#art blocks not lettine me art >:C

[miwachan2]

Art block is bullying me >:C

[dvtsr]

 // WHT IS A REFLECTION?

if(reading == reflection){

    please listen to (Han-Tyumi and The Murder of the Universe);              else (experience great boredom, following reflection is long winded);

}

THE POST-DIGITAL PROTOTYPE

With a project (//brief) this open it was hard to decide where to begin, the post digital was such a colossal topic it was easy to get lost in SPRINT tunnels where you would start fifty micro projects only to abandon them all and be left with nought.

Having grown up with my nose in a book, specifically Sci-Fi epic’s and dystopian thrillers, this studio option was an easy pick. When given the brief, rather than a solid idea I had a feeling I wanted to encapsulate. A pseudo Orwellian future in which we are monitored constantly, not menacingly but very blatantly. 14 year old me would have been disappointed by the mediocralypse we are living through. Instead of a cold judge Dredd / Robocop patrolling the streets it is Siri watching us, reminding us to take an umbrella less we catch a cold.

When I got my new iPhone [TM(TM) TM] I turned off all the regular ad/ tracking settings only to find within a few weeks that without me having ever set anything, it knew where work was, when I was working and when I was coming back home. This was on by default, hidden in settings be-riddled with sudden jargon. 

(the setting was frequent locations) INITIAL BRAINSTORMING:

With all the aforementioned in mind I chose to focus on “looking at screens works both ways.” For the first part of this task I initially wanted to create a book out of paper that would dissolve under certain conditions, or create a publication that reflected my sentiments that I would expand upon in this final segment. However as I continued my research on the “post digital,” I began to think about my own future as both a designer and individual. The design industry is simultaneously competitive and collaborative. I thought a lot about what kinds of clients I wanted to attract, sectors I wanted to work in and what set me apart as my own designer. There are enough/too many Frankie magazine designers already, regurgitating the same grid patterns and shallow works, printing the same idea month after month.  

This is A Magazine, Compendium #3 “Chaos Happens.”  Shown work by: Flutro-Creative Services Unit 

It was from here that I realised that I personally couldn’t make another perfect bound print publication as my own interests didn’t align with this. To expand my practice I decided I needed to buckle down and do something I had little experience in. This is how I landed on coding. Whilst a daunting task I really do believe to evolve and stay ahead of the AI-designer-DoomBots who will inevitably replace us, it’s imperative we learn thy enemy. To bring something other than roast, peas and mash to the dinner table. 

In the same way we swapped traditional waterfall methods in our ideation/prototyping phase I wanted to SPRINT my own portfolio and make use of the opportunity to work on a concept driven design as opposed to a finished work. Whilst AI can mimic human semantics and create pretty websites it is yet to learn to think of it’s OWN ideas and it is this that is perhaps our best asset as flesh and bone.  On the same tangent, I wanted to explore the popularity of computer companionship. With the Mac OSX Sierra update, ‘Siri’ also lives in your desktop. Amazon released ‘Alexa’ and Google retaliated with ‘Google Home.’ All bots designed to assist your livelihood by taking over rudimentary tasks such as adding items to cart, checking the weather or playing music. The real appeal in these bots is not their ability to tell you what time it is in Denmark but their capability for relatively smooth, realistic conversation. How is it in a world more connected than ever, we feel isolated enough to require a live at home robot companion?

Like a housewife from the 50′s, only Alexa can’t stick her head in the oven!

It was from here that I began looking into the feeling of loneliness in the post digital scape. Looking through my phone I found screenshots I had taken from a twitch stream of two google home bots set up such that they could converse with each other (side note: the rise of streaming culture/ Instagram live is an interesting foray into how we consume media and how rapidly it’s changing!! Saving it for another post!!) .

