hjc309’s blog

Week5-Serial

This lab requires me to work with two potentiometers, a push-button switch and 10kohm resistors. I entered some of the code examples provided. I entered the code for raw pot value, corresponding binary, decimal, hexadecimal and octal value.It took me quite some time to run the Terminal program.
I took a program into Processing to manipulate data with the analog sensors. This moved a ball around. I ran the command to give Processing access to my serial power and had great results.

Serial output and Talking to Processing
click to watch

Week4-Servo/Analog out

Our instructions asked us to wire the servo motors that come in our kits to the potentiometers. The analog output on the servo does a nice job of reflecting the action taken on the potentiometer.

Analog output - RC Servomotor, Potentiometer

Which one is the orange juice?

Yingxian and I wanted explore the conflict between real and fake in a questioning way rather than making a moral point such as telling people being true or real is always good. I think the moral value really depends on the subject.

Response of “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”

Walter Benjamin discusses the nature of art in relation to politics, human behavior and technology. He believes that technology shapes what a piece of art actually is. By reproducing an art work, such as a print of a painting, the original piece of art becomes devalued. The original work is no longer the only image of itself that people can enjoy. Suddenly, the masses can also enjoy a work that only the elite who could travel around the world to museums could enjoy. Benjamin believes film has become an art medium that is also enjoyed by the masses. However, he believes that filmmakers, particularly those engaged in “capitalistic exploitation,” are “trying hard to spur the interest of the masses through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubious speculations” (Benjamin X).
Benjamin accurately predicts that the art of film will become more popular than the traditional art of painting because it represents a more realistic view of the world. Also, film provides viewers with a collective, interactive experience that painting cannot provide itself. Benjamin also says that film will offer scientific value to psychologists because it will be able to document human behaviors for their study. “Fifty years ago, a slip of the tongue passed more or less unnoticed. Only exceptionally may such a slip have revealed dimensions of depth in a conversation which had seemed to be takings its course on the surface” (Benjamin XIII).
In my opinion, Benjamin was ahead of his time in predicting how new technologies would change the nature of art itself. He was talking about technologies that we consider outdated today, such as printmaking and early cinema. He could never have guessed how computer graphics would revolutionize both art and filmmaking. Benjamin was also accurate in predicting how the masses would eventually dominate the world of art. This is evident in the commercialization of filmmaking, which today is more of a product sold to the masses than a true art form done without financial considerations. Benjamin accurately predicted the use of film in the mental health field. Today, videos of psychological studies show how the subjects behaved during the experiment.
Benjamin’s linking of politics to art accurately predicted that film would be used as propaganda by governments. This is perhaps the greatest lesson we can learn from Benjamin’s essay: technology can have beneficial, as well as negative, impacts on human civilization.