Blog Post 7: Inanimate Objects

I completely believe it's impossible to have a relationship with inanimate objects. I think anyone who has written code feels like they are their bastard step child. I form deeper relationships with animals or humans obviously but I do think there is merit to humanizing an inanimate object. I think everyone's childhood they had a tamagotchi. Those taught children about responsibility and taking care of a pet. The benefit was we didn't actually kill an animal. The hurt of losing them was still palpable. 

Without a tamagotchi I don't think I would have been responsibility of a rat, it was an important part in transforming who I was. 

I don't think you could call AI inanimate tho. At a certain point it will be nearly indistinguishable from human life. 




Turtle, Sherrry; Taggart, Will, Kidd, Cory D; & Daste, Olivia. (2006) Relational artifacts with children and elders: the complexities of cybercompanionship

Blog Post 6: Interactive Art

Participation of interaction: Towards the Origins of the Interactive Art  by Solke Dinkle talks about how we can interact with our art mediums. The first two things that came to mind were: the blue man group and video games. The Blue Man Group is notorious for having audience members interact with their shows. Is this truly interactive art? I guess that would depend on what you are considering art.  Dancing to music at a show, is also creating your own art to jive with their art. I have been to a few art collective shows where all the painters start one painting and everyone else is asked to interact with that painting. Paint whatever inspired on top of their original art form. I think that's an interactive art. I think video games are the true new interactive art form. Games like Mario Maker, which take a game we are used to Super Mario Bros, and let us create our own levels. We can expand on an artform we already know, the platformer game, and create something in our own liking. People get absolutely nutty in creating masterpiece levels of difficulty and creativity. 

The game Journey, which is very linear, still I would consider interactive art. You can't change the outcome but you can interact with this world of pure beauty. 

I think the next true expansion of interactive art is going to be Virtual Reality, I am very excited where this art form takes us in the future.

Blog Post 5: Timohthy Brinkley The Vitality of Digital Art

Digital art is hindered by the processors on which the creations run. Now digital art is quiet amazing and can produce more colors than we could with an analog equivalent. This wasn't the always the case, we must think back to CRTS and 8 bit processors. The limitation of technology was preventing us from producing truly vivid pictures.

Now we can render any color, from a scale of 0-255 from the R,B,G spectrum in terms of what is put out. This allows us such a greater scale in terms of what we can produce. Last year in my engineering class we had to convert one of these pictures into gray scale for compression of information. It was an eye opening experience in how computers produce images.

I, however, love 8-bit and 16-bit pixel art, it makes me feel nostalgic. There has been a Renaissance in that art form in the last few years. It's almost like the minimalist art movement that started one hundred years ago. Now that people have the technology to make very advanced art, there is a longing for art that reminds us of our childhood. I grew up playing 16 bit pixel art games and sprite based fighting games. I grew up in the arcade playing Street Fighter 3: 3rd strike, so to see a return to that nostalgia makes my heart warm.

I don't think digital art seems any less real, but I could see how that argument could be made. Unlike the author though, I've grown up with digital art. I've seen the progression from CRTS to digital screens. I find digital art endearing.

Binkley, Timothy (1997). The Vitality of Digital Creation. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 55 (2). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Blog Post 4: Programmed or Be Programmed

Chap 6:

 I relate to on a personal level. It is the main reason that I do not have a Facebook, people rely on the internet too much to hide who they are. They produce this person they think they should be seen as, and not the person they truly are.

Chap 7:

 I think is well said, being able to boil human essence down to those five things: survival, power, wealth, sex and glory are the five inspirations of man kind. I think it'd be hard to convince me that someone was doing anything if it didn't pertain to these five drives. It's easy to accidentally tag your friends or use them as a product. You could inadvertently make revenue off their likeness.

Chap 8:

I think memes are one of the greatest inventions in the last 20 years. It completely wraps up with that internet is about, quickness and accessibility. You can break humor down to just a phrase that makes people laugh uncontrollably. You can take political ideas or human rights issues and make people read about them because of the simplicity. 

Chap 9:

I full heartily believe in open sourcing programs and letting them out for people to use. Open source algorithms are the backbone of the internet and human progression. A person in Africa could get access to Khan Academy, learn advanced math, and transfer to a first world country. Things like YouTube tutorials, Wikipedia, and countless other resources are educating the world at an alarmingly fast rate. The tools are there if people are just willing to look for the resources.

Chap 10:

Using all these principles, we can shape the future of the human race and the individual. We can reprogram how we think, how the world thinks and how we are digesting information. I personally think online reading is the best solution. It's how I learn most of my information for school.