INSTABOOTH

Riverfest 2016

For our Contemporary Art module our class created the Instabooth/Peekabooth. It was an instalation piece that held a camera obscura. The camera obscura allowed peple to look through a small perscope through on the roof of the booth . The people can then draw images of the reflections that they see.

The Instabooth was a succes. It took place on the Saaturday Morning of the Riverfest in Arthurs Quay and we recieved positve feedback from people that took part.

Physical Computing and Musical Interfaces

The protocals for this module was to create a DMI using Arduino, sensors, and Max/MSP. This will demonstrate the authors ability to control sound in real-time, by implementing appropriate mapping strategies, and to present this instrument in a short demo, and perform with it as an ensemble.

The group ensemble consists of Nicole Roche and Shauna Shanahan. Shauna is interested in the flex/bend sensor ideals and would also in corporate her own way in using it with the Arduino. Shauna would like the led lights to be set off through different beats formed by using the flex sensor. Nicole is interested in using the slider potentiometer to connect the sound volume and also to the led lights and see how they react with one another.

The Performance

The goal of the group was to create a performance that was expressive and to communicate ideas and emotions through the instruments.

In preparation for the performance we gained knowledge of each other's instruments through practicing with each other rehearsing different effects that could blend together using the instruments. 

For the performance as a group we organised the sound effects that we would create into different parts. The author created the base clip Nicole on drum and Shauna on synth. Together as a group we picked tracks in ableton that would correspond with one another’s sound. During performance as an ensemble we used non-verbal ques to communicate and watched each other's hand movements this is how we gained knowledge of each other's instruments through practicing with each other.

It was a successful performance, goals were achieved and we obtained good feedback from other members of the class.

Artists Of Interest

These are a few Artists which use surveilance and technology in their Art work, That I find interesting.

FERNANDO ORELLANO

The Living

The Living draws inspiration from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which speaks of the nature of our perception and delusion with reality. The six large heads in this sculpture cannot look behind themselves. Speaking to each other with bursts of light emanating from their mouth, they can only look forward and side-to-side. The large light bulbs on their heads are symbolic of both their consciousness and the sun that blinds them from truth. The wheels that are fastened to their cribs allow them the potential to escape at any moment, and yet, they do not; they remain happily anxious in the bliss of ignorance. Artists and spies are loners, operating on the margins. They observe, gather intelligence, surgically intervene, and detect and disseminate artifice. They try to stay ahead of everyone else.

Phoney

Most days we spend a great deal of time watching screens and massaging interfaces. It is only through the looking glass of our devices that we may assume our electronic doppelganger. Wearing it like invisible armor, our avatar helps us navigate and communicate in 21st century collective consciousness. Some have begun to define and customize their avatars, while others are still becoming aware of their image in the electric mirror.Through video phones and a reconfigured mechanical toy, Phoney allows two people to talk to each other on separate sides of a space. When a person interacts with a terminal inPhoneythey see the live video feed from the point of view of the mechanical toy on the other terminal. Similarly when they speak into the phone receiver, their voice makes the mechanical toy on the other terminal dance, causing the video feed on their side to bounce around. If both Phoneyteporminals are in use, a bizarre conversation is ssible.

MEDIENGRUPPE BITNIK

FOLLOWING THE CRISIS 2010

With «Following The Crisis» !Mediengruppe Bitnik, by way of psychogeographical Dérives, re-appropriates the urban environment of the financial centers of Zurich and London. By randomly following bankers and bank customers they explore the financial districts. From this field research they then derive the „Instructions for a Dérive“.

«Following the Crisis» presents exemplary extracts of a growing archive of personal journeys through the city documented via telephone calls. The Dérive works as a symbolic act against the powerlessness in the crisis – a form of appropriation of the inaccessible and closed financial spaces of London and Zurich. The results are subjective wanderings in search of traces of the crisis using the means of observation.

0PERA CALLING 

«Opera Calling» was an artistic intervention into the cultural system of the Zurich Opera. By means of audio bugs placed within the auditorium of the local opera house, the outside public is given access to the performances on stage. The performances are retransmitted to the public not through broadcasting, but by telephoning each person individually.

From March 9th to May 26th 2007, audio bugs, hidden in the auditorium, transmitted the performances of the Zurich Opera to randomly selected telephone land-lines in the city of Zurich. In proper style of a home-delivery-service, anyone that picked up their telephone, was able to listen to the on-going opera performances for as long as s/he wanted through a live connection with the audio bug signal. As soon as the listener would hang up, the telephone machine would call the next random number.

Thesis Summary

The idea behind my dissertation proposal is to create an object that holds a, Shock Art’ aspect but with a technology edge. I want my Piece to show the contribution of social media and surveilance with art. My Piece will be an installation piece, a computer animated film or sculpture piece that incorporates, the aesthetics, mentioned before of the privacy and surveillance in internet social Media and how I can incorporate this into an Art installation Piece, my end result will be a narrative reality or current film, interactive piece depicting our contemporary culture lifestyle around the effects of social media privacy on the web.

