In thinking about using/visualizing 3d information:
Robert Lazzarini warps familiar objects and then re-casts them in the original materials. The skulls are cast in ground bone, so they are pale and matte. Visually they are difficult to comprehend. You want to physically hold them in your hands to understand them, because they look flat against the wall instead of actually three dimensional.
http://www.robertlazzarini.com/
DIY 3d scan (destructive)
Following a short brainstorming session, our group (Shahar & Molly) converged on the idea of destructive scanning (what does that say about us?). We liked the idea of consuming the object as it’s getting scanned and “rebuilt” in 3D in the computer.
Here’s the code we ended up using.
carrot from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
carrotae from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
LABEL
Assignment:
i. Create a jury system for selecting cultural texts for inclusion in
an exhibition (exhibition could mean a proposed gallery installation,
a video, a website, a collection of texts). Present your results in
class.
For this project, you will need to make the following decisions:
What source material will you use? Options could include: a call for
entries, an existing archive or library or art collection, paid
submissions via Mechanical Turk, a selection of consumer goods that
you bring to classWho will be your jury? Do you want the project to be juried in class,
online, or by some other body of participants?What are the criteria, and how are these criteria communicated to the
judges? This is a particularly thorny topic. Please do make an attempt
to define the criteria clearly.How are the results then presented to the public? Your exhibition can
be a gallery-style exhibition; a video; a website.Within this last point is an additional question: how will this
exhibition be interpreted or contextualized? Context is everything,
and the creation or adoption of a context for presenting the works in
your exhibition is really up to you. Even if you just published the
selected works on a Tumblr page, there are still questions of labeling
and design that come up.
The class is the jury.
One half of the class gets this on paper:
SCENARIO:
You ride in a small canoe towards a lumpy overgrown cliff.
As you approach you see an opening in the rock face, an entrance to a cave, curtained with dangling vines and moss.
The canoe enters the cave opening and travels along a meandering passage lit with shafts of sunlight.
As the canoe rounds a corner, the narrow waterway opens out into the pool of a large cathedral cave.
The cave walls are pale, smooth and glossy.
COMPONENTS:
The jury should quickly list their answers as a group, as you only have a few minutes to decide. Each member has right to veto another’s answer, however as a group, you must have an answer to each question.
Ambient:
What is the temperature?
What do you hear?
What colors do you see?
What time of year is it?
What do you smell?Physical:
What is your external and internal state: (i.e., dry/wet hungry/thirsty tired/energetic illuminated/obtuse, etc)?
Who is paddling the canoe?Terrestrial:
Is there anything living in the cave? If yes, what
What does the water look like?
What does the ceiling look like?
The other half of the class got this:
SCENARIO:
You are walking down a dark sidewalk towards a lumpy construction site.
As you approach you see an opening in the plywood fence, an entrance to the site, curtained with dangling vines and trash.
You enter through the gap and travel along a temporary construction walkway lit with shafts of dusty light.
As you round a corner, the narrow passage opens out into a large cathedral like space.
The walls are pale, smooth and glossy.
COMPONENTS:
The jury should quickly list their answers as a group, as you only have a few minutes to decide. Each member has right to veto another’s answer, however as a group, you must have an answer to each question.
Ambient:
What is the temperature?
What do you hear?
What colors do you see?
What time of year is it?
What do you smell?Physical:
What is your external and internal state: (i.e., dry/wet hungry/thirsty tired/energetic illuminated/obtuse, etc)?
Who is walking with you?Terrestrial:
Is there anything living in the site? If yes, what?
What does the floor look like?
What does the ceiling look like?
The responses, switched:
Assignment: Break an implicit or explicit rule in an art institution (don’t get arrested).
I’m having a lot of trouble with this assignment.
