Flash text project review

I was happy to hear that my flash project was well received. I have to admit that at first, I was unsure of what I was going to do but everything began to flow together after I just pushed myself to do it. The original idea was going to be much different. I was going to make something similar to a music video but with interactivity. However I was not sure how to pull it off.

This project reminds me a lot of the previous project I made with the storybook. It takes something that people take for granted and flips it upside down with a little comedic humor.

Once I finally had an idea of what I was going to do, the questionnaire was easy to do. The coding was a little tricky though. I had to settle for if statements for things that would have given the user a more unexpected output. I wanted to be able to parse the number and have the number added to another number or changed to a random number but then this became more complicated than I wanted it to be. However, this project does encourage me to make good use of Lynda.com. I purchased a session of it, I should put it to good use.

Artist Response 5: Up Up and Away

In Up, Up and Away, Philidelphia artist Micheal Bell-Smith creates extravagant pixelated images of real and imaginary places. One of the cities in the panel looks remarkably similar to Tokyo while others seem less specific. The panels drift upward on the screen to be replaced by new images in a cycle that last 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The images are full of bright colors but Bell-Smith works within a limited pallete. In one image of a city the foreground reveals a green landscape with trees that slowly shifts to a yellow, then purple, and finally blue cityscape. The viewer can see each pixel the artist makes to build up to these images. When I first saw this work at the hirshorn it reminded me of games on the sega genesis as well as games on the gameboy and it's later generations.

The viewer is brought to a different place in the matter of seconds. It's almost challenging to really appreciate the details of the pictures before being introduced to another one. This artist frequently uses pixels in his images but I consider up, up and away one of his masterpieces.

Artist main site: http://www.foxyproduction.com/artist/view/5

Lawrence, Sidney. "Cinema Hirshorna"23 February 2009.
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/lawrence/lawrence4-25-08.asp

Artist Response 4 (Animator vs. Animation)

Alan Becker's, who also goes by the name albinoblacksheep, quirky animation called Animator vs Animation shows the different elements of Flash Professional 8 while be engaging and comedic. The flash movie blurs the boundaries between the user and and Becker's animation. It brings physicality to the characters he makes.

The movie starts off with a movie clip Becker makes labeled victim. The victim eventually breaks out of the symbol's bounding box and fights the creator's mouse with keyframes, line strokes and assortment of flash tools. The unique aspect about this movie is that the character and the user both interact with Flash's interface in different ways. At one point Becker tries to delete the animated character in the menu but the character crawls up and scratches the word delete out with the pen tool. By the end of the movie, majority of the interface is either altered or completely destroyed.

It helps to have a previous knowledge of Flash to enjoy the movie. Some of the tools' functions would be confusing otherwise. In one such example the symbol named victim creates copies of itself to attack the user's arrow. If someone did not know what actions symbols performed or even what a symbol is, the joke would lose its value.

Since the movies is about the flash interface created in flash, it is important to see how the artist might have made this movie. It first appears that he only used a screenshot as the background. This is not the case however since in one scene the keyframes from the movie slide on to the work area in every which way. The interface interacts with the characters so much it's hard to seperate the flash animation from the possible screenshot. The result is a very complex workload.

The movie can be found at http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/animator.

Artist Response 3

Rubikcubism is a site that includes a collection of icons, paintings, and photographs redone in pixels. However the pixels are made from the individual squares of a Rubik’s cube. The process starts with the original painting or icon transferred digitally into pixels. Then the artist incorporates this into a collection of Rubik’s cubes. The works range from replications of high art such as Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the grass” and Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque,” to popular culture icons such as Pacman, Mario and Clockwork Orange.

In the translation of paintings to pixels, the image becomes abstracted. This is an extreme example of how the quality of work is dependent on the pixels. Many of the pictures are undecipherable up close but easy to recognize in their thumbnails. In this era, pixels are almost synonymous with digital media. A pixel on a computer screen or bitmap image can be very allusive but the Rubik cube gives the object tangibility. The works on this site are not digital but I believe that they have such a strong relationship to the digital format because of their use of pixels that it is almost the same as a bitmap image printed to physical form. However, in this case the image is constantly going back and forth between the digital and traditional media.

Artist Response 2

I found out about this artist on Drawn.ca and followed the link to his site. Recently, he created a voice based drawing program. It is the etch and sketch of the digital age. The picture to the left is one the artist made. According to the site, the level of the volume adjusts which way the lines will go. Low volume will turn the line counterclockwise, while high volume will turn it clockwise. The user can make the line straight with a medium volume.

I decided to give the voice program a shot. Unfortunately, it did not work as well for me. All I was able to get was a dot. I adjust my microphone setting, and experimented with my voice abut nothing happened. I even tried putting my headphones to the microphone. However, others were successful with the process and their work can be seen on his page. Some used their voice, others music, and some even used television shows.

I think this is another great example of how sound can be used to make images. This program takes a few steps away from traditional drawing. It also shows how new media art can really differ from traditional media. The draw to this project, that currently does not have a name, is that it needs interaction from others to work. It is just like a blank piece of paper in a way, it needs someone to create the image no matter if it is by hand or by voice.