the eXplore blog

Before Curation

tali22 — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 06:05:32 +0000

I am very happy with the job the curation team was able to pull off with Fusion. I believe it was a true success and no small feat.

However, before the curation of Fusion was an option, I had every intention of pulling off my tweetject race, although it would’ve been quite a sad little show in comparison to all the rest of the AMAZING projects on display.

But planning it was fun and the preliminary tests I had done were fun, so I might just do it on my own time.

Here’s the preliminary presentation, enjoy!

presentation_3rdyr

fourth year inspiration

tali22 — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:58:29 +0000

It is actually 20 minutes to the end of our last critique of documentation. We’ve been discussing everyone’s pieces and their documentation for three classes now. Its safe to say, as much as I loved curating the show, I’m pretty finished with it. I’m ready to move on to fourth year.
My first choice would be to curate the fourth year show, but my awareness of the competition is present.

Therefore, I am thinking about concepts I would want to touch on for a fourth year and how I would go about executing things.

More later.

Curation and Me

tali22 — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:32:33 +0000

So, I actually had no idea I would be given the chance to curate, and since then, I have completely forgotten to keep up with blog posts.

What would I write?

The experience of curation has just gone by so quickly, I dont even know what to describe. It’s just been a whirlwind since the beginning, and as much as I’ve stressed and worked and organized and emailed, I don’t really feel like I’ve gotten much done. However, I can attest to a few things I’ve done.

emailing en masse : every student artist in third year has been harassed by me and my demanding emails for their project details, artist statements, biographies, space dimensions, etcetera.
data entry: Between the creation of a few spreadsheets and the input of everything my artists’ have sent me, I’ve been copying and pasting like a mofo.
fundraising: I’ve been baking all afternoon/evening/night because tomorrow I’ll be fundraising from 11:30 to 3, perhaps longer depending on demand. I’ve baked 30 cookies, 10 brownies, and 15 cupcakes in preparation for tomorrow and a hope for raising lots of money for the exhibition at the end of the week
Floor planning: I may have been sick during the time measurements were being taken, but I did try to take it all in and I’ve been trying to collaborate with Britt and Jordanne in their planning spaces in which the artists would show their pieces
Event planning: Trying to work out the details of the actual event has been tedious, but we’ve taken initiative and have been trying to work with what we’ve got. Luckily, some of the work has been done for us and the rooms we need have been booked. YAY! Thanks Steve!
Promotion: Social Media is my forte. I created a Facebook page for the event this weekend and have since then bombarded everyone I know with it. My grandma in California is asking why I keep sending her something about “fusion ni que ocho cuartos…!” Twitter, email, skype, stumbleupon, and my wordpress blog have all been used and abused to promote this. I think the fourth year image arts students are starting to wonder who the hell I am, and why I keep trying to bomb their promotion pages on Facebook. I imagine the photography pages are not too pleased.
More promotion: I plan on making appearances with Jordanne to all years of classes to talk about the show at the end of the week to try and get as many people out as possible.
Even more promotion: Even though Andrew has been the design head of the curation group, I have been pushing the group to get the posters ready to print and post ASAP. I think my group is getting sick of my demands. I’m starting to feel like a b**ch.

So yeah, that’s what I can remember out of the things that I’ve done. Now that I look back on all of it, I feel like a total meanie. Making demand after demand, and harassing people with emails and promotions. I might have a future as a collections agent.

hmm…

tali22 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:57:08 +0000

twitter API feed

beatles lyrics

typography

projection of data

…hmm.

Exploration (almost) Concluded!

tali22 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 13:50:33 +0000

I can’t say I have anything to show for two weeks of what should have been exploration, except the fact that I had to abandon an idea which I was quite taken with, and had to jump onto another. Not that the other would be so bad either, I mean, I did think of it myself and it does seem interesting, but there’s always a bit of emotional investment in every project one dreams up, isn’t there? Abandoning it feels like a miscarriage of sorts; I just didn’t have the capacity to carry it through at this point. Perhaps in the future… we shall see.

However, with the closing of one door, there is the opening of a window, as they say, and so I have decided to take on a different project. What project you ask? (I’m not stalling, I’m just playing around for effect.) Funny you should hypothetically ask!

The project in it’s working title is called “Natali versus the Blogject,” and will be a study to see how a real live person can compare in their effectuality while blogging and actively trying to affect persons and things around them on a particular subject in comparison to a object that blogs on the same issue.

Now, I have been wondering what kind of blogject I would be taking on, and that is definitely the harder part of the equation. Where can I get a blogject that is ready to be taken on? Furthermore, can it handle me?

The blogject may have to be created in this case. I may have to dream up my own, and tweak it to my style. It is true, I am no computer whiz, but with help, I am certain I can come up with a “tweetject” (object that tweets via twitter).

