"Telematic Embrace: A Love Story?": Reading Response

Ascott believed that the creative process should and would embrace cybernetics; to co-exist and work together to inspire new directions in art and further the future of art. Many others disagreed with Ascott, believing that technology would industrialize art, creating a “utopian attitude” in the art community, and art would become lifeless, like cybernetics itself. Ascott still believed that cybernetics should be embraced and explored to create new telematic art, and that anything and everything can still be ‘art’. This can be applied to many different conceptual artists and art pieces we have discussed in class, including Fluxus, which pertains to the anti-art message, Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades that took regular objects and juxtaposed them with others to create a new meaning, and John Cage and his work “4’33” where the idea of a musical performance is turned on its side to create a new type of composition. These artists and their works all push the limits of what is deemed art and innovate instead of detracting or repeating others work.

The metaphor of the mirror in Duchamp’s “Large Glass” or “The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even” is from the reflection of the viewer, and the viewer sees this as part of the installation, which leaves the meaning of the work open for interpretation to each individual. This reveals a tension in consideration with the ideas of Ascott and Shanken, as the inclusion of the viewer in the piece draws away from the involvement of cybernetics in art and that there is no set meaning to the work. “The machine-like anonymity and ambivalence of the eroticized intercourse between these aspects might be interpreted as creating a perverse tension rather than a loving embrace.” Shanken refers to Ascott’s idea of love and the embrace of cybernetics, where Duchamp’s “Large Glass” seems to welcome a machine-like resemblance of the work itself. New media artists already embrace technology, and use the mirror metaphor (e.g. Daniel Rozin’s ‘Wooden Mirror’) to give each viewer a different meaning and interpretation.

"The Dis-Embodied Re-Embodied Body": Reading Response

The two opposing ideas about the body that emerge from Shaw’s discussion of the interface are that we struggle to distinguish ourselves from our mortal, ‘obsolete’ body and our performative, ‘interactive’ body. We seem to have this need to reject our ‘real’ body and engage with our ‘virtual’ self more frequently. Shaw brings up the internal struggle between the real body and real space around that body vs. the virtual body and the virtual space surrounding that body. We readily allow our virtual self to take over, when we really need to balance between the two. It seems that we have evolved into what Jean Baudrillard would call a hyperreal society, where everything seems more ‘real’ than ‘real’ itself, and at times we cannot tell our mortal self from our virtual self. It also seems that art is being lost within this same hyperreality, in which it merges with the interface and the original ‘real’ art disappearing altogether, leaving the ‘virtual’ art to remain in the forefront.

Shaw ideas can be related to Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in which traditional techniques uphold a certain importance and value to an art piece. These traditional techniques are relatable to Benjamin’s ‘aura’, in which they carry a cultural and societal meaning with them, as opposed to newer interactive techniques, which do not. The interface can reinforce the message of a work by often resembling a theme present in the work. The interface should complement the art piece, and not be to elaborate. Cumbersome interfaces can cause a negative impact regarding the message of the piece, distracting the user away from the original art’s intended meaning, and possibly changing that meaning.

"Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices": Reading Response

I feel that our installation work does not fit with the idea of surveillance or sousveillance. The idea of watching and taking in information about the user is not we want to accomplish. We do not intend to film or capture anyone with the camera; the camera is aimed at the floor, and its use is only to establish whether a foot has entered the camera’s field of vision. We simply want to teach, empower and possibly brighten someone’s day. If we were to include this type of technology into our installation, it would alter the public environment so that users of our installation would be more cautious and apprehensive. The atmosphere would lose its fun and engaging atmosphere in favour of a judgmental, uneasy feeling caused by the cameras.

If our installation adopted a wearable or portable technology, it would create an interesting outcome. In theory, any footstep taken could produce a different note, and not just the user’s own feet; others within the camera’s surroundings could produce a sound as well. In that regard, there could be a sense of fear or alarm from the general public as to being captured on camera, as many do not like that feeling of being secretly filmed. But as well, our installation in a portable sense could bring out a fun-loving, easy-going attitude that most people do not show in public.

In another sense, our installation is like other performances in which uncertainty is prevalent. There are many outcomes that we cannot possibly foresee, but that also creates an unpredictability regarding the limits of our installation. We encourage breaking the boundaries, and I feel that is how you truly learn about something. Our aim to take learning outside the classroom fits well with this unpredictability.

