Final Days of EMAC

I'm gonna miss this class; this group of people. A group of very talented artist with some serious design skills. I remember the first couple of classes filled with people dreading computer media. I also remember going over the first letter form project and watching people create super-creative pieces with low photoshop experience. Software is only a tool, creativity is the key. Everyone can eventually learn all the tricks and functions of a program, but those who can really let their creativity work through the tool will be the most successful. I thought the class became fairly comfortable with each other over the weeks and it became a good work/learning environment. I also thought that Tim Hoover was a great asset to the class. His professional experience really helped the class build on the foundations of design. I was very grateful for his help and being an overall cool guy. I felt our teacher also performed very well; always having a game plan and introducing interesting projects. I would have liked to go deeper into some of the programs and learned some more techniques, but I also enjoyed delving into some many unexplored areas of electronic media and culture. This class helped open my eyes to the broad range of electronic media. From robotics to video art, this field is very interesting and always moving foreword. I am glad that I will still be able to work with electronic media next semester in my intro to 3d computer animation class. I am soooo excited to get into that line of work. I feel like this semester has flown by, yet sometimes it seems soo long. Orientation weekend  feels like years ago. I believe I have grown considerable in the time between, both as a person and an artist especially. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year goes and track my own growth as well. This has been an amazing and successful semester and I look forward to the challenges and experiences ahead of me.

Almost forgot about the laser cutter

A couple weeks back we had the chance to create a project based around the use of a laser cutter. I have never been able to use one of these machines and was surprised at its capabilities. There are so many possibilities with laser cutter. For my project I created cut-outs of four people. I choose people who show up in the news almost every day. I placed them on playing cards of rank. The ace went to Obama, King to John Stewart, Queen to Lady Gaga, and Jack to Justin Bieber. I feel like these faces show up all the time in the news/media. Now this plan has not been completely executed. I was able to make an Obama card on a think piece of a book cover, but still plan on placing the set of four on four cards eventually. I was pleased with the results of my engraving. I wanted the piece to be completely cut out, yet the material I used was a lot denser then I thought and after seven passes with the laser, I stopped. It did not end up being expensive at all and I will definitely go back and use the machine.

Website design

Website Design is exceptionally important. People browse the web at light speed and the only way to get their attention in order for them to stop on your site for more than 2 seconds is to have a solid design. During my latest EMAC class we recieved a great presentation from Tim Hoover, the Teacher assistant for the course. He did a great job going over the good and bad of web design. Keeping a good separation of content and design really helps a site look smooth and easy to use. I'm glad we get to dive into web design, something I see everyday and wish to learn more about. Tim had numerous examples of good design. I walked away with a bunch of sites to check up on including ffffound.com which has great examples of design in general. One thing that I find myself obsessed with from time to time in Type and Typography. I have a passion for text and its uses for some reason. I feel that good, well used type can really enhance a website. Our next assignment in class is to develope our own website using the dreamweaver program. I have had some previous experience with this program, but I prefer to use wordpress in website design. I am glad that I get another chance to work with Dreamweaver and explore its possibilites. I am planning on creating a personal website to showcase my own work, work in progress, and work from other artist I follow. I want to give it a minimalist view with nice text and a good selection of colors. Hopefully I can get through the 'set-up' phase of the site without any problems. After last class I remember how tricky that can be just to get the foundation ready for the site. I belive once I can get back into photoshop to design the site, I'll start picking up speed.

History of Video Art

There is a huge gap between film and video art. When I think of film, I see movie theaters. I see directors, actors, sets, and scenes. I hear beautiful background music and sounds, and listen to professional writing. Film is of a high interest for me. When it comes to video art I see something completely different. I would say that about 90% of the 'video art' that I have ever seen has left me either confused or unsatisfied. I'm sure there are plenty of good examples of video art out there, I have yet to experience them. Recently in both EMAC and elements, I have been introduced to a bunch of video artist and their pieces. Some are rather interesting while others seem to lose all artistic merit. I feel this medium is hard for artist to use to produce something other than film. I've seen videos of a guy crying for 40minuts, I've seen random collages of people and images talking in weird ways and floating all over the place. I try to search for a message of symbol but every time I identify with one, I lose it in the crazyness before me. I have seen some amazing work before. Not everything video-art related confuses me. The work of  Alejandro Jodorowsky has astounded me. His use of symbolism and imagery blew me away. Many of his works are out of this world, yet for some reason i can stay with his films and follow what he is trying to say. With other artist I feel they fail to capture the audience. I still find interest in this field and hope to look into it further despite my bad experiences so far.