Rules in galleries and art spaces exist for mainly for two reasons: to protect the art and to ensure the safety of visitors. Personally, I don’t find the spaces too terribly precious, and don’t have much interest in breaking a rule. I’m completely comfortable in museums and galleries and art spaces, having worked in, participated in, shown in and tourist-ed in many, many different kinds of art institutions. And, being so comfortable, I have about zero desire to rebel. In undergrad at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I worked at the epic Field Museum of Natural History. We used to sneak into the diorama exhibits and once participated in a lip-sync performance of “Hooked on a Feeling” behind the glass with the mangy cavemen (it was hilarious). In other art institutions I’ve acted out, talked when I shouldn’t have, eaten when I shouldn’t have, gotten too close to the art, was impolite, was too polite, met artists, dealers, curators, engaged the staff, engaged other visitors, ignored other visitors, and even once may have licked a painting at the Art Institute of Chicago (or maybe a friend did that, I can’t quite recollect). We used the museum part of the Art Institute as a thruway, for naps, to be alone, a place to have arguments, to draw, to think, and sometimes even just to see the art.
I’ve thought about possibilities for the project, in an attempt to fulfill the assignment despite my incredible reluctance to do so. I thought perhaps I’ll learn something from the project if I force myself to do it. I could write “litter” on a piece of paper and drop it on the floor. I abhor litter, this would break not only an implicit rule but a personal rule. But that felt false and contrived. I thought about changing a baby in a gallery space. Bringing a food treat to someone who works there as a gift, some way of changing the nature of the activities within the space. I thought of bringing someone and having a too loud conversation about something tiny. I thought of going and just staying in a gallery for way way way too long. I thought about standing outside, looking in. I thought about having a discussion in front of a piece of art, about what I am supposed to be doing.
But I can’t bring myself to. The outcomes seem to be constrained to be dull, or cause damage, irritating/antagonizing the staff, or embarrassing someone else or myself. Potentially there could be humor and that would entertain us, the class, but to what end? The assignment feels forced. I’m going to have to wait this one out, until I can find a meaningful purpose to do something. I really hope to be impressed by other people’s projects and outcomes/experiences.
I was curious to do some reading into other people’s actions, breaking the rules. An interesting story is Tony Shafrazi’s 1974 graffiti attack on Guernica, which at the time was hanging at the MoMA. Shafrazi of today can’t quite explain why younger Shafrazi did it, other than to say things along the lines of, ‘it was a different time’. His earlier explanation: ‘I wanted to bring the art absolutely up to date, to retrieve it from art history and give it life. Maybe that’s why the Guernica action remains so difficult to deal with. I tried to trespass beyond that invisible barrier that no one is allowed to cross; I wanted to dwell within the act of the painting’s creation, get involved with the making of the work, put my hand within it and by that act encourage the individual viewer to challenge it, deal with it and thus see it in its dynamic raw state as it was being made, not as a piece of history.’ I’ve heard that the laws on vandalizing art were made stronger after the incident. Yet the painting was restored perfectly, immediately, which is probably why Shafrazi was given probation. A completely audacious act, breaking the most explicit rule (don’t hurt the art), yet one with no physical repercussions. I’ve seen Guernica in Spain. It’s fine.
Arturo & I decided to collaborate on project #1:
“Working with a partner, use a website such as Mechanical Turk to ask a question, make an offer or assign a task.”
Our original conversation started out curious about the workers themselves. We thought of requesting self portraits.
Self portrait as a ____
Self portrait in a ____
We were online last Sunday chatting about last weeks readings, and about project ideas and came to the very efficient idea of requesting the Turk workers do the reading / summarizing for us. A two-fer, as it were. And for a bonus, we’d ask for a quick self-portrait. We looked into using a live HTML drawing tool for workers to draw, but Arturo suggested we go for ASCII portraits, a la his email signature, almost as an afterthought.
