Special Topics in Interactive Media Arts: Class Presentation Part 1

Rebecca: Scott Snibbe

• Born august 20 1969 in New York City
• Graduated from Brown University and became a computer scientist at Adobe
• He became a professor of media art experimenatl film at Brwon university, The San Francisco Art institute, and many more.
• Joined the research group at Brown University.
• Founded Sonamo collaborative media, Sona Research, Snibbe interactive, and Snibbe Studio.
• Snibbe's personal mission: "The purpose of my work is to bring meaning and joy to people's lives."
• His most famous piece of work is biophilia (2011)

Kevin: Norman White

• Born in texas, but grew up in Boston and studied Biology in Harvard.
• Intended to become a fisheries biologist, but decided to travel.
• Became an electrician where he developed his love for electronics.
• Known for works like "The helpless robot", "Hearsay", and "Them fucking robots"

Jacob: Wafaa Bilal

• Born in Najaf Iraq, June 10 1966
• Dreamed of becoming an artist but was prohibited in Iraq
• Secretly study art but was arrested as a dissident for his art critical of Saddam Hussein
• Created a computer game based on Nght of Bush Capturing: Virtual Jihadi but it is a modified version of a game called Quest for Bush.

Special Topic in Interactive Media Arts: Class 7 blog

Why is Alexa.com useful when doing research online?

Alexa.com is a useful website while doing research online because as most people know, the internet can have a lot of fake information. If one wants to find out if the website is real or not, one can check if the website is legit or not by using Alexa.com.

What kind of tactics do Tactical media artists use to reach their audience?

Since video game is becoming bigger each year, Tactical Media uses video games to reach their audiences. Games such as Darfur is Dying and September 12 sends a strong message to the people who does not follow the news or does not know what is happening in the world.

What kind of tone and aesthetics or style The Institute of Applied Autonomy use in the video presenting their work?

In the video of The Institute of Applied Autonomy, they used modern technology to “rebel” against the media who tries to keep us under control. I.e. the CCTV has thousands of cameras set up outside in public so the police and security can monitor our movements. The IAA will have an app that can show people which direction to go to avoid the cameras without being seen.

What interactive media is used by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre, the Institute of Applied Autonomy and the Yes Man? What is the difference in the way they use it? How effective are these tactics?

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- The interactive media used by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre is with the internet. If there is a website that concerns a lot of people, Electronic Disturbance Theatre will have a lot of people to go on the website and make it crash, sort of like a protest but on the internet.

-          - The Institute of Applied Autonomy uses a different interactive media; they will create technology devices to let people know what they are aware of. I.e. they created a robotic car that spray paints messages for people to read.

-          - The Yes Men uses more of a risky method to interact with people. I.e. they will create a fake newspaper to write false information for people to read. But the false information is what the people want to read and hear about. E.g. they announced the war on Iraq is over, the min wage is at $24 etc. It may be fake, but the people embrace the false information because it is better news.

What are your thoughts about these artist groups and the way they try to reach a large audience?

My thoughts on these artist groups are interesting. The only way to reach an audience is by having the audiences to spread the word. Since we use the media such as the internet, newspaper, television etc. we can attract a larger audience in a faster pace. 

Special Topic in Interactive Media Class 5 blog

Mail Art: Mail Art was originally made out of the Fluxus movies in the 50s & 60s. It can be made out of anything from an art piece to recycle materials. It can also include music, sound art, poetry anything that can fit into an envelope.

Net.Art & Fluxus: Net.Art & Fluxus are similar but different in a way; both contain art works on their material. Fluxus contains art work on the media while Net.Art contains art work on the internet.

Face to Facebook: It was a bit surprising that it can be simple to get people’s information out of Facebook. I knew Facebook can use our information but I did not know other people can easily take our information and put it on the web. The purpose of Face to Facebook is to show people how easy it is to get people’s information. It was successful because once people realize how much information they share on the social media it can easily be seen by people they do not know in the world.

Special Topic in Interactive Media Arts: class 4

Early forms of network art: Mail art

- it initially developed out of the Fluxus movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

- Mail-art is about sending artful things creative communication making projects and shows global culture freedom fun and humor.

- the main mail-art concepts: exchanging art in the global network asking for participation on a project chain-mail.

