Sam McCollum
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
According to Benjamin, The artist's creation has always been capable of being duplicated. But a mechanical replication of an artwork introduces a new concept. Different planes influence how people see and evaluate works of art. Two polar kinds stand out; one places emphasis on the cult value of the art, the other on its display value. The woodcut was enhanced by etching and engraving in the Middle Ages, and lithography first appeared at the turn of the nineteenth century. Lithography allowed graphic art to depict daily life and started to keep up with printing. But photography overtook lithography within a few decades after it was created. Digital and technological developments in art making have changed the process, display, and reception of artworks because digital art can be easier to create and manipulate. The process of graphic replication was greatly sped up so that it could keep up with speech since the eye sees faster than the hand can draw. I believe another technology other than photography that can change the way you view, make or share art can be social media or the internet in general. You can create art on phones or computers, by downloading apps that can allow you to make art. Artists can draw and "paint" on Ipads/Iphones just as well as they can draw and paint on a canvas. This can be good or bad, it can take people away from physically creating art. When Benjamin refers to an original work of art as being authentic, he indicates that it has a presence in time and space and a singular existence wherever it may be. Benjamin compares a magician and a physician to a painter and a filmmaker. While the painter keeps a healthy distance from reality in his art, the photographer dives deeper into its web. The public's response to art is altered by the use of mechanical replication.
Psychogeography
The term "psychogeography" refers to the study of how a place's environment affects people's feelings and actions. The legacy of psychogeography represents the need to reinvent one's personality, language, and social life. The drift is intentional, according to contemporary psychogeographers, and can expose the city's underlying structure. Contemporary art is a reflection of the complicated themes that influence our varied, international, and transforming world. A common reference for the modern psychogeographer is Charles Baudelaire’s flaneur, he was known as the painter of modern life. A "flaneur" is a passive and distant spectator who ambles around the streets. Stewart Home mentions “For me photography is most alluring when both the person behind the lens and what is being photographed self-consciously manifest their subjectivity. Traveling across ‘Britain’ to discover ‘America’ is only one of the many ways in which such subjectivity might remake the world in both photographic and material form. . . . The psychogeographer . . . knows that the world cannot be recorded, it can only be remade.” I thought this was a powerful quote, I think of this quote like taking something original and remaking it into something better, or just making it different in a way. Another artist that uses contemporary art is Pablo Picasso. From the naturalism of his youth to cubism, surrealism, and beyond, his work evolved, influencing the course of modern and contemporary art over the years. An early illustration of the idea might be seen in Tristam Hillier's paintings, such as La Route des Alpes from 1937. In the 1990s, psychogeography became more popular. Overall, I thought this reading was a little bit hard to understand but I’ve also researched more about contemporary art and psychogeography to get better insight about what these two subjects are and to see different examples of artists work.
The Garden of Forking Paths
The Garden of Forking Paths is relevant to our assignment because in our assignment we are creating a path to get from start to finish. It can be a location, building, story, experience, or game. In the article The Garden of Forking Paths is a guessing game and, in this game, you cannot use words, it is forbidden just as it is in our assignment. In our assignment we can only use gifs, images, sound, or videos. In the article it mentions “to eliminate a word completely, to refer to it by means of inept phrases and obvious paraphrases, is perhaps the best way of drawing attention to it” (pg.7). this is saying that saying words or phrases will easily give it away. In this article Yu Tsun is a spy for the Germans but can’t speak to the Germans directly, he has no established method of communicating to them. But in the end Yu kills Albert who is a scholar of all things Chinese, which then sends a message to the Germans, “because the town of Albert has just been bombed, he knows the Germans got his ‘message’” (Dr Oliver Tearle, 2023). This article can influence other new media artists because it can allow them to create art in different ways. It can change their view on how they create art.
Hello World! Processing
I thought this video was very interesting, I liked watching the different processing techniques and the different forms that people create. I think anybody can do this, although it may look very easy there is a lot of different material to learn about this process. I like how they mentioned "it's a digital sketch book, somewhere you can scribble down your ideas in code", some people like to sketch whether it's digital or not, s I think this can be very useful. Another thing that they mentioned was "When you have an idea, it's a very short path to being able to see that idea become real". I find it helpful that jotting down ideas can become something real and bigger. If you are new at learning processing usually the first thing you learn is drawing a line from point A to point B. I believe this can be a very helpful and useful way for people who want to go into graphic design and learn more about it.
P5.js Sketch #1
P5.js Sketch #2
Current Sketch
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Interactive Website (Silk)
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I really like the interactive website I found, it's very simple but I think its fun. I found it just by searching "interactive websites", it took me a minute to find something I found interesting. This website it a symmetry drawing app. In this interactive website, all you do is drag and press your mouse down and it allows you to draw in different ways and you can use different colors. The drawings look like laser beams which I thought was really cool. The sizes start from no rotational symmetry to 5-fold rotational symmetry. If you don't like what you drew you can delete it and restart or you can press the undo button or "z" that undos the last thing you drew. This is available in the app store on Ipad and Iphone.
Assignment 3 Critique
In the last critique my classmates had helped me come up with ideas to add to my sketch. So, for the final I had added some of the elements that were mentioned such as having the sun move through the page, having the flowers look like they're moving, and having an airplane follow my mouse to look the it's drawing pictures in the sky. I had trouble figuring out how to having the drawing affect while moving the mouse. In the final critique it helped me because my classmates had given me more ideas to add in my work and helped me figure out how to fix some of the affects that wouldn't show up. Overall, I liked the image I came up with I think it fits my personality.
