Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction eschews on the significance of art, comparing and contrasting art’s origins to its more current perception.  new technologies has enabled art to transcend its original association with the religious, secularized and the magical, breaking down what Benjamin deems art’s “aura,” so rather than art as a single experience only available to a select few, through new means of reproduction (and in particular film), it is available to the public at large, enabling politics and culture to collide in a way that was never before possible.

of course to say that art and politics and culture never had the symbiotic relationship that it does now would not be entirely correct.  throughout history, many cultural revolutions were started by the likes of more traditional artists: picasso, mondrian, and duchamp.  the latter’s association with the Dadaist revolution however, is linked closely with film’s anti-elitist, anti-aesthete qualities.  film, like many of the Dadaists’, highlighted the idiosyncrasies of mankind and destroyed many of the traditional relationships that separated the artist from audience.  what technology has enabled within art in its dissemination of form, is the promotion of a “mass culture” and a “mass politic.”  the mystique is broken.  the original artwork no longer matters, but the idea of its existence, for whose significance is more apparent and more important than the actual work.

I think here too however of Jean Baudrillard’s essay Simulacra and Simulation, which expounds on the dangers of perceived reproductions of reality.  Baudrillard writes, “the simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.  The simulacrum is true.”  We now live in a world where modern society has replaced reality with symbols and signs and that our experiences are now just a simulation of reality rather than reality itself.  i think it is important here to make a distinction between simulations of reality versus reproductions of reality, the latter being a direct representation of our existence, the former being a mere perversion which distorts society rather than enhances society.

Documentation Project #1 for Communications Lab, experimenting with the Xacti camera. I had filmed a project that I was working on for pcomp but it turned out that Matt and Meredith sitting across the table were much more entertaining to film.

our group’s submission to the 30-minute film festival.

In this lab, we were exploring electricity and learning more about circuits. the analogy that was the most helpful to hear was the idea of electricity as water going through a pipe.  voltage would be how much water is being pushed through (measured in (V)volts), current is how strong the water is being pushed through (measured in (A) Amperes or milliAmps (mA), and last of all resistance (in Ohms) is likened to the size of the pipe, which will oppose both current and voltage.  that’s so hot right? yea, so movin’ on.

Part I. Measuring Voltage

Working with Winslow on this lab, we first set out to test our skills at measuring voltage. after soldering the DC power jack, we connected it to our breadboard, along with our voltage regulator.  taking our multimeter, we measured roughly 15V going in and 5V coming out.  so far so good.

Part II. Basic LED circuits.

Here we connected the LED, switch, and 220-ohm resistor in a circuit.  again no problem.  measuring our voltage with the:

switch on (0 V)      :  LED (1.78V) + Resistor (2.89V) = 4.67V TOTAL

switch off (3.75 V) : LED (0 V) + Resistor (0V) = 3.75V TOTAL

Part III. Components in Series.

Here we were connecting two LEDs in a series (power to ground).  the voltage reading across both registered at around 2.4V, which makes sense since together they should add up to roughly 5V.  the second we added the third LED however, it dropped, and the third LED would not light.

Part IV.  Components in Parallel.

HOLY SMOKES! so we had a few LED casulties on this one.  someone suggested replacing our voltage regulator with another one, even though it had the same numbers on the front, the new regulator had a top section that was slightly different.  it might be the reason, but regardless of which, our LEDs lit up sporadically.  it was a little confusing at first to figure out how to connect our multimeter in circuit to our existing parallel circuit on the breadboard but we figured it out eventually, reading 1A.

Part V.  Generating Variable Voltage w/a Potentiometer

Finally we added our trusty pot to the mix. watch our conclusions in the video below.

This week has been learning about object-orientating programming in processing.  the first time is definitely ABSTRACT.  but after i had about 10 different analogies explained to me (cookies, bikes, factories, people, sheep), I came up with one that would be the most familiar to me.  the prefab dwelling.  a class is like the design for a prefab home that doesn’t yet physically exist but for which all the properties have already been defined in the blueprints.  along comes a potential owner who buys the design and hires contractors to build the house (aka the object) which in processing is like using the constructor to create an instance of an object of the class House.  phew..

and now for some prefabricated goodness.  thanks to robert and john for their help and trigonometry refresher. click on picture below to go to sketch, and refresh to change colors and orbs.

