Final Project

After torturing myself for 2 days, I've finally made up my mind to make a website featuring on war.
I think it should be categorized as "Politics" or "Society". As we all know, war is probably the most terrible thing that mankind invented. Ever since there is human, wars have never stopped. Millions of people were killed; billions were wounded; trillions were homeless, and they still cannot learn the simple fact: wars don't solve problems, they only create hatred. My website will focus on how destructive wars can be, how cruel wars can be, how wars can tear countries down and break families apart. I wish my website can arouse people's anger towards war, people's compassion to countries in a war, and people's fear of war.
Technically, my website will include pictures (of warfare), (sad) songs, and maybe flashes. Something I am thinking about now is to put a map of the world on a webpage and put big warfares of different times on different places of the map. I might add flash to it showing statistics like how many people died in the war and etc.
But what I described above are just notions for now, they are subject to changes. I will definitely add new stuff, and may delete things that I cannot realize too.

Reflection on earlier works

The first project I did in this class was the Immersive Environment. For the project, I made three pictures with Photoshop and Google Sketch-up which reflected the immersive environment of the road. Since I was a small kid, I was always fascinated how immersive road was and I often lost myself in all the imaginations just by looking out of the window of a car. What I am proud of the most for this project is the idea that road is immersive. But maybe just because that this idea is too strange and others didn't think of the road that way, it might seem a little bit confusing to some. Technically, I learned a lot about Photoshop and Google Sketch-up and implemented many in my project.

The second project I did was the Sound Art project in which I used Garage Band. In this project, I used some Garage Band loops, but mainly sound I recorded myself which included voice, guitar, piano and some other sounds, to compact the whole life of a person into a less than 1 minute sound piece. The idea is to tell people that life is short, please don't waste your time. Comparing to others', what I am not satisfied with my project is that because I recorded most of my sounds, sometimes there is noise in the background. After finishing this project, sound art is no more mysterious to me. It just consists of sounds which were put in different tracks.

The third project was animation using Flash. By far, this project has been the one that took me the most time, yet the one I found most fulfilling. I was amazed and shocked on my first glance at stick fights, and decided that I would definitely make something like that later in my life. After learning Flash in class, I've got the tools to realize my dream since I was a small kid. But later I found out that to do that I would have to move the body parts of little stick people little by little, and 25 hours of work may end up with only 10 seconds of show. Though tired, I found accomplished after realizing a dream since childhood. What I can do more is to add sounds when a stick person gets hit, and add background to the fight scene because it may seem somewhat boring without one.

The last project I've done is the net art project, which I already reflected in my self evaluation form. So I won't talk about it here.

For the final project, I haven't got a great idea yet about what I am going to do. But for now, what on my mind is to integrate as much knowledge I've learnt in class as possible in my final project. Which should definitely involve the use of Photoshop, Flash and Garage Band.

Net-art Project

For the net-art project. I'd like to make my site as a small the game. As for now, the game may be one that asks people to find the difference between two pictures. If he can find the difference, he can go to the next level, which is a different set of pictures. If he clicks some place else, he may fail the game.
I will employ Dreamweaver to make the site. Also, I will use photoshop to make the differences between two pictures.

This Week's Blog--AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE (the Sticker)

The piece of art that I am going to critique is the Sticker made by artist Evan Roth. The art is simply a sticker with the words "available online for free" on it, and a red sticky background. The artist then stick the sticker on several softwares and movies and take pictures of them, meaning that you can download them freely from the internet. This is a very creative way to address the pirating issue in the IT area and a powerful question of the role of the internet. I like it because it is nearer to our everyday life.

This week's blog-Underglow (2005) - Susan Collins

Underglow is a piece of art that illuminated a number of separate gullies (drains) in the vicinity of Guildhall Yard, King Street and Queen Street and they were visible from dusk to dawn from November 2005 until February 2006. I like that piece of art particularly because from the picture we can see that the drains glow green light, which looks like what drains look like in the future. Also, green gives people a sense of chemicals, which suit with the idea of drain. So I like it very much.