"Computer Vision for Artists and Designers": Reading Response

The four simple detection and tracking methods outlined in the article are:

1. Detecting motion – ‘frame differencing’

2. Detecting presence – ‘background subtraction’

3. Detection through brightness thresholding – controlled illumination (e.g. backlighting) and/or surface treatments (e.g. high-contrast paints)

4. Simple object tracking – tracking the single brightest pixel in every frame of video

One of the major challenges that face programmers when working with computer vision techniques is that computers are not completely accurate when trying to tell if a person is present in video information. Since video is made of pixels, computers have to distinguish between pixels that resemble a person and pixels that make up background objects. This differentiation is often difficult, especially if a person’s clothing is similar to the background in which the video is shot. Different filming techniques are needed for computers to fully tell apart a person from the background. Techniques like using backlit objects and stark contrasts in clothing to background are good ways to ensure that computers can better distinguish objects from one another. Another major challenge that occurs in computer vision techniques is accurately measuring distance in video. Until recently with Microsoft’s Kinect, measuring distance in video feeds has always been a challenge, as many cameras could not accurately measure depth of field. Even with Kinect, the technology is still new, and judging how far an object is from the camera has not been perfected yet. Even though we have come a long way with innovations in technology, the camera lenses being used today are not perfect and can only be improved upon in the future. One more challenge that occurs with computer vision techniques is that it is hard to observe and detect a person if they are stationary and not moving. Some cameras depend on movement to judge if a object is present in the video feed, for example, the Suicide Box that looked for vertical movement by the Golden Gate Bridge. This also ties into camera lenses not being the greatest, as well as higher end lenses have a higher price point and most often, it is cheaper to use low end cameras for manufacturing purposes.

"The History of the Interface in Interactive Art": Reading Response

The 6 artists Söke Dinkla uses to exemplify the 6 categories of interactivity are:

1. Myron Krueger – Glowflow (Power and Play)

2. Jeffrey Shaw – Points of View (Participation vs. Interaction)

3. David Rokeby – Very Nervous System (Proximity and Manipulation)

4. Lynn Hershman – Deep Contact (Strategies of Seduction)

5. Grahame Weinbren – The Erlking (Nonlinear Narration)

6. Ken Feingold – The Surprising Spiral (Remembering, Forgetting, and Reconstructing)

Videogames are often given the short end of the stick, often categorized with film and books, rather than being seen as an independent art form. In my opinion, videogames need to be looked at and seen as a legitimate art form and be autonomous from films and books. In one of my classes this year, this idea was, for the most part, agreed upon as many videogame aspects just simply cannot be looked at in terms of literary and film theory. Videogames require their own theory to be fairly judged in an artistic form, which in itself is not an easy task. Since videogames are still a relatively new art form (in comparison to film and literature), not enough work has been done to establish a videogame theory. As well, the videogame industry is moving incredibly fast, making what people have written about videogame theory obsolete within a year. In one of my classes this year, our textbook contained articles written about videogames, comparing them with literature and films, and often using games from years past to make their argument. Most of the arguments made in that textbook do not seem valid anymore, as the videogame industry has evolved so much that new technology and ideas for reinventing and revolutionizing the industry take precedence. Being one of the fastest growing industries in history, it is hard to tie gaming to one specific theory on its own, in my opinion. Videogames seem to be more of a blending of different techniques used in film and in literature to create an interactive form of art. Even though it borrows techniques from these other industries, the product stands by itself independently, and it should be judged that way.

"What Gaming Can Learn From Installation Art": Reading Response

Early experiments in participatory performance by Allan Kaprow failed to make the audience “co-creators of the work” because the public was not interested in participating in and making the art “come alive”. Many art installations had the viewer become a participant, ultimately turning the viewer into a “material” to be a part of the installation. Most art installations also had specific instructions for the viewer/participant, and the public did not like being told what to do. As well, not all Happenings and installations were as open or inviting as the artists claimed.

I would have to disagree that the principles of interactivity in gaming have changed little since the early computer games. In my opinion, I believe videogames have become incredibly more interactive in recent years, especially with the introduction to motion control gaming, including the likes of the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s Playstation Move. By actually involving the user/player’s body instead of depending just on a controller for movement inside a game, the user/player’s input has become more interactive and engaging. Nintendo’s Wii started the motion control phenomenon, recognizing how a controller moves in relation to a sensor. This new fad opened brand new avenues of videogames, appealing not just to a niche market anymore. Microsoft’s Kinect is a gigantic leap forward in gaming, eliminating the need for a controller and depending on the physical movements of the user and voice commands as well. However, since the Kinect is still new, its use is limited in games. Game developers are still yet to use the Kinect to its full potential.

Games have also recently included more interactive storylines, notably Mass Effect, allowing the user to choose what phrase they want their character to say, and how to navigate the game. Other sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption allow the user to choose what they want to do, when they want to do it. These types of interactivity with games were not present in early videogames. Games like Super Mario Bros have linear paths to follow to the end, in which they have to follow set events to finish the game. In older games, there was only one way to go to progress; newer videogames have allowed users to pick which way they want to go, given more than one option to progress the story. In my opinion, this makes newer games more interactive than their predecessors.