Projection Design

“Projection Design” offers a hands-on approach to the design, planning and execution of digital projections in a variety of performance spaces by using a combination of industry standard and open source research software tools. This blog will serve as an online text for the developing book, "Technical Ecstasy" and link for the web-readings, online tutorials,software resources historical examples, video art and performance examples and essential class communications for Projection Design class taught by Patrick Pagano

Sunday, October 26, 2014

p127-p150 Extended Cinema

In this part, Youngblood analysed some common situation and thinking models in today mass-audience age. His thesis is magic and showed his encyclopaedic knowledge in the whole related area precisely to us. Some of concepts are abstracting for me, particularly, the viewpoint about the behaviour-altering. As a member of 21st participant, it's not hard to find that multiple information and preach that have flooded our every social platform, sometimes, we could even find two articles stood on totally opposite position still accentuating their own stubbornness extremely and confidently. Then it's turn to our audience, how to discriminate those information and to build relative healthy values?
I regrettably found that most people just follow what they have received passively from those information platforms, and consciously or unconsciously rely on them without scientific investigation and eventually become one of their so-called "faith" advertiser voluntary. This is scary, because inundate information could take advantage of audience's frangibility of discrimination and acceptance and easily reshape their formal behaviours and values. Admittedly, a few of receivers could do survive in this multiple-choice environment and pick up what he need and weave his own faith work together soberly, but most audience always follow something they even don't know what they are  when they living in this everything multiple world.
We are about to face the problem of values, maybe do not think those questions too deeply and seek for a standard and solution could be much more easily, like Bronowski said: The problem of values arises only when men try to fix together their need to be social animals with their need to be free men. There is no problem, there are no values, until men want to do both.
I still all of them are worth of being thinking.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Synaesthetic Cinema: the End of Drama

In the text, Youngblood reasons that synaesthetic cinema is the only aesthetic language suitable for the "post-industrial, post-literate, man-made environment with its multidimensional
simulsensory network of information sources" However, I believe this writing came at a time before the development of hypermedia, responsive environments, and video games. In a sense, they are new aesthetic languages in which people could convey thoughts, feelings, or entire experiences to the audience. They may still have a long way to go before emulating conscious existence, but they are proving that cinema isn't the only tool available with which we may aesthetically communicate  significance in life. It can be further argued that responsive media may even be the more effective aesthetic language as the audience receives feedback for its actions rather than just playing the role of spectator to the media.However, Youngblood stands correct that the synaesthetic cinema is the first step in our journey to communicate consciousness aesthetically and the development of television has helped set off a process that is still in development today.

Monday, October 20, 2014

The Artist as Design Scientist

It appears that Youngblood is arguing that the vast majority of innovation is not necessarily coming from new modes ways of expression, but new relationships between things. This reminds me of a similar argument that Nam Jun Peik touched upon, however he ended up disagreeing with such a notion as new mediums tend to spring up when least expected, much like Myron Krueger has devised with his responsive environments. I would have to say that the artist is rather limited in their message based on their experiences and experiences working in the medium. Of course, since many people opt to not invest heavily in a technical background, their ability to express themselves is bottle-necked. While it isn't exactly a bad thing, they are more prone to build upon a foundation previously laid out and to discover new relationships in their respective mediums rather than creating a whole new message. There is a tendency to lean towards something that is more established than to travel out into the unkown alone.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Greg messing with Isadora

I did a quick set-up like the one from class.

http://youtu.be/3TGuK92pVLg


And another with different effects like the kaleidoscope.