Shepard Fairey

A big part of electronic culture revolves around copyright issues. This subject has been brought up numerous times in class, this time we focused on a certain graphic designer named Shepard Fairey. He is most well known for his rendition of the Obama hope poster and his line of Obey graphics. Fist off I find his designs very attention-grabbing and professional. The issue with this artist is that he is constantly targeted for violating copyrights and stealing from artist around the world. It's true that he uses older images and symbols in his work, sometimes he blatantly takes the image, while sometimes he slightly modifies it. From what I have seen, many of his pieces are taken from considerable older images. Images that were used in different political/social movements in the past. He takes these iconic images and places them in his own work. Some are angry with this, which I can understand. I'm not the biggest fan, yet some of his images are great. I do feel however that Mr. Fairey is not trying to upset anyone. I believe he just enjoys seeing his designs all over the world and does not focus solely on profit to get rich, but profit to continue his lifestyle. I'm not sure if he has already, but I would like him to state exactly what he has taken from others. I feel if he is completely honest about it people would appreciate that even if he continues his practices. I also feel like many of his images are taken from very old sources who should be happy that their design has surfaced once again.

Professor Warwick's Lecture on the History of Electronic Music

This class was an amazing example of technology. We held a skype conversation with a professor between Baltimore, Maryland and Toronto, Canada. I thought this was fantastic. I've had skype conversation before, but never like this. We had a open lecture/discussion as if Mr. Warwick was right there in person. The reason for this event was to talk about electronic music. This form of music has been around longer than I thought. Pretty much ever since audio could be created through an electric machine, electronic music has been produced. I thought it was amazing to learn about the pioneers of this field and to see how they created tones and certain sounds. Some of the equipment they used looked super big and exceptionally old compared to the technology we have today. Although their machinery was somewhat primitive, they made amazing steps in this field and produced some amazing pieces. We also learned more about the battles going on over issues of copyright and such. Some people copy others on purpose, yet give out their music for free such as the artist 'Girl Talk'. I don't have too much information about this artist, but I've been listening to his stuff for a while, especially his new album. I have been having a great time listening to how he remixes popular artest and gives them a new refreshing beat by combining old and new songs together. Overall I appreciate electronic music, although sometimes I get tired of the synthetic-ness of the music. I like knowing that another human possesses the talent to produce notes from an instrument and create a song/melody. Overall I really enjoyed this class and hope to have such discussions in the future.

Telematics and Robotics

Whoa time passes by so fast sometimes. It's hard to believe that 2 months have passed since my last blog post. I guess it's just one of those things you mean to take care of, but something always comes up and distracts you. the past 2 months have been relatively busy. Classes have been flowing very steadily and projects come and go. During the last 2 months in EMAC, we took some time to focus on Telematics and Robotics. These areas are both heavily involved with technology. Telematics use computers/computer programs/ and forms of artificial intelligence as their medium. Many of these pieces are interactive and focus on the behaviors of both humans and machines. This is a very interesting subject, yet also somewhat frightening. I always start thinking of Skynet when I see or hear the word artificial intelligence. Its great that computers are becoming more advanced and helpful, I just don't want them taking control of my life. Robotics is another subject we covered. This media deals with building machines that can operate on their own or are controlled by outside forces. Both of these subjects are advancing in step with technology, yet are also used in the art world more and more. Some pieces are small, while others are huge demonstrations. Overall it is an interesting medium, one that will hopefully continue and advance in years to come.