lillianlii

[lillianlii]

Pain Visualization early idea

The reason why I think about it…

I felt a strong Migraine on my left head, which make me feel hard to focus on one thing. When I research the possible reason of having a migraine, I find some patients have interesting descriptions: “It’s like I’ve been attacked with a stapler”; “like having rabbits running up and down my spine”; “it’s like someone’s opened a cocktail umbrella in my penis...” Then when I was rethinking about collaborating with other people/working in the company, I realized the majority of the problem when someone facing people is communicating. It is really hard to communicate only by the oral way Combining with patterns, the way of communication could be extended. (maybe add audio in the future...) Using an interesting way to demonstrate human feeling.

The early idea of visualizing the pains. 

Pains will be visualized by some animated monsters. When people show their face to the devices(phone, pad or PC/MAC...), their human faces will be captured and they could put/drag the monster to their painful position, then there will be a vivid monster hitting/shaking/knocking/electronic shocking/slowly washing their head. Opacity will be used to demonstrate the Intensity of pain.

For further development, the visualizing of pains could be placed on the whole face. For instance, showing the dryness on their eyeballs, the Stuffy nose… For the possible future, the visualization could cover the whole body.

[lillianlii]

Week 15 - Multispecies Storytelling.

A new genre of writing and mode of research has arrived on the anthropological stage: multispecies ethnography. This week we are learning about Multispecies Storytelling which is quite exciting and eye-open. 

Multispecies is a kind of negotiating focus to non-human, like the relationship between technology and biosphere.

[lillianlii]

Week 14 - Digital Narrative

When I was physically touching the person next to me, I could feel warm from her finger, and the slight shaking when air through my nose. However, when the time I was noticed that I am been observed, the super uncomfortable and worried feelings flooded into my mind.

Since the development of digitalization, the things out-of-sight before due to the long-distance emerge in the public’s view. Along with the description of Google Earth, digital narratives start to affect daily judgement. Followed by Nishat Awan’s view, we could see the shifting position.

Till now, digital technologies are the key component of humanitarian action, the role of images increased and combined with virtual reality which consists of a powerful digital narrative. This narrative could generate human compassion much easier than before, and also hurt or kill people easily.

[lillianlii]

Week 13 - Multiple Aesthetic

Pete Jiadong Qiang who’s fancy with ACG culture(Anime, Comic and Games) showed us his new research project “HyperBody” based on Queer maximalism.

Visual Reality is a really interesting area. It’s a place between physical and virtual world. This week, Pete opened a new gate to us about Hyper body by queer theory in Anime, Comic and Games area.

He is a typical person using “plus” way to his project, as a supporter for Maximalism. (The opposite part of minimalism) When I was learning graphic design during my undergraduate course, minimalism is often been told as a really smart way to create image. Like using less elements to create more meanings. (Edgar Rubin’s vase) Same logic in the ancient painting in China, especially in Song Dynasty, which is a flourish heyday of art history. They present the whole world by just showing a small corner, leaving blank for people to imagine. That’s the typical aesthetic taste for traditional China. 

But Pete’s lecture pushes me out of the imagination, provided a visible and colorful “ultimate reality” to us, a freedom of laissez-faire, which definitely showed the diversity of beauty. Facing this diversity, it’s obviously that aesthetic should not only be led by one main standard.

• What are you experiencing in the HyperBody VR space?

Using VR to explore another world.

• What are you feeling?(what are you seeing, hearing, touching, feeling)

   A little bit confused, but the world still really fancy.

• What are you encountering there?

  Flying in an old temple filled with colorful stuff. It doesn’t have specific sign for entrance or changing senes.

• How does your body feel in the meat space and the virtual space?

  I’m holding the the equipment tightly. Every time when I wanna move forward or other directions, my physical body often wanna move together.

• Where and what are the borders in the space?

  It looks like an infinity world. But there still have some shape to help you change the scene.

• What is your maximal self – How did you, or might you, become maximal?

  I used to be a minimalist. Every time when I decided to use some visual elements, I will be super cautious and think a lot without action. But maximalism help me think about the multiple attempt in the future life.

[lillianlii]

Week12 Black Feminist Thought in Computational Art

If you think about nude, what color will you get?

This week, I touched with black feminist thought in computational art. We got a charming lecture from Clareese Hill. The black women history she mentioned helped me to start thinking things from different view.

Also Safiya Umoja Noble’s article: A Future for Intersectional Black Feminist Technology Studies is super fancy. Her article reminded me of Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” about the racial problem. But much more sensitive and uncomfortable on the situation like Black woman. She made lots of issues visible for our readers, and that’s a really clear and loud voice for me to start thinking about the whole Internet system made by white western people. 

