Self Assessment: Project 3

For project 3 I am proud to say my projection art has been the most rewarding and entertaining projects within my Advanced Digital Media course. Beginning with artist research I stumbled across a photographer by the name of Lee Kirby. Kirby, who projects images of city skylines and nightlife onto human bodies, gave me inspiration to also use the contours of the body as a living canvas. Because this piece was in need of a body, I realized no one would be willing to stand lit up in public space for two hours- thus the idea of using a statue to project upon crossed my mind and began looking in monty for a usable subject. It soon became apparent though that no statute had a daunting enough presence or ideal position so I was forced to go back to square one.

Suddenly, I remembered one of the St. Mary's wonders- The Naked Man statue located right in between route 5 and Trinity Church road. Not knowing its significance I acquired knowledge about its existence, hoping it could add to the content of my own piece. 

The statues actual name- Freedom of Conscience, was sculpted by Hans Schuler in 1934 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Maryland. I am embarrassed not knowing this after living here for almost 4 years, but St. Mary's City is considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America. The piece itself symbolizes the original colonists who were escaping the religious tensions of England during the 1600s.

Lee Kirby's Self, my personal favorite

After acquiring this knowledge, I felt bad that students simply know it more as "the naked man" rather than a erected symbol of diversity- a concept this campus is obsessed with addressing. In terms of my own art projecting onto the sculpture I wanted to stray away from my usual glitching technology for two reasons: one, I felt as though I should have stepped outside of my usual artistic genre, and two, I feel glitching would have little to no positive effect on the sculpture itself. The class had various spurts of creative suggestion, beginning with the idea of projecting genitals onto the sculpture. Others believed it would be fun to display it with clothes on, but again this goes back to the issue of no one really knowing what the naked man really stands for.

As Lee Kirby showed, the human body has wonderful curves and lines that warp images into an unrecognizable spectacle. Brainstorming, I realized the ideas of religion are represented by none other than text and symbols, both of which having diverse meaning. Even among Christianity, many meanings within the bible may be interpreted or translated differently from the U.S. to Japan. Because of this, I began constructing the project through Final Cut Pro- editing together images and including scrolling text of various religious texts, such as the Koran and Torah. These beginning passages would then be put through Google Translate and voila: a diverse collage of religious passages in various languages and images such as the Star of David and Jesus.

As a filmmaker, having a great amount of Final Cut Pro experience was very useful towards getting the most out of this piece. Playing around, I first layered religion verses over their symbols. I soon realized I could even layer other scrolling text on top of the original text, connecting all three with custom transitions. In the end I had verses and symbols from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, all to be projected onto the statue in a rare harmony of culture.

Image of a Buddhist Infinite Knot is
shown over the first verses of the Quran

While my work habits were strong and consistent, the biggest issues I faced were from both technology gripes and the act of testing the projection before the digital media art walk. Due to great amounts of rain, it was tricky to set up a large amount of electrical equipment outdoors- trying twice to get a test going but retreating due to the possibility of my lap top short circuiting during finals. Dragging the cords across the street and through the dirt became a muddy job itself. Luckily, Clifton was there for support after he moved his piece from the Trinity Church  down towards the back of the statue. All in all, we tried.

On the night of the projection, I attempted to transfer my final project onto a flashdrive before downloading the quicktime movie onto my computer. Unfortunately, my flashdrive refused to accept my project due to "not having sufficient memory." Even after I deleted everything from the flash drive it still would not download- so I ended up projecting a test version of my project onto the statue instead. Despite the difference being only a minute, I was more bothered by the end of the piece- showing Jesus randomly popping up in different sizes (originally to scale his body to the statue).

Regardless of minor hiccups, once I saw my projection for the first time I had the greatest feeling of satisfaction rush over me. All that tedious copying/pasting text and rendering video finally paid off. Now I could sit back and admire my piece in public, flashing its images across the contours of Freedom of Conscience in a spectacular manner. The turnout of art audiences was surprisingly great also, averaging roughly 10 people every 20 minutes- all loving the projection montage and questioning its significance. 

When I look back upon the piece, I believe I was highly successful in creating a visually beautiful projection that fit the original sculpture and its meaning towards St. Mary's City. Because of this, I'd give myself a solid A. 

Wherever he is, I hope Hans Schuler would approve.