V: “what date” E: “the date you’re going to take me on.” V: “I don’t know we’ll have to see” Too real google, too real  :----(

��If you don’t want to talk about Harry Potter I’m leaving”

Which reminded me of my own experiences chatting with bots. Cleverbot was super popular while I was in primary school as were portable offline versions of this with devices like 20Q. Our romanticism of talking to an algorithm is evidently nothing new. As AI ultimately reflects our own speech, is wanting to imbue human qualities in a string of data the ultimate form of narcissism?  Or is it our collective cry for help, to save us from our own loneliness.  This theory culminated when I read through/devoured The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present by Shumon Basar and co. (thx for lettin’ me borrow it Andy).  

Growing up with video games it wasn’t until recently I’d noticed how isolated games that weren’t MMO or server based made me feel. Disconnected almost.  Even open world games like the Witcher never truly asked:

Thus they never responded to my most current emotional needs. It was from there that I decided I wanted to create my own solution to this. I started with idea of collecting meta-data to fill in variables in a block of text. After strenuous research I realised with the time available and my lack of prior experience the code required to string this together was far too complex. From there I dug into machine learning some more,  finally discovering Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is a corporate orientated tech service which provides servers and API’s to aid in a vast range of analytic type applications. It was pay-per-use however as I was not sending it 10,000 hits at once it was a couple of cents per request.  Unfortunately the AWS Rekognition software (which is infinitely cool, able to recognise objects, faces, expressions, age, gender and gestures with a certain amount of certainty) was region locked to North America and very buggy through my VPN :--(

I did get it to work a few times. Ultimately this was weeks of learning python and wrangling with Terminal down the drain. Deflated I wasted a few too many nights out/at bars trying not to think about my impending failure for this assignment. It was from there that I found Microsoft Azure, a similar service to AWS it provided the same recognition and the added promise of analysing “emotion.” Again I put in my credit card details only to find that the API was locked to North American servers and also too complex to incorporate for my own uses. In my growing list of abandoned ideas, I’d hoped to incorporate the raspberry pi into my project mostly because I really wanted to play with it. I loved the appeal of it’s blank canvas nature and the anarchy within creating your own systems as opposed to simply absorbing what is fed to you. At this point I’m losing a lot of sleep over /getting it done./ I’d watched hour upon hour of Java and then Python tutorial hoping to build this damn application. I then came upon openFrameworks (OF). Similar to Processing, OF is an arts-engineering toolkit, like well fertilised soil is to plants oF makes the coding process easier. However it is still just a nursing ground and to plant and grow your project you still need a firm grasp on the basics and semantics of C++.  It was at this point I discovered  http://www.facetracker.net, an Open CV2  library for ~ tracking dat face ~  Developed by Jason Saragih, it was wrapped for openFrameworks by Kyle McDonald. Most of the resources used in this project ended up being Frankenstein-ed together as I found most online tutorials were either lacking or 7 years old. Equipped with a source code I was still inept at writing a code to utilise this library. This project was like trying to solve a puzzle where all the pieces are made of bubbles and the instructions are in Russian. Luckily for me I love puzzles. I went on self loathing wiki-hole after wiki-hole trying to find help. I had all the parts I just didn’t know how to make them work together.  

* note time stamps * Luckily openFrameworks came with a small library of tutorials which sent me in a better direction. It was 4 am and I was getting delusional when I finally stumbled upon a template Dan Wilcox had developed around FaceTracker for students at Carnegie Mellon Universities School of Art Faculty ( In Pittsburgh USA). This became the skeleton which I broke and rebuilt and furthered to build my own monster. 

I changed the colours on my compiler (Xcode) so I felt more like hackerman B--) From there I did far more math than to my liking to integrate my facial structure into the algorithms:

If I had been more apt at coding I would have liked to have actual face recognition as opposed to tracking. Baby steps, perhaps for my next project. I started with the idea of the book changing large volumes  of text depending on expressions, however it was too difficult to maintain one expression for any extraneous period of time. Coming back to my initial research ( with content driven on current emotional needs) I decided to use poetry. For each relevant emotion I assigned a poem/snippet which I both cherish and relate to a feeling. 

