BACHELOR OF CREATIVE TECHNOLOGIES

Math and art Reflection

Before I started this paper I was worried. I dropped out of mathematics in year 12, after completing NCEA level 1, so I was unsure if I had a strong enough understanding in the subject for it to not hold me back in this paper. I dropped out at the time because I wasn’t interested in it enough to expand on my knowledge bank in it, and felt that I had a good enough understanding to be comfortable with it.

I have been into art passionately my whole life, so I was pretty excited about that side of this project. I wanted to integrate a style that I have never used before, and abstract art seemed very fitting because it has a sense of randomness to it and can be pulled of looking like anything (not that that was an intention, it just fits well with the term ‘generative’). This leaded me to reflect on what I learnt in NCEA level 3 art history. I used ‘the story of painting; from the renaissance to the present' by H.F Ullmann. The other physical resource I used for this project was my note book from art history last year, I skimmed through it and it helped me refresh my mind.

 It turned out that that was a smart move, because I helped me deicide that I would base my project on art from abstract expressionist artists such as Mark Rothko and Hans Hoffman. I think my modern take on the style worked out very well.

Programming; How I hate it/not good at it/ about hacking the code I found and the book/ worries/how it turned out great

I still don’t know what came across me that made me decide to use programming in this project; I don’t mix well with the medium at all. I failed the programming for creativity paper this year and haven’t had any plans on bettering myself in the subject. I guess I could say I got lucky on this project, I found a (sample) book called “generative art: A guide to Processing” [http://www.manning.com/pearson/GenArt-Sample-Intro.pdf] which had a piece of code that struck out to me, and my landscaped theme, so I decided to utilise the prebuilt program and modify it my desire which I think worked out great. I have named my creation "cerebral swamp". The meaning behind it is the cerebral cortex handles facial expression and the swamp is a metaphor for my feelings towards expressionist art.

The world of art has a reputation of being pompous and about showing of the thickness of your wallet for relevant and true reasons; reasons such as why Malevich’s “Black square on a white background” (1915) sold for over 60 million USD, which is literally just a canvas painted black. After taking Art History last year, it made me realise that there are many different applications of the word ‘art’- from doing for emotion, technicality, and skill to doing it for the shrouded bourgeois mentality of ‘art’.

The randomly generated square multiform’s have been programmed to only show in a swampy colour theme. This is a metaphor for my personal views on expressionist art; a metaphor for how expressionist art was alive for all the wrong reasons from that it was birthed, the swamp element is insinuating a negative environment. The artists had a genuine love for their medium; it was a way for them to express emotion, however art collectors abolished this into a consumerist market and spent millions on paintings from certain artists so they could show off their riches. When you think about expressionist art, you can immediately correlate the idea that it is about expressing a form of emotion so it seems like the consumers were interested in the art form for all the wrong reasons. Expressionist artist knew they could be successful because of the capitalist fame they had, I feel like my work is a valid expressionist artwork because my meaning behind it is genuine.

Math and Art blues:

Academic Articles (1/2): 'The story of painting; From the renaissance to the present'

Studio 2: Reflective statement.

Before this assessment I already knew what trans-media is, but wow experiencing it forms an entirely new meaning in my head. Seeing integrated mediums first hand shows you how greatly trans-media can work. I think it subconsciously creates depth in the end users mind, although it can still work in a negative way if not done right. For example, we made a short comic book [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrMOJaMCLqQ] and we wanted to capture the classic comic book style but also wanted to use the style we used in our stop-motion film so we found a midpoint between the two and went with it. If we went with a dominant ‘classic’ comic book style it wouldn't have mixed very well with everything else we have done and if we went totally the art style of our film it wouldn't have correlated the idea of a ‘comic book’ strongly enough in the users minds. So I learnt that finding a medium between two things can work well, and I learnt this through experiencing trans-media. Last year in NCEA level three media studies I learnt a lot about ‘synergy’.Trans-media is a similar concept so I transferred a lot of information that I learnt from media studies to our ideas behind our trans-media.

I have to admit, this has been my favourite project of the year. Not only because of the content but because I have been a better, more organised student. I have comprehended the workload at the start of the project and not left anything to the last minute (which very sadly) is a first for me. It is a gratifying feeling because I feel as if I can see my real potential. Although I knew already that leaving things to the last minute is bad, I proved to myself with hard evidence that it's bad. I think it will be easier for me from now on to be more productive and start assessments earlier and put consistent effort into them right through until the end. 

In most group projects people chose their roles fast (While I have a more holistic mentality) which made me feel like I had nothing to do because everything I contributed seemed to be under someone’s umbrella of their job title and meanwhile I would get overwhelmed with nothing to do, and end up having nothing to show for what I have done. This time around my group shared a similar holistic mentality as me so I feel like I have contributed to more things (not only that, but I have contributed more). It makes me feel like I am part of the group.

