Art Hack Day: A Codification of Coolness!

This past weekend, a warehouse in Brooklyn was home to a 48 hour marathon of technologically derived artistic activity. The two day-long event, titled Art Hack Day, was organized by 319 Scholes, an organization that “supports digital arts and experimentation through exhibitions, lectures, panels, participatory workshops, and live performances.” Art Hack Day’s participants were a contrasting group of “hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is technology.”

Notwithstanding the title and the foreboding logo of an animated axe, the event was in fact “dedicated to cracking open the process of art-making, with special reverence toward open-source technologies.” And reverential is all that we can remain, because whether we know it or not, we use open-source technologies such as Mozilla Firefox or the Android operating software on a daily basis. Under the grim and inclement climate of SOPA and PIPA, it would be remiss of us to overlook an event that celebrates open-source through digital creativity and art.

Each project undertaken at Art Hack Day was accompanied by a Twitter hashtag, where online viewers could converse with the artists and hackers. Even though the “part-happening, part-hackathon” event is over, the projects can still be viewed online, though the information provided is brief and leaves one wanting to know more. But in all the fairness of open-source, they did provide a live streaming tour of the event last Saturday.

Anyhow, the results of Art Hack Day range from the quirky to the technologically cool! For instance, there is a project titled Bot Zoo, which is essentially a humorous and sarcastic portrayal of spam bots. While malicious bots are those ridiculous advertisements on the web that entice you with equally ridiculous offers (free iPads), the project portrays them as “‘rare, gentle creatures” that “don’t want to hurt us.” Harmless bots aside, if you were tired of surfing the net, why not dive in and start swimming?

Titled SwimBrowser, the project applies Kinect’s ability to recognize body movements, specifically arm motion, in the navigation of the web. In this aquatic browser, you zoom in by swimming forwards, zoom out by reversing the motion of your arms. Moreover, you can also scroll, click, and open up new tabs through a host of  intuitive arm movements. Flailing your arms around has never been more fun!  But be sure to build up stamina because with SwimBrowser, getting tired of browsing the Internet is no longer in the sea of figurative language.

http://vimeo.com/20255369

The project won the 2011 OpenNI Developer Challenge and its developer, David Solarsky even gave a talk about SwimBrowser at CMU last October for Art+Code 3D.

For those who would like a hand at storytelling, there is Story Wheel, a site where you can narrate stories using Instagram pictures and SoundCloud recordings. Another captivating project is OneHolePunch, "an iphone app that collects circles from your environment and keeps them in your pocket." And the codification of coolness doesn’t stop here. 

Take, for instance, Skippable Rope, a virtual skipping rope created out of a pair iPhones that will have you jumping for joy, at least until you get tired or fall out of sync. Or Bike-in Movie, where the movie speeds up as you speed up on your stationery bike! Star Wars fans might want to take a look at Star Wars Uncut GIFs, which is a collection GIFs made from crowdsourced 15 second reproductions of the Star Wars movie, and finally, a project named Aliens That Look Like Skrillex. Yes, Aliens That Look Like Skrillex. In all, there were 35 projects, all of which are worth exploring, because they will leave you in a state of, to quote Eddie Izzard, "techno-joy!"

So if the world of hacking is as alien to you as aliens that look like skrillex, the projects showcased on Art Hack Day are a neat way to begin familiarizing yourself with what open source technologies can achieve in the field of digital and experimental art.

Deconstructing, Reconstructing and Tidying Up Art

In this Wednesday's post, exhibit viewers re-choreograph Henri Matisse’s Dance II and a Swiss comedian cleans the floor of Vincent van Goh’s Vincent’s Room, Arles. Yes, you read that correctly, what I have to share today is as glorious and odd as it sounds. It has taken me quite some time to settle down long enough to write this post- I have been rather distracted by these projects and videos. I know you will be too…sorry in advance… Let’s first take a look at Intel’s newest project in its Visual Life campaign- “Remastered: A Visually Smart Production from Intel.” Showcasing the work of leading curators and innovative designers, the exhibit on display at London’s One Marylebone explores and pushes the boundaries between art and technology; more specifically, between “old art” and Intel’s newest processing technology. The result, you ask? A sound installation remake of Wassily Kandinsky’s On White II, an online application of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, a moving image rendering of Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, a food design and photography adaptation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, a visual animation of J.M.W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed-The Great Northern Railway, and a stereoscopic, and 3D animation of Casper David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (a special favorite of mine), just to name a few. Collaborating with jotta, Intel’s curatorial and creative partner, the artists “remastered” select classic works of the world’s greatest masters using digital processes to give new meaning to “old art” for a modern audience.

