My final Portrait

Jackie Chan

First draft of moodboard - version One

This is my first version of moodboard. I would like to choose RONE's graphic style as I did lots of research. His style is focusing on face expression and color. On his graphic artworks, I found that there are many pop arts graphical style. So I would put some pop arts, Text with machine inside. Also Jacky Chan is the person I would to choose on my artworks. His is a very famous kungfu movie style in the world, he always acts characters on good side, so I put he on the my moodboard.

My favourite Artist and his Artworks

I went to the Cokatoo Island last Monday with my friends to see the artwoks exhibitions there. I saw lots of very impressive and wonderful artworks there. I like many works as I took many photos. Unfortunately, my camera didn't have enough power to took all the photos there. I saw a graffiti artworks with Michael Jackson. The Michael Jackson's graffiti was separated into four parts which are different skulls on the faces. I like that very much because the graffiti has very strong expressions and very simple graph style. On the Cokatoo Island website, I found the artist who made this graffiti was RONE. I didn't take photo for this graffiti because my camera didn't have enough power. I found this photo from Cokatoo Island website.



RONE is a made artworks in streets the inner city Melbourne.
His style is focusing on face and personality and give very some impression feeling on the faces' expression

I would choose RONE'S style in my assignment design.


Reference Website

http://www.outpost.cockatooisland.gov.au/artist-rone.html
http://r-o-n-e.com/
http://r-o-n-e.com/?page_id=402

Cokatoo Island Update.My favourite Artwoorks

Cockatoo Island

My first poster

moodboard 2

Ted's MOODboard

My three key words are FUN, FRIENDSHIP and Social

Digital Pathway Final Essay evolutionary theory of beauty and Digital Media

The topic of this essay is talking about Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty, what his theory is and how his evolutionary theory of beauty relates to digital media. In my other course, which is called Academy Culture, I also did a similar essay about Denis Dutton’s theory – prove relationship between human evolution and evolution of arts. I choose this topic because I want to discuss Denis Dutton theory with digital media.

Firstly, I want to introduce about Denis Dutton personal background and his books that I found on Internet. Denis Dutton was come from United State of America and he was an academic, libertarian media commentator and also he was a professor of philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Before he came to New Zealand, He had taught at some Universities in the USA. Then After 2008, he became head of the philosophy and Humanities school. He was dead in 2010, in his life from 1944 to 2010, he have written and published lots of documents articles and books. In 2009, Denis Dutton published a book, which was called The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Early 2010, he was invited to do a speech called Denis Dutton A Darwinian theory of beauty by TED. In his: TED speech, he briefly summarized the main points from his book The Art Instinct. Denis Dutton’ idea of beauty was based on Darwin’s theory of human evolution. Darwin’s theory is commonly agreed by people and treated as the main theory about how human beings evolved.

What is Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty?

Denis Dutton stated ‘beauty’ is an ‘adaptive effect’ that people feel from arts and entertainment. Human beings started to feel the beauty ‘effect’ since millions years ago. In the Darwin’s evolution theory, there are two main mechanisms – natural selection and sexual selection. Natural selection could be considered evolution influenced by environment or situation, for example, people don’t have long tail unlike other quadruped animal, because human beings don’t need long tail to balance themselves. The sexual selection is totally different from natural selection; one of the sexual Selection examples that Dutton Denis gave in his book is the peacock’s tail. Peaco’s have very beautiful magnificent tails and they use their tails to attract peahens for mating. While peahens influence peacocks and select them. Therefore evolution is easier survival and reproduction.

By natural selection, human being want to survival in the earth and beat huger animals and eat them meat, we need tools. For human history, hands axes were tools for production, but 2.5 million years ago; hands axes had been treated as aesthetic objects. People used hand axes to present their creative abilities. Similar to the peacock’s tail, high creative abilities Hands Axe makers gained more opportunity to reproduce by attracting the opposite sex then less creative tool markers.

