Introduction to Digital Media Art

Steve Lambert

2010-04-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

Website Link
Steve Lambert was born in Los Angeles and then instantly moved to the bay area four days later. His father was a monk and his mother a former nun teaching him the core values of his belief and the ultimate way to be a better person.

Lambert was a high school dropout in 1993 and moved on to be a student of sociology and film. He went to the San Francisco Art Institute and received a BFA in 2000 and in 2006 earned a MFA from UC Davis.

His high expectations of art show that Steve Lambert is capable of making great works. He is a character very against advertisement. In his works he makes a point to show how advertisements are meant to catch your eye and yet they mean somethings that is non-existant in real life. It taints our perception of reality.

My main criticism of his work is that he refuses to see the art in what he is criticizing. I don't appreciate his attitude toward it but I appreciate the way he goes about expressing his opinion. His use of simplicity in his structures and pieces combined with the complex meanings.

His work on the invisible sculpture was the work that most captured my gaze. It sets a blank canvas tone at a glance and then the word takes a hold of you. It's as if the audience is involved in the process of making the art.

I might toss out my anchor... reworked.

2010-03-31T10:03:00.000-07:00

I might toss out my anchor....

2010-03-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Jeff Crouse

2010-03-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Website Link
You3b
For the most part, Jeff Crouse is a video artist who works to show the absurdity of technology on our lives. He believes it to be a bad influence in how it is always striving to be bigger and better. However, even though he believes in this, he uses this technology to make his point. Whether or not you believe this to be a good tactic or to be somewhat hypocritical is up to you.

Jeff Crouse was raised normally as a child. When he discovered computers and the internet, he really began to excel in it. In 1999 he graduated with an art major from a small high school in Wilmington, DE. He was well known by his teachers to be familiar with Photoshop and other HTML sources. Soon after graduation he accepted an internship working with graphic design and web development. Only after several other internships and programs did he finally move down to Georgia to study in the Digital Media design program at Georgia Tech. Finally he became to see himself more as an artist and started to really pile up his resume only to become part of the eyebeam team.

After becoming a part of the eyebeam family, he developed a program called you3b where users can combine youtube videos to make origional works adding to the technology argument. I find it a very odd expression but I like the uniqueness in what it shows. In combining the web and video it is taking two mediums of technology and combining them to make almost pointless videos showing the pointlessness of technology. I like what he has done with video and I admire his thought process but I do not completely understand everything that he stands for. He is taking the one thing in his life that he has worked so hard at and is turning it against himself and everyone else.

Another one of his projects is called Project Blackbird. You can see a small example of it shown in the image above. Basically, the point is to show the correlation between humor and the media. He originally thought of this plan when he saw a class about media and how it creates humor. The course description can be viewed on his website.

I enjoy looking at Jeff Crouse's work. He has a very exploratory mind. Also, I like that he gives the viewer exactly where he found this inspiration. It gives the viewer a better sense of his work.

To further look into what makes Jeff Crouse up as an artist, view the video on the main page of his web address. It explains his goal as an artist.

Jacob Ciocci

2010-03-10T10:06:00.000-08:00

Website Link
Youtube Link to "The Peace Tape"
Jacob Ciocci is a video artist who works with exploring the connection between popular culture, technology, and transcendence. Most of his videos, exhibits, or performances involve an inconic figure like Spongebob, Elmo, or something he invented to express pop culture and then he manipulates it by turning it into video, overlapping animation, or the like so that it turns into a fast paced explosion of what we call pop culture.
According to his website, Jacob Ciocci is an artist, a member of the band "Extreme Animals," and a professor of animation and video art at Carnegie Mellon University.
Some of his other work involves collage art with bright colors depicting the same ideas expressed in his video. His more popular exhibits appear to be graffiti adding to his concept and making it more appealing to the eye.
The image above is taken from a video he did called "Booty Melt". I wasn't able to find a link or video for it but I found that the image itself was strong enough to make the statement the movie would have.