Something I have learnt from the trans-media side of this project (dominantly Facebook, from our ‘Blurred realities’ page [https://www.facebook.com/blurredrealities]) is that only a tiny fraction of people who follow you will take you seriously, unless you have a solid form of credibility such as being famous. This being said, I was nicely suprised by a few dedicated followers that gave us feedback throughout the project.

I have noticed that my role within the group has been a bit all the music guy/lead actor/all over the place. As the music guy, I have produced all the sound heard in our project from the stop-motion final product to the trans-media videos. I have really enjoyed composing for this project and as much as it is time consuming, it is worth my time. Because producing music is something I want to get better at as a hobby I feel that it is a very productive role, and I’m not superficially doing it to ‘get the grade’. Acting was a tough part of this project for me, and I would not recommend being an actor for a stop-motion video; The tedious activity of standing as still as I could for each frame was very hard on my back and it also made me feel like I wasn’t contributing a lot to my group. As the other members of the group composed shots, filmed, prepared props etc. I stood there, stationary. For a while I felt slightly useless, but then I realised I was the main actor of the film! There wouldn’t have been Sataan without me, and that eased my worries a bit, just because of the sheer amount of time it spent being the actor.

This has by far been my favourite project of the year. Not only is stop motion something I am quite interested in, but my group has been really great to work with. We consistently have had great chemistry and have had no arguments what-so-ever, and I’m not even annoyed with any group members at this stage in the project (which is a first). One thing we have done really well, which I think has leaded us to where we are now, is our production schedule. We have religiously stuck to the schedule and it has worked out for us better than expected, and it is something that I will definitely look into again for future projects. We haven’t left anything to the last minute which is also a first for me this year, and  also the reason we had all our footage captured a lot earlier than other groups but because we were intensively productive for so much of the project, I found my motivational levels were slowly dropping at the end, but I came through.

Transmedia:

Comic book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrMOJaMCLqQ

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/blurredrealities]

Ambience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k71SL798tok 

Reference:

Comic book: (2013, October 23). Retrieved October 25, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrMOJaMCLqQ

Facebook page: Chalk. (2013, October 23). Retrieved October 25, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k71SL798tok

Ambience: Chalk. (2013, October 23). Retrieved October 25, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k71SL798tok 

Credits song (3:38-4:28) Please note; I did not compose this track: Midnight Youth - The Letter. (2011, February 11). Retrieved October 25, 2013, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b273_IFz2cI

Songs I produced for the stop motion video (part 7/7):

My remix of Datsik's "Jenova project"

Reference:

I have finally finished the musical elements to our project! All I need to do now is to put the tracks into the film which will tediously take a while but I am very happy the composing side is over because it took ages.

Manipulation of idea:

I have manipulated my idea with quite a contrast from the previous idea; I'm putting together a program that creates my interpretation of modern art! I use the word 'manipulate' because I have similar meanings and themes behind the art such as the previous idea of landscapes and my statement of intent done for my previous idea is still very relevant and I want to explore the same ideas except I will be drawing inspiration from modern art movements such as abstract Cubism, Bauhaus and abstract expressionism with influence from artists such as Mark Rothko, Fernand Leger and Peit Mondrian.

I am currently modifying and hacking away at some code I found in 'Generative art' by Matt Pearson which is has a blog post on my Tumblr dedicated to it. I am going for a swamp like theme.

Here is the coded I am hacking: 

void setup() {

 size(2000, 2000, P3D);

 background(150);

 stroke(0, 50);

 fill(255, 200);

 float xstart = random(10);

 float ynoise = random(10);

 translate(width/2, height/2, 0);

 for (float y = -(height/8); y <= (height/8); y+=3) {

 ynoise += 0.02;

 float xnoise = xstart;

 for (float x = -(width/8); x <= (width/8); x+=3) {

 xnoise += 0.02;

 drawPoint(x, y, noise(xnoise, ynoise));

 }

 } 

}

void drawPoint(float x, float y, float noiseFactor) {

 pushMatrix();

 translate(x * noiseFactor * 4, y * noiseFactor * 4, -y);

 float edgeSize = noiseFactor * 26;

 ellipse(0, 0, edgeSize, edgeSize);

 popMatrix();

}

Reference:

First/top image: "Broadway boogie woogie" by Piet Mondrian (1943). Retrieved October 21, 2013, from http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/mondrian/broadway.jpg

Second/bottom left image: "Railroad Crossing" by Fernand Leger (1919). Retrieved October 21, 2013, from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f7/Leger_railway_crossing.jpg

third/borrom right image: "Orange, red, yellow" by Mark Rothko (1961). Retrieved October 21, 2013, from http://tinyurl.com/obfx23d