Projection Art: UPDATE

Recently I have scoped out the actual site of the Freedom of Conscience/naked man statue, looking for places to put the projector and more importantly finding electrical outlets to plug into.

The Freedom of Conscience statue. I'm worried if those
lights will ruin the projection.

The back of the statue itself, plenty of room
for another students projection so I'm not
out here all alone.

The projector will be placed just before
the tall grass and angled upwards.

West of the statue is the boat house where the closest
electrical cord is. While the distance isn't so bad,
the fact that the cord has to run across the street
is troubling.

Project 3- Projection Art

As discussed in my last post, my next project will consist of incorporating projected art onto a public space within the St. Mary's campus. While the concept of displaying art in such a manner appeals to me, it also arises multiple issues. Where is an ideal place to project art? What should the content of the art be? How will people react to the possible messages displayed?

To take these questions and reshape them into answers, I looked towards Tony Oursler's work and began to construct a mental map of possibility. Through his use of human response projected onto static, non-living objects, I was originally inspired to record sections of an individual's face (for example a pair of eyes or a mouth) and project them onto the library wall by the writing center. These facial sections could be revealed in different orders, such as feminine eyes staring upon foot traffic and then switching to a mouth, showing forms of social communication in physical mannerisms. However after giving the idea more thought my lack of time constricts too many artistic possibilities.

A more appealing project came to mind when I reviewed Lee Kirby, who also works with the human body and projection. The main difference however is the artistic platform is reversed- with Oursler projecting active human faces onto inanimate objects, Kirby projects static photographs onto human bodies. Because the idea of a live human standing in front of a projection light for hours on end is simply cruel, my mind changed gears towards projecting onto a sculpture of the human body- specifically the Freedom of Conscience statue by route 5.

One of the seven St. Mary's wonders, Freedom of Conscience was sculpted by Hans Schuler in 1934 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Maryland. I didn't know this until following up with a bit of research, but St. Mary's City is considered to be the birthplace of religious freedom in America. The peace itself symbolizing the original colonists who were escaping the religious tensions of England during the 1600s.

Essentially my concept shown through photoshop

After acquiring this knowledge, I feel kind of bad that students simply know it more as "the naked man" rather than a erected symbol of diversity- a concept this campus is obsessed with addressing. In terms of my own art projecting onto the sculpture I want to stray away from my usual glitching technology for two reasons: one, I feel as though I should step outside of my usual artistic genre, and two, I feel glitching would have little to no positive effect on the sculpture itself.

The class had various spurts of creative suggestion, beginning with the idea of projecting genitals onto the sculpture. Others believed it would be fun to display it with clothes on, but again this goes back to the issue of no one really knowing what the naked man really stands for.

In terms of capturing the symbolism and original meaning behind Schuler's creation I would prefer to avoid pasting crucifixes and the star of david onto the sculpture. The simplicity of a bible verse or other religious passage would function better in terms of scrolling over the many contours of the body. Other simple ideas could be projected, such as rain, fire, leaves.. in other words- forms of nature that intertwine nature and art.

However, issues with the location may arise. Due to its position by a street, cars may be distracted by the projections presence. There may also not be a close outlet for plugging in equipment- giving me no choice but to run a long extension cord across a moderately busy road towards the boathouse.

An alternative to this statute could be using a statue in Monty, but that raises issues of actually moving the art outside. At this point the creative process is spinning and will soon gain traction.

Project 2 Self Eval

The only page on my site that I am content with

 For project two I chose to focus on web design- specifically the design of my own page created in digital media I. Last semester, http://students.smcm.edu/docope/index.html was built with the intention of presenting my acting/filmmaking/art resume along with an extra radio tab. While for my first Dreamweaver creation I was pleased with it, certain elements of the site could be polished and/or added. Because this page represented my creative ability and professional talents, I wanted to re-enter the site for necessary changes.

To begin my project, I did research on multiple artists who happened to have outstanding and/or relatable web designs. The first was David Hockney, a 76 year old painter, sketch artist, photographer, and stage designer from England. While I am not a fan of his work, I never the less appreciate the clean professionalism of his website. Similar to mine, each tab is color coordinated to a degree. For example, if you click on the purple media tab, the name David changes to purple (as seen left). I eventually integrated this feature into my own site- with the film section's red font to the radio page's pink. This helped keep the site refreshing and unique beyond the continual background changes. The only technical issue I encountered was in the resume page. Despite my efforts to keep them black, the links remained purple without change. The roll over color change also does not function properly, even when selected in the page properties section.