The versus part is easy. The comparison would be based on how many conversations I can create (via the internet only) versus the tweetject’s conversations created. It is the conversation that creates discourse and discourse that inspires change, after all. Therefore, this must be a very straight-forward approach to counting conversations.

The competition, ahem, I mean “study”, will be documented daily on a website that will follow both my assigned twitter API and the tweetjects. Since twitter only allows microblogging within 140 characters, this will be a challenge indeed.

Now, I need inspiration for an issue that my tweetject will be able to tackle in a manner that will be able to rival me. To be concluded…!

Exploration Accumulated!

tali22 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 04:02:02 +0000

Exploration… I have to admit, this is scariest part of artist’s projects. It’s the part where you have to figure out where to start, and that has always been my biggest weakness. I brainstorm, I contextualize, and I talk and write and get excited. Then I fizzle out when I have no idea where to begin.

It’s not because I have nothing to show. Well, okay, maybe I don’t really have anything CONCRETE to show. But last week I didn’t actually have anything to show except maybe the kind of codes and software I would be working with if I were to end up working with the kinect hacking.

https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect

☝ That is the link I have to the source code for the open source software which has made many kinect hacks possible, libfreekinect.

Why haven’t I started doing anything concrete yet?

I downloaded the software, and had I any idea how to use all or any of the following:

…I would have started already. So… exploration week 1 went by without me actually have explored much except reading how long it would take me to learn all the code languages and then feeling sorry for myself.

Exploration week 2 consisted of me wondering just how I’m going to pull off a project for which I have no base knowledge of how to do. Sometimes, I wish I could just be someone’s muse, and give them ideas, and then get paid to inspire someone with awesome ideas which I could never see to fruition.

So I did the ol’ switcheroo: I gave up on the awesome idea I had gotten so excited about. Now, I must figure out where to go from here… give me a couple hours, I need to look some things up.

Contextualization

tali22 — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 07:01:10 +0000

con·tex·tu·al·ize

http://sp.dictionary.com/dictstatic/d/g/speaker.swf [kuhn-teks-choo-uh-lahyz]

–verb (used with object), -ized, -iz·ing.

to put (a linguistic element, an action, etc.) in a context,especially one that is characteristic or appropriate, as for purposes of study.

——————————————————————————-

It is difficult to contextualize a certain landscape within which I am ready to explore in, because it should be plural. The landscapes I carried on and on about in my last post were very different from each other, and the ideas stemmed from very different sources of Bleecker’s manifesto; therefore, the pathways gave out to very different ideas, but the idea which was most inspired was the idea of taking the best of a completely commercial product, like the Nintendo Wii remote or the Xbox Kinect sensor/camera, and misusing them to come up with a new way to use the product, thereby creating something completely new and useful.

The idea of a hackable sensor is nothing new. This has been done by many people, and the kinect sensor has been hacked to be used for more games, many which can be seen on youtube or kinecthacks.net.

However, the use of hacking by artists is still the most fascinating part, since it is the most outrageous ideas which always end up being the most interesting (plus they usually get their own TED talk out of it.)

For example, take Johnny Lee. His TED talk on Wii Remote hacks has seen well over one million views on youtube.

His demos on that video alone include making the economical wii remote, which can be purchased nowadays at a measly $30, into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen, and a head mounted 3D viewer. That video can be seen here.

…Then there’s those darn geniuses at MIT research lab.

One of their most recent Kinect Hacks include using the Kinect sensor to create a holograph. That can be viewed here.

Another genius at MIT, Garratt Gallagher, has chosen to share his latest Kinect hacking idea onto KickStarter, one which I helped fund. His idea was to make an affordable robotics platform taking the technology of the Roomba and the Kinect, plus a laptop and ROS robotic operating software. His prototype and kickstarter video can be seen here.

Another such MIT genius is Phillip Robbel also chose to mount the kinect sensor onto the roomba robot, but in this case, used the hacked sensors to create a 3D data mapping robot. As the robot goes around a room, it streams the depth and color images to a remote host to create the 3D map. The video for that project can be seen here.

Thanks to Kinect Hacks, I also was able to discover great works by artist Achim Kern. His Vimeo page allowed me to view his work called Sunrise, a multi-user installation using a particle system to follow the user(s), a work called Sunset, of the same kind of work but with real-time footage and the use of particles to create a lightning effect, and a work called Kinect Pin-Board. The hack of the Kinect sensor was misused to create a software which could, in real-time, show on a large projection an interactive installation where the user is a the imprint of a large, moving, digital pin-board.

last, but not least, is a beautiful, chilling, and very memorable piece by Takayuki Fukatsu, creator of artandmobile.com. His “Optical Camoflauge” Kinect Hack software has over 750,000 views on YouTube and has gained him my utter respect and idol-status. It is his work that I could refer back to as the simplest concept yet the craziest outcome, which impacted me heavily, to the point where I tell myself, maybe I can do something cool like that.