- some example of mail-art techniques are; stamps, rubber stamps, collage and combination, text and typography, materials and objects and other kind of techniques.

Paolo Cirio and Alessandro Ludovico's project Face to Facebook is a bit disturbing. Although Facebook is allow to use our photos for advertisements, having Paolo and Alessandro to take photos of us and posting it on a dating website seems to be disturbing. It can lead to people getting paranoid and wondering if someone is stalking him/her or something. If they ask permission first and the person agrees then it would be okay, but if do it without asking it doesn't seem right. They created it to show that there can be consequences by sharing one's information to a public website. How it is easy to get informations from someone through a website. It created a lot of awareness.

Special Topic in Interactive Media Arts: Class 3

Artificial Intelligence: Marvin Minsky

• An American Cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence
• Co-founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Born on August 9, 1927 New York City
• Awarded the Turning Award in 1969, Japan Prize in 1990, the IIJCAI Award for Research Excellence in 1991 and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2001

Alan Kay: 

• American Computer Scientist
• Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society of Arts.

In his video he explains how Computing Pioneer is evolving in a steady pace. It is not too advance at the moment but during the past years it has evolve in a pace where it brought people to awe. The project One Laptop Per Child is an interesting project, because it gives the advantage to kids in the 3rd world country to have an education. Not long ago they only had a small chalk board to use (from what I remember my grade 3 teacher told me) but if they have a laptop it would be much better use for them.

Ken Feingold:

• A Contemporary American conceptual artist
• Born in 1952 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Creates talking heads that talks back with people or machine

Martin Spanjaard:

• Invented the Adelbrecht
• Adbelbrecht is an electronic ball that can think and feel similar to a human being. When the ball can't move it will do a sad sound, when Martin hits the ball the ball will scream etc.

Myron Krueger:

• An American Computer Artist who developed early interactive works
• One of the first people to generated virtual reality and augmented reality

David Rokeby:

• An artist who makes work of electronic, video and installation art since 1982
• One of David Rokeby's pioneering interactive work is the Very Nervous System. He started to work on it in 1982 and his work has been evolving ever since.

Paul Garrin:

• Born in 1957
• One of his famous work is Man with a Video Camera
• The video is about police officers beating protesters and him being a victim as well for video recording the beating. He then made a new interactive video when one person moves a dog will bark on the screen.

Special Topics in Interactive Media Arts Class Deux notes

- Interactivity: can be interact with anything. Can be with words but has to interact with it, two people interacting with each other etc.

- Interactive art:

• Is a form of art that interacts with the spectators 
• Some people can ask the artist to interact with the art
• Electronic art can be highly interactive

- Interactivity in art:

• The viewer interacts with the art piece, they are the inputs and the interactions of the art is the output.
• Interactivity in art is when the audience & the machine that works together.
• Instead of having the artwork that tells to the person, it will give different type of art when interacts with it.
• Some people may say interactive art does not exist unless the audience is there to interact with it.

- Marcel Duchamp: redefine the meaning of art. Before artist paint/draws their expression of the world while Duchamp used everyday household items to put it together to make it into an art piece. Such as his famous bicycle wheel.


- Happening: A definition of happening is "artistic event of a theatrical nature, but usually improvised spontaneously without the framework of a plot." (Happening, proteus.fau.edu) The happening is a creation of a brand new environment within an alrady preexisting environment.

- Allan Kaprow: Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblage and a pioneer who organized the concepts of performance art. He helped created the environment and the happening in the late 1950s to early 70s. He created about 200 happenings and has evolved over the years.

- Cybernetics: Cybernetics is when science is use to control and communicate animals, human and machines.

Defining Interactive Media

Interactive Media Arts is when someone uses an electronic device such as a computer, cell phone, tablet etc. to interact with an object, whether if it is for art, animation, video, audio, games or anything that one's imagination may come up with. For instance, the user may interact with an object that can produce different sounds to create music or produce different types of lights to create light art. 

Since we live in a modern time where technology is more advance than a few decade ago, companies can promote their products by having people to interact with it. Companies such as Coca Cola uses their vending machine for people to interact with it so people can make new friends by getting more Coca Cola than they expected, free Coca Cola if one does a dance or even bring peace to two countries.