2nd Interactive Website
The website I chose to do is one that we have already looked at before. This one was located towards the beginning/middle of the schedule. The interactive website is called Cameron's World. I chose to do this website because there are so many interactions that are included. His website starts off in space and as you scroll it is something totally different. If you scroll down a little bit there is a play button that if you click it you can listen to his greeting announcement, he talks about what he did to his website. It looks like it is color coded which is interesting. It has a bunch of random gifs; I like how not every object on his pages are static. You can also click on some of the images/gifs and interact with them, that's another reason I thought his interactive website was cool. If you click on one of the images/gifs it will take you to this website inside his website and give you information about whatever you clicked on. If you scroll all the way to the bottom, it will tell you about his interactive website, it will also give you information about the artist. About Cameron Askin: "Exploring the intersection of art, technology, and visually-induced seizures, Cameron creates unique web projects from unusual content sources such as archived GeoCities sites, stock photos and clip art". He is the founder of Stand & Marvel, a web design and development studio based in Melbourne, Australia. His website also gives information about his exhibitions and press. His interactive website may look chaotic when you first look at it, but as you scroll and look at everything it's very unique. It looks like this took him awhile to make with all of the text and images put into this, it looks too complicated. Overall, I thought this was a good example for an interactive project, it's long and has a lot of things you can interact with so it can keep you busy.
Interdisciplinary Interaction Design Reading
After reading this article I found it helpful to know what each topic is about. In the beginning it talks about branching and nodes. Branching would be the paths between the points and the nodes would be each of the points. I believe a good example of this would be a family tree. The second topic talks about Cognitive Load Theory which refers to the quantity of fresh knowledge and tasks that our working memory is capable of processing. A good example of this would be when we are doing coding in Dreamweaver or p5.js, since there is a lot of information to learn and remember. The article mentions “designer wants to avoid overwhelming the users with too much information, so they don’t give up”. I would agree with this statement, because there is a lot of information and it can overwhelm people, it overwhelms me because I can’t remember everything. That’s why it’s important to write everything down. The third topic talks about controls. Controls are standard elements in screen-based interface design that let the user modify, alter, or work with interface elements. I believe this is when for example in p5.js when we write “mouseIsPressed” or “keyIsPressed”, etc. These controls allow you to do different interactions with your website. Another topic is the Geon Theory, it talks about different shapes and blocks and how the viewer can think about what the object is. In my p5.js sketch I made a flower scene. The flowers I used circles and the stem with a rectangle shape, for the clouds I used more circles, and also a circle for the sun. Overall, I think this was an interesting article to read. I feel like I could connect what we have been working on in class to many of the topics that I read.
How to Structure an Effective Typographic Hierarchy
This article talks about what you need in your website that make up a typography hierarchy. These include size, weight, color, contrast, case, and position and alignment. To start with size, it's important if you text is bigger or smaller. When beginning a typographic hierarchy project, designers typically start with size. The article explains it as bigger text can mean more important and smaller text can mean less important. Another effective method for establishing hierarchy is weight. Text stands out when it is heavier (bold or black weights) and recedes when it is lighter. Another subject is color, the significance of the text may be significantly altered by altering the color of the typeface. Text may be made to recede in a design by, for example, being made a lighter shade of gray. On the other hand, typography may stand out against the surrounding text by employing a bright color. An example of a bright color text would be a link, links usually have a bright blue text so it can instantly stand out among the other text. In typographic hierarchy, contrast is essential because it creates a visual hierarchy, directing the reader's attention around the text and highlighting the significance of various sections. Talking about case in typography hierarchy, it contributes to the overall visual structure and readability of a text. Emphasis and significance are frequently connected with capital letters. For body content, lowercase letters are the norm as they are typically simpler to read. with positioning and alignment, readability and a seamless reading experience are enhanced when alignment is maintained consistently across a document or design. The reader's eye can easily follow a clear visual route created by proper placement and alignment. Overall, this reading was very helpful for me to understand what typography hierarchy is and how it is effective in my website.
My Website (Final)
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Starting this website, I had no idea what I was going to do. Looking at some examples shown in class it gave me some sort of idea. I knew I wanted the overall color to be purple because that's my favorite color. I also didn't want my website to look chaotic, I wanted it to be simple. I started out with my bio and artist statement page because those would be easier, I think they both describe me well. Then I began to work on my media page, this is where you will see my drawings/paintings that I've done in school or on my own time. I made a thumbnail of every picture and then linked it to what the full image looks like and gave it a title. I have 9 pictures of my artwork on my media page. Then began working on my sculpture page, I have two thumbnail images on this page with links to the full image and a title. I wish I had more to this page but this is all I did in my sculpture class. My next page was my ceramics, I have 6 images here. I made 12 ceramic pieces in the class but only showed 6 of my best pieces. All of them are linked to show the full image with a title as well. The next page is my projects, this is a link to my nonlinear project and my p5.js project. Both of which we did in class as an assignment. Then I have my resume page which I made in html, it took me a very long time but I managed to do it. One part on the resume is messed up which I couldn't seem to figure out, it's on the left side with the bullet points. My next page is my blog, I linked it to the website so when you click on it, it will take you to the blog. This one got messed up too because you have to click on it twice in order to get to the blog. My last page is my contact page. I have linked my facebook to this page because I think this is an easy way to contact me. Overall, I think building this website was fun, it took a lot of work and stress but I managed to do it and I think it turned out really nice.