addie and lots of coffee.

Well, I got my claymation rendered at low res, so its working FINALLY but this basically proves to me I really do need a new computer after all. If I end up taking any sort of video or animation next semester, this system I have just won't cut it.

I just spent something like 20 hours trying to get this thing to output, thats really insane and a total waste of life.

Thanks Marianne, I ended up using your suggestion, however it doesn't play on OSX, at least it plays!

Now its onto my Processing and I have some major work to do. eek!

Posted by itp at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I somehow thought it would be brillant of me to do a Claymation for my Computational Media class project since I've never worked with it before...

The actual shooting went fine, the models worked ok, and I spent all weekend putting it together, making a soundtrack and then, whats this...?! My computer doesn't have enough virtual memory to render ANY of it?

great, just great.

I should of stuck to flash, stoopid clay!

Posted by itp at 08:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

here's my groups movie for our comm lab project that required a 3 mintue film, you can tell I worked in a group because
a) it lacks any morbidness (is that a word?)
b) its so tacky its almost funny

we had a good time and I learned a ton about editing and shooting thanks to mike d.

Posted by itp at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I've been dealing a lot with death the last year; A LOT with the c word this semester (cancer). As a result, I've become interested in the theme of morality and the idea of temporal humanity.

Cancer often gives the patient a sort of countdown. Doctors tell you how long you have, and often as a result people change the way they think ("Since I have only two months to live, I want to travel the world or I want to tell him that I love him."), which if they had not been given this countdown would of possibly continued to live their lives in the same safe pattern they had before (ask a cancer survivor how their life changed when they 'knew' they were going to die).. with no shift in thought to encourage them to change or live for the feeling of living.. as a result, I am curious to know if a person/user is given this knowledge of temporality and it is brought to the front of their thoughts will their lifestyle shift? will they boldly follow their hearts or dreams or continue living the way they are living?

After talking with hatti about my idea of making some sort of life countdown clock we started to sort of unintentionally collaborate, and next thing we knew we had a rough idea of how to making a really fucking rad programming/installation project,

and thus our computational media final project has been born.

Posted by itp at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Adam and I made this remix for our Comm lab assignment!

I wish we had a bit more time, I would of liked to have experimented even more with what we could of created since I won't have time to do it on my own till at least week 15.

Posted by itp at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had a professor who has all of his work available on his website and allows anyone to use it as long as they retain credit for him in some part of their work. His philosophy was always that "if work was being shown, it was being shown, and that was all that mattered". Of course, he was also earning money as a professor so his art was not his only means of income.

I've always agreed with him in some form, as an artist, our ultimate goal has been getting our work out there, having people experience it. However as things have evolved in our society, you cannot simply support yourself off of fame alone, or can we? Or can you use fame to create wealth? A simple example is 'reality tv' stars. Many of these people were normal unknown people and once put on TV were offered other opportunities and ways to make a living or income based solely off of their fame.

I think the interesting cross roads we have reached. Nothing is truly original anymore, and everything is drawn from something or somewhere no matter how abstract a form. So how do we give credit where its due and how to we take a copy of the copies of the copies and make it our own (without creating lawsuits or being accused of plagiarism in the artistic arena)?

Many of the issues at hand have more recently become issues as we have become somewhat of a 'free trade' society with peer to peer software being introduce into the mainstream culture. The availability of media has become easy for anyone to obtain just about anything within a few seconds depending on the speed on an internet connection.

At some point our society will need to define boundaries or develop new ways of using medias to allow artist to make a living or just make free art although I don't feel I have the soultion, it will be interesting to see what is proposed.

Posted by itp at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

here is my short quicktime movie assignment, its compressed at about 8 MBs which is why you'll see some fuzzy transitions that would otherwise be clear.

Posted by itp at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pravin and I made this for Comm Lab and the Winter Show (for those of you in NYC, it will be in Mid- December and all the famous people will be there.. to offer us lots and lots of money and fame for our brillant projects.. or so we hope):

tragically its a little small, but the high resolution image is much nicer with the details you can't see in this one..

Posted by itp at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think nothing annoys me more then how women are shown in media and how it is accepted as being ok or 'not a problem' that its done by magazines or so on.

