crit

Ilana – your design with the star of david constructed out of words was really effective – it is delicate and you can see how it is constructed – the words become scaffolding.  it looks like it could fall apart at any moment – still it’s the only fixed part of your project. everything else is moving. i think the words could have moved more fluidly and maybe a little faster. i think this is the best thing you’ve done yet! also, as someone who loves words, i’m really glad you were inspired by heavyindustries.

it’s always a bold move to put your raw emotions out there for other people to see – great work.

Jordan – this was a  really interesting concept that seems worth continuing.  your collaborator has a beautiful voice. i wished there could have been even more tweaking – i think the song could have become so much more. somewhere in the middle there were a few notes that you had manipulated sounding almost like guitar strings – this was disjointed in a very effective way.  overall, i really enjoyed it.

Thea – Based on the video documentation, I think you did a nice job of linking your passion for installation with the success of your recent sound project.  The work comes off as a quasi-frog.  It gives me the feeling that it is in the wrong place.  And then I start to question place, thinking about man-made ‘nature’ places like parks and zoos.  the work up against the white paint of the staircase gives a very specific kind of glow, like coming upon some  radioactive trash. But closer inspection makes the project much clearer.  It would be interesting to see the work in a more natural setting and see it moving (solar powered?)  Overall, I really liked it.

Stephanie – I gotta say, I’m not sure what was going on in your project.  I thought it seemed like a fresh concept and something I haven’t seen before and I liked that.  But the message wasn’t clear enough.  After reading your proposal, I got a better idea and started to get excited about it.  A map of the world with sound spots would have been great! Maybe I wasn’t getting the sound on my computer?  I wonder what the sound would have sounded like.. this is worth continuing and thinking through.

Christine – Your idea is clear to me.  Sounded like you were having some trouble with the project – at the last minute it stopped working?  Each object makes one motion for me.  Day changed to night. the flower lost a few petals, and the watering bucket gave water.  I think you maybe planned for more to happen but I’m not sure.  I like the clean-cut shapes and the game environment.  But the project feels unfinished.

Nikki and Justine – I really enjoyed your project. It was fun to watch and did a great job of integrating drawn elements into the video.  I liked how you sprung from Nikki’s newspaper project to expand into a real time environment.

Samantha – I like Chuck Close too.  I thought the image 1 and 2 were the most successful because they were  so different.  the first was more obviously a chuck close and the second allowed the viewer to create their own chuck close.  Was this a critique of Chuck Close’s grid system?  As in, anyone can make a Chuck Close if they adhere to this easy step by step recipe?

Shae – Thought this was really successful in every aspect – the timing, color scheme, composition etc.  Only thing I didn’t understand was the title.  Fun to watch and think about.

Marissa – Don’t know much about music but I really liked how your work evolved from the original. Very interesting transition.  It has a distinct rhythm but enough freedom exists within that rhythm for my thoughts to wander.  These were soothing sounds.  Was this intentional?  Was the original something you created from scratch?

project up…but is it showing?

hi everyone.

I put my project up last night and it was working fine. But today i checked it again…and theres an error (theres a little red X on the top left corner…)

can someone please check and verify…or tell me why this is happening?

thanks

http://maven.smith.edu/~220b-ae/Site/FinalProject/finalproject.html

Installed

My piece is finally up in the CC. If you guys wanna go see it ahead of time. The entrance to the stairwell is on the second floor right before you enter the red room’s balcony. It is a white doorway on the right side coming from the Carol room.

See you all tomorrow

-T

HELP please :D

Hello everyone, I have been working with processing and I need help on my project. I think Eiton left for somewhere, right?

