Wonder Women :: Art & Technology

My first impression of the Andrea Stanislav installation “River to Infinity – The Vanishing Points” was that it was mysterious – being in a room with dark walls and little light, however, the reflective surfaces of the mirrored obelisks and pond created a very stunning brightness at the same time. I was initially very excited at the chance to take off my shoes and be able to walk across the stepping-stones to view the installation. The viewer rarely has an opportunity to interact with the artwork and look at it so closely. I was very surprised to find that by walking around the back of the structure that there was more – horse heads hidden – and I thought it was interesting that this really invited the viewer to explore and make discoveries on his own.
I liked the fact that you could peer down into the mirror pond and it seemed like you were actually looking down into water because the reflections made it appear to go very deep. The sounds were pretty quiet and soft at first like still water, but the booms corresponding with the explosions were unexpected and startling the first time around.
In the next room I felt the same mysterious quality – especially with the mirrors displaying faint portraits looking back at you. I really liked the connection displayed between the two rooms by having the horse bodies on pedestals missing the heads. The astrological charts and signs gave me the impression that everything was related to time and perhaps events occurring in the future.

After re-entering the installation I had a better feel of what it was trying to portray, mainly after reading the description of the installation, and it made more sense and created a different feeling since I knew what to look for at this point and what to expect as far as the explosive sounds. I was surprised to find out that there were some movie references and Internet based pictures influencing the installation and I definitely thought the artist would have some strong belief in astrology. I think it made me feel more like the installation had more of a present day connection to it after learning some of this.

If I had to describe this installation to my family (who aren’t very art-oriented people), I would tell them that they should imagine they were visiting a real landscape – complete with a pond, rocks, and natural artifacts that they really get the chance to explore on their own. I would tell them that it would be like coming to an undiscovered land that you have to investigate fully and learn as much as you can if you want to get a complete understanding of what it is.

Posted by beckx214 at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I lost my information sheet from our artist visit last Tuesday, so I'm doing this entirely from memory, which really means that I am not sure what her artwork was called, or her name, for that matter. I feel really bad about this because it was so great to meet her, and I feel rather rude for having forgotten it.

Anyway, I really enjoyed our visit, and meeting her. My favorite part about the installation was that you had to totally immerse yourself into to be able to see everything. If I didn't walk across the river, I never would have known about the horses heads or known how cool it was to see my reflection in the floor (no I am not narcissistic!) I am glad she was there to help explain it a bit though. While I certainly took my own interpretation from it, it was nice to hear how she did it all: what materials she used, how long it took, and the obstacles she faced. Just from seeing the exhibit you would never know the troubles she had in turning her vision into a tangible exhibit.

I also thought I'd post what I am working on at the same time as I do this blog. (not visually, because it is a load crap right now) My goal is to do something to honor my maternal lineage, and I orginally thought I would contrast that with our culture's partiarchal way of dealing with heritage, but I decided to cut that out. What I have so far is a very crude set up of a bunch of pictures and it looks a bit more like a cheap invitation to a family reunion than it looks like art, but I am working on it.

I am also discovering that Photoshop is much harder to use than I had previously thought. I am really struggling with making it do what I want it to, but I guess that is part of the process, right?

Posted by Kari Volkmann at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

" I don't think you have to worry about the future. It isn't here yet. And now it is gone."
-John Cage

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Wonder Women :: Art and Technology 1968 - 2008, proposes to explore multiple generations of artists whose creative work is integrally engaged with technology. The impetus for this Spring 2008 seminar is the timely need to consider the vanguard generation of women who have had a profound and often understated influence in the creative realm of Art and Technology. The forty-year span from 1968 – 2008 highlights their work and their influence on the artistic inquiry of the two generations of women who follow.

Artists such as Steina Vasulka, Pauline Oliveros, Harriet Casdin-Silver, and Joan Jonas, as well as writers and curators such as Jasia Reichardt, represent the first of three waves of women. Their work was followed by the subsequent, second wave of artists including Gail Wight, Andrea Polli, and Kathy High who have extended these hybrid visions of electronic culture, along with the third, emerging generation of Wonder Women, such as Sabrina Raaf, Amy Youngs, and Kelly Dobson who are deeply immersed in the conceptual, aesthetic and social dimensions of art that employ digital technology as the content, media and substance of their art practice.

A hybrid format, interweaving readings, reflections, discussion, explorations with technologies, and direct experiences with contemporary art and artists will comprise the course content. Related events include: the exhibition “culturing nature :: culturing technology” at the Nash Gallery, the Wonder Women :: Art & Technology series of events the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art.

