Gifs

Since we made gifs in class and I have Photoshop at home, I wanted to try it in my own time. I used a drawing I had done recently and tried to make it blink.

I used three layers (full open, half open, closed) then repeated the half open layer to the end (ie. full open, half open, closed, half open.)

At first I attempted to control the speed of the blinking by increasing/decreasing the copies of each frame. It would be viewed fine as a preview on Photoshop or as an html but once it was saved as a gif, the animation would speed up incredibly.

I later realised the frames could be delayed and assumed this may make the gif move slower. I delayed the frames by 2sec, 0.2 sec, 1sec, 0.2sec respectively. Since the theme of the drawing was a (living) doll, I felt slow and sheepish blinking was appropriate.

Unfortunately the quality of the image did have to be reduced in order for me to save it.

Ideas

After this week’s power point I was able to gain an insight on what artworks are possible to create through this course. Out of the many works shown in the ‘Overview of Internet Art’ power point, several stick to mind:

• Paul Sermon, Telematic Dreaming, 1992

I thought this was a very interesting and intimate way of expressing the things technology, art and the internet can do. It can bring people who are miles away together and allow you to interact with images you otherwise would not be able to.

• JoDi, JoDi.org,1995

I thought this a clever idea to forcibly show the viewer how the screen really looks and works, though I am hesitating to visit the site.

• Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back From The War, 1996

I have always enjoyed and had an interest in storytelling. The narrative form and purely black and white images reminded me of printmaking, the books I made with lino in particular (it was one of our assessment pieces.) Though Lialina’s work is minimal in its interactive aspect, I find the idea of an interactive story charming.

• Lisa Jebvratt, 1:1, 1999

Visually, I find this work fun because of the highly saturated colours and it’s resemblance to a screen.The thought of it being composed of every single site at the time is amazing and somehow just as underwhelming as it is overwhelming—can all the sites now fit in the same piece? I think it is interesting how many of the sites then no longer work, there is a sense of time, the change the comes along with it and advancement. It is bittersweet but interesting.

• Casey Reas, Path, 2001

Path is a series of prints that document the movement of synthetic neural systems. Each line in the image reveals the history of one system’s movement as it navigates its environment…

I remember this piece mostly for its aesthetic aspect. It is mesmerizing to follow the coloured lines around the frame. I find it fascinating how such fluid, organic lines, that I find resemble strands or hair, can be associated with technology—an unnatural and mechanic being. I imagine it would create more geometric and sharp movements.

• Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Half Breed Apache, 2001

I thought this was smart and charmingly cheeky. The simple bold text paired with the upbeat music is fun, playful mocking—like somewhat geeky banter.

I would like my final project to include some of these works’ qualities is either technique or the response it gets from the audience. In truth, the outcome of my project will probably depend on what I learn and which of those skills I will be confident enough to use. Currently I still find coding and using Dreamweaver rather overwhelming and confusing. It is challenging for me to fully grasp what I am doing/supposed to do if I do not understand the concept and why to do certain things. Given the time frame, I will probably avoid using Dreamweaver for my project if I can.

Artist Research: Mez Breeze

M Breeze, Codeology.

Codeology is a project that combines art and code. The codes are rendered into visual representations with differing colours, forms and sizes to symbolize and categorize different languages and the number of characters of code written.¹

An algorithm analyzes GitHub projects and creates unique organic forms based on the codebase size and language. As no two pieces of code are alike, no two Codeology forms are alike. —M Breeze

The application extracts data from GitHub’s public API to create forms using WebGL, Three.js and GLSL Shaders. Currently Codeology is able to recognize and uniquely render 108 different languages including Java, Elixir and CSS.² 

Some pieces produced by Codeology look like flowers and fauna, others look like organisms or insects and some almost seem to resemble pixelated game characters and graphics. They all hover on a plain black background, spinning slowly like decorative objects for sale. The forms can be deconstructed to show the individual languages, it is as if one it dissecting a heart or animal in a biology class. The way the project intertwines both life-like forms with code, creates an almost digital product of life.