The advances in technology has been providing artists with new ways to express themselves for a very long time. More and more artists are reviving their Art through the uses of technology be it a piece that moves in response to human interaction or a piece that is created using the visual use alone, of technology. We live in a cyborg society. Technology has infiltrated the most fundamental aspects of our lives: social organization, the body, even our self-concepts. This blog chronicles our new, augmented reality.

We are in an age of digital distraction. There is an almost constant feel isolation to the point of panic without our mobile or internet access. It’s a feeling of dependence constantly on these search engines wanting to know information, every second, of everyday. And it is pretty much all of us. When we’re not online, most of us spend roughly four months of each year, engaged in the stressful work of trying to get online.

Big Brother is something that has always fascinated and terrified me,The idea of being watched. We are all being watched this is the world we live in. Drones have become an entire subgenre of surveillance. The Internet permeates through every aspect of our corporate government and personal lives. Ninety percent of the world’s data — your information and mine — was created in the last two years alone. More and more people have access to the internet via mobile phones, tablets, labtops, smart tvs and so on.

Social Media and Art

Presentation

Friday 8th of April

One of the corner stones of 21st century is the use of the internet. One of the defining phenomena of the present times reshaping the world as we know it, is the worldwide accessibility to the internet. The lovechild of the World Wide Web is social media. Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

Social Media is not about technology. Social Media is about people, people in our society, people around the world. It even Impacts our online behaviour and our offline behaviour. Social media has three main recognised social platforms be it Facebook, snapchat or Instagram.

Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.

The issue of privacy is ubiquitous. With social networking we have a certain control in regards the information we provide. We are currently in a time frame where we are witnesses to these types of artists using the internet as a platform.

Social media is a fascinating new human phenomenon. In 2016 alone, research showed that over 2 billion people have used the Internet across the world. Of those people, nearly 80% have signed into a social networking site in the past year to connect with others, curate their personal images, and share information with people across the virtual universe.

Given these facts, social media has been a growing medium in visual art over the past 20 years. In the 1990s, artists who couldn't find commercial success began sharing their work on early webpages. In 2002, Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen developed "Listening Post," an installation that pulled real-time text from chat rooms, bulletin boards, and online forums, and displayed them across hundreds of small screens. Today, artists regularly tap social media as a way to create a shared experience, crowdsource participants and ideas, and explore the dynamics between the virtual and IRL. Social media has been a growing medium in visual art over the past 20 years. Artists act on Social media by using its subjects as their modern day profiles.

WORKSHOP

Instagram is a widely used image based application used by 200 million worldwide. 8796 photos per second are shared worldwide. We as a group decided seeing as everyone in the group are designers, a proficient workshop on how to successfully use and build a following on Instagram would be extremely beneficial. The workshop started with a debriefing on how to properly tag photos with some generic yet useful hashtags as to broadcast their image to a wider audience. We then proceeded to divided the group into teams of 3. We discussed how to use the lighting available to you at any location and how to use the preset editing system built in to the Instagram application. We left it to to groups to decide what and where to take phots. Interestingly they all choose to take pictures of themselves ‘selfies’. After 20 minutes they returned with their selected photographs. We asked proceeded by showing people established Instagram accounts to demonstrate the different aesthetics utilized by various users. With ‘mayfair’ being the most popular filter used by Instagram users, many opted to apply that filter. We then allowed the group to make their own decisions on how to edit their photo. At the end of the workshop the most successful photo gained 31 likes in 15 minutes which according to the user was a great improvement.

Hunt Museum Flat Pack Exhibition March 2016

The Hunt Museum Limerick is Currently holding an exhibition from Monday, 21st March to Friday 8th, April In a world that is increasing ready-made, flat pack is a concept we are all familiar with, but get ready to re-think it!

The Interactive Media class at the University of Limerick  will create a temporary exhibition on the theme of ‘The Flat Pack Museum’.

We each had to create a peice inspired by an object in the hunt.

I picked a Bronze Staff and re-created my own interepretation of the staff using different folds with the white card paper and also used dramatic filigry designs to incorporate a more creative modern edge to the piece.

Product Report 2015

This report will describe and outline the design processes that was followed to create a new electronic feature to help in airport control areas.  Manasi Shetye, Shauna Shanahan and I as a design team set out to explore the different stages a passenger experiences on their journey in an airport, and how we as a team research and analyse some of the hassles and experiences passengers come in to contact with while travelling.

As interactive designers we have to not only respond and react, but we also have to try to organise and coordinate discussions, thoughts and debates and then this process is then repeated again and again, and then as a new ideas are sent around again with different updates to the design idea porotype which is influenced by the general audience. This then changes the initial research through more various design explorations and onto the creation of the main product for the future user.

As group collaboration and coordination are critical elements in the success of this project. There isn’t a single individual who is responsible for coming up with an idea, designing it and selling it to the class. As a group these responsibilities are divided among us by combining our skills and know how. To discuss what we are designing, why are we creating it and how it will all come together.

Next we identify the aspects and elements of our design whether it will be an application or a product. We believe this will work towards our  goal objective. Whether the product will result in a conscious group decision or will it force us to make us analyse the whole design as it’s presented. When we start to think about the specific aspects and objects we have received from our group critiques, we then discuss whether those choices will work to achieve the product. This is the centre of critical thinking and analysis.