Posted by Diane Willow at 08:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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In 1988, the year I was born, Marc Canter was developing new kinds of software. Nicknamed "Father Multimedia," Canter worked on computer programs with a user-friendly notational system similar to a musical score. He saw the future as one in which the user could "compose" on the computer by bringing together text, art, video, music, sound clips, and animation into a single "composition." Canter is the founder of the software company Macromedia, which is still successful to this day.

In 1979, almost ten years before I was born, Michael Naimark released the Aspen Movie Map. This virtual map allowed users to navigate through Aspen, Colorado using a laserdisc. This map was one of the first instances in which a user could "travel" virtually. I see this technology used frequently today, but not in the context of art. One example is GoogleStreet, also known as Streetview, where users can navigate a map of a city and view photographs of what the street actually looks like in various places. Another example would be house tours on realty websites. In these "tours" potential buyers can "walk" through the rooms of the house -- all at their personal computer.

I see video games as one of the forefronts of art. Virtual environments pose a challenge for artists because unlike a 2-D artwork, the artist has to create a scene or an object that can be viewed and from an almost infinite number of angles. As computer technology becomes better and better, artists will be able to make computer and video games more realistic. In the future we probably won't see as many goal-oriented video games (games in which you have to say, kill a monster, or beat 100 levels), but instead more open-ended games like The Sims and Second Life that let users explore their personalities and socialize via virtual worlds. The artistic elements of the video game graphics will be an important part of the success of these games.

Posted by teich024 at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1985, around the time my mother was gestating me, Scott Fisher was concerned with creating multi-sensory modes of interaction. He termed the world "telepresence" (seems not to have caught on in contemporary discourse concerning multimedia) which he described as "the projection of the self into a virtual world."
About a decade before Fisher was thinking about stimulating all senses during virtual experiences Myron Krueger was creating alternative modes of interacting with virtual worlds. Krueger, while not really appreciated by the art world, created art pieces and theories concerned with the idea that the response was the medium. I find it very interesting that a lot of Kruegers work took place at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Most of his pieces where concerned with the arts some even included interactive art drawing - however he was never embraced by the art community. It seems that his work was the "pandoras box" of many multimedia art projects today- and even of the past (Marcel Duchamp- A piece of art is not complete without the perception of the viewer)
I feel that multimedia practices will slowly become more in tune with natural processes. More and more we are finding that nature has provided designers and scientists with the most efficient solutions to problems. I feel that the future of technology (to broaden the scope of this prediction) will be taught to us by what nature we will have left!!

Posted by Benjamin Faga at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

there are hundreds of tips here...

CLICK HERE

more tips in extended entry

Use the navigator window to zoom in, out, and move about with great ease.
**

Holding the SHIFT key while in free transformation will let you make the
image bigger or smaller and keep the shape.

If you have a photograph or scanned in a negative you can get rid of most of
the dust and scratches by going to the remove dust and scratches option in
the filter menu.

If you are merging two images into one with the layering system you can
change the opacity of the top layer to fit them better and erase around it.
The opacity controls are located on the layer pop up window on the right.

~Michael E Blomberg
**

Use Layers.
Layers are one of the most powerful aspects of Photoshop.
If you're blending 2 images, you can use a layer mask (Layer > New
Adjustment Layer > Reveal All) and a gradient ramp to do so. By
keeping the various aspects of your image separate, it makes your
image easy to edit. You should also use "adjustment layers" instead
of the image adjustments (brightness contrast, hue sat, etc). You can
find them under Layer > Adjustment Layers. They do the same thing but
they are not applied permanently so you can easily go back and tweak
their settings whenever you want. Remember, with all layers, there
are blending options, so using various gradients or the painting tools
you can chooses where you want that layer to be visible.

**

This is how you go about rotating separate images in Photoshop:

1. Select the layer you want to rotate from the list on the right.

2. Go Edit->Transform->Rotate-----(3rd one down)

3. Grab any corner with the cursor and drag it in the direction you want your image to rotate.

4. Once you have the image where you want it, press enter.

Pretty simple, but it took me a while to figure out...

Ian
***
Tip on Photoshop:
If you like to emphasize certain parts of your image, I found it helpful to blur, very slightly the edges of images other than your focal point. You can do this by using the Blur Tool (not the one under Layer-Blur-Blur Edges) but the blur tool on the left-hand toolbar (about halfway down). It will be a drop, triangle or hand shape. (If it is the triangle or hand shape, click on the bottom right-hand corner and select the drop shape-Blur tool). After you click on this you should be able to look at the toolbar at the top of your screen. Under "Brush" you can select the diameter of the blur tool and the hardness as well. Another way to emphasize which I found helpful, was to slightly desaturate the images I wanted to be afterthoughts. The focal point images I would up the contrast or saturate them slightly more. This makes them "pop" out at you. Hopefully it helps if you are looking to create a more certain focal point to your piece!