Self Portrait Ideas

2010-03-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

For the Self Portrait Project 2 I've chosen to work with these images; my favorite being the bottom one taken at Bash Rock. I don't know for sure what words I want to include but I'd like them to be incorporated into my hair. My hair symbolizes the similarities between me, my family, and altogether my heritage. Ultimately this would rule out the middle photo because my hair is not in the photo, and it would also make the first the best candidate.
As for the background, I would like to do a collage of images including places I find most comforting. As to how I'm going to do all of this, I really have no Idea but I like the images and I have confidence that it will all work out!

Two Line Scans

2010-02-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

Obaby Lincoln

2010-02-24T11:03:00.001-08:00

Scott Hessels

2010-02-23T21:30:00.000-08:00

Website Link

Scott Hessels, also known as Damaged Californians, is an experimental artist who, for the last decade, has been working with film, video, web, broadcast, music, print, and performance.

The Image Mill is an award winning public sculpture. As you can see. The sculpture is made up of a mill that spins as water falls into it creating a sort of picture show of a horse galloping. This fast paced mill is almost like that of a flip book or flash photography. The structure stands at twelve feet tall. Using two wheels, the shutter action is created. One wheel has the horse animation while the other spins the opposite direction and has slits in it.

The water is one of the main keys in how this sculpture works. Without the water, there would be no motion. Quite literally the water creates fluidity in the motion or the gallop. Rhizome suggests that Hessels may have invented a sort of cinema for the future calling it "environmentally responsible".

The mill is a metaphor for the autobile industry. The horse was one of the first forms of transportation in the world. Using the mill, which is also a large part of history, the structure transports your mind. The mill is shaped as a wheel much like that of a car or train. In the short cinema that Hessels designed the horse begins galloping and then falls and then continues on again. The main metal work was done in Michigan where the automobile industry first took off.

I find Scott Hessels to be an interesting look at new media. He has a different eye than the other artists I have looked at so far. The structure of The Image Mill is in and of itself a wonderful thing for the eye to see. When the animation and motion created by a natural resource takes its place, there is a sense of magic to what is being shared by all of the viewers. It is no wonder he won the ArtPrize in 2009.

Other works by Scott Hessels prove to be just as amazing as this invention. He is definitely a legend to the new media world.

http://rhizome.org/object.php?49467
http://www.dshessels.com/

Sergey Kotsun

2010-02-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

Website Link
Funny Video of an Orchestrion

Sergey Kotsun is a Russian media artist who works with interactive media. His most popular work is the Orchestrion. This internet machine transforms motion into music, making the viewer, the artist. The style g orchestrion was first introduced in 1911. The musical machine was said to contain the sounds of a piano, violin, flute, mandolin, bass drum, snare drum, tympani, cymbal, and triangle. The orchestrion was capable of making very high volumes of noise. Using the model for the original player, Kotsun developed a program which turns motions made with a webcam into both orchestrion music and visuals.

For those of you reading this and have about twenty minutes to spare. Please take some time to explore just what kinds of animation and visuals this guy makes. It's pretty cool. If you don't have time, at least take a look at the video of someone doing it. The link above is kind of trippy.

Sergey Kotsun has also developed some video games. They seem simple enough but with the use of 3D glasses, the game is a little more excited. In the game Star Collector, a little man walks through obstacles, collects stars, and turns moles into birds. In the game paper waves, it looks like your boat is moving through the waves and has to dodge the oncoming octopus, monsters, and whales while still collecting the floating treasure.

Besides the very cool interactive music and video games, Kotsun, has also provided the sites of programs that take the written word and turn it into music. As well, he made a program which can read off the letters spelled out. I put my name into the piano machine and it was interesting to here my name through the portal of a computer.

I think that the visuals are lacking in the composition, but the concept of turning the viewer into the artist a incredibly well thought through. I find it interesting that Kotsun used such a different sound to make this work. The orchestrion was a good idea because it doesn't limit the variations of sound.

