladimir Bonacic

Vladimir Bonacic created a piece called G.F.E. where 1,024 lights of 16 colors were used to create a relief structure of boxed lights. Each light can change color by the viewer, as well as the sound. The sound generators interact with the light generators in oder to change (pg. 67). I like the piece even if it didn't change color. It looks complex, but simple at the same time with the use of the boxes to show the light. With the addition of the able to change the look of the structure is an added bonus. The sound probably helped to create an entire environment and to help complete the space in where the structure stood.

Electronic Art and How to Show it

Art and Electronic Media discusses how electronic art can be, at times, difficult to show to the public. This can especially be seen in web based art, since the amount of technology and tools to show it can be lot to come up with (pg. 50). One of the other potential difficulties of showing web based art is that it can sometimes take a while to get through it, depending on what it actually is, such as a non-linear narrative. The problem with this is that there has to be a willing viewer to go through it all, and if it is set up in a gallery, then there is the possibility that not everyone will get to see it. While it can be hard to show electronic art in a gallery space, there has been improvements on how to show these types of works, and hopefully we will see more of this as time goes on.

Pen and Paper

I recently read an article on Wired that discusses how, even though there are a ton of digital tools to start a design with, many designers prefer to start with pen and paper. Apple and Adobe are pushing for the use of tablets for brainstorming and for doodling, but it seems that pen and paper in many instances are the number one choice for designers for starting a new project. The article talks about how designers prefer to use pen and paper because it is a more tangible object that can be manipulated, marked on and passed around easily. I prefer to use pen and paper for brainstorming because it is easy and fast to get ideas out of my brain and onto something. After that I of course move on to using technology to create my design. I find it interesting how may designers don't use tablets for brainstorming and such. One would think that companies pushing for the use of tablets would talk to the designers who would use the tablets in order to find out why they don't like to use tablets for the initial phases of design.

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/sorry-apple-turns-designers-dont-use-ipads/

Art and Electronic Media: Light

I enjoyed reading about light in Art and electronic Media and how it went from painting to being in an installation (pg. 17). I like how Edward Shanken, the book's author, discusses how light went from being flat and on canvas, to a real life object in works of art. Artists who were first interested in light used different methods of painting to show light in order to make their paintings look more three dimensional. Today light is not only used in flat, two dimensional pieces, but also in massive projects that only use light to create stunning art. Tribute in Lights is a good example of how light can be used in a massive scale project (pg. 19). The lights beam upward next to the world trade center site, to show where the two buildings once stood, as a remembrance. The powerful piece only uses light to show the emotion of what has been lost.