Its people with these sort of mentalities that simply encourage how women are portrayed in media and magazines and not seeing the longer term implications of it

Continue reading "photo discussion, in class.. " »

Posted by itp at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

what I found interesting about this reading from Walter Benjamin was his concept of "aura" and whether mechanically reproduced art can have it, of course since this has been published, work word mechanically could probably be rewrote as digital or internet based pieces although I feel the question can remain the same. Can work produced by machines have the same emotions or results as a work created by artist? And if the machine produced pieces can have the same results, does this imply that works by physical artist will or could be obsoletes?
As someone who has grown up basically in the digital age, I believe its possible to have an aura regardless of the media. Installations, or metaphors are universal and a piece can have an aura of emotion or reaction regardless of the artist (human vs. machine).
If you focus specifically on aura and the properties of an aura, you can see that electronic media or digital arts through different means of expression can produce or meet this criteria. Artist that create innovative, unique environments for work that is produced electronically can transmit aura or emotion through their work. Artist using digital media can produce aura by creating or using space. Contradicting Benjamin's belief by following his definitions.

Although, I am curious exactly what aura means in the current art world and if aura is even important anymore, or for that matter does it even truly exist? The world is changing quickly everyday and values and ideals can shift minute by minute. Just like photography was once considered 'not a true art' it was eventually accepted and now considered 'fine art'. So is it possible that digital art will cross that line, or has it even already?

We are housed in the college of art, not the college of sciences.

thoughts?

Posted by itp at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I originally started blogging back in the 90s when I was introduced to LiveJournal right before I graduated from highschool. I actually still use livejournal for my personal blog although I found the manipulation options LJ provided were too limited for this assignment and thus set up a movabletype blog specifically for my experiences in class and around ITP.

I prefer minimalism in design over lots of graphics and colors, so my first thought was to make a simple blog inspired by much of what I already had in my personal blog: a large title, gray scale type and a simple clean layout. I made the decision to include photos on the top, which I plan on having randomly change during the seasons, probably generated through a JS command (although of course, I haven't actually done that yet!) My decision to include photos was a conscious choice which is lacking in the layout of my personal journal over at LJ. Much of what I do or see, I find I can't quite articulate to anyone who wasn't present at that moment.. and maybe some photos will do just that? They also allow a glimpse into my personal everyday life here in the city without verbally talking about it in an academic blog. I hope to include photos of my physical work while at ITP once those projects begin to evolve.

I also thought an interesting although conventional way to allow viewers to find post is by using the calender function which I stole borrowed from sample templates.

The titles for each class category are listed and allow users to view only post related to each class (eg ICM vs Comm Lab) Hopefully allowing professors, employers or peers to find information more specific to their interest without having to keyword search.

Then 'Memories we forgot' allows the users to view a basic clean version of post specific by month..

The text colors and website palate I wanted to remain neutral and clean with the eye hopefully being drawn to the images on the top of the page and downward. As a disclaimer I haven't tested browser compatibility nor have I validated my CSS.. maybe next week.

well, what do you think?

Posted by itp at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

He told me that once he forgot himself
and opened up like a door with a loose latch,
every thing fell out. He tried for days to put it all back in the proper order,
but he finally gave up
and left it there in a pile for everyone to see
and loved everything equally.

Posted by itp at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've always been interested in how our personal thoughts and documentation (photographic or otherwise) can affect mainstream media. The article "Blogs of War" is a great example of this, much of the information soldiers documented would of otherwise gone perhaps unnoticed or be held in only intensely personal thoughts or memories not shared with people on the outside. With the subculture of blogging now becoming accepted by mainstream news sources as more credible, I can't help but wonder how it blurs the lines of professional and amateur journalism, and thus brings up the question, which is more accurate and why?
Its been well documented by many liberal or independent news sources that the large labels (ABC, NBC, CBS etc) are vastly controlled by the upper percentage of wealth in our nation as well as the government. Blogging for the most part eliminates most, if not all control, from corporations and government watchdogs. I can't help but wonder if the internet wasn't a part of our society at this point in time, if much of the brutality towards the Iraqi prisoners or the abuse of power of our military would simply be lost in history? What impact would situations have like this if they had not been documented by soliders or the everyday witness of the event?
The real advantage I see in the blogging society is it allows a large spectrum of experiences, from left to far right, without censorship or control over thoughts, photos, and really the availability for everyday people to change or make an impact in the world via blogging and internet could be much more vast then we realize.
Another good example of everyday people making big impacts, is groups like Witness, who are able to find and verify documented human rights issues from everyday people with cameras that otherwise would be possibly ignored. The great thing about blogging is it allows everyday people (or anyone for that matter) with access to basic technology the ability to see the world through another person's eyes on a global scale. People are no longer interdepdent on local or national news. The attacks on the WTC is a great example of this, thousands of photos we taken when the planes hit and we saw from millions of angles and people what the experience was like.

Posted by itp at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

test

Posted by itp at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)