The emotions and poems I ended up with are as follows: Happy: ->  smiling Yes Yes, Charles Bukowski Angry: -> brows furrowed and eyes squinted Snippet of The Divine Comedy - Inferno, Dante Alighieri  Shocked: -> mouth open Alone with Everybody, Charles Bukowski Tired: -> close to the screen Rhapsody on a Windy Night, TS Eliot

Confused: -> Far from screen Jabberwocky, CS Lewis

As emotions are never singular, neither are the outputs. If you show signs of multiple emotions they will clash and play at the same time. The fluidity of the text on screen mirrors the unanchored nature of thoughts and feelings.  I also initially did not have the little face on screen, however found it more charming/uncomfortable to see a visual reminder of your constant surveillance.  Whilst un-menacing it is slightly disgruntling to know you are being watched. Some test screens (as in the opening GIF):

 Now armed with a deliverable software, my next hurdle was submission. I wanted to incorporate a physical art element that grounds the project as something tangible whilst maintaining the romanticism in the playful app, i.e I didn’t want to have it simply downloaded from a boring dropbox or CD as the prototype relies on “ inspiring a hope for a future outcome. ”  To physical represent both my Frankenstein-ed code (which has been passed down forward and tweaked by four generations of people to get to this!! In the spirit of open source I will also upload my version to GitHub) I deconstructed an old hard drive and replaced its casing with old mobile phones. Another technology rapidly evolving and leaving behind carcasses. Building new through old, forging future with the bones of the past. It also includes a charger noose to remind viewers of the potential perils of living entirely online. This is countered by cute stickers and a smiley face to also remind viewers that things moving forwards doesn’t have to be scary.

In conclusion this Studio was like an incredible buffet in which I took way too much food but enjoyed all of it none the less. The book club meetings were incredibly rewarding and a pleasant change of pace from other classes. I’ve learnt so so much from class discussions and just being surrounded by super super suppppperrrr work. These are all concepts/skills/thought processes I’ll carry forward into future works both in academia and beyond. Honestly though my favourite part has just been absorbing other peoples works. Through and through my favourite class ( and the only class I’d come to uni at 9 am for.) 💖🌸💕💗 Thank u everybody for an incredible semester!  

[tarot-tatas]

Grease (19/?) Rarepair Grease!AU

Chapter Nineteen: The Snap

Read it on AO3

Lift up the skirt to read ;)c

“Nico-chan, are you sure about this?” Hanayo asked her smaller friend, flat as she could go against the lockers as students passed. The buzz of conversation spread as each student or groups of walked by, and the school walls didn't help the volume control as the echo increased to the point that Hanayo was wincing. Nico, the Pink Lady in question, was fixing her hair and seemed completely invested in her mirror that was attached to the door of her locker. “Positive, I skipped a period. Lucky Honk and Hoshi are cool,” Nico spoke brokenly as she fluffed each twin tail three times and twirled her hair around her bangs. Hanayo bit her cheek and fumbled with the books that were in her arms. She was still shaken from the drive-in, and had not seen or spoken to Nozomi since. The girl had run home and refused to go out with Kotori the following day, saying she felt sick. “And yes, they know.” Hanayo was becoming more confused by the second, so she just decided to drop the questions and fish around in her jacket for a snack. “I’d help you out with a sugar rush, but I’ve got two mouths to feed,” Nico didn’t sound to remorseful. Hanayo just sighed and pulled out a candy bar from her jacket. She was still fairly traumatised, and instantly felt worse upon realising that the block of chocolate she had just shoved down her throat was bought for her by Nozomi.