“White supremacy as the primary framework that structures research inquiries in the field.” 

discussed by Jessie Daniels. The whole system is super available for English-speaking internet users, and “easily tends to universalize problems assigned to race or Blackness as ‘male’” which all tied with colonization.

It reminded me of my own background. China is such far away from western world in geographic position. The communication from internet is not smooth. It makes people still have old colonization concept for western world such as old binary bias for gender problem, especially happened when people make jokes. I suddenly felt guilty about the jokes I made before.

[lillianlii]

Week 11-“Disobedient Electronics” and Improvement of Pay Gap

This week we discussed about disobedient object, which could shortly stop artists and researchers to think the technology on social, ethical or historical aspects. That was a quite fancy word for me. It’s also the first time I started to thing about how to explore disobedient objects.

Disobedient objects may remove the practicability of functions, but it focus on reminding people of some social problems. It may evolve an object to a visible and meaningful manifesto like the project Abortion Drone in Hertz’s book - Disobedient Electronics Protest.

women who work full-time are paid only 79% of what men make annually, so the 79% Work Clock lets you know when 79% of the work day has passed.

Inspired by the example 79% WORK CLOCK by Jamie Carreiro of Party New York, I started to focus on the pay gap between men and women and their inequality situation in the actual work places. My idea to improve this project is paying more attention to individual wage. Using algorithm to analyze and calculate daily earning they deserved, showing the salary number in a physical way like the clock with digital screen. Changing to individual clock could not only notify people’s awareness, but also become a good sign when the situation is improved, which means people who suffered unequal situation could see the daily changing around their salary and get the money they deserved.

[lillianlii]

Week6 - Physiognomy

The bias Zach Blas pointed out about racism exists. B612 is an app like snapchat have lots of beautiful filters which try to make people have the similar fancy face. People fall in love with the hyperreality world, and live in a facial cage. Our faces are stuck in a huge database.

Portrait of Edmond Belamy is an AI art created by GAN(Generative Adversarial Network), this project is exploring the interface between art and artificial intelligence. Caselles said they fed this system with huge data set of portraits painted from 14th to 20th, the generator makes a new picture based on these set. Another system called CAN which more creative than a generative network is developed by Ahmed Elgammal, the director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey. It can produce more novelty from the old data. It’s a quite unpredictable project which often surprised people.

http://www.zachblas.info/

[lillianlii]

Week 5 - Generative Art and Glitch

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Glitch, as a process-based art form, destabilizes the centrality of the author in the process of creation. By creating conditions that utilize chance and error as compositional tools, glitch artists create conditions that give rise to emergent systems in which agency is radically distributed.

Based on the amplification of error, failure is a key conceit of glitch aesthetics, an art form based on disrupting, breaking and transforming media. Glitch musicians and artists invite the figure of the parasite into their works to disrupt and destabilize sonic systems and challenge the autonomy of the artist in the process of creation.

Why Glitch art? Glitch art embraces failure to seek out alternate forms of knowledge production that reside in subcultures and countercultures 

Figure 1 The Opener

Figure 2  Opener Drawing Nr. 2 (excerpt). A denser spiral

The example of Glitch arts I chosen is  The Opener. Drawing Machine (Figure 1)made by Andres Wanner. A gear wheel grasps the edge of a can, rotating it on their own axis. Pen is tied in the can, pressing against the paper by its own weight. "The drawings reflect both the repetitive regularity of the can rotation, and the nervous motions of the forceful machine, mirrored by the squiggly lines. While the spiral curves can be seen as a planned or programmed outcome of the rotating repetition, the shivering scribbles emerge as unpremeditated results of the can opener’s mechanical technology. ”

[lillianlii]

Week4 - Virtual Anchor and AI

Machine learning always plays an important impact on the digital world. In WeChat App, there is virtual machine called ‘Ergou’. Ergou is an algorithm with a 2D dog character. It plays a role as a icebreaker in the chatting group to help members to communicate with other people. Ergou has a big database which embed numerous data about people’s daily talking way. It especial contained different talking ways from different accents. They also provide games to help people show their talent, such as singing or guessing words puzzles,

 Virtual anchors are emerging in the webcast industry. Some of the anchors using fancy virtual image to interact with viewers. When anchors are sleeping, some simple AI anchor will show up and do some basic communicate with people such as changing songs.

AI virtual anchor Liza was produced by Sogou and Xinhua News Agency. “they can broadcast news based on text inputs with the image of a human host. The appropriate mouth movements, pronunciation and intonations, and natural facial expressions make them almost indistinguishable from real people. The only difference is that they speak Arabic or Russian languages instead of Chinese, according to Wang Yanfeng, general manager of the voice interaction technique center of Sogou.” 