Flash Project

(It takes forever to upload my flash movie, I will try to upload it again later)

For the flash project, I'd like to make one with the theme of Chinese Martial Art. Chinese martial art is famous in the world and is what I've always been fascinated in. Thousands of movies were casted and millions of books were written about it, one example known well in the western society is the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Chinese Martial Art is not just violent fighting, it is a state of mind, a way of communication with others and the society, and a beauty. But it surely will require a lot of details of human movements. I will try my best to make it as detailed as possible. Also, after learning interactivity in Flash, I may try to add some interactivity in my project.

Tree

Sound Art-Time Square

The piece of Art named "Time Square" is produced by artist Max Neuhaus. It is created by emitting sound under the center of Time Square. Because there are tunnels of different lengths under Time Square, people will hear different sounds when standing at different places because of resonance. Max and his assistants described this piece art as sculpture. Usually sculpture is perceived by eye, but ears are also able to feel the object. Besides, this piece of art share several characteristics with sculpture. At different places and angles, you feel differently towards the sound. The significance of the sound changes with the time of the day, just as the perception of sculpture changes with light. According to Max, Time Square is a place possessed by expensive real estates and deserted by art. His sound adds art to this deserted place.
In essence, his piece of sound art is the same with what we were doing. They are all using the form of sound to convey a message (in his case, creating the feeling of sculpture and adding art to Time Square). Like critiquing our art, I think the genre his piece of art is ambient. The major difference bewteen his and ours is the scale of the art(his is at Time Square...).

Sound Project

In this project I will try to convey the message that Time Flies by compressing a person's life into 30 seconds of sound. It will contain some of the representative sounds during different phases of human being, i.e., infant, adolescent, adult, and elder. Some examples of sounds that I may use are the cry of a new born baby, the oath at a wedding ceremony, and the sound of an old man walking with the help of a stick.
The theme of time and life is eternal. But more often than not, people tend not to be able to appreciate the preciousness of time. By compressing one's life into 30 seconds of sound, it should be easy for the audience to get the message and actually think about it seriously.
As for now, I haven't collected my sounds yet, so I don't know in which environment should it be listened to. But most probably headphones.

Photoshop-My toys

Inauguration overload

Of all the cool sites and innovative ways to address the event, I love NY Times' I Hope So Too the most. All the bubbles floating around and circling is really creative, and it indeed visualizes what "random" means.
CNN's "The Moment" is pretty awesome too. Though I don't think photosynth is necessarily a better or more convenient way to see pictures, it certainly looks a lot cooler. And it does enable everyone to be an artist and inspire everybody to take part to contribute and make their own art as well (they provide the software to make photosynth).

In class project-Spaceroom

Answer to Professor Wilkins' questions

Copy the following questions into your blog, then answer them as thoroughly as possible.

What is/are your major(s)/minor(s)? Undecided. May be physics/math.

Why are you taking this class? The topic seems extremely interesting to me. I always loved to make some art with computers but unfortunately I didn't know how to use the softwares. And also, this course will be very useful whatever career I choose in the future (presentations and making designs, etc), or I can just play around and please myself.

How comfortable are you with (please be specific and elaborate):

Macs? A little. I used Mac for the first time last semester when I came to the States. So I'm still more used to PCs. But now I'm much more familiar with Macs than ever before and I believe I will eventually catch up.

Photoshop? A little. Played around with it for a little while and know some basic stuff.

Digital Cameras? I only used a point-shoot to take regular pictures before.

MP3 Players? Fair. I have an ipod and often listen to music or play with it.

Contemporary Art? Not much. This class is like the first class about Art I've ever taken in my whole life.

Video? Not much. I used to have a video camera and recorded something (without doing any editing at all)

the Internet? Pretty well. I surf the internet every day so I shouldn't have too much trouble with it.

Web site creation? Fair. I made a very simple web site with Dreamweaver a long time ago.

Digital Music? Nothing. I have to be honest to say that I have no clue about digital music.

Flash animation? A little. Learned a little about Flash by myself before and made some simple flash animations.

Drawing? A little. I learned to draw when I was a small kid, but I have to admit I'm not a real good drawer. But it can be improved.

Blogging? Some experience. Posting blogs every once in a while on a website similar to Facebook.

What are your hobbies, interests, philosophies (that you might use to make art in this course)? Basketball. Snowboarding. Skiing. Engineering. Chinese culture.