…The exhibition unlocks the creative potential of technology and underlines how visual masterpieces can be created with simply a mouse as a brushstroke or a screen as a canvas.

Exhibitions like these generate much discussion in both the academic and professional art world, as the issue of the digitization of art remains a hot topic of debate. What is most inspiring about these remastered pieces is the beauty in the medium. As an art history student and Italian Renaissance aficionado, I am neither offended nor resistant to the digital world’s claim it can reproduce or master painterly qualities and techniques in its own medium. It is important to view these “remastered” pieces not as competitors of the original work, but as showcases of the power, potential and influence technology has in the modern artistic process.

If you are familiar with Turner’s oeuvre, be sure to view Eric Schockmel’s 3D animation of the painting, Rain, Stream and Speed- The Great Northern Railway. Known for his unsurpassed ability to render light, Turner’s work is an experience of the Sublime, an aesthetic theory originating in the 18th-century. Schockmel’s stunning remastering addresses themes consistent in Turner’s work. But can the advanced technology of 3D modeling, animation software, Adobe After Effects and sound design create an experience of the Sublime, a theory developed in response to a level of advanced and dramatic painterly techniques? Or is it unfair to project such standards and theories on the entirely unique and individual medium of digital art? Do we need to develop a new vocabulary with which to discuss it? The artists featured have contextualized the meanings of the “old art” in today’s modern and digital age. As jotta's head of creative, Ben James stated

The broad range of work and outcomes exhibited within Remastered help demonstrate how technology is being adopted practically and conceptually by artists and designers across all disciplines. The intersection of technology and art has gone far beyond its creation on a computer to a symbiotic relationship -- one where new technology offers new opportunities to the artist or designer who, in return, provides ever-evolving experiences and contexts to our relationship with technology.

If nothing else, each artist’s unique interpretation of the work makes viewing the remastered piece and accompanying videos a worthwhile activity on this midweek, midday Wednesday (Bompas & Parr’s redesign of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper is a good place to begin, it will surely amaze you).

Ok, on to my next obsession. Have you heard of Ursus Wehrli? No? It’s okay. I had not either before viewing his TED Talk. Since then, however, I am either always a) re-watching his talk or b) mentally rearranging and reorganizing the components and forms of any given painting into tidy stacks. My new guilty pleasure is the TED Talk “Ursus Wehrli tidies up art” given by Wehrli, a Swiss comedian, cabaret artist and

…the author of Tidying Up Art, a visionary manifesto that yearns toward a more rational, more organized and cleaner form of modern art. In deconstructing the work of Paul Klee, Jasper Johns and other masters into its component parts, organized by color and size, Wehrli posits a more perfect art world

Take your Wednesday lunch break with Wehrli as he taps into your confusions and Type A tendencies when it comes to viewing and understanding contemporary art. The talk will surely elicit laughter; proceed with caution when at work.

And again, my apologies for any drastic drop in productivity at work or school as a result of time spent transfixed by the digitally remastered masterpieces or watching, and re-watching, Wehrli’s convincing contemporary art cleaning spree.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

This week saw the arrival of the second biennial 01SJ - North America’s newest and largest festival of digital arts, and a great deal more. From a hip hop, multi-media meditation on Antarctica to robot art, from conversations with artificial intelligence to operatic performances of Google headlines about the environment, from avant-garde cinema to new musical forms - well over 100 artworks, performances, screenings, talks, and workshops will be featured at 01SJ. Festival organizers expect it to be a perspective-altering experience that entertains, enlightens, educates and involves attendees in a new understanding of our changing world.

The 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge consists of over 100 events, exhibitions, concerts, performances, lectures and workshops at many venues across the urban landscape of downtown San Jose.

According to Artistic Director Steven Dietz, “This has the potential to be the South by Southwest of digital media in the United States.”

01SJ aspires to become the North American answer to the Ars Electronica Festival – the annual celebration of digital art in Linz, Austria first staged in 1979. “Linz is now a cultural center for the country,” said 01SJ founder and board chairwoman Andy Cunningham, “We hope to do that with San Jose.