Denis Dutton said in his book, what beauty is, for the people around the world. Even they live in different parts of the Earth, the have same aesthetic taste. One of his most obviously examples is landscape; everyone on earth is interested in landscape. People print landscape photos on post cards, calendars or computer desktops. Tourists travel around the earth to search and enjoy different landscapes. This can be considered as human beings finding and searching for beauty similar visual experiences from different cultures for one purpose.

Cave paintings could be considered as the earliest human artworks, we have found lots of cave paintings around the world, from Asia to South Africa. Starting from thousands years ago, people learned how to record their lives, animals and events. Compared with artworks, we could find similar things from cave paintings. As the recording materials and ways changed, we still record stories, draw animals, humans and objects on paintings. We have also found that human’s artistic and aesthetic tastes have changed in thousands years.

For human history, human’s tools have improved from millions years ago. At the beginning of human history, human started to use stone as tools. Then people understood to shape the stone to be sharp, as we know sharp tools are easy for butchering animals. Thousands years later, people learned to use metal to make tools and they learned to use stone and metal to present beauty, luxury and worth, for example gold and diamond. After millions of years, people understood how to develop and design stones and metal and make them from nature resources to be kinds of products and artworks and sell shaped stone and metal in jewelry shop. Deep inside human’s mind, the culture tells us the shaped stones and metals are beautiful and luxurious and worth a lot.

What is Digital Media is?

As the second topic of this essay is talking about what and how evolutionary theory of beauty relates to digital media. I would like to introduce what digital media is that I found the definition from Internet. Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission (e.g. hard disk drives or computer networking) of information or to the "end product", such as digital video, augmented reality or digital art. [1]

From the definition that I found, basically, the digital media if modem way store, transport and transfer media as data form on electronic. Digital media is a very extensive and huge topic. Digital media includes Mobile Phone, Computers, Digital video, electronic books, game consoles, Internet, Televisions, Video games and Interactive media. Those digital media has become parts of very important elements of our lives.

The first question that we should think about why we are inventing and invented many digital media. Sample is very simple: We need tools. According to Darwin’s theory - natural selection, if we want to survival in the Earth, we should have tools to protect ourselves or make our live better, make our working more effectively. At the same time our mind is changing when the human evolving continues, more convenience tools and entertainment are required.

We use mobile phone or higher smart phone to contact our family, friends or clients. We watch Television for entertaining and we search Internet for the newest information and share news with people and so on.

Millions years ago, our ancestors tried to record their events and lives on the cave painting, then our ancestors drew pictures on stones or wood till they knew how to make paper. At the same time human’s aesthetic taste was changing when people saw more and more different painting, then people started to link painting. This is a briefly way explain human evolution and arts. Now human start to use electronic devices to replace old tools. Human could also use digital media to record and share arts.

Above paragraph, we talked about how the human evolution inflected digital media as the lives required. Now I talk about what do they relate. There are many ways arts can be showed on digital media.

Denis Dutton talked about the people in difference culture and comes from different parts of the earth are interested in landscape and he say difference culture people can understand similar things. We are watching foreign movies and hearing songs in different languages. For example, Hollywood movie production is very famous in the world, in the world, there are not only English-speaking countries like watching those films but also many non-English speaker audiences are interested in. For marketing required, we always see some Chinese elements in the Hollywood movies, such as KungFu Panda. Compared with westerns countries, Asian centuries people have huge different cultures and lives style. But many Japanese comics are very popular in westerns countries, such as, Pokemon. Movie, Television shows are not only digital media but also Arts. Acrossing countries and cultures, people still can understand similar elements.

Video games other examples related to the human evolution. People introduce video, as people lives require for entertaining. Video games companies target markets are not only their own countries but also around the World. Dynasty Warriors serials is a game made by Japanese and the stories of the game is based on Chinese histories and novel - Records of Three Kingdoms. In this game, character are wearing Chinese style suits and background is Chinese Three Kingdoms period building and landscape. Players are from around the world and playing the same game, even thought they don’t have same cultures and histories.

Digital Arts is sort of new arts on the electronic. Sometimes people create digital arts for advertising purpose. Sometimes people create digital arts, especially interactive arts is more creative purpose as artists jobs. People create arts as animation on digital media such as on big screen, mobile or computer, because electronic devices is closer media to human lives than paper nowadays. We can consider digital devices equal cave which one of the oldest media in millions years ago.

