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sarahbean

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    Arizona
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    Hi, I am a graduate student right now at Arizona State University where I am getting my Masters of Fine Arts in digital technology. I am also a research and concentration student in the Arts, Media and Engineering program there. I build visual feedback modules for experiential learning and media systems. I love mountain biking, all kinds of ethnic food, home cooking, field hockey and watching films. Being an art student, I also love all kinds of art, even art that Ayn Rand would probably hate. Right now I am most interested in interactive sculpture, physical computing and telepresence. My current art heroes are Ken Goldberg, Paul Demarinis, and Rebecca Horn to name a few.
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    Arizona State University
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    grad student

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  1. Hong Kong is a great city with spectacular skylines. It is probably my favorite place in the world but am a bit partial because I lived there for a couple of years. Hong Kong smells are often a bit off-putting though. I also found standing on a busy street to be somewhat disconcerting as well because of the pollution. I think the best part of Hong Kong is how diverse the terrain is. You can go from city to beach or country park in less than an hour. Hong Kong does not get a terrible number of earth quakes, but it does experience typhoons.
  2. I agree, certainly, that the idea of the holodeck is a fine example of a need for art, especially the certain types of expensive, processor heavy computing that goes into making high-poly virtual reality. Have you ever read Hamlet on the Holodeck by Janet Murray? She draws a historical line from the medieval bard to MMORPGs. What makes something immersive or better yet, embodied? Does it have to do with how realistic it represents the natural world or does embodiment occur when the medium is so ubiquitous it isn't questioned? I would surely argue that an immersive world can be art such as a painting. I feel they both seek to recreate objective reality selectively, but do so with different tools. My question though regards more the works I posted. I think Protrude Flow is an excellent piece, whether it is art or not. It is fun, innovative and imaginative. I have played with it myself and although I obviously don't believe in magic, I could easily describe the experience as magical. So is it just a museum exhibit? Is it just science? Is it just media? Is it just an installation? Would you disregard some of these examples because they are too highly political or they possess too much noise in the rendering process? Are they too abstract? I would say that these qualities are what make them not art but it doesn't make them invalid. So are they architecture? Are they monuments? Are they fruitless experiments? For me, the ambiguity doesn't bother me because I love many types of interactive pieces, video installations, etc. If I ever said to my profs, "hey guess what these actually aren't really art but thats ok they are just something else" I would get a lot of criticism. I really hope other people respond as I think about it all the time.
  3. I am curious what some people here consider New Media "Art" to truly be. For example, creative works that are interactive, time-based, kinetic, etc can be highly innovative, they involve the need for talent to mediate whatever experience the creator wants to portray, but I am not sure if they fall into the category of "art". The term new media is unfortunate in its own respect because it lacks the ability to pinpoint exactly what it is trying to describe because media and technology change rapidly and thus what could one day be perceived as new could be obsolete the next. Since I work in this genre, for lack of better words, I often don't use the word art when describing what I do. Instead, I often refer to it as just my creative practice. I also believe some of it is actually just architecture or monumental. In order to clarify, here are some creative works I really enjoy: http://www.well.com/~demarini/exhibitions.htm http://www.jimcampbell.tv/ http://goldberg.berkeley.edu/art/ http://www.kodama.hc.uec.ac.jp/project/protrude.html What sort of need do humans have for new media "art"? Is it really art? Is it a response to our curious nature? Is it invalid? Is it architecture? Is it media or just a mediator? I believe that certain new media can portray a creator's sense of life. Much new media is playful yet meticulously engineered and programmed. On the other hand, much of it is not representational, rather, it exists within reality and must be experienced within. Much of it could be argued as being embodied, although that can be argued against easily. My reaction is that kinetic installations, physical computing, net art, and all of these creative technologies are in fact not art but a different creative practice altogether, or, they are just a combination of art, architecture, design and engineering that are enjoyable because of human curiosity. Another term for these products is emerging technologies, used often at conventions like SIGGRAPH or CHI. Looking forward to your thoughts.
  4. I am really happy to see this thread. Have any of you played Myst or any of the sequels? I would say that Myst is a great example of a computer game that is a work of art. Moreso, there is a lot of contemporary art right now that is is interactive or experiential. I think some serious objectivists may argue that is not art, but you can't disagree that it is really amazing and the creators have great mastery of electronics. I think video games certainly fall into this genre of interactive experiential media, but whether or not this media is art, I am still not sure. I actually make some myself, but feel incredibly humbled when looking at some of my favorite artists who show at conventions like Ars Electronica and Siggraph. I do feel though, that a lot of experiential/new media can be really didactic or political. Here are some links, enjoy: Jim Campbell http://www.jimcampbell.tv/ Paul Demarinis http://www.well.com/~demarini/exhibitions.htm here is a game, Facade, that pushes the new genre of interactive storytelling, something I am really interested in, the rendering is pretty low-fi for lack of better words this late at night, but, the concept is grand and I think I would enjoy playing it. This game embodies a lot of what Janet Murray talks about in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck http://www.interactivestory.net/ I think for me in the kind of work I do, I try to distinguish between art and media. For instance, Ayn Rand loved great architecture and found it inspirational, but it wasn't art, and in architecture's case it is because it served a function. I think a lot of experiential media serves a function or has an application, and in that case, I would say it is not art. It really is a tought question but my hope would be that people don't get hung up on the question and continue to make provocative "media art" or "digital art" or "digital media" with grand themes inspired by objectivist philosophy. I am sure the outcomes, whether art or not, will be amazing.
  5. This is a super old thread but I would just like to say that the images in Cheyne's portfolio, while underwhelming on their own, look very much like frames of animations. I suggest trying to create some animations in Flash or After Effects, they could be much more compelling.
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