Ultimately, we shall see how far I get, but the inspirations will not cease.

First Response – “Why Things Matter”

tali22 — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 08:12:30 +0000

At first read, I couldn’t really figure out what was meant by the word “spime,” yet the word “blogject” seemed clear as day. The idea of “projects that blog” seemed to be present within my everyday. My sister’s blackberry blogs her movements all day and posts them on her respective social media hubs. It’s what every parent wants their kid to want to have, a tracking system they implement themselves!

“Blogjects become first-class a-list producers of conversations in the same way that human bloggers do — by starting, maintaining and being critical attractors in conversations around topics that have relevance and meaning to others who have a stake in that discussion.”

I like to consider myself a writer, and moreover, a conversationalist. I like to debate, and engage, and I like to see what people take away from different works. These words, therefore, resonated with me as the “this is what you should be taking away from this article,” and it therefore led me to brainstorm about different types of conversations I would like to have.

It is those words which first inspired me to have an interactive projected piece, preferably with the latest technology that is commercial enough to recognize as a blogject but not for it’s most creative uses. I have been toying with the idea of hacking Wii Remote Controllers, but now with the success of the xbox kinect hacking, I envisioned something more, as well as inspired by first year instructor Susan LK Gorbet and her Lileo Light Fountain piece.

For the work, I would hack a kinect to record 3d movement, and translate it into how that movement would affect the surface of a calm pond. the more agitated the movement, the more agitated the water ripple, yet every movement would be projected as closely to the organic movement of water, and would soon return the pond surface to a still calm.

The space of work would be a space of 3-5 square feet from a large blank wall that would be projected onto. The media used would be an xbox kinect, it’s program on a laptop computer, and a projector from the laptop to show the interactivity from human moving space to wall image.

“Blogjects operate in the physical world and, therefore, would know where they are, where they have been. …Where our Blogjects go,someone always knows.”

As previously stated, my sister and her blackberry, inseparable as she doesn’t know where she is without it. Not physically, per se, but in her everyday, her schedule, her timing, her social world, is partly governed by the her blogject. Her foursquare, her facebook, her twitter, all convey exactly where she is in a physical space and also at what point in her day she is. Her lunch with a co-worker at a restaurant she’s been meaning to try, now made a dull day a pleasant one, recorded for all to see. Stuck in traffic during rush hour on the DVP, she will record with anxiety and helplessness.

I would like to create a web tracker of volunteers, who for x amount of days (say 30, for example), would track their movements with their social media outlets and their respective blogging objects. Their locations would be tagged, and their descriptive words would be compiled, so that at the end of the x amount of days, a word cloud could be formed to their respective locations when recorded.

The work would be an observatory data collection, to be sure, and would only require the use of a website and volunteers who already own respective smartphones and have accounts on at least foursquare, twitter and facebook. It would also be an interesting observation into self-surveillance, and how telling they are through their respective blogjects of their own whereabouts.

“Blogject intellect is their ability to effect change. Their agency attains through the consequence of their assertions, and through the significant perspective they deliver to meaningful conversations. Blogjects bring something heavy to the table. Or, they are brought to the table because they have semantic weight.”

The idea of agency is a scary one, to me at least. Yet it is the most powerful reason blogjects are impactful; they create discourse, and moreover, affect things.

As a human being, I often argue with myself about my ability to affect change, and it is this inner dialogue which makes ME blog, makes me want to go to school, and makes me want to participate in discussions and debates. I know I cannot be the only human who feels this way; otherwise there wouldn’t be so many bloggers, entrepreneurs, teachers, etcetera.

It is this which makes me want to dive deeper. I am now in competition with the idea of a blogject, and the semantic weight that a blogject has may now be more important and more relevant than my own.

Therefore my idea would be to map my ability to affect change versus a blogject. How? This idea is the fuzziest I’ve had, yet the most intriguing. I wouldn’t really know where to start, but I know my end result would be like a six-degrees of Natali Martinez map versus a map of affectation a blogject with a similar context would have. what am I affecting, how am I affecting it, and how am I winning or losing against the blogject? Futhermore, can the blogject affect just as easily without any human agent helping it along?

The media required? I guess a website. Perhaps a documentary movie? Perhaps a photo montage. Like I said, this is the most vague idea I have had, and yet the competitive me cannot let the idea go; neither is it giving much fruition since it won’t let me create more ideas.

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