Use the navigator window to zoom in, out, and move about with great ease.
**

Holding the SHIFT key while in free transformation will let you make the
image bigger or smaller and keep the shape.

If you have a photograph or scanned in a negative you can get rid of most of
the dust and scratches by going to the remove dust and scratches option in
the filter menu.

If you are merging two images into one with the layering system you can
change the opacity of the top layer to fit them better and erase around it.
The opacity controls are located on the layer pop up window on the right.

~Michael E Blomberg
**
Here's my photoshop tip:

Use Layers. Layers are one of the most powerful aspects of Photoshop.
If you're blending 2 images, you can use a layer mask (Layer > New
Adjustment Layer > Reveal All) and a gradient ramp to do so. By
keeping the various aspects of your image separate, it makes your
image easy to edit. You should also use "adjustment layers" instead
of the image adjustments (brightness contrast, hue sat, etc). You can
find them under Layer > Adjustment Layers. They do the same thing but
they are not applied permanently so you can easily go back and tweak
their settings whenever you want. Remember, with all layers, there
are blending options, so using various gradients or the painting tools
you can chooses where you want that layer to be visible.

**

This is how you go about rotating separate images in Photoshop:

1. Select the layer you want to rotate from the list on the right.

2. Go Edit->Transform->Rotate-----(3rd one down)

3. Grab any corner with the cursor and drag it in the direction you want your image to rotate.

4. Once you have the image where you want it, press enter.

Pretty simple, but it took me a while to figure out...

Ian
***
Tip on Photoshop:
If you like to emphasize certain parts of your image, I found it helpful to blur, very slightly the edges of images other than your focal point. You can do this by using the Blur Tool (not the one under Layer-Blur-Blur Edges) but the blur tool on the left-hand toolbar (about halfway down). It will be a drop, triangle or hand shape. (If it is the triangle or hand shape, click on the bottom right-hand corner and select the drop shape-Blur tool). After you click on this you should be able to look at the toolbar at the top of your screen. Under "Brush" you can select the diameter of the blur tool and the hardness as well. Another way to emphasize which I found helpful, was to slightly desaturate the images I wanted to be afterthoughts. The focal point images I would up the contrast or saturate them slightly more. This makes them "pop" out at you. Hopefully it helps if you are looking to create a more certain focal point to your piece!

Posted by Benjamin Faga at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1987, a year after I was born, George Landow was exploring new literary forms he called “intertextualities.” He wanted to use new media to dissolve the authority of the author, allowing readers to interact with texts in ways that were impossible before. He also wanted to get away from a linear/narrative text and instead focus on individual fragments of text. You can definitely see Landow’s influence on today’s hyperfiction and e-poetry, where texts tend to be more fragmented and are open to readers interacting with and navigating between fragments.

A decade earlier in 1976, Robert Wilson was creating “visual operas” such as “Einstein on the Beach.” Like Landow’s “intertextualities,” these operas worked against linear narrative structures. They were about music and visual effects for their own sake and didn’t “make sense” in a traditional way.

I think that technology encourages these non-linear and non-narrative art forms and will continue to do so a decade into the future. The idea of the reader/viewer’s increased interaction and authority in experiencing art I think will also influence art in the future. As art moves away from “traditional” media and into “new” media, I think it will continue to work against traditional structures and subjects as well.

Posted by lips0037 at 07:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The artwork that “From Wagner the Virtual Reality” deems representative of 1986 is the “intertextualities” advocated by George Landow. The notion of hypertext came from the idea that computers could be tools for communicating with words and experimenting with interactive writing, More importantly, this kind of text was no longer words attached by the author in a specified order, but an artistic montage where the reader was bound only by his or her decision of what words to read first. This added a new dimension to the art of creative writing. It seems similar is some ways to the way poetry is written on page in a non-traditional, non-linear structure, yet the hypermedia allows for even more fluidity. Robert Wilson’s work from the previous decade also toyed with the notion of texts and other mediums that freed the spectators mind to wander freely through the sensory experience without being led down a preconceived path. In Wilson and Philip Glass’ operatic collaboration “Einstein on the Beach” the movement of the piece through time and space is completely non-linear, and it greatly impacted contemporary performing arts. We can see then that the transition to a greater use of computers might carry this concept of breaking the bounds of a strait line into the cyber world of hypermedia.
Computers, information technology, and the internet make the global community at large appear closer and closer to our daily lives. The art put forth using multimedia and the network of the internet is available all over the world. Once the multimedia art is online, it becomes a permanent, indestructible piece of work that may float in cyberspace for eternity. I imagine that a decade from now, artists will anticipate that wider and more diverse audiences will be viewing their work. Art will be greatly influences by how artists want their work to be seen and by whom. I believe that the tactics used in getting the multimedia art scene will be similar to tactics used by consumer marketing groups trying to find the most appealing image with which to catch the target audience. Spectators can be targeted in ways that were once impossible before computers and the internet were widely available. In an age where multimedia can easily be disseminated, artists will find new ways of reaching spectators that look for inspiration simply by clicking a mouse.