[lillianlii]

Week3 - Music and Computing

Last week, I read an article called Physical Computing’s Greatest Hits (and misses), which was written by TIGOE. If you want to know how to play with computer, or what kind of changings people have done now, this will be a nice and friendly guideline for rookie.

Do not give up because that someone has done before. Many physical computing projects are combined with two or more themes. The topic appeared before doesn’t mean that they are not original or useless now. Noting is perfect, so just try our best to fix more problems.

Theremin is a nice combination between music and physical computing. Theremin was invented by Lev Termin in 1919. This instrument consists of two protruding structures like antennas. The vertical rod controls the audio frequency, and the horizontal ring controls the volume. Musicians could change the distance between the hand and the antenna to adjust the size of the capacitor which could affect the oscillation frequency of the circuit.

Another fabulous project integrating music with computers is The Shape of Song. This project is connecting each repeat composition to draw arcs. MIDI files which they were using could divided music into several tracks, each files has unique rhythm characteristics, which influence the visual diagrams. Project with visual elements makes the music become much more vivid.

Tigoe’s article mentioned much more themes, such as wearable applications and multitouch interfaces projects. There are more challenges in our digital environments, and hope we could find out more potential outcomes to enjoy the learning time.

[lillianlii]

Week 2- Algorithm

In the second week, I read an article called Algorithm. This is a draft written by Tarleton Gillespie who is a professor in the department of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University.

Algorithm is more like order of a system. People need to use Algorithm everyday to communicate and solve problems. They need to set each step to reach their goals. About algorithm, they need model, target goal, data, training data, application, hardware and connect it all to a broader social endeavor.

Algorithm is logically built by human. Like dealing with daily works, people need to try their best to collect enough information related to their jobs to untied the trouble and obstacles when they encountered. Every optimization could make by numerous considerations and calculations based on the situation. Similar things in Algorithm, it’s not possible to only pursue a particular consequence. They want more possible outcomes. As some online shopping like Amazons, the algorithm decided what kind of purchasing suitable for the customers.Some online shopping using swarm optimization algorithm. It uses the fitness degree as the evaluation function, and searches for optimal solution by the iterative steps. This algorithm begins with random solutions, and then they will consider the customers’ satisfaction degree, the cost, and both integrated conditions into consideration. The algorithm will give the proper results. The simulate user experimental results could show that the proposed model and algorithm are efficient and effective for online shopping express logistics distribution problem.

The truth is that there always are bugs existing there. Although some big data have contained lots of information about users, they could recommend some suitable clothes or foods to them. But human are emotional. People’s unpredictable mood may directly lead to the fail of the algorithm. In binary digital world, fail means useless. These are orders which people are trying to avoid. However in real world, fail may contain more potential values than one success. 

Discovering the world without hesitation, finding more potential from useless failure.

[lillianlii]

A fish can’t judge water

That is quite strange. Using software seems to be a magic. Finding the corresponding command on the interface, you will get the visual stuff you want. Compared with ancient people, they spent time growing seeds to find the lovely color, creating their own tools by plucking pig hairs. They have more unconscious possibilities with their artwork through preparing. The software we are accustomed with have their own way for using, and they are designed for nobody.

Software exist with culture, they also produce culture. It is easy to buy a cloth from a shopping mall, but if someone want to hold their own symbol and show their values, the clothes produced by the assembly line are not the best choice. Learning to make their own clothes could help people find their own values. But if they could make the fabric by themselves, the relationship between author and clothes will become deeper. Like the coding world, after the first class I learnt, I could create my own brush instead of downloading from the internet. It seems that we got more freedom to alter and share my work, not only playing on other people’s palm.

It seems that everyone now is becoming the slave of software. People share daily life and communicate through electronic devices. It is a challenge for us to design more user-friendly-ness stuff, to awake people to get rid of the fate of software controlling.

[lillianlii]

Week 1 - Creative Computing – Image, Sound, Motion[book]

I learnt the history about Mathematics and computing this week. In Babylonians, people used right angles to construct buildings. In Ancient Greece, geometry was developed, Pythagoras’ Theorem appeared. In the period 800-1400, modern algebra appears. The Arabic numerals which we are accustomed with was come from Indian. The vision was connected with geometry during the Renaissance in the west. The first computer programmers came up in 1843.

Telescopes and microscopes have not been so useful to the eye as this instrument would be in adding to the capacity of thought. Programming as a new skill for me is not only a tool for creating stuff, but also a new way of considering the world. Different order of the same commands may cause totally different results.

The relationship between music and architecture here is quite interesting. Iannis Xenakis said, architecture as being about articulating structures in space, while music involves deploying structures in time, in both cases involving calculation and reasoning. Programming is also deploying code in time and space, loop or repeat. And He introduced many new possibilities about music, like treating the individual musicians as molecules in a gas through the sound world.That is a quite interesting way for thinking.