Dennis Oppenheim (earth artist)

“Garden for the Accused” Sep.14-Nov. 8 2006

http://www.dennis-oppenheim.com/works/2006/238

 http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/thomaspainepark/pressrelease/19829

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

objective about the project

nime firstdemo 01 from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.
**currently working on sound to make it more ‘sonical’ (with harmonious and non-harmonious (tensional) chords of sounds), sampling voices could be another option (more emotion and more story-telling). Also the amplitude (loudness of sound) changes as the amount of color increases and decreases.

techniques and tools

I am using a webcam which is hooked up to USB cable to my computer to read RGB values from what I am capturing through the webcam. MaxMSP software reads value coming from the webcam and it converts the value into sounds.

Initial Synopsis for the performance:

1. The performer is blinded by a cloth and he or she is wearing a webcam on his or her palm.

2. The blinded performer reach her arm and ‘sees’ color through the webcam on her palm.

3. RGB values from video image captured through webcam are translated into audio signal in MasMSP software.

4. Each RGB color data represents each different notes and amplitude of the general audio signal. All the audio signal is played simultaneously.

5. The performer, with a vulnerable position, relies on the sound generated by her ‘new sensor’,explore the space, and play with participants.

Story-telling

I am putting some abstracted narratives behind this performance. The main character can’t see but she can hear colors.  The main character (me) is someone who is mature outside but immature inside (she feels intimidated by the society (outer forces). That emotion is expressed as visual semiotics that she is blind and she thrives to find ways through her own way (by hearing colors). The other character(s) is(are) have different characteristics and he or she fools around with moving around colored light bulbs with might represent ‘enlightenment’.

Buzzwords

emotional tension, whisper, pray, longing for enlightment, chance/improvisation, outer force that prohibits total control of sound

test 1 (FM synthesis)

IMG 1451 from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.

test 2 (voices: whisper when dark, women singing ‘E’ note when certain amount of Red is detected, women singing high C note when certain amount of Blue and Green is detected) I actually like this because I think the voices can evoke more emotions.

NIME TEST 02 from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.

test 3 (various instrument/effect sound tests, in chords and scales of notes) more ‘instrumental’

IMG 1475 from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.

Costume and installation ideas so far 

  

http://makematics.com/code/psvm/

http://artisticactivism.org/2012/10/an-open-letter-to-critics-writing-about-political-art/

I studied architecture at college.

While I was working for assignment from professors, there were things that I could not be convinced. At that time in Japan, there were a lot of empty buildings, left over. I noticed that there are 700,000 houses in Tokyo that are empty. However, there were more than 10,000 homeless people. Therefore ‘houses’ are not actually for people to live in. (00:01:38) I told my professor that we do not need to make more architecture buildings anymore. (00:01:48) I tried submitting a project, a documentation of me living inside a left over water tank, as the school assignment. But my professor replied that “Then you cannot scratch a living”.

The teacher I needed was the one with ‘reality’. I met a homeless person who changed my life completely. His name was Mr. Suzuki. His house used Solar powered roof and 12V battery that he got free from a gas station. It can charge even iphones and macbooks.

We do not know how much water we use daily and we don’t know what is the material behind our walls. If you do not know this, you do not have your own ‘economy’. This homeless person had his own economy. I asked him if the place is too small for him and he would say, “this is just my living room.” We visited public library and he would claim that it is his bookshelf. He claimed that space does not belong to anybody. He used a bike light to light the space. It does not die easily. Regular light bulbs are designed to have a limited lifespan because they have to sell.

Not only homeless lives, I research about gardens as well. In Tokyo, everybody wants a garden but it is too expensive to have. One day, I found a place with plants covering one’s parking lot (even on top of cars, walls, everywhere). I asked the home owner how could he do that. Every afternoon, he installs plants and trees on his parking lot and clear them out every morning. I call this ‘Zero Yen Garden’. He collects plants and tag every plants with name tags so that passerby people can enjoy them. This is a park rather than a garden. I thought this might be something ‘public’. I do not think that ‘public’ is not something a government made with the taxes they collected. I think ‘public’ is something that was made by one who has a ‘full’ mind and who is willing to share things with others, which can add to fill up something missing, without spending much money, but with humor…

I made the ‘New Government’ after seeing this garden.