Posted by remu0019 at 07:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The year I was born (1985), Scott Fisher's "Telepresence" is highlighted as symbolic of the times. His aim was to create/ enhance virtual realities, and his term telepresence meant "the projection of the self into a virtual world." Though virtual realities were already popping up, he added to his work headphones and microphones so that sounds could be both heard and created, as well as collaborating with another artist, Tom Zimmerman, to create the dataglove, which allowed people to "feel" and "grab" things in the virtual world. We hear about virtual worlds and realities today, though I myself have never experienced something like this in totality. I have had "virtual" experiences, such as art exhibits that incorporate the sense of smell, but nothing like the dataglove. This leads me to think that this concept of immersion (entering into an a simulation or suggestion of an alternate 3D world) will be elaborated on in the future, even though things like this may exist, they are clearly not well-distributed forms of art, and time may change that.

Roughly a decade before I was born in 1972, Alan Kay was working on developing the Graphic User Interface (GUI), which is considered one of the most crucial advancements in human and computer interaction because he assigned icons to how we use the computer (the folders and overlapping windows that we still use today). No doubt other icons could have been formed; last Tuesday we talked about the "desktop", as if the computer were a physical space. Perhaps this particular icon stuck because the original use for computers and the main function even today, is a workspace, as is a desktop.

As I wrote before, I think that a decade more of technology will show even more enhanced forms of immersion. We are already seeing elaborate and surprisingly accurate 3-dimensional worlds, such as on video games and animated movies. The next step is to combine Scott Fisher's ideas of incorporating all of the senses. And I am sure this is already happening, but as technology advances, virtual realities will be fine-tuned and become more and more "real". In a way, it's a little scary, but perhaps I am bit old-fashioned.

Posted by Kari Volkmann at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In 1987 when I was born, George Landow’s “Intertextualities” paved the way for the use of computer/viewer interaction in order to transform reading and writing into a unique individual experience. With hypertext, readers are able to read literary works that are ever changing before their eyes using both graphics and text phrases that allow the reader an endless range of possible interpretations. The meaning of what you see is entirely up to you and the route you take to using the hypertext is also entirely up to you. Grammatron is said to be the widely accessed hyperfiction work on the World Wide Web. Here is an example of a phrase that you would see from viewing it – “their computer-mediated environment announcing itself to the creative plureality of "being" that congregates before the Digital Altar.” This work reminded me of the action-novels I read in middle school where you could “pick your own journey” that would lead you to the end, but wouldn’t necessarily be the same as someone else’s experience. Similarly this concept is applied to hypertext art – allowing viewers to click on hypertext that leads them on a personalized path where they can expand on words that interest them. I agree with critics that have said this destroys the linearity of a work, but that is the point and it wasn't unintentional. Follow this link to view Grammatron: http://www.grammatron.com/index2.html

A decade and one year before in 1976, Robert Wilson created “Visual Theater.” Interestingly the reason he invented this new form of art was because he was “frustrated with the images in his head that were so much richer than anything he could get on canvas.” I think that a lot of artists probably feel this way when creating art. He worked with other famous people from artists to musicians to create a music theater experience integrating non-narrative drama, scenic beauty, music, sound, silence, and dance. Viewers were able to experience seemingly bizarre and out of place works such as Einstein on the Beach. I think it would have been exciting to go to a performance like this - something unusual and interpretive. I think more theatre performances have strayed in this direction since its initiation. Similarly to the hypertext fiction that was created 10 years later, this also made use of nonlinearity, so I was somewhat surprised to see this trend expanded over the years to incorporate new technology (computers) but still remained.

A decade from now in 2018, I imagine there still will be a trend of this non-linear perspective. Artists today seem to want to allow as much creative room for the viewer to participate in the meaning and presentation of the art as the artist himself. I would not be surprised if viewers were able to contribute to the artwork and leave a lasting impression on it in some way – more of a community collaborative artwork. The expansion of virtual reality will eventually become more accessible to the public and I imagine that participants will be able to create their own stories through this form of interaction that no other person will ever be able to experience in the same way. Maybe people will see artworks through virtual technology and be able to change it in any way they want while viewing it, but once they are done, it will be a completely blank canvas for the next person who interacts with it.

Posted by beckx214 at 01:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)