Author: awm330

When I was going through the recorded sounds and beats, I found one that I found very interesting that I haven’t used before and I don’t think anyone else did in the previous assignments.

I used and audio called Bev, which is a recording of a person singing, I played around with the speeds and options for at least 45 minutes until I was able to make different sounds for both ends, one as a female voice and the other as a male voice.

I tried my best to remove the background and adjust the settings on the browser so that it sees me as the blob without anything more or anything less. I feel like the blob detection was good to a great extent and blocked out most unnecessary objects.

Attached is the video below:

I had trouble working with “Show threshold” as it wouldn’t change the sounds whenever I moved and so I kept recording for at least an hour as well. I made it in a way where it is like a concert and two people are lipsyncing, I think the practicality of this could be used in the future for other assignments and activities in general.

Posenet

In regards to Posenet, it seems more interesting to me, as I have always enjoyed watching similar videos on the ____ Got Talent(s) in general. The fact that it tracks individual parts of the body makes it much more convenient and practical for detailed performances.

For me, I felt that the blob was better in terms of tracking because it looks at the bulk and can be adjusted, so for non-detailed performances it would be more beneficial to use.

Out of the assignments that we’ve had so far, this one’s my favorite. It leads more towards the goals of the course, which I find very interesting, and the fact that we have already practiced some tidal cycles and know how it works helped a lot.

To begin with, I decided to comment out the line for the average flow because I felt that it’s a bit unnecessary for my recording, though it helped a lot in understanding and grasping the concept.

As I was working on my assignment during sunrise, I was inspired by the sound of birds and construction. Accordingly, I set the beat to the sound of a bird near the window and pretended that the mover was a piece of tin, seeing that it is used in construction, and I found the sound of a bin which appeared to be very similar. I also changed the color of my piece of tin and gave it a border to make the color seem a bit more realistic at least.

The Sound of Sunrise

The general sound for the video is the sound of the bird and I made the sound of the “tin” piece hitting the wall in the upper right corner as the wall is the most evident there and somewhat realistic.

I was having trouble with the movement as it was a bit unstable as well as the fact that the camera is flipped and not mirrored, so I had to record the video at least 10 times to make sure that I move correctly.

The author puts a lot of emphasis on embodiment and the relationship between body and matter. The concept of implicit body case studies also adds to what we’ve read in the previous reading where the author talked about art and meaning. In this chapter, he says that actualizing is given priority over the projections and sounds. I really like the way he layouts information and breaks it down, like the use of the word thematic instead of theme and elaborating on why the word is more meaningful and reflective, which makes much more sense when put into context. 

He divides the Implicit Body Framework into four categories, which are: artistic inquiry and process, artwork description, interactivity, and relationality. He discusses how all artists take such factors into consideration when producing or creating their artwork as it’s a two-way activity. This idea is similar to businesses, where the producer finds out what the customer/consumer wants and what they would like to see, and accordingly, cater to that. He also talks about how “interactivity, and relationality” are the least analyzed in critical writings, and this shouldn’t be the case because they are as important as the first two categories.

Artistic inquiry and process– gives context to the work, the artists’ approach, thoughts, and intentions, It basically offers the frame for the work.

Artwork description– offers a detailed description of the piece, incorporating all sensory details that are portrayed, seen, heard, and felt.

Interactivity– focuses on how we interact, rather than how the piece is interactive, it focuses on action and experience. He further discusses the purpose of movement, continuity, embodiment, and performance.

Relationality– focuses on how we move/think/feel during such interactions; this focuses on how we interrelate with the artwork.

I tried to decompose his ideas and write, in summary, what I understand from each category and the purpose of it. As stated earlier, he truly emphasizes the importance of the second two categories because as we know from this reading and the previous one, they hold a chunk of the artwork’s meaning.

For this assignment, my focus was mainly on the sounds and making them fit together in a way that doesn’t sound disturbing. I used some of the code from my previous assignment for the sounds and amended them to match this assignment.

For some reason, I was too embarrassed to record this video by myself as I didn’t know what to do. So, I decided to focus on each section separately or with one other section. Overall, there are three sections, a left column, a right column, and the area in between them but only halfway, not equal to the height.

At the start of the video, I try to avoid movement in the three sections and work my way up from there up until all sounds can be heard at the same time. And at the end, I maintained my movement in the upper half until I stopped moving at all to create a fading effect, as I thought it would be more interesting for the sound and the video; the overall performance.

Something different I chose to do was that I created a variable for the section’s size, being the width of the right and left column as it was easier not to have it hardcoded because I used such a value for both the color of the rectangle (when I was still trying it out) and the actual value. I named this variable “secSize”.

One of the challenges I encountered was when I typed in “localhost:8000” in the browser as it kept on displaying the top part only; with the labels and not the actual video. To fix this problem, I went through the code for section 3 as there was a specific line that, when it wasn’t commented it would work but it would work incorrectly, so I fixed it.

