final.fla

https://webfiles.colorado.edu/mccartnj/final

Just click on final.fla

digital art chapter 3

This chapter centers around the idea that there are many themes in digital art. One of them being artificial intelligence. This is expressed one way by Licklider who authored the paper 'Man-Computer Symbiosis, this is the notion that computers are men can work together to formulate decisions and controlling complex situations. It is interesting to think of computers as partners able to assist humanity.  The transformation of information and the survival of the (aesthetically) fittest also form a theme in digital art. I think that this is an interesting theme in that the internet could easily become a form of information only, and have no artistic value to it at all. But i think that humans are such visual beings that websites will always have to have an aesthetic value to attract an audience. The internet is too good of a means for the exposure of artistic expression for it to become a means for information only. I really like the piece A-volve. I think the interactive program was very advanced for the time. There are also a few other projects like A-volve that follow the rules of genetics and natural selection to make life. I like this chapter because it really explored artificial intelligence and how it can improve in the future. 

project 3

https://webfiles.colorado.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-912773_4

The name of this project is cherries.

Internet art: chapter 4

The chapter begins with a very interesting story. The story is about a piece by Wolfgang Staehl, in September of 2001. He positioned cameras in very populated areas, such as a castle in Bavaria, the TV tower in Berlin and the skyline of lower Manhattan. His original objective was to capture the normal progression of everyday life at these locations, except one of them happened to capture something completely unexpected. The skyline of lower Manhattan captured the attack on 9/11. This turned into an articulation of the role mass media images could potentially take on. It inadvertently turned into a piece of journalism, and documented the aftermath of the tragedy until October. I didn't know that the internet had advanced so much in the last ten years. I thought that most of what we have today, was available in the late 90's. Additionally, I liked Keith Obadike's piece were he put his blackness for sale. In his piece he tells the advantages and disadvantages of his race. It is a very different take on how identities are structured in relation to the ways they can be objectified or sold. This chapter displays the reaction of artists to the shift in the internet to a unprivate and  business based system.

internet art: chapter 3

Heritage Gold (1998) was an interesting concept. The creator, Mongrel, a gallery of different faces all different ethnicities. The different ethnicities were supposed to represent the complexities of life. It seems that the different faces are manifestations of how different lives can be. In 2000 art major art museums finally started commissioning internet art for their galleries. I think that this was due to all the publicity that eToy and other controversial sites were getting. the internet was becoming more known and available. At this time it also seemed that information and art were beginning to be juxtaposed on websites. I don't completely understand what the website 0100101110101101.ORG's complete objective was, but it mainly seemed to focus on "privacy is obsolete". That the internet shouldn't be so exclusive with passwords and private accounts, but it should be a source of infinite information for anyone. I like the analogy that Anne-Marie Schleiner makes with art as 'culture hacking'. Art does give insight into the context of culture as well as the individual in their art. I also thought that the Trigger Happy internet game was an interesting idea. It challenged the viewer to choose between reading the paragraph on the screen or making points for the game. This chapter displayed the advances in the internet, as well as the challenges companies faced trying to keep in business or make controversial statements. 

internet art: chapter 2

When email first came out, face to face meetings were still popular. Emails were immediate and convenient, but in person meetings were more intimate and it was less likely for misinterpretations to happen. Face to face meetings were essential to the early net art scene for bonding. I though that it was interesting that everything did not depend on the internet once people started using it. Bonding and intimacy was still crucial for artists to sell their work and connect with other artists. Conferences such as 'Beauty of the East' in 1997, also brought artists together to catalyze change for net art. I didn't know that art galleries did not initially hold internet art, because it was difficult to sell, had difficult display aesthetics and projects were technically complex. I'm sure that it was hard for artists not to have the support of galleries. I thought that John Simon Jr.'s Every Icon(1997) piece was very original. The piece had an icon described by a 32 by 32 grid, and any element of the grid could be colored black or white. With in these limited guidelines this grid, the artist estimates that this grid can manifest every image across several hundred years. I also thought that it was interesting that artists use porno films to write ASCII since they need undetailed videos and porn films are 75% close ups.

website

Website project

Introduction and chapter one of Internet Art

The introduction makes the claim that individuals who do not like internet art generally think that it is, "too unfamiliar both conceptually and physically, and the technical steps necessary to access it simply do not reconcile with 'art' experiences like browsing in quiet galleries of navigating vast museum collections." I agree that traditional art looses a lot of its appeal on the computer screen. There are certain physical properties that can only be experienced in the physical presence of the piece. Just clicking on a link to view a piece of art devalues the art work unless it is digital art. Internet art also gives access to works that could be lost or just local. It globalizes art as well as communication. I thought  it was interesting that Russia and Eastern Europe used the Internet as a means to express art: whereas, the U.S. mainly used it  for economic purposes. The internet boom came just as the Soviet Union ended in the early 1990's. This helped these countries reconnect with the world with speed never before used.  I thought it was interesting how feminist, such as the VNS Matrix 'cyberfeminist', arose out of the net. I hadn't ever thought that the net was "male dominated". This chapter showed me that the internet was a revolutionary tool for art, economy and communication. 

This chapter made me realize that digital art can be expressed in many mediums. I always thought of digital art on the internet or magazine, but never displayed in a museum next to paintings and other traditional art. Digital art also makes the pieces interactive in another level. Some by detecting motion and others with the use of a mouse, audiences can manipulate the art in a way never before possible. This is displayed in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's work with the moving hand projected onto the facade of a building. The chapter also makes the statement that digital art is a new representation of physical space. Recognizing a digital image of what it is supposed to represent is really a matter of perception and cognition, according Peter Anders. I think that digital art is much more capable of tricking the illusion of reality in that it has new elements that replicate the physical world, such as motion and interaction, that other genres are not capable of simulating. I also learned what an avatar is, and how it is a representation of the person who created it. Digital art really took off in the mid 1990's. From using different media for the art to making much more complex pieces of art. I didn't think that digital art was even being explored in the 60's. It is interesting to see the progression of digital art spike in the mid nineties compared to the much slower progression in previous decades. 

introduction and chapter one

The introduction gave another perspective of computer history that I found very interesting. I did not know how slow the progress of technology was until the 1990's and how revolutionary the 1990's were for art to have this new medium. I would not have connected the "digital revolution" to the dadaist movement, but the text recounts how digital art is a completely original and has elements of "controlled randomness" like dada art. I didn't know that computers were used to make art as early as the 1960's.  I thought that the 1990's or late 1980's gave birth to this medium. I thought that the art created with the primitive computers was very interesting, but I would have liked the introduction to go into more detail how they created the digital art.  In chapter one, the text displays not only how digital art can be used to make a visual impact, but how images usually not able to be juxtaposed, make a strong emotional impact, such as Ken-Gonzales Day. Additionally, I didn't know that digital scanners can make a much more detailed view than a camera. This is displayed in the moths by Joseph Scheer.Many of the art in Chapter one also involves other fields of study. Nancy Burson's Beauty Composites were actually discussed in my social psychology class to display how beauty is subjective and ideals of beauty change with every decade. Furthermore, William Latham's creations of artificial art forms combines digital art with biology.  Chapter one entices me to master photoshop and other means for digital art. Additionally this chapter expanded my knowledge of the uses of digital art, from artifical life-forms to abstract pictures, and informed me of the possible advances coming in our near future.