Resume page with incorrect and seemingly
 unchangeable link color

My next artist was Tauba Aurebach, a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist who was born and still resides in San Francisco. What struck me by her website was not the fun visual presence it gave, but how well the design co-existed with her own art. One thing that immediately differentiated my site from both Aurebach's and Hockney's was the use of an "introduction page." I feel the first thing that a user sees should always be different, interactive, and exciting- a sort of gate that prepares them to enter. For Aurebach, her introduction is her name in an interactive form of hieroglyphic letters, changing colors at an almost alarming rate with any movement of the mouse. Simple and clean, I sought to chase down this design in order to achieve an advanced first impression. Unfortunately such a feat remained out of reach at the current time due to my lack of coding experience.

Originally I aimed for my introductory page to flash just like Aurebach's, however after some suggestions from my fellow classmates the idea of a changing background fell into place. Essentially I wanted the page to appear simple at first glance, a white background with the name DYLAN COPE in all caps was the target. After rolling over individual letters, the background would change into a repeated wallpaper of one of my art works. Despite its simplicity, Dreamweaver again struggled to follow the most basic of page property commands- ignoring my link font, size, and even color when input. Things only got worse after the complexity of layering div tags; filled with various artworks seemingly popping up at random and making the process overwhelming. After discussing my vision and current issues with Professor Friebele, he pointed me towards the way of coding- searching via Google towards a site that had already laid out interactive color change codes. Unfortunately I (yet again) hit a road block due to technical difficulty.

Example of Lightbox with one of my works

With my introductory page off to a bad start, I chose to focus my time more on recreating the old site rather than fumbling over the new. Beginning with the dreaded (but very necessary) Lightbox program, I downloaded the software and watched an assortment of painstaking tutorials until the program was up and running. For those who are not familiar with Lightbox, it is a collection of codes that display pictures in a more professional manner- dimming the page and presenting an image in a floating box, rather than sending you to another page. With this element in place, viewers could now browse art by album, along with resume head shots, and film clips off YouTube. Unlike last semester when I created the site and fumbled at the end to incorporate Lightbox, it was now up and looking great. This achievement was arguably the greatest accomplishment for me in this project and it felt freakin fantastic.

Stepping back and looking at the page I can't say I am happy with the unfinished product. While I was able to recreate the page in a short amount of time, my limited experience cost me. During the class critiques the site also drew mixed reviews- mainly through the page backgrounds clashing with the subject foreground. Another issue the class seemed to focus on was my acting resume, which frustrated me mainly because it was unrelated to the critique and also a good professional resume confirmed by David Ellsworth and Michael Tolaydo. Regardless, this has been my most anti-climatic project in digital media. While there isn't a polished final project, I was still able to accomplish a sizable amount of work in a short amount of time. I'd give myself a B-.  

The Language of New Media: Marshall McLuhan

In McLuhan's article New Media: The Guerilla Culture to Gadget Art he addresses the definitions and effects of "new media" in our culture. To him, new media can be broken down into two groups, art observers and the "lay public." The public group holds a paranoid perspective towards the recent advancements in technology despite ironically using it everyday. He draws comparisons of technology from the comic book boom in the 1960s where parents sheltered their kids from the imaginative stories that "hindered" their developmental growth. Of course as time passed it became evident that the books had no such impact, if anything the books artistically benefited the young minds of that era- but that's a whole other discussion.

With new media comes new ways of expression. Take this very class for example, without the many programs and advanced components available we could not create/deliver the visual messages we intended. Same goes with the vast conection artists have for inspiration through media.

To McLuhan, new media is not visual art, it is a developing art form. It's a neutral device that becomes political through the individual operating it. In the hands of industrial and commercial conglomerates, international television has become fully commercialized- filled with product placement and advertised messages, some more blatant than others.

An interesting perspective he uses is the Indonesian revolution of new media. Beginning in the late 80s, private television became available to the general public- something that the government realized could hold great power if controlled. However with great power comes great responsibility, with the introduction of global TV and eventually the internet, a guerrilla rebellion took place that knocked down the central government. This modern situational example clearly shows the potential power of new media for an oppressed culture. I find it fascinating in this day and age that governments are able to successfully suppress all outer influence of technology and media.