http://youtu.be/7MGd2vFiWQY


Jewel's HW









Reading from pp112-127

In the first chapter, Youngblood proposed his viewpoints of synaesthetic cinema from a sexual angel and used some films to analyse them. As for the second one, he introduced the concept of "extra-objective reality" into his synaesthetic cinema. Two aspects are fresh and interesting to me, actually, he investigated them because he could make the difference between the art and the life and then refine the nature of both to build up his own comprehensive thoughts. Just like what he said, mostly, our artistic work which intend to transmit our abstract emotion or expression, invariably and undoubtedly, bases on our observation and understanding of the real world we lived in. This is also a good thinking model or in other words, a crystal-clear self-awareness to define some laws which could be applied in our life. All in all, we should not only to learn how to conclude the important significance following our traditional common sense or breaking our of normal principle, but also try to classify why the superficial layer come out and respect some of our simple human behaviour. Existence due to its rationality. human is a creature who could possess two contradicted minds at the same time and what we are ought to do is just to utilize our controllable power and artistic way to express them, combining the science which from our knowledge and the human nature, whether good or bad all  together, then begin to analyse them once again, from any way you like, just feel free and comfortable, let your audience taste this feeling as well,by this way, I think even an artist makes an "illusion", people only feel more realistic characters in watching.

Zhuang's Isadora patch




Playing with Isadora

First Patch: 

Video: 


Second Patch: 

Video:

Retrospective Man and the Huamn Condition

Youngblood presents an interesting point that much of what is the cureent interactions in our life is often just a look into the past rather than the future. It's noticeable that much of the popular music today is just a shiny repackaged composition that was made hundreds of years ago. The school systems are usually preoccupied with teaching us many of the foundations and functions that were created in the past , and yet they omit many of the cutting edge developments of the day. It can be said that many of these upstanding individuals in the past have given us the tools to think for the future, but what about paying attention to the development of new tools in society? It is usually the case that we "rediscover" important discoveries years after they have been published or written. If we look at the case of genetics with Gregory Mendel's work, his ideas were rediscovered almost a generation later. If we were to use technology to propagate important ideas, perhaps this concept of redundant discovery would disappear and people's efforts would be spent building upon that work rather than a figurative reinvention of the wheel.

Playing with Isadora

Played around with a few of the effects that Pat showed us in class. The frame rate is pretty bad (primarily because of the size of the videos), so I kept the effects to a minimum. The background is a shot of the mountains on a recent mountain bike trip and the dancers are from a video used in a recent Digital Worlds project I worked on.








Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Isadora HW



The first clip is featured in the screen shot, I used the exact same source footage for both clips and just messed with effects to get a different result.

My laptop is not liking the capture feature as it drops frames during recording but runs fine without it.
In this  clip, I used a Luminance Key, Gausian Blur, and an HSL with wave generators hooked up to the Saturation and Luminance effects.

Monday, October 13, 2014

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Television as a Creative Medium (pg. 257-)

The use of television has skyrocketed since the 1960s. From 200,000 homes having television in the United States in 1948, now you can find a television in almost every American home. According to the text, television is like a "sleeping giant." There are so many different possibilities, but society isn't using it to the best of their abilities.

Instead of using television as a creative medium of expression, it has turned into another mass marketing technique, and a way for companies to bring in the "big bucks." Our commercial culture has led television to its downfall - while it's great for entertainment purposes, it could have been used for other means, such as furthering education (little did the author predict the future of television shows geared toward learning...) Companies spend months just to perfect a thirty-second commercial, yet less time is spent on a teacher's lesson plans for the year.


Thursday, October 9, 2014

Max Patch Assignment

Features:
Video B can be switched for webcam feed
Freeframe, Brcosa, and Fast Blur available for both videos and show in respective preview windows
Chromakey and Suckah applied to Video A
Patcher

                                                                    Presentation Mode

Updated MAX Project with Presentation Mode



Greg's mixer patch


Final Patch


Patch in Presentation Mode


   I've added the brcosa and extra preview patch windows, as well as finishing the dropfile. 

Zhuang's patch




Jewel's Final Work



one of my test


Joseph's Final Patch


Ethan Max Patch


Class today

There is a class today, you may use this time to get the tutorial part 2 from Thomas and I will make your first assignment on Tuesday. You can meet with your group and plan your design for your artists and them you are free to go after Thomas has given the tutorial. Email me at pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu with any questions

Hilary's Final Patch



Monday, October 6, 2014

Art, Entertainment, Entropy

I find it to be interesting that the "current generation" Youngblood speaks of is remarkably similar to ours in a number of ways. In our questioning of almost all the traditional aspect of the world, it appears that entertainment has yet to change from what it was back in the day. Our plots revolve around similar themes and formulaic stimuli meant to manipulate the audience. However, it can be argued that the methods of manipulation have gone even more commercial in that we have developed product placement as a subtle encouragement to purchase products that the characters own or use in their respective dramas. Furthermore, we have more or less distilled the notion of drama into it's most easily package-able form with the onset of reality television saturating out broadcast schedules.