Well, I am going to post the code here and perhaps you guys could tell me what’s wrong with it.

part of my CODE (where processing has a problem I will indicate with a *)

PFont font;

float[] x;
float[] y;

float[] speedX;
float[] speedY;

String[] txt;
****txt = {***** (<–they say there is a “unexpected token: {” )
“Half”, “Palestinian,”, “half”, “Jew”,
“What”, “is”, “this”, “world”, “coming”, “to?”,
“How”, “did”, “this”, “become-”,
“How”, “is”, “this”, “real?”,
“Totally”, “two”, “opposites-”,
“How”, “can”, “I”, “feel?”,
“Didn’t”, “know”, “before”,
“Absolutely”, “denied”,
“Became the” “people”, “I”, “least”, “expected”,
“I”, “wish”, “I”, “could”, “hide”,
“My”, “memories”, “resurrected”,
“Others”, “will”, “now”, “think”, “I”, “lied”,
“A”, “part”, “of”, “me”, “has”, “died”,
“Totally”, “two”, “opposites”,
“With”, “a”, “clear”, “divide”,
“Confusion”, “from”, “all”, “sides”, “over”, “takes”, “me”,
“Death”, “on”, “both”, “sides”, “rakes”, “me”,
“Mother”, “you”, “never”, “told”,
“Damn”, “it”, “sometimes”, “I”, “feel”, “so”, “old”,
“But”, “I’m”, “not-”,
“Growing”, “I”, “am”,
“Grown”, “I’ll”, “be”,
“The”, “question”, “is:”, “will”, “this”, “world”, “ever”, “have”,
“a”, “place”, “for”, “me”,
“?”, };

void setup() {
size(600, 600);
font = loadFont(“AgencyFB-Reg-48.vlw”);
textFont(font);
noStroke();
x = new float[txt.length];
y = new float[txt.length];
speedX = new float[txt.length];
speedY = new float[txt.length];

for(int i=0; i<txt.length;i++) {
x[i]=0;
y[i]=0;
speedX[i] = random(1.0);
speedY[i] = random(2.0);

}
}
void draw() {
background(0);
fill(255,255,255);
for(int i=0; i<txt.length;i++) {
x[i]=x[i]+speedX[i];
y[i]=y[i]+speedY[i];
text(txt[i], x[i], y[i]);

if(x[i]>width) {
x[i]=-100;

}
if(y[i]>height) {
y[i]=-100;
}
}
}

ok, Thanks in advance!!!!!

post deleted?

I made a post earlier today about an issue i was having with processing. I managed to fix the problem but i dont see why it was deleted (or who deleted it). Any reasons?

thanks.

Finally blogging the workshop/performance

April 10th – Interactive Performance Workshop

Overall, I found the workshop quite informative.  For one thing, Thomas talked about how he’d “built” the instruments he was working with (e.g. the guitar with all the sensors.)  Although this is a pretty innovative thing to do, a guitar is still an object that is intended to be a musical instrument.  It made sense to me that an instrument could be altered in the way it produces sound by putting a computer program between the guitar and the amp because it’s, essentially, the same principle that went into turning an acoustic guitar into an electric one.  The thing I found so intriguing was when Thomas mentioned that one could just buy a cheap game controller, break it open and take out the sensors, then put them on some other meaningful object.  Strangely, it hadn’t occurred to me at all to use a non-musical object to produce music, which is awfully limited of me since anything can be used to make sound.  I really liked the idea of taking a random, non-traditionally-musical object and turning it into a kind of instrument, blurring the line that I’ve, apparently, been trained to think exists between musical and non-musical.

Along these lines, Jamie Jewitt talked a bit about the performance that would be given on Friday: “Melt.”  In the piece, there would be large hanging blocks of ice, some of which had rocks frozen into them, and as the ice melted, the water droplets and rocks would fall onto some kind of sensor, which then transmitted signals that were interpreted visually and aurally using different electronically produced sounds and graphics.  Again, what an inventive interpretation of “musical instrument”!  I was pretty excited to see the performance the next night so I could find out how the rock/water noises actually worked into the piece, though he said that the audiovisual controls wouldn’t be used.

Another thing Jamie mentioned was a project he had done in which dancers movements cut through beams of light, and cameras detected the breaks in the light and triggered sounds accordingly.  He said it was an exercise in getting dancers to think more about the sounds they produced through movement, since dancers typically respond to sound, not vice versa.  It seemed like a neat experiment with awareness, taking people who’ve been trained a certain way and placing them in a situation that forces them to think and move differently from the way they normally would.  (I found it amusing that this idea had seemed pretty original until he discovered that the Merce Cunningham Dance Company had done something similar in 1965.  I guess it just serves as a reminder that, no matter how new something might seem, it’s probably not that new.)