In conclusion, this essay has briefly introduced what about Denis Dutton’s evolutionary theory of beauty and what digital media is and also I have talked about what and how the evolutionary theory relates to digital media. We introduce digital media as our lives require and technology developing as human society evolving, people use digital media to transfers and represents to arts to other people even in difference cultures.

Reference

Denis Dutton, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Dutton#cite_note-4 18 September 2011.

A Darwinian theory of beauty, TED http://www.ted.com/talks/denis_dutton_a_darwinian_theory_of_beauty.html 18 September 2011.

Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, Oxford University 2009.

Denis Dutton website, http://denisdutton.com/, 18 September 2011.

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution http://theartinstinct.com/, 18 September 2011.

[1] Definition of Digital media http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_media

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sangokushi

Urban Realities & Augmented play

image courtesy of Stephanie Fynn

Introduction

About Urban Realities & Augmented play

Urban Realities & Augmented Play was an exhibition that was held by The School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney and the Design Lab at the University of Sydney. And New Media Curation manages this collaboration. This exhibition was held from 9 – 16 June 2011 which is held two months ago at the Wilkinson Building, City road University of Sydney. In this exhibition, Students from the Interaction Design and Electronic Arts (IDEA) showed their interactive electronic artwork as part of their final assignment to the public. Fortunately, I was studying in IDEA course at that moment and joined this assignment and my art was showed on the exhibition and displayed to the public, that’s reason why I chose this exhibition for analyzing and reviewing.

About the exhibition.

The exhibition was held at the ground floor of the Wilkinson Building, City road University of Sydney, also this is the build for the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. The exhibition was separated into two parts; the first part was in the hall, which was inside the building, there were hanged many poster of the students’ artwork, they helped audiences to understand more information about the exhibition and electronic artworks. The outside of the building, there was a big screen was called Smart Lab. The Smart Lab was used to display students Artwork. From the 9 June to 16 June, the Smart Lab kept playing the students’ artwork video which is token from the launch night.

The launch night

The launch night was the last day for students to work on their assignment. Also the launch night was a very important day, lots of University students, students; friends, teachers and many industries professional persons came from around of Australia to join this exhibition.

In the exhibition launch night, guests could get free drink and food. The processes of the exhibition launch night were some important person did some speech. Then students started to show their artworks to public.

Interactive Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts is kind of new art on electronic screen which is as new media in our life. The most popular way to use electronic arts in life is promotion. In the IDEA course, students have to learn how to create electronic arts to attractive audience to interactive with the screen. Compare with tradition arts - traditional painting, traditional architecture, and the electronic arts is much more different. Electronic arts is only for watching but also it is attractive and playable. As the definition of the Urban Playground which is from student Design Brief document, ‘an interface to the built architecture of the city that engages passers – by into playful moments of interaction’[1]. Students have to make their artwork to be entertainable, but it is not a video game.

How to make electronic arts?

Electronic arts are made from codes and words. People usually use programming way to create artworks. The platform called Processing is developed and made based on Java language, as people found how difficulty on programming in C++ and Java language. Also the other way to create electronic is use a platform which is called Quartz Composer. ‘Quartz Composer is a node-based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in Mac OS X for processing and rending graphical data.’[2]

In this project, student could choose either Processing or Quartz Composer to be the programming tool and platform. Also students can find lots of online open recourse and library from Internet. By using the recourse, example and library, student can easily achieve their goal.

How to make interactive electronic arts?

Interaction means a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another [3]. I searched how students make interactive arts. By making the audience can interact with the arts, people have to use image or light detectors. Normal Web computer camera or Microsoft Kinect could be chose as the detectors. They have both same theory, as they detect light of the objects then use programming method to detect light and separate the objects, people and background objects. Microsoft Kinect is a kind of equipment and device of Xbox 360; people could play games without any traditional game platform Accessories. People also can hack the Microsoft Kinect to make them become a interactive electronic arts detector and work without the Xbox 360. Compare with normal web camera, the Microsoft Kinect could much easier to detect light by separated light resource into different section from weakest to strongest. In this exhibition, most of students chose to use Microsoft to detect objects.