Project 2 Website Development

For my second project in Advanced Digital Art I plan to revitalize my personal website. Last semester I created http://students.smcm.edu/docope/index.html with the intention of presenting my acting/filmmaking/art resume along with an extra radio tab. While for my first Dreamweaver creation I was pleased with it, certain elements of the site could be polished and/or added.

To begin my project, I did research on multiple artists who happened to have outstanding or relatable web designs. In the end, two sites I believe really encaptured my vision of what I wanted my site to become.

The first was David Hockney, a 76 year old painter, sketch artist, photographer, and stage designer from England. Despite his bio being inactive as of 2010, Hockney's work is exhibited and updated- showing the website is still in great use. While I am not a fan of his work, I never the less appreciate the clean, professionalism of his website.

Similar to mine, each tab is color coordinated to a degree. For example, if you click on the purple media tab, the name David changes to purple (as seen left). His works are also categorized neatly into decades- a feat I won't be able to accomplish for a number of years. The only slight gripe I had was that I found the drop down menus never disappeared after each interaction- causing text to block subject matter.

My next artist was Tauba Aurebach, a painter, sculptor, and graphic artist who was born and still resides in San Francisco. A graduate of Stanford University, Aurebach's work has a natural vibrancy through dream-like textures and patterns. What struck me by her website was not the fun visual presence it gave, but how well the design co-existed with her own art.

Firstly, one thing that immediately differentiated my site from both Aurebach's and Hockney's was the use of an "introduction page." I feel the first thing that a user sees should always be different, interactive, and exciting- a sort of gate that prepares them to enter. For Aurebach, her introduction is her name in an interactive form of hieroglyphic letters, changing colors at an almost alarming rate with any movement of the mouse.

In terms of the site, Aurebach also keeps it  simple but fun- layering the menu in a font that's barely legible and makes you feel drunk. Under "works" I enjoyed the display of her art. The animation it makes once loaded is also a factor that makes the page less static. On my own pages for art and film I plan towards simplifying the presentation through the use of Lightbox.

In conclusion, my research compiled a number of things: 

1. My own site is too static. It needs a interactive entrance to prepare viewers for what is to come. 
2. Simplify. My Art and Film pages have simply too much going on with back/foreground clashing
3. More color. I dipped briefly into the menu bar change but I can take it further.
4. Polish! Lightbox and my resume not showing up are the two technical issues I've run into.

Artist Sites:

• (http://www.hockneypictures.com)

• (http://taubaauerbach.com)

Rourke/Steyerl and Peter Osborne Response

For today's reading, I greatly related to the artistic perspectives surrounding Hito Steyerl on digital art. Steyerl accurately explains how digital art does not maintain the same quality once transferred, compressed, and shared, it becomes "bruised" with unpredictable results. From my own experience, this idea is what keeps my forms of art entertaining and new every time. Because Textedit simply displays the lengthy coding of what a digital image is made of, it is close to impossible to accurately predict the result of each deletion\. Knowing this, I never enter a new project knowing exactly where it would go. Each image is a new canvas waiting to be corrupted.

Steyerl's own artwork is directly parallel to my own in terms of approach and final image. The only thing that differs is the actual image content. While I tend to lean more towards vintage advertising, he traces his roots back to Japanese ink paintings- mostly consisting of sexual intercourse. The final result is an interestingly "censored" form, some of which glitch in a GIF file type (as pictured to right).

The interviewer, Daniel Rourke, claims "glitches expose us to the inner dynamism of the digital." From my own perspective, I see glitching as pleasant DNA mutation- slowly evolving into something still relative- but vastly different in its uniqueness.

In the second article, Peter Osborne restates Walter Benjamin's idea of the digital age, claiming,  

"art distracts and art is received in distraction." Art in this day and age is certainly distracting, especially the art included in this blog. Another example from Osborne was the creation of video games and how they require tangible interaction.

Distraction by technology is nothing new however, over a century ago the first motion picture camera was produced- giving a visual escape from one's own life. The internet also has become a tool of dangerous immersion, but who wouldn't fall in love with such a concept?