I feel that we most certainly have regressed with out entertainment as the quality has slumped quite markedly as the years have gone by, with continuously rehashed plots and formulas being the norm. In order to make it look different, we have used technology to dress the stale presentation with a new coat of computer generated paint. Something has got to give eventually, as the current situation is becoming ridiculous in it's amount of imitations of past successes. For instance, there are at least 5 American Idol rip-offs airing right now off the top of my head, and the same can be said for any other genre on television. Of course, there is the occasional breath of fresh air once in a while, such as with the airing of Breaking Bad. However, I am positive that the commercial powers that be will be sure to milk this new venue that deemed successful for all it's worth.

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Reading from p70-p111

Millions of scientists invent and experiment multiple technological device  at every moment, but fated, human always has to wait until our consciousness caught up with our technology. Youngblood stated his viewpoint "The artist as design scientist" in the chapter, and in the following chapter, he thought TV showed the human race itself as a working model of itself, which reminds me one of Nam June Paik's design, a buddha sitting on a desk faced with a television which screen showing the picture of that buddha took by a camera, in a closed circuit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc1levEuytA
Indeed,  on the macrostructural level all television was a closed circuit that constantly turns us back upon ourselves, the reality is so closed that virtually forces cinema to move beyond the objective human condition into newer extra-objective territory. Therefore, cinema and cinema experiment's explorers, are full of intuitive, tentative and un daunted cinematic spirit in their life-long developments.
Some classic clips were analysed and Youngblood not mention that film was a documentary of the filmmakers own perception at once, now look at our contemporary society, we keep alleging that the newest style of design comes out but actually binding ourselves into an inertia thinking model prison, combining with multiple luring benefits and few comes back to the real art.
All in all, Realism, surrealism, constructivism and expressionism are clearly categorised into cinema field, but what really needs to be classified is our consciousness that whether is truly understand our destination.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Part four:The technosphere: man/machine symbiosis

In this chapter, Youngblood claims that the technosphere is a symbiosis between man and machine. The computer liberates man from specialization and amplifies intelligence. It is said that the computer processing is similar with the human neural processing to some extent. Additionally, Youngblood predicts that computer software will become more important than the hardware.

This particular part reminds me another article about the man-computer symbiosis, which was written by J.C.K. Licklider (1960). He used an example of fig tree and fig wasp to describe a cooperative relationship between two dissimilar organisms. Licklider envisioned a similar degree of specification of human and computer interface, which is that each operator might have distinct way to interact with the computer, so each member of the group could perform their tasks in parallel, and then exchanging information to the central machine. Besides, he points out that human-computer symbiosis is based on humans and machines can closely interact with each other both in computational level and analytical level.

Multiple-Projection Environments (pgs. 387 - 398)

We may encounter multiple-projection environments today, however the late 1950s and early 1960s brought about "lumia art integrated with sound in an intermedia environment." This chapter discusses the use of planetariums, music concerts, and other forms of intermedia performances.

"Intermedia" is Dick Higgins' term for experimental artistic expression, which crosses the boundaries of media that is traditionally divided into poetry, drama, music, and visual arts. The boundaries of art can be fused with media to create a great work of art.

The chapter also mentions numerous artists, including Nam June Paik (1932 - 2006). He worked with a variety of different media and is known as the founder of video art (and also coined the term "electronic super highway" in reference to telecommunications).

With Jud Yalkut and the "Floating Theatre," he was able to create and present a piece called Dream Reel, which was a mixed-media performance and tribute to Paik. The "Floating Theatre" is actually a huge parachute canopy, which is  "anchored by nylon chords" to the performance area. By surrounding the audience, it is able to use both front and rear projection techniques to fully immerse the audience. I would of liked to be present during such a performance

More information about Yalkut's work can be found here.