Arts Projects

We can find lots of information about this exhibition on the students’ blog[4]. As the blog posting is one part of the students assignment, they put how they started the project, how they researched what audience wanted to see on the Urban Screen and how they faced challenge and solved problems before they finished the assignment and exhibition.

All artiest in this exhibition have their on purpose and represent them on their artworks. The purposes were be creating a colorful interactive art to represent colors and emotion. Some of them use arts to telling people to protect and save our environment and some of them create an underwater world with lots of fish etc

As I motioned above, I joined that project; I would like to introduce artwork before. My group called Luck Koi, which is a Japanese Name means ‘fancy carp’ [5] and described by my group mate Lin. Our purpose is creating underwater world with many lots of fish and those fish can interact with audiences who stand in front of the screen. Our last decision is make fancy carps as the main ‘characters’ in the screen and also lots of shadow effect with them. We chose fancy carp because we are Asian background and Fancy carps are orient fish and could be found in lots of Chinese and Japanese culture painting and artwork, we want to use fancy carp to present Asian culture, also we use smoke shadow and Chinese traditional ink painting. When audiences stay in front of the screen, fancy carp would swim toward to the center of the shadow and as the shadow follow audience, fancy carp would change their swimming dictation. Also in the center of the shadow would create some white smoke as Chinese ink painting on the screen. My initial idea was making a white background and black ink effect to exactly fill with Chinese ink painting style. After tested on the screen, white background is too bright and glaring [6].

Bella’s Boyz team, they created a very amazing artwork – Universal space[7]. This group has very powerful imagination; they made a black ground and lots of the colorful points and circles to represent star and planets in the universal space. When audiences move, the whole space would follow the audience position rotating. This is very creative job with very wonderful interactive way to present.

Team plasma is name from science. This team made a very colorful and simple work; they called it ‘CITY___’ [8]. As the picture above, they make a full black background. They used a processing library called MSAFluid and they used webcam as light detector instead of using Microsoft Kinect. When audience move in front of camera, the screen start to create to two waves from each side of the screen. The speed of waves and size of waves are depended on the movement speed of the objects which in front of the camera. Then the color of waves is automatically keeping changing as part of the programming. They want to use color to repent feeling. This makes audiences feel they make a very colorful and beautiful painting on the screen.

Fy created is very interesting artwork and they gave it a name called Skin[9]. But this is not a skin or something is related to skin. They make a artwork with plastic bags and the artwork showed on screen is a piece of plastic and part of bags. From their introduction, the purpose of the idea is creating something that people can’t touch and they can feel and see on the screen as the interactive arts.

I only introduced four groups’ artworks and there are many artworks I don’t mention in this report, all the art works in the exhibition are very incredibly, those student spent about two months to complete their assignment. Here is the link of the blog website. http://www.idea9102.net/wp/. You could find lots of artworks’ pictures, videos and stories on it.

This exhibition was very interesting and very important for me as my work was showed in the exhibition, interactive electronic arts in new kind of arts on technology to create more different feeling and changeable compare with traditional art painting. Electronic arts are not only arts but also parts of programming in computing. In inclusive audience in to them and motivate audience to play and watch on them.

Reference

http://newmediacuration.com/

[1] Design Brief of Urban Playgrounds - The University of Sydney | IDEA9102 – Installation Studio

[2] Dentition of Quartz Composer- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Composer

[3] Dentition of interaction - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction

[4] Installation Studio Website - http://www.idea9102.net/wp/

[5]Name of group Luck Koi - http://www.idea9102.net/wp/groups/the-lucky-koi/

[6] Fancy Crap report http://www.idea9102.net/wp/archives/3311

[7] Universal report http://www.idea9102.net/wp/archives/2946

[8] Team Plasma http://www.idea9102.net/wp/archives/3335

[9] Team Fy http://www.idea9102.net/wp/archives/3456