EVENT 3 | COLOR LIGHT MOTION | Quinn Winter

The event “Color Light Motion” hosted by artist Toni Dove presented and discussed many examples of the immersive art installations that she creates. Toni’s work intertwines everything that we have experienced throughout this course, using the skills of art, math and science to create technological interactive art exhibits. Throughout the event, Toni mentions multiple times how interested in exploring the question of why humans continue to make robots that most similarly replicate ourselves, such as her art does. Toni’s art reminds me most of our Unit 3 topic of Robotics and Art. Professor Vesna discusses how robots came out of the theater as a response to the mechanism of labor (Unit 3, Lecture 1, 1:59). These machines are made to act like humans as humans are made to act like machines.

"Fabian Sanchez" by David Bermant.
Screenshot of zoom by Quinn Winter. 

The picture above was a clip that Toni played of a robot installation by David Bermant. The robot imitates human motions, moving back and fourth, arms moving up and down and eyeballs moving around. Toni believes that humans continue to make robots that act as though they are humans because it is something familiar to us that we can relate to. The idea of being able to make something that comes alive when we put so much effort into it encourages humans to keep pushing the boundary to see how far we can go. 

Pictured below Toni shows her invention, "The Dress That Eats Souls" utilizing skills from art, math and science to produce a robot wearing a dress that mirrors the motions of whoever is standing in front of them while playing videos on a screen through the eyes of whoever has worn this dress. These 3 key factors allow for the creation of skeletal and head tracking, allowing people to navigate a 3D space that is created to connect to the robot.

"The Dress That Eats Souls" by Toni Dove
Screenshot of zoom by Quinn Winter
Toni showed us another one of her interactive art installations where characters move around and relate to the person moving by copying their movements. This immediately reminded me of our Unit 2 Math and Art module. Playing with math and coding, Nathan Selikoff's art installation projected a clock that sensed and visualized the auditory environment around it translating sound into light. Similarly, Toni's art also combined math and coding to create a technological installation that reflected movements of those in front of it. It is a bizarre thing to me that we can create things like this with how technology has advanced. 
Characters copying the person moving.
Installation by Toni Dove
Screenshot of zoom by Quinn Winter


Proof of attendance: 








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EVENT 2 | Jess Irish | Quinn Winter

Image
The event by Jess Irish played a wonderful film, “This Mortal Plastik,” focusing on the drastic damages that plastic has done to our environment. Plastic has completely dominated our world today and can be seen every single place we look. Every single product is displayed in plastic, which can especially be seen in grocery stores. As Jess discussed in the film, “the average person in the U.S. generates 243 points of plastic waste per year” (Irish, 2022). As seen above, plastic dominates every store and almost every item we buy involves plastic as its container. (Samantha, 2020). What’s harming us most are single use plastics, meaning it has one purpose and use, and a majority of which ends up being a pollutant that is not biodegradable. These single-use plastics, like plastic bottles and bags, “have a lifespan of mere minutes to hours, yet it may persist in the environment for hundreds of years” ( Parker, 2019 ). A majority of these non-biodegradable plastic items end up in our oce...
Read more

EVENT 1 | Moment of Reflection: Opening Night | Quinn Winter

Image
The Moment of Reflection exhibit opened on campus to honor the American Indian and Alaskan native communities that were hit hardest throughout the pandemic. The art installation gives people a space that will help us reflect the feelings of loss, gratitude, sorrow, anger, determination and others that we have experienced over these last two difficult years.  The instillation, shown below, was an animated piece that looked like colorful sand in a box moving like waves set to music. I interpreted the sand to be understood as emotions, moving through the stages of grief that we have experienced throughout the pandemic.  A few of the different stages of the animation. Art by Refik Anadol, photos taken by Quinn Winter during the event (Anadol, 2022). The second the installation started I immediate related it to our week two unit, discussing the intersection between math and art. Art today has become digital, and animations use mathematics in order for objects to move, such as rotat...
Read more

Week 1 | Two Cultures | Quinn Winter

Image
     As a third year sociology major at UCLA, I have been immersed in the "North Campus" culture, which I quickly came to realize has a clear rivalry with South Campus majors. The North Campus at UCLA possesses more social sciences and humanities classes, while the South Campus focuses on physical and life sciences (Jung, 2021).                THE CAMPUS DIVIDE: North Campus, claimed to feel like a park and community, where South Campus feels as if it is a city Source: Jung, 2021      As Professor Vesna stated in lecture, "divisions of people and disciplines inevitably lead to the creation of stereotypes that contribute to perpetuating the separation wether intentional or not" (Lecture 1 Part II, 6:25-6:37). Though UCLA's North and South Campus is only separated by a small distance, it is the stereotypes that the two hold against each other that widens the gap immensely further. For example, it is a common ...
Read more