They have the internet on computers now? – Homer Simpson

starting a blog seemed like a great idea at times.  setting up a blog and faithfully posting was a daunting task most of the time. and choosing what to write about in a blog took up entirely too much time.  i have often started and than stopped a blog, never finding the dedication to stick to some firm ideas. but now as i find myself in this environment of incredible self-reflection, i find it an appealing, albeit slightly frightening, concept to put myself out…there.  and whether or not this blog will eventually meet its fate into the netherworld as 90% of blogs roughly do, i am sure that at the very least, this blog will at least be a good reflection of the thoughts and ideas of my time here at ITP (namely my slow descent into dementia).

now we have reached an era in which the term being “published” means virtually nothing.  in fact, as i write this now, i am staring at a large glaring “publish” button off to the side in which with one click of the button i can send my thoughts and ideas out into the world for everybody to read, for better or for worse.  and to be honest, much of what is out there, could use some old-fashioned editorial critique.  and while my blog for the most part will be harmless, i can only imagine the thoughts behind bloggers whose blogs are being read by thousands if not millions of people around the world in which instantly through no mediated media outlet nor rounds of fact checking, can make their belief likened to fact through the simple click of a button.

so yes. this blog might get hot and heavy, as in I’m getting all excited and tingly thinking about doing some object-orienting programming on one of those new mac notebooks, but its not like i’ll be talking about what Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson are wearing…much.

Hello World.  This is me.

Winslow and I decided to observe people when they least expected it.  on a friday night.  we wanted to observe people in a private setting than see how it differed with people out on the streets in the east village and LES.  At the party, people were thoroughly stimulated so the only time they relied on technology was to improve their social experience, ie. music, locating friends, etc. People on the street however, used technology as a social crutch, finding easy outs for awkward social situations, relying on their cell phones and other devices as a means of avoiding a situation at hand, keeping themselves occupied, or even as a comfort device–holding it in their hand even though they weren’t interacting with it. for the most part, cell phone-use by our subjects prohibited real direct human interaction with the people who were standing literally inches away.

I was thinking of Yoko Ono’s “Box of Smile” as the inspiration behind this piece.  In that piece, the viewer would approach a closed box that simply said a box of smile and upon opening the box, it would reveal a mirror in which the viewer would “get it” and start smiling, fulfilling the work’s name.  For my own love-o-meter, the concept aimed to accomplish two ideas: (1) love is special and frankly, who is more special than yourself (didn’t your mother tell you that)?; and (2) in order to love freely, you must first learn to love yourself.  To demonstrate this, I placed a mirror inside a box with a photocell sensor that would detect how far a person’s face was from the mirror.  I than set up a set of conditions that would give a range for how far a person’s face was from the mirror, in which the red LED would light up when the person’s face was literally pressed up against the mirror in embrace.

I at first tried the love-me-meter with a passive infrared motion sensor but was limited in the fact that it was only a digital output, telling me whether or not something was moving.  Not willing to spend the money on a more analog-type of proximity sensor, I decided to use the light sensor as an indicator of how close an object was to something (would block more light).  The results are below.

i’ve been reading Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, which if one can get past the fact that it is incredibly dense and somewhat esoteric, proposes some concepts that help reinforce the idea of the electronic-era as ushering in a new manner of communication.  backpacking on mcluhan’s earlier revolutionary theory of “medium as the message,” Ong delves into the history of oral and literal cultures and how in actuality, literary cultures are the minority and it has been the mistake of literate cultures to view oral cultures in terms of their lack of literacy.  Ong moreover, would argue that oral cultures are the more primary, dominant form of communication and that writing, though important, is static and unresponsive.  now however we find ourselves in a third form of communication, or a ’secondary orality’ which uses writing in a manner so instantaneous via text messaging, IM, etc., that it translates ideas at the speed nearly the same as ‘primary orality’.

reading that, i immediately thought of a scene in an episode of Californication, when David Duchovny’s character bemoans the loss of the english language when the girl he is dating responds to his question with BRB.  although one could argue that BRB is part of a new lexicon that circumvents the english language.  and even recently while flipping randomly through a magazine i see a little tip that says IM at work actually improves work flow better than something like e-mail because the communication is instantaneous in such a way that you don’t have to wait for a response before proceeding.  now while some companies might look down at the use of such things as chat-rooms or IM at work, certainly it makes sense that within an organization, it is a lot faster than getting up and walking over to someone on the 12th floor…

i was all set to check out Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls up close and personal.  Riding the NQBD trains everyday always allowed me to see them from afar but to be fairly honest–and I appreciated Olafur’s previous retrospective at the MOMA and PS1–from my high vantagepoint on the Manhattan Bridge, I wasn’t particularly impressed.   i had hoped however that perhaps a night view and a closer inspection would induce me to take back my initial judgement.  after determining my bike route based on the NYT recommendation, in the end i was only underwhelmed to discover that they were in fact even MORE disappointing up close because…they weren’t even turned on.

all the while, i couldn’t help but think that: (a) the roughly 15 million in money to support the work could have gone to better use; and (b) the visible structure behind the falls didn’t add to the work in a positive way.  despite the artist’s attempt to try to convey the physicality of water, that sense didn’t seem to translate to the mere viewer. all in all, it still felt like a dry town.