Ignoring the loud noises of banging metal and screeching steel as best she could, Nozomi leaned against the outside of the school garage. It was a surprisingly hot day, to the point that the majority of the T-Birds had taken off their jackets (Honoka and Rin were only wearing half of their jump suits, with the top halves wrapped around their waists to expose sweaty armpits.) Nozomi, however, was too stubborn to remove her jacket, so the leather was sticking to her skin as her hair became plastered to her face. She exhaled the smoke from her cigarette with a sigh, and looked down at her sketchbook. Nozomi, despite her shenanigans, was actually a decent student - in regards to her grades. However, her favourite subject was art. She would sit in a tree with her sketchbook, drawing all the designs she could think of. They ranged from drawings of cars, to neon signs, to action figures and little comics that would make the three idiots laugh and Umi angry. But in order to distract herself from her mistake with Hanayo, Nozomi had drawn up a rather interesting design: Thunderbolts, with two different shades of blue, along with orange and yellow accents and purple block colours. She was so lost in her work that she didn’t hear a pair of heels clicking up to her. “What’s with the dumb grin, Tits Mcgee?” Snapping her head up, Nozomi saw Maki with her arms folded and a packet of cigarettes in her left hand. “Has the heat finally made you mad? Not that you aren’t already.” Instantly, Nozomi scowled and flared her nostrils. “Whadda ya want, Red,” she growled, fists clenching over her notebook. “Got a light? Nico-chan took mine,” Maki raised an eyebrow. Nozomi roughly took her silver zippo out of her pocket and clicked it to life. “Ya ain’t concerned about Niccochi puffin’ with a bun in the oven?” “She isn’t pregnant,” Maki deadpanned, flicking a cigarette into the flame then bringing it to her lips. “Ya seem so sure,” Nozomi grumbled, puffing out more smoke herself. “My family are doctors,” Maki shrugged, inhaling the toxins slowly. “She had no obvious signs of pregnancy, and it’s more than just skipping a period. I’ll bet you by the time we graduate she will blow it off and make some shit up. Besides,” Maki exhaled and tossed her hair out of her face, “she’s dumb.” Nozomi smirked, but didn’t say anything. “You’re still a dog for what you did to Hanayo.” The T-Bird scowled again with gritted teeth. “None of ya business.” “It ain’t, but Kotori had to comfort her in the bathroom today. The poor girl couldn’t even go to class.” Nozomi’s heart plummeted into her stomach, and her blood ran cold. “Yeah, that’s what I thought t-” “Oh shut the fuck up!” Nozomi kicked herself off the wall and glared at the Pinky Lady, who didn’t flinch once. “Ya think ya know shit?!” The shouting clearly caught Honoka’s attention, because she bounded off the car and out the garage door to see what was going on. Upon inspection, Honoka stood between Maki and Nozomi, her orange shirt stained with sweat. She instantly reacted and grabbed Nozomi’s arms to pull her back from Maki. “Cool it, Nozomi-chan,” Honoka was strong enough to not be phased by Nozomi’s lurches and kicks towards Maki. “Maki-chan,” Honoka smiled, then turned around and manoeuvred Nozomi into a headlock, using the position to half-drag half-force the older T-Bird back into the garage. - “Honk! Get da fuck off me!” Nozomi snapped and tried to free herself from Honoka’s vice grip. Her voice echoed throughout the garage, as did the scuffing of her worn sneakers against the concrete floor. Rin, who was sitting on the bonnet of the Mercury, just laughed. “Nozomi-chan's nyat gonna get outta Honk’s grip,” Nozomi glared at the youngest T-Bird as she continued to struggle. “I ain’t lettin’ you go until you calm down,” Honoka remained calm and refused to loosen her grip. “Maki-chan always riles people up, that’s just Maki-chan,” she explained, ignoring Rin jumping down from the Mercury to skip up to the two. “Nyeah, and if ya wanna make up with Kayo-chin, its gotta be done by nyaself,” Rin added. Nozomi stopped struggling for a bit, her purple hair falling into her eyes. She remained quiet, only breathing heavily as she swirled around in her thoughts. Honoka and Rin looked at each other, confused by the sudden drop of resistance from the usually-stubborn older T-Bird. “Nozomi-chan?” Rin asked quietly, bending down to try and see through the mess of hair and into her eyes. Suddenly, Nozomi snapped up, finally getting out of Honoka’s grip. “C’mon tabbies,” she then pulled her sketchbook out of her pocket and stormed over to the table in the corner that had cans of spray paint. Honoka and Rin looked at eachother, confused. “Come to where?” Honoka asked, watching Nozomi slap her book down on the table and flicking it open to a page. The T-Bird then picked up a can of spray paint and marched over to the car. “We’re gonna spice up Muse Lightnin’,” Nozomi’s voice was muffled as she took her purple shirt and stuck her nose and mouth inside the neck hole. “Look at the sketchpad, pick a colour and get over here,” the oldest T-Bird ordered over her shoulder at the two gingers. When they still refused to move, Nozomi turned around and snarled at them. “NOW!” Honoka and Rin jumped in fear and scampered over to the table. Nozomi bit her lip and continued to focus on her design, ignoring the swirling dark thoughts about Hanayo crying.