We gave ourselves a budget of $50 ($25 each). Arturo scanned the pages, counted the number of paragraphs, and we worked up a price per paragraph scheme: 50¢ per paragraph, 50 words max. We’d get several summaries per paragraph and then pick the best and reconstitute it into a single summary for each of the week’s six readings. They would be a fragmented versions of the texts, with the shorter paragraphs much more likely to be summarized than the longer ones based on the 50¢ flat rate per paragraph. We thought it would be interesting to see if workers would engage a text in its entirety (which is what usually occurs) or if they would get simply go for the highest time/pay ratio. What happens to the meaning of a text when it is summarized in parts rather than as a whole? Would all the paragraphs be summarized or just the easiest cost effective ones? Would we be able to make sense of a assembled text to complete our homework?
The system of Mechanical Turk has a lot of interesting rules that preserve the sense of anonymous community, as well as consideration for labor ethics. Our plan was not going to cut it. First of all, positive reinforcement is used in approval system, just like in animal training: if a worker doesn’t do the job (trick) well you must reject their work and they won’t get the payment (reward). Doing so, “will train a worker who is making a specific mistake.” Setting the payment really low would not only lose the interest of a lot of the workers, the ones who actually do it would be set up to fail due to poor incentive. We didn’t think the added value of art theory education would get any traction.
Our task also had a poor cost effectiveness. We had to scan the documents, isolate the paragraphs in Photoshop, number them, and embed them as individual tasks in the Mechanical Turk interface. Then we had to think of parameters that would aid the workers in being most efficient at their task, ie setting them up to succeed by removing as many speed bumps as possible in the task description. Quickly it clear that this was unwieldy and going to take forever, so we started narrowing down to just a couple of the shorter readings. It was still a ton of paragraphs, so we chose to do just the Tiravanija reading, as we were wondering what people would make of the individual paragraphs in that particular article. While uploading the individual paragraphs into a blog made for just this purpose, and pasting paragraphs into individual Turk HITs, it became apparent that we had to do something else.
The self portrait bonus box just looked so appealing and perfect on its own. We discussed and agreed to ditch the paragraph summaries and go straight for the visual goods. At $1 per portrait, we requested 45, setting aside $4.50 for the administrative fee so as to stay under budget. A total of $49.50 spent.
The hits were created and published at 1:00pm on September 23rd.
All hits were completed by 2:46pm on September 23rd.
Less than 2 hours.
We were amazed to see how quickly they were all taken and completed. Such an incredible feeling that we’d hired this anonymous mass of humans and they were simultaneously churning out their individual mini works of art. I wondered if they were enjoying themselves. According to the batch manager, the initial time spent was closer to 3 or 4 minutes, with an hourly rate of $16-17 ish. But by the end, the average time spent was 5 minutes, with an hourly average of $11.96.
Watching the batch results as they were streaming in, we were extremely disappointed to see that there were no carriage returns in the comments… the portraits showed up as a single line of characters. We’d never be able to recreate the portraits exactly.
But when the batch was done, there was an option to download the .csv file and there, like presents, were the portraits as created by the Turk workers. They were clearly enjoying themselves. Only one appears R-rated & with a caption “Naked Me!” Some are quite creative with use of characters and very personable.
Conclusion: ASCII self-portraits are quite descriptive of personality and looks through a few simple shapes and lines. The low-resolution solution gave people a somewhat level playing field as the technical prowess of a good draughtsperson would not be as helpful without the HTML drawing tablet. There are a limited number of ASCII characters, and we hoped the finite number of possibilities would compel workers to identify expressive shapes with their own looks. We wanted the workers to be aware of themselves, to think of themselves as they worked for [100] pennies. We also wanted to have the signature of each person who worked on it. Indeed, the signature of 45 people is the piece itself. Perhaps a title would be untitled in parenthesis 45 self-portraits in ASCII.
The assignment as the workers would see.
Batch details from the Turk site
Oh no! The portraits appear on a single line... the artistry lost.
And finally, as the workers intended, more or less.
Mechanical Turk Worker Self Portraits
Here is some photo & video documentation from the installation at the ITP Spring Show 2010.
