Digital Artists at Elastic

Honda Accord Crosstour “Boxes” from Elastic on Vimeo.

I absolutely love this video. It inspires me to do artistic advertisement, something I struggle to commit myself to daily.

Directed by Andy Hall, “Boxes” builds on the lively minimalism of “Instruments,” with transitional moments powered by the expansion and contraction of nested squares that look like Albers paintings on acid—neon-lit and full of kinetic possibility.

The simplified shapes the artists use in this video commercial are so powerful and work seamlessly with the music in the background. Without knowing for sure, I believe this project was done with 3d rendering software as well as AfterEffects and possibly many other digital programs. The simplicity is found in the primary colors, the basic shapes and the overall feel of the production. This was the same aesthetic I was hoping to achieve with my project on Misinformation. The composition of the stills in this video could easily be recreated into a successful painting or print.

When you have artistry that is this smooth and aesthetically pleasing, it makes everything else that is associated with it that much greater. The animation has nothing to do with cars. However since it is juxtaposed with a brand new clean car, it enhances it and makes some people look favorably upon it. You can say it’s making people fall privy to the moving image, but there is no denying the power of this animation and it’s effect on the human mind.

Printable Batteries

Technology has been giving us new innovations for many years and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. One of those new ideas that will hopefully come to fruition is the printable battery. There has been news that, “a research team [has] revealed a 0.6-millimeter-thick battery.” (NY Times 2009 Year in Ideas) Supposedly this battery can be built into the product so the realization of video screens in magazines is clearer than ever. The reason why video screens in print have not become mainstream is because of how hard it is to power them. With printable batteries this would not be a problem.

The exciting thing about this technology is that it is not far off. When you hear about a printable battery you think that it is 10 years in the making. Not so. The researchers believe the product will be available in the next year. I can’t wait for this breakthrough to happen. I love technology and this innovation will open the door to so many new things. The one thing that I failed to realize when reading this is that the technology is happening in Europe and Asia, that means that America won’t reap the benefits of this technology until 3 or more years later. In America we are just not as forward thinking as the rest of the world. So the wait for video screens ans printable batteries continues.

Silhouette Intuition

The first project of the semester in New Media Design was about misinformation.  To me misinformation in terms of art means to present something in a way that is different from conventional belief and reason in an effort to make a statement.

I chose to display common household items on a white background void of the brand “name”. Even after taking the text off, the products were still recognizable. For my last project I chose to expand on this initial concept. With this new project that took the form of a flash presentation, I focused on the phenomenon of recognize someone from there silhouette. A shape void of details still reads as a distinct shape.

I simplified the products into basic vectors to make the products even more obscure than before. I’ve found that the majority of the products are still recognizable. I’ve equated this feeling of discovery to seeing a silhouette. The shapes and outlines reveal something despite crucial details being missing.

Here is a link to the website: udel.edu/~keyrich/package/index.html

Second Life

Second Life was a very different experience. As part of a class assignment we had to endeavor into Second Life and report our experience in it.  A lot of people in my class were appalled by the idea of a “second life” and they refused to do it. I was hesitant at first, but I gave it a try anyway.

The character I made for myself was green and had purple hair and no shirt. Making a character that looked exactly like me was not something I was looking to do. A lot of people in Second Life embellish their character to do things they don’t get to do in real life. I can remember one guy in my class who added wings and expensive jewelry to his “avatar”.  The things that happen in Second Life are never ending. There are strip clubs, restaurants, really anything you can think of. This was something I only did for the assignment. I have not continued to partake in Second Life and I don’t see myself ever playing it again.

I just believe that there are too many things to enjoy in real life than to be stuck in a virtual world interacting with characters that people make.  I believe things like Second Life contribute to the decrease in interpersonal communication. If people spend hours interacting with a computer screen they don’t get the same experience talking with people face to face. Sometimes this interaction is not needed and this is where Second Life has the slight potential to be something people would use in the mainstream.

I would venture to say that the majority of students don’t like getting up in the morning to go to lecture classes of 350 students. If they could hear the lecture from the comfort of there room, it would be so much easier to listen to the lecture. This is already done in the form of online classes where students listen to teacher lectures. With Second Life the same classroom could be built and a recreation of the real life situation would exist and the teacher could interact with students as opposed to just lecturing to them.

I don’t know what to think about Second Life. It has the potential to do great things, but there are so many bad things that come with that.

Sound Print Record

There is an ongoing exhibition on campus now being held in the Mechanical Hall Gallery. It is a mix of print, music, and photography. I was lucky to volunteer for the opening weekend events and also got to listen in on the group of panelists who were here. Thay all had interesting things to say. One thing that was said that stood out to me is how a play is both live and imaginary at the same instance. I never thought of this juxtaposition and it is not something we think about readily. The bulk of the conversation centered around time and space and it’s role in music and art. It was mention that everyone talks about the theory of time, but the real challencge is to show it differently than anyone else has.

One of the panelist created graphic scores for different musicians and he talked about how he would make 5 or 6 colors look like 2 and how he would make 2 or 3 colors look lik 5 or 6. An intteresting note I picked up is that a lot of artist go from sound to print, but I’m interested in hearing sound inspired by art, or shapes. That would be cool.

LTLYM

Learning to love you more is a website similar to Post Secret, where users submit photo’s or documentation to a single website and it is all collected and posted for the world to see. This site was brought to my attention while we were talking about mapping in New Media Design. At first I didn’t see how this qualified as a map, but another reading we did opened my eyes up and showed me that maps don’t express realistic things. They are all a concept of our imagination. If something shows a territory, time, or tracks a story it is a map.