Rhizome Link

Taras Hrabowsky

2010-02-14T16:35:00.000-08:00

Website Link
Thingpit Link

Taras Hrabowsky is a young painter from New York who has recently delved into the world of digital time-based art. As a child he mostly painted graffiti and small designs, but now his graffiti are impermanent videos touring the streets of this country.

Hrabowsky designs video images which he broadcasts off the side of buildings across the country. His most popular clip is called ThingPit, "a dense vacuum of detrius." If the motion is slowed down or paused repeatedly, it's obvious that there are things falling into an unidentifiable pit. Toward the end of the clip, everything that flew into the pit is dramatically pulled back out and into the world. Some things being thrown in could be fire, water, trees, houses, people, airplanes, and more. However, the film starts and ends exactly the same. The screen or wall being played on shows a gray brick wall. Starting slowly, the wall is crumbled into the center and begins to pull everything down with it. They are digital images computer manipulated to move across the screen.

There are other popular clips from this artist made using the same sort of technique and style. For someone who grew up and worked most of his life on painting, Taras Hrabowsky has managed to enter the digital world without explaining himself. In none of the bios or blogs flying around the internet, does it ever lead the reader to understand how this projection came to be. Hrabowsky animates things with the help and combination of his painting skills.

To better understand ThingPit, the viewer can read the meaning or definition of the title:
\’th`ing\ p`1t\
Noun
An entity, an idea, or a quality perceived, known, or thought to have its own existence.
a. The real or concrete substance of an entity.
b. A natural or artificial hole or cavity in the ground.
c. A natural hollow or depression in the body or an organ.
d. The single central kernel or stone of certain fruits
Verb
(often foll. by against)to match in opposition, esp. as antagonists:
a. a concealed danger or difficulty
b. guerilla projection made in opposition to a static view of our surroundings
c. a re-presentation of a coming together / an envirotron of differentiation
d. the commonly overlooked exultation in between
ORIGIN Old English (also in the senses “meeting” and “matter, concern”)

Personally, I feel that this artist conserves the mystery of the draw. The reason people feel a pull toward this art, not just because it is shown so publicly, is that the images moving so fast are hard to recognize as anything more than things. At a closer look, more familiar objects can be made out.

Sources:
http://rhizome.org/object.php?49677
http://beautifuldecay.com/2010/02/03/taras-hrabowsky/
http://www.impakt.nl/index.php/artworks/thing_pit
http://tarashrabowsky.com/?page_id=60

Winter in St. Mary's

2010-02-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

Textures

2010-02-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Marina Zurko and Jeff Crouse

2010-01-24T19:37:00.000-08:00

Website Link

Marina Zurko, an artist and animator, is the creator of an open framework which she can use to control the different aspects of her character's environments. With the help of her friend Jeff Crouse she created this program and called it Ecosystem Engine. By exploring both art and code together, they managed to create 3D graphics on a web browser without hardware. These 3D characters react to another but never twice in the same way.

The piece titled "Weights + Measures" is about the world as an ecosystem. Using three machines (an airplane, an elephant, and plankton) the artists brought out the meaning of each as they are displayed swimming, flying, and darting across the screen. The airplanes are representative of transportation and war, as are the elephants. Elephants are at the top of the food chain because of both size and status. The plankton rest at the bottom of the food chain and eat the carbon dioxide produced by the airplane. However, the ecosystem would die without the plankton. The clip nicely displays the presence of both old and new age ideas. There is so much more to the dynamics of the blurp of the long program. The clip quickly throws together a quick representation of the artists view of how our ecosystem works.

The animated graphics are impressive, but not so much as the program itself. There wasn't much integration of color. Most of the screen remains blue. The sinking airplanes are a greyish tint but mostly just an etched figure. The swimming elephants are transparent sketches with red eyes. Finally, the plankton dart into the image as white orbs with red dots much similar to the elephant's eye. The floating green plankton are a more subtle addition to the ecosystem. There's a lot going on in the browser at once making it easy to see how the program can run forever and not repeat itself.

Sources:
www.eyebeam.org
www.ecosystemengine.com