Digital Art and Meaning: Interactive Installations

The way he introduces the topic is very interesting as he reminds us of how the audience has always had an input in artwork before it is interactive. Earlier, the “meaning of an artwork” was also created as a dialogue between the work and the audience” and now the work itself is “created within such dialogue”. I feel like the way he phrased this sentence sets out the base for the reading and interactive art and interpretation of art in general.

I didn’t really get the connection he was making between the body being a commodity and interactive installation art, but I do know for a fact that the importance of the body has an impact on performance art. I disagree however with the next point about how interactive installation art represents ongoing visual exploitation because, at the end of the day, it is art. The fact that interactive art gives the audience the space to “(physical) self-discovery” is very astonishing, to me. Not only do they benefit from the artwork, but without them, there would have been no meaning. The interactivity also reminded me of a video I watched earlier that I hope to discuss in class titled “The Sensory Room: Helping Students With Autism Focus and Learn”.

The connection made between art and neighbors is significant to the idea as a whole. The difference is made on the spot and among other people/art, and therefore a connection is made and the interactions are of benefit to both parties. The overall message basically amplifies the importance of the interactor or the audience in interactive art, as without them the definition would not be the same. 

Music as Mirror of Mind

Firstly, I had no idea that hierarchy was a thing for music, and so my interest significantly increased as soon as I started reading, to learn more about what she is talking about. The concept of a sequence is also vital to what we are currently doing with tidal cycles. As she says, sometimes an individual sound is “awesome” and nothing else is needed to increase the effect. This is something that I noticed when I was working on my first assignment as sometimes adding more sounds was often disturbing and noisy rather than aesthetically pleasing.

As I read more about the concept of hierarchy, I started to grasp the gravity of it. Not only is it effective to deal with “the simultaneity of multiple, multidimensional and multipart sonic streams”, but it also solves many problems. The next part uses musical terminology that I am unfamiliar with so it impacted my understanding. Another aspect she brings up is the ear and how it listens to music. I don’t know if I understood it correctly, but either way, something may sound musical or pleasing to someone and annoying to someone, and so people liking or disliking music is not necessarily associated with the music itself, but also with the preference of the listener.

She discusses another aspect that I also thought about as I was working on the first tidal cycles assignment, the idea of how the music we listen to now is not organized along hierarchical lines, but rather on the layering of different elements. Being just a listener, in general, is what I incorporated into my assignment, unintentionally even, because this is the music that I am used to hearing. Music and tastes of people in music have changed a lot throughout the past 60 years if not more, not just the sounds and the technology integrated, but also the structure and the dismissal of the concept of the “note” which has started to occur recently. This is all based on the year 1999, so imagine how drastic the difference is today. Not only that, but there is also the emergence of visual representation. 

Overall, I was not able to understand the whole text but I was able to somewhat break it down and try to understand the most out of it. It increased my understanding of music and the fact that it is not easy and just like everything else, it has changed dramatically with time. 

Whenever someone asks me what my major is, my response always starts with “something called Interactive Media”, and I don’t stop there, I go on to explain what it is based on the classes I’ve taken and what’s written in the bulletin. This reading, however, sets the framework of where Interactive Media lies as it focuses on interactive art and embodiment. Not only that, but most of the reading surrounds the topic of this class; Sensors, Body & Motion.

Through his discussion of technology and his project, we can see how small ideas that start from nothing may lead to a huge impact. The feedback he got was not necessarily on the project, but rather his body movement, his semiotic gesture, or classifiable behavior. This is where body and motion begin to show their long-lasting effect since a lot is actually happening outside the screen (and computer science side). His description of embodiment as a moving-thinking-feeling dynamic supports his claims throughout where meaning is reflected since with these 3 factors, he can influence people or their thoughts or feelings, when done good for example, it distinguishes between bad actors and good actors, aside from the technology part.  

Looking at the overall picture of the moving-thinking-feeling dynamic, we can see that situations of this sort often lead to a philosophy of their own; art philosophy. No one ever thinks of philosophy as a tangible aspect, it is often thought of as a way of thinking and its delivery, however, what he’s saying makes sense as the embodiment does reflect thoughts on its own. The definition for interactive arts that he comes up with covers a variety of topics, such as the works, being digital or electronic, sensors, and cameras as inputs as well as other factors that lead to the sensory output. This is where the interactivity is, seeing a dynamic visual, listening to changing sounds, or touching different textures, especially when all come together as an embodiment.  

For this assignment, I tried to listen to a bunch of different notes and beats that are already built-in and chose the simplest and shortest ones as they would allow me to explore the most.

I tried my best to find sounds that match and fit together, and so I avoided anything that was off pitch or noisy since it’s not what I was going for. While some sounds were too loud and playing around with the “# room” made them even more amplified that they were annoying to hear, others were too low I thought they weren’t working.

Another aspect I tried to focus on was the outro as the one minute video was short and so making the sounds drift one after the other, I feel, was the smoothest thing I can do with the information that I know.

I look forward to exploring further and trying out other sounds that I haven’t already tried as I’m certain that there could be more helpful sounds and features that could help bring it together further