This is a year before 3.11 earthquake. I am reading the law legislation book as a fiction literature. As I am reading legislation, I always notice that human beings are so amusing (funny). Outrageously, the number of laws never decreases. The government always make new laws and rules.

An ‘architecture’ is something that is fixed to the ground. So I attached car wheels. It really looks like a house but when you attach wheels, this becomes a ‘automobile’. I can rent a parking lot from a realtor who lends parking lots. I placed this mobile house on this parking lot.

People used be asking me if I am going to ‘live’ here and I say ‘no’. Because ‘to live’ is not defined in any law. ’To live’ is a matter of a philosophy. The government does not have a philosophy. So philosophy is more powerful. I am living but I am not living according to the law. This is art.

As I learned from my master, I used solar panel to make electricity. I attached bike lights, used 12 volts battery, charge ipads with my cigar jack usb cables. And I can use the wi-fi internet that was free in this particular parking lot spot.

There was the 3.11 earthquake after this. It happened right after I placed this mobile house on this parking lot. By chance, on March 3rd, I once publicly mentioned about the Fukushima Nuclear Accident. After a week, there was really a earthquake happened. I decided to leave Tokyo, far away. So returned to my hometown, Kumamoto.

It was March 15th when I escaped.

According to historical record, the radioactivity started to cloud over Tokyo on March 15th. I telephoned people to warn them but they mocked at me.

And this place I discovered has an entrance that is over two meters deep, a place that cannot be remodeled legally.

This 1200 square meter building was 15000 yen, which was pretty cheap. Because I was going to escape many people from Tokyo to here, I decided to pay double and I refurbished the place by myself.

And then on May 10th, I made this place ‘public’ and create the New Government. The reason is because I wife kept saying that this situation we are in is so anarchic.

I made a tree house. For this place, the book that I published acts as the passport so whoever has my book could access this place. In the New Government, I made new currency. This is the 500,000 yen bill.

This currency piece was not really popular in Japan. However, Vancouver in Canada was a good sell. I divide my lifestyle according to different countries and regions. In Tokyo, I am publishing books; so far, I have published around 10 books. In Kumamoto, I am running the government. A close friend of mine is the real vice mayor at Kumamoto. I work with his guy also for my projects. In Vancouver, I work as a contemporary artist. Starting from August, I am going to work in Europe and they call me as a performer. In Nairobi, I donate a lot and they call me ‘Great Brother’.

So I change myself according to countries. In Kumamoto, I am running a government. This place is where anyone can escape to. Instead of being enraged against the government without any solutions, the New Government start making solutions.

Everything I mentioned before- the garden, layers of homeless people, a lot of left over houses- they are all relevant to ‘Oikosnomos’. All of these are about economy that is about my attitudes which is ‘attitude economics’.

In Kumamoto, the local government could not do anything. But I only spent 1,500,000 yen to do this job. It was not that difficult. So I wrote a manual of this project for the local government can perform by themselves. But they really did not do many things to help people.

People want to help people who are devastated. But often we cannot think of a new economics.  ’To show how’ is what I have to do as an architect. These days, I am building more ‘sophisticated’ mobile houses. I often call my pieces something like ‘customized’ arts. This mobile house that built as a restaurant is very popular. Now, I started to get suggestions from local governments in Aichi, Kumamoto that they want to make ‘mobile house towns’.

Performance

10 Minutes

at Highline Park, New York, NY

Highline Intervention from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.

The main purpose of ‘Marking Space with Physicality’ is to contextualize a public place as a museum by providing a served (injected) context, as we referred as ‘frame’. Our project was temporarily hold in Highline park, above 24th street and 10th Avenue in New York City. We’ve chosen this area because of its clear view of Highline neighborhood and benches facing the view. We needed this specific area since we wanted to embrace the history of Highline in our project. With this set of environment, therefore, we were able to reframe the area as if the place was a museum. What we’ve actually done was to hold a big cardboard frame against the view, so that people could sit on benches and look at the real-time view of Highline neighborhood as if they were to look at paintings in museums. When we were using our bodies to hold the frame, we were facing the view as well. Also, we tried to provide an impressionistic-point of view to audience by looking at the framed real-time painting that changes with daylight through time. While we were holding the cardboard frame for 10 minutes, we could see how people were interacting with the piece. As our original intention of project, people often sat down on benches and looked at the view we emphasized with the frame. People seemed to recognize the beauty of Highline view more engagingly than before. The project was a good learning exercise for site-specific project since we could actually interact with public audience at a specific public space.

