Digital Arts by Christiane Paul - Ch. 3

Digital arts presented the artists not only the new mediums to work with, but also more themes for them to work on. These new themes deal with artificial life and intelligence; telepresence and telerobotics; database aesthetics, mapping, and data visualization; net activism and tactical media; and gaming and narrative hypermedia environments.

Artificial life and intelligence has been an area of research and developments of scientists. To artists, the theme is used to depict their view on human evolution. In Karl Sim’s installations of Genetic images and Galapagos, he established an explicit link between aesthetics and evolution. Also, Christa Sommerer touched on the idea, survival of the fittest with his work, A-Volve.

The concept of telepresence in connected to any form of telecommunication. Telecommunication art existed even before the digital arts have formed. The artists used devices such as fax, phone, and satellite TV. However, the new digital media have replaced the whole theme of telecommunication. The advance in the technology allowed people to be present in multiple locations at the same time, and the artists bring this possibility to their arts.

The arts the deal with gaming is what I am really interested in. The video game has been a big part of development in digital technologies and its industry is even bigger than the movie industry. The artists use the factors of Video game’s success to convey their messages: navigation of simulation to linked narratives, the creation of 3D worlds, and multi-user environments. Some games are known for its plot, some for its visuals and graphics, and some for its gameplays. The artists create whole new game or distort already-existing games to accomplish their goals.

Montage II - Redo

Digital Art by Christiane Paul - Ch. 2

One of the advantages of using digital technologies would be its interaction with the viewers and tendency to respond to every real-time data flow. In digital arts, interactivity takes different forms: navigating, assembling, or contributing to an artwork physically. The possibility of this complex interactivity can be achieved by the technologies’ dynamics. Whenever, the viewer or user clicks something or triggers one specific response, the digital medium can quickly transmit data to the viewers or save changes made by the viewers to the works.

There are many forms of digital arts: movie, video, audio, music, images, websites, and so on. Depending on the forms artists choose, the installation takes different forms. It can be large-scale video installations with multiple projectors or just an Internet Browser. The digital art installations are in and of themselves broad field and come in myriad forms. The installation, alone, change the meanings and the message the artists were trying to depict though their works. For example, the concept of the digital moving images and ‘digital cinema’ have redefined the very identity of cinema. The digital technologies were able to do so because they offer multiple possibilities for an enhanced cinematic representation in installations.

Also, interactivity played crucial role for development in digital cinema arts. Using light in their projection, the artists are now able to allow viewers to interact with even films/videos. The digital arts had been further developed through the advent of World Wide Web. A new genre, Internet Art, allowed the artists to create new forms of expression. Other genre of digital arts is software arts which refers to projects (programs) that have been written by artists from the scratch and run locally on a computer.

Digital Art by Christiane Paul - Ch. 1

The use of digital technologies in almost every aspect of daily life has been increasing due to its rapid development. The same situation is occurring to artists’ choice of tools. The artists have been working in different forms of media such as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, music, and video. Now, the use of digital technologies allows the artists to expand their tools of creation and aspects of their arts. They can rely on the new technology which reflects on its language and aesthetics, or they can combine analogue and digital works to form a new meaning.

The new technologies are used to produce both printed images and three-dimensional sculptures. For making images, the artists can create entire paintings with these new technologies or use photographs or existing images and change them to create whole new pieces. Such includes Charles Cohen’s 12b and Andie 04 which the class went over for the first project, Absence/Presence. Some sculptors make use of the new technologies both in the initial design process and in the output of the physical objects, others create sculptures that exist only exclusively in the virtual realm and can take the form of a CAD model or digital animation.

What If We Played A War And Nobody Won?: Critical Approaches to War in Videogame Art

'What If We Played A War And Nobody Won?: Critical Approaches to War in Videogame Art' is an online exhibition that deals with the concept of war in today's videogames. The exhibition contains six online games that temper with the rules and styles of standardized games. Such games include 'Play the News. Solve the Puzzle,' which makes player to solve conflict between Israel and Palestine without using violence.

The vast majority of the videogames have glorified and celebrated war and violence. If you look at the recent best-selling videogames, they all deal with wars and violence: Halo 3, God of War II, Grand Theft Auto IV, etc. One project in this exihibition shows the list of the U.S soldiers died in Iraq and the exact time. I like the project and its concept because it engages the players the true natures of war, and how it is distorted through the videogames.

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Furtherfield Review
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?From=Index&review_id=227

What If We Played A War And Nobody Won?: Critical Approaches to War in Videogame Art
http://jschumanmc75.nexo.com/whatifweplayedawar

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Through this project I wanted to criticize the diet pill companies. They always have before and after photos of people who took their pills and show off how successful their pills can be. Everyone in the before pictures look depressed and but in after pictures they look happy. To me, it seems like they threw away their individualities to become somebody else they had seen on TV's. I replaced their after pictures with one model and added 'transformation' in bold letter on the ad because that's what people proudly refered this pill as.

Personal World Map - Roxana Torre

Roxana Torre's "Personal World Map" is an interactive world map that is distorted depending on the user's time and budget limiation for his/her travel plan. The project starts with world wide map, and the viewer will be given multiple cities s/he starts with. From the center city, user will input his/her time and budget (in euro) for the trip and the map will be distorted to show the users possible destinations for their trips. Rather than distorting map geographically, she chose to do it by money or travel time distances.

I think the message she was trying to convey throught this project is the difference in how today's people think about traveling. Due to the emergence of the low cost flight industry and online ticketing, people are allowed to make last minute decision on where they are going to go. Before this, people used to think the destination before money and time, but now they started to think of going to place 'anywhere except where they are now.' I think this is a great project depicting the change in how people perceive things due to the advance in techonology.

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Furtherfield Review
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?From=Index&review_id=162

Personal World Map
http://www.personalworldmap.org/