Umi was used to getting into fights. She did have an older sister, after all, and they would do karate and such together. Her sister would always win, but Umi practiced and practiced until at the age of fifteen, right before her sister moved out, she was able to beat her. From then on, Umi was never beaten in a fight, and very rarely took any hits on herself. Once in a blue moon, her opponent would land a punch or scratch, but the worst she had ever received was a broken nose from Erena.To add to her bare list was what was happening right now: getting slammed into a gym locker back-first by Eli. “What the FUCK Umi?!” Umi remained calm, despite the sight of the tall angry blonde looming over her. Eli’s face was contorted in rage, with steam blowing out of her ears. “I apologise again,” Umi’s low voice only enraged Eli more, and it earned her another slam against the lockers. Brown eyes shut tightly as the force of her own body caused the pain to shoot through her body and the ringing to start in her ears. Eli’s fingers curled around the top of Umi’s dark blue shirt, lifting her off the ground with no effort at all. “You fucked me over!” “And for the third time, I apologise,” Umi was a master at remaining calm when it came to her gang members, but it was proving difficult with Eli. She knew how dangerous Eli could be, and she had to admit that owning up to this mistake was a double-edged sword. “SHUT UP!” Another slam, this time the back of Umi’s head collided with the three groove in the locker, and her vision turned dark for a few seconds. “You fucked me over in front of the town!” Eli shifted Umi’s shirt into one fist and raised her other. She clenched it so hard that her knuckles turned white. Umi braced herself for what was about to come. “You dick!” Eli punched Umi square in the cheek. “Asshole!” Another punch. “You No-good! Slimy! Mother! Fucker!” With each insult came a punch, and Umi knew she deserved every single one of them. Sure enough, her face went numb, and crumbled to the ground after one final slam against the lockers when Eli let go of her. Wincing in pain, Umi naturally curled up into herself, ignoring the metallic  taste of blood coming from inside her mouth. Eli was standing over her, her chest heaving in rage. “You think you can just apologise to fix this?!” Eli kicked Umi hard in the stomach. “No..” Umi coughed out blood and wretched as Eli kicked her again. “Then why tell me?!” Eli snapped, glaring at Umi in a blind rage. “Because...it’s the honorable thing to do…” was all Umi could manage, looking up at Eli with watery eyes as her mental defenses started to shatter. “Honorable?” Eli hissed through her teeth and clenched her fists tighter. “HONORABLE?!” another kick. “YOU DIDN’T THINK ABOUT HONOUR OR SHIT WHEN YOU TRIGGERED A PHOBIA?!” Umi knew there was no point in arguing. Because Eli, who was continuing to beat and kick her to a pulp, was right. The very reason why Umi messed with Eli in the first place, and it had come around to bite her. Surely what Eli was doing was not right, but this was Ayase Eli. Eli was right, she was always right, and there was nothing Umi could do about it.