More about the Processing & code — Nature of Code class, see this post.
More about the Video part — Animals class, see this post.
Interactive eel nursery, 3/4 view. Photo by Tom Igoe.
Interactive eel nursery, top view. Photo by Lee-Sean Huang.
Still from video installation. Photo by Tom Igoe.
Still from video installation. Photo by Tom Igoe.
Close up of eel drawing, laser cut in masonite.
In front was a small round table containing the Processing eels. Attached was a small electret microphone, the circuit built with Eric Rosenthal’s help in Project Development Studio. People could sing or blow to get the eels to react. They always reacted to blowing, but only reacted to some peoples singing… finicky little wigglers.
Behind the table was a long narrow screen, 1920×540 — HD in width, but cropped to half height, with a projection of the Bellyful of Eels animated video. Above the video was the laser cut drawing of eels in masonite.
Here is a video of the eels motion when left alone:
Bellyful of Eels: Eels left alone (Documentation 01) from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
Here is Paul R. talking to the eels:
Bellyful of Eels: Paul R. talking to the eels (Documentation 02) from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
Here is Rune M. singing to the eels:
Bellyful of Eels: Rune M. singing to the Eels (Documentation 03) from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
This is the animated video, that was projected on a narrow screen behind the interactive
eel nursery. The video follows the life cycle of common river eel, using a variety of
animation techniques: drawn, computer generated, particle system, puppeting,
claymation and including exported frames from the Processing sketch:
Bellyful of Eels: Animated Video from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
Nature of Code Final:
Bellyful of Eels
Glass Eel Farm
I continued to work on the eels in Processing, trying to get a balance between wiggliness, fluidity and a sense that the eels were individuals. As I continue, I’d still like to work on getting a a bit more oscillation originating from the tail end of the eels.
The table is set up with a projection from below. The surface is clear glass – the projection is not visible until the plate is filled with goo. I used Guar Gum, a semi-translucent sticky, slightly off white vegan goo made from a bean. Guar gum is a commonly used thickener in salad dressings and breads. I learned that the gum does go bad when kept in a plastic container unrefrigerated for more than 2 days… but when left out in the air, it simply dries out. Eric Rosenthal pointed out that it was a “growth medium” as well, so perhaps there will be another level of life in the project.
Some stills from the installation:
Photo by Jonathan Ystad
Photo by Jonathan Ystad
The processing sketch & code is here.
Further development: I’m going to add an audio component for the installation. I’ve built a microphone in Eric Rosenthal’s Electronic Project Development Studio class, and I’d like to have the eels respond to the audio.
Bellyful of Eels
Bellyful of Eels from Molly Schwartz on Vimeo.
Anguilla japonica (Asia)
Anguilla anguilla (Europe)
Anguilla rostrata (North America)
Rivers eels are un-confinable, un-farmable, they are very common but much of their reproductive cycle remains mysterious. Adult eels seem currently plentiful, yet the numbers of glass eels and elvers (immature eels) entering the rivers of Asia, Europe and North America are declining rapidly… scientists believe there will be an eel population crisis as the next few generations of eels mature from this much reduced population of juveniles. Eels have been a popular contemporary and historical food source worldwide, an aspect of their relationship with humans affecting the ecology of these creatures. They are impossible to reproduce in captivity. Instead, they are captured as glass eels and raised in nurseries. Bellyful of Eels is an animation using a collage of drawn animation, claymation, puppeting, animation generated in Processing code and compositing to explore the life cycle of the eel. This narrative follows them transforming on a cellular level from a saltwater larval creature to a freshwater fish as the young eels leave the ocean to enter the rivers along the inhabited human world. Many are fished, the remaining eels live out their the majority of their lives in a solitary muddy river bottom of their own choosing. The eels second and final internal transformation, from freshwater back to saltwater fish, occurs as they leave their river homes, reenter the oceans, disappearing unseen into the depths to reproduce and complete their cycle.