One criticism I have for the talk involves references.  The other people in the room didn’t ask, so I assume that most of the audience was familiar with “big names” in experimental dance and music, but I found that most of the references to various choreographers, etc, were lost on me.  Because I didn’t get the reference, I didn’t really understand the context that was being laid to talk about Jamie’s work.  Other than that, however, it was a really interesting experience, and definitely made me revise my definition of the word “musical”.

April 11th – Interactive/Multimedia Performance

The performance was actually really enjoyable.  I do like that I’d gone to the workshop, and thus had some frame of reference for what I was seeing, but I wonder how my interpretation of the various pieces might have been different, had I not known what to expect.

Thomas’ performance with Curtis Bahn featured some really creative instruments, including what appeared to just be a bowl, as well as Curtis Bahn’s eSitar.  I admit that, given what we’d heard in class, I was expecting to find most of the sounds somewhat grating.  While I won’t say that the piece was entirely without sounds I didn’t like, overall I found it somewhat soothing.  I was surprised by the number of people I saw covering their ears, though, since I’m usually more sensitive to uncomfortable sounds than others around me.  My one criticism would be that, while I realize that the piece is interactive and changes every time, I felt it needed to convey more intentionality.  To me, there didn’t really seem to be a direction that the performance was leading me (of course, I concede that that feeling may have been the intentional part) and I think I would have found it a bit more engaging if I had gotten the sense that there was more of an evolution to the sound.

As far as Jamie Jewett’s “Melt”, the ice/rock instrument was unbelievably cool.  As that melted, two dancers moved slowly across the stage, interacting with one another with contact improv type motions as a visual display played on a screen behind them.  I’m not exactly sure how the display was triggered, though it seemed to me that the dancers might have been wearing cameras and that the feeds from those were somehow being processed for the projection.  The dripping rock sounds ended up providing a fascinating, arrhythmic heartbeat that seemed move things along more than the dancers did, though they seemed to be the focus of the piece.  I was really impressed by the way everything came together:  the graceful but almost achingly slow movements of the dancers, the present but inconsistent drips and drumbeats from the ice/rock, and the constantly moving visuals on the screen behind the dancers.  Ordinarily, I’m not that fond of what’s usually termed “contemporary” dance, but I found the whole piece to have an appealing tempo that challenged my former opinions yet again.

AI article in NY Times

Pursuing the Next Level of Artificial Intelligence

Guitar Hero!

If anyone needs a study break, we’re playing Guitar Hero in McConnell 1034 tonight starting NOW! Come join us!

Jordan

Workshop/ Show

I know this happened oh so long ago but if you didn’t go this is what I thought of it.

The first half of the performance was purely music and I must say it is an acquired taste. I believe I liked the music more because I am taking the class; repeated exposer helps tune my ears. I also liked that the room was dark. I was able to close my eyes and really focus on what was going on. At times I found the sounds a little harsh but that added to the experience. I also thought the sitar was kewl. I liked the sounds it made. It was also interesting to see Thomas use more that his guitar.

 

The second half of the performance was two dance pieces. There were many different elements to this part of the performance. The one that intrigued me the most was the ice. There was an instrument that involved rocks that were in a sheet of ice. As the ice melted the rocks would fall out and hit different things inside of it. This was amazing and during the performance the ice cracked in two and made a tremendous crash. It was absolutely moving.

 

Before the performance there was a workshop. At the workshop we talked about art and machine and if the machine was creating the art or if it was a new instrument. From the aspect of a new instrument it is revolutionary in a way that the artist first has to make their instrument and then teach themselves how to play it. We also looked at other pieces the tow artist had done and some of the programs they use to create their art. What interested me the most was the alphabet that was created out of motion. Each letter was represented by a digitized movement. Each letter was represented and when put together looked like text. I really like the idea that letters could be more than writing.

Lab!

Hey all! I’m in McConnell 104 playing with my sound project (which, predictably, has changed radically from what I originally intended). Come play!

Jordan