White noise is a random signal (or process) with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency. White noise draws its name from white light in which the power spectral density of the light is distributed over the visible band in such a way that the eye’s three color receptors (cones) are approximately equally stimulated. In statistical sense, a time series r_t is characterized as having weak white noise if {r_t} is a sequence of serially uncorrelated random variables with zero mean and finite variance. Strong white noise also has the quality of being independent and identically distributed, which implies no autocorrelation. In particular, if r_t is normally distributed with mean zero and standard deviation σ, the series is called a Gaussian white noise.

An infinite-bandwidth white noise signal is a purely theoretical construction. The bandwidth of white noise is limited in practice by the mechanism of noise generation, by the transmission medium and by finite observation capabilities. A random signal is considered “white noise” if it is observed to have a flat spectrum over a medium’s widest possible bandwidth.

Tristan Perich – Microtonal Wall at Interaccess – Walkthrough from Tristan Perich on Vimeo.

1. Reconstruct me +Kinect

2. MeshLab

3. Sketch Up (unfold plug-in)

wearing me from another time and space / cyborg/

other wordly costume

problem with unfold= cannot retain the form??

other option= 3-d print  a thin crust of the original mesh (reduced vertices) and hand-cut sections to open them and attach to stretchy fabric (fabic pattern is done by unfold)

IMG 1155 from Jee Won Kim on Vimeo.

OPEN FRAMEWORKS CODE:

*put soundfile inside ‘data’ folder

(inside test.h)

#pragma once

#include “ofMain.h”

#include “ofxOpenNI.h”

 class testApp : public ofBaseApp{

 public:

void setup();

void update();

void draw();

void exit();

void handEvent(ofxOpenNIHandEvent & event);

 ofxOpenNI openni;

float currentZ,lastZ, diffZ;

ofSoundPlayer punch;

 ofTrueTypeFont font;

};

(inside testapp.cpp)

#include “testApp.h”

using namespace std;

void testApp::setup() {

ofSetVerticalSync(true);

openni.setup();

openni.addImageGenerator();

openni.addDepthGenerator();

openni.addHandsGenerator();

openni.addAllHandFocusGestures();

openni.setMaxNumHands(1);

openni.setRegister(true);

openni.setMirror(true);

openni.start();

currentZ = 0;

punch.loadSound(“kungfu_punch.mp3″);

font.loadFont(“Sudbury_Basin_3D.ttf”,40);

}

void testApp::update(){

openni.update();

ofSoundUpdate();

if (openni.isNewFrame()){

if(openni.getNumTrackedHands() > 0) {

ofxOpenNIHand& hand = openni.getTrackedHand(0);

ofPoint& handPosition = hand.getPosition();

float currentZ = handPosition.z;

currentZ = ofLerp(currentZ, handPosition.z, .1);

diffZ= currentZ- lastZ;

lastZ= currentZ;

if (diffZ < -59){

cout<< “punch” <<endl;

punch.play();

}

}

}

}

void testApp::draw(){

ofBackground(0);

ofSetColor(255);

ofScale(.75, .75, .75);

openni.drawDepth(0, 0, 640, 480);

openni.drawImage(640, 0, 640, 480);

ofSetColor(255, 0, 0);

int n = openni.getNumTrackedHands();

for(int i = 0; i < n; i++) {

ofxOpenNIHand& hand = openni.getTrackedHand(i);

ofPoint& handPosition = hand.getPosition();

ofCircle(handPosition.x, handPosition.y,10);

// cout<< handPosition.z<<endl;

float ofGetElapsedTimef();

//cout<<  ofGetElapsedTimef() <<endl;

}

ofRect(640, 0, diffZ * 10, 10);

ofSetHexColor(0×000000);

font.drawString(“PUNCH!”, ofGetWidth()/4, 90);

}

void testApp::exit() {

openni.stop();

}

void testApp::handEvent(ofxOpenNIHandEvent& event) {

ofLog() <<

getHandStatusAsString(event.handStatus) <<

“for hand” << event.id <<

“from device” << event.deviceID;

}