“Today we are beginning to realize that the new media aren’t just mechanical gimmicks creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression”
Marshall McLuhan
IT IS HERE THAT THE COMPUTER CEASES TO BE A TOOL AND INSTEAD BECOMES A MEDIUM…
NOWHERE, NOW HERE is the title of my project that is about the perception we have of time or the lack of it. It is a project that mixes video, text and processing to talk about existential stuff. Hard core craziness. I could say my goal is to present my stuff at MoMA but the truth is that the purpose of my project is really to experiment and discover how can I use code to express myself. When it comes to the audience, for now, I guess is just me, myself and my mom.
This idea was born after I did a video for Common Lab called Missed Connections based on the work of a woman that makes beautiful and insightful illustrations inspired by her readings of one of Craig’s List sections. Messages in bottles, smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. She tries to pin a few of them down. Her name is Sophie Blackall and in a very poetic way she transforms the absurd / romantics of all that cyber talk in one single awesome drawing. I was “telling” one of her drawings and needed tools that could express feelings since I was determined not to use words or dialogs. I shared that with a friend and he showed me a bunch of ways to achieve that “speaking” processing. I picked this one…
And here is the video… The image I referred is the one that ends the movie.
About the planning and the process on making it real I can say that my main problem is I am all over the place. I am interested in a bunch of things. But at the same time I also can be extremely obsessive when I really like something. I struggled a lot to decide what I wanted to do! Instead of having an idea right away and putting my time on developing it- even it was not the best idea ever- I chose to put my time on discovering something that I would be passionate about. I strongly believe that being connected with my final project’s content will make me give a 100% no matter how hard it is for me to “talk” processing. The downside of all that is I ended up not giving that much time on the development part. Still, I think engaging with a project is the most important decision I can do for my work and the rest will probably come naturally… Or not that naturally, but then again, by now I am an expert on dealing with frustration. (No, I am not. I’ll give my best and if it doesn’t work I’ll be devastated. But I prefer to make things that way then going for something “safe” but unappealing).
My plan is to start the ‘doing part’ right away. However, I have to talk about a last concern. At this point I guess all of us understand that code is not limited to the screen and projected image. It is also felt in physical space to control aspects of the world outside the computer. I kind of want to use that characteristic that makes code unique. Suggestions?