The website made by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher sets up an assignment/submission relationship between the website and the many different users. An example of one of their prompts is simply to repair something and show a before and after photograph of it. This is a submission from Jen May in Brooklyn, New York. There are many other submissions and they all create a log or track of different people’s take on one assigned thing.

Sadly Learning to Love You More no longer takes submissions. No more conceptual maps!

Never Sleep

I’ve been reading this book Never Sleep:Graduating to Graphic Design by dress code, also known as Andre and Dan. The summary of their book is that, “There is a major disconnect between the life of a design student and the transition to being a design professional.”

My girlfriend bought me this book after months of raving about it and now I’m too busy to finish it. From what I read so far though I have learned so much. One of the greatest quotes from the book that inspired me to this point, “we are taught in school that great packaging will not sell a bad product. If this is true, then maybe our problem is not with how we package our profession, but instead the product we are trying to sell. Graphic design does have the power to help make the world a better place, but until we begin to exhibit the potential we will be plagued by the question – ‘you do graphic design, is that logos and stuff?’.” I am often faced with the question, “What is graphic design?” and sometimes it is hard to explain to people who are unaware, but I am learning to become comfortable with what I do and see my self as a communicator through visual elements. Another great point made in the book is that if graphic design is all about communication why is it that people don’t understand what we do. I’m hoping to create work that translates to all people but as of now, it’s hard to do that because we are making art for our teachers whether we want to think of it that way or not.

Thinking gnorwwrong is really encouraged in this book. I find as expected that the better ideas come when you are not in your comfort zone.  I need to push myself to go extreme and not settle for less in the ideas I come up with. When I’m working on a project I try to steer clear of help from other students because asking them usually limits the way I should be portraying the work I am doing. Not in all cases though, usually they are helpful, just not after I’ve already come up with an idea.

The design work that Andre and Dan have been able to come up with is phenomenal and the crazy ideas they have are worth taking a look at. I would recommend this book to anyone pursuing a career in graphic design after college.

Digital Art by Christiane Paul

This reading is about the history of Digital Art, how it came to be, artist involved in the movement, and different terms associated with the art form. The reading talks about how digital art fits under the category of New Media, but that is debatable because people were thinking of concepts dealing with the same thing digital art deals with now a very long time ago. Digital Art is a finicky art form because it can be used to create art or it can be used as the art itself, on the screen. A lot of things about technology are taken for granted, at least from my generation. We grew up with the computer and don’t know what it was like to have a computer without a mouse. Thanks to Engelbart we can make the connection between the screen and our hand.

Duchamp has been a very influential character in digital art, which is most likely the reason he is my favorite artist, and the maker of my favorite art piece, The Nude Descending. He is know as one of the first to think about concept as art, and this is how I like to think about art as well. One thing I had not known before reading this excerpt by Christiane Paul  is how far back digital art really went. According to the reading, Paul states that as early as the 1960s people were making art with the computer. I am grateful for all the developments in digital art and technology. Now we have things to look to for inspiration and ways to advance digital art.

This just happened.

I love reading Wired magazine and I’ve read another article from it called, “Live in the Moment,” by Clive Thompson in the Oct issue.

When something happens in the world, everyone wants to know about it at that second. The first thought usually is to go to Google, but now with the implementation of micro blogs and a new generation of search engines, Google is starting to lose it’s position as a place-to-find-the-most-updated-news kinda site. The news that Clive Thompson alludes to is the death of Michael Jackson and how much of a stir it caused on the internet. Everyone wanted to know what had happened and if the news was true. So many people in fact that Google started to block people who searched Michael Jackson because they thought it was a virus or hacker attack.

With microblogs and new search engines, Google may be forced to change their ways since there aim is to rule the internet and everything associated with it. I have found myself once or twice going to twitter to find details about recent news stories. Some times I come across news there completely incidentally. Recently a women got hit by the train her in Newark, DE and the way I found out was through Twitter. And then everyone else found out through me. One of the earliest forms of communication was word of mouth and Twitter is replicating this, but in a digital way. Americans as a whole have short attention spans, which makes Twitter great for people trying to find information quickly. I think eventually the people at Google will figure this out, and try to be better than Twitter, or just offer them millions of dollars and take the company.

The Evolution of Flash

I read an online article from Wired titled, “How the iPhone’s App Store Could Stimulate the Flash Economy.”

To date, the Iphone/iPod App Store has sold over a billion apps and it only took 9 months.  The growth of Flash developers in the recent years can be attributed to the birth of the iPhone app. Many more people are developing games with the idea that they can sell them and make money from however many people buy the game. Adobe has just come out with a program called Flash Professional CS5 Developer Kit. This program allows developers not only to create games, but to then also make that game compatible with the Iphone App Store upon approval. Flash has never before been a money-making industry, but with these recent developments it very well may be headed in that direction. There’s a story that a man from Indonesia was able to buy a new house just from the revenue from the sale of his flash game. It has been noted that this is not a normal situation. However, the market for Flash apps in third world countries is big because exchange rates between countries. This is an interesting thing to think about, countries outside of the US making American dollars and getting extra money from the exchange rate by being sponsored by US gaming companies.

The iPhone has indirectly sparked higher interest in Flash apps as a business. Flash apps started out as a hobby for most people, but now that the App Store allows people to sell their games and money is involved the near future will surely show a spike in Apps, and sales equally. Adobe has made it easier for the conversion from Flash to iPhone easier on the developers. I think this is a great idea because it makes the market bigger and gets people excited about the new technology.

I personally could see myself pursuing the making of a Flash app,  knowing that I have the potential to make money from it. Making a Flash app takes a lot of time, but making a profit from creating one could be enough of an award to get me started on making one. After you make one, you really just sit back and reap the benefits, unless that is it needs to be tweaked or updated.

Now all we do is sit back and watch the Flash community grow before our eyes.