Monday, February 23, 2015

Artist Post #3

Pascal Dombis

Image result for pascal dombis antisana
Antisana 
Pascal Dombis is a french a digital artist who has been working on this medium for more than 20 years.  Dombis has been using computers and algorithms to produce excessive repetition of simple process.  By computationally reproducing a geometrical or typographical sign, he creates restructuring structures which develop into irrational environments.  What interested me most when reading the excerpt from class the description of how he made his pieces.  In Antisanna, Dombis uses a recursive process to code the images that are created and then evolved off of the other. In computer science recursion was one of the more complicated things I learned when first learning the language. When I'm coding something recursively there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about writing it at all.  It's usually just taking a input from the user and then using a recursive function to cycle through a function so many times until the function does what the user wants.  Recursion as an art form is fascinating and the abstract pieces that Dombis is able to create seem so simply made and artistic that you would never think about the amount of coding and manipulation of code that goes on beneath the surface of the piece.   
Line_Wave
The part of the reading that drew me in most about Dombis was just the description of recursion as an art and how it is used to model natural phenomena.  If you look at Antisana it looks very symmetrical all of the lines travel around the piece in different layers yet each side seems to be symmetrical and seem to all join at the center of the piece.  This piece gives a perfect visual representation of what the  recursive process is.  In recursion you start off with one simple thing that is given to you.  In a computer scientist terms you start off with whatever data is given to you.  As a digital artist you look at your start point and see how you can evolve it from there.  Once you obtain your data (or start point) you can code it so that function you code can technically go on and evolve into whatever you want it to until you've reached whatever end point you've decided in your function. As a computer scientist recursion can be simple but I can only imagine what it would be like to create an piece of art with recursion.  It would take so much trial and error to make sure each line that you draw in the piece goes the way you want it to and it would take a complete mastery of the recursive process. Coding it would be a very long process to create something that Dombis created.  This article explains that computer art hasn't taken off as an art form and I think the main reason for that is that a majority of the viewers don't see the process behind it. 

  [ENG] CensorZip explores the notion of censorship in China and built a sensational environment that deals with the legibility of images coming from censored web pages. The mass of...
CensorZip

After looking at many of his works online, it seems like every piece he creates has a very digital feel to it.  Some digital artist look towards animating characters or creating life like image in their pieces but all of  his seem very abstract.  However, every one of his pieces make me feel that there is a computer somewhere behind the image.  In Censor zip the rectangular lines and kind of puzzle piece look to it makes me thing of it as like an abstract version of some sort of data chip.  In Line wave it literally looks like a computer screen that isn't working the right way. Even in Antisana all of the lines look like an intricate jumble of wires that make up the piece.  In making all of these subtle relationships to computers and technology he is able to express his process that is not seen by many of his viewers.  That's the part I like the most about his pieces, he brings the medium he works with to life an makes people question how it was made.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Artist Post #2



Kazuhiko Nakamura

Automaton

The artist I chose, Kazuhiko Nakamura was born in Hyogo, Japan in 1961.  He was greatly influenced by surrealism and cyberpunk styles of art.  His style of art has dark look to it, non of which really emulate life.  He makes live objects seam dead and mechanical.  In making the lifelike images turn into machines the viewer no longer looks at the piece as something alive.  Once the mechanical aspect transforms the image the viewer is only seeing machines, not live objects. I found this very interesting because of how simply he can transition the mechanical and humanistic aspects of his pieces. He has had exhibitions in Zurich and other places around the world, and has also has had his work used for book and Music CD covers.  I found this interesting because of the upcoming project we have to do.  The object is to combine dissimilar things and my immediate thought was to combine humans and machines.  

Rhinoceros 1515

On the site I looked at about Nakamura there was a quote from an artist reviewer that said, "Nakamusa's art is a surreal hybrid of man and machine, a hard marriage of man and machine, a hard marriage of metal and flesh."  His art does represent the hybrid of man and machine and what it reminded me of is how viewer's feel when looking at something mechanical as opposed to something that's actually alive.  The mechanical element of his pieces give everything a dark ominous mood to them.  He uses very dark hues with many different shades of black and brown to simplify the images.  The lack of color adds to the "dead" feeling of these images.  They all seem to look constrained by the gears and wires that make each figure up.  In Rhinoceros 1525 the mechanical Rhino looks like its being held up and constrained by all of the wires.  In   Automaton the human skull is shown as a layer of the mechanical parts that make up the face.  Nothing seems alive and all of the human like features are only shown in crude bits and pieces.  The only thing that makes it alright to look at is because technically we look at all of the subjects as machines.  

Metamorphosis

I like these pieces for what they represent, and how the artist makes the viewer feel when looking at them. In my opinion I would try to make each piece look more alive and less mechanical.  Nakamura does an incredible job combining man and machine but I don't like how dead every image seems.  Metamorphosis has the most soft feel to it but the lack of color and lack of "humanness" to it makes it seem very dead.  I would add more color and humanistic features to this work if it were up to me. I do think that his work goes to show that once something is mechanical it is viewed at as dead but I don't necessarily agree with that idea.  Anything that is mechanical has been constructed from some basic idea that a person has had.  A machine is an extension of it's makers idea so in a way it's a part of the person who made it. These idea's live on through the machines that we make as humans so in a way machines should be considered living examples the minds of it's maker.  Many machines have the same basic functions that humans do; they have memory, they can die(run out of battery), they can calculate and keep track of time...in a way we could classify as them being somewhat alive. That's why I would try to add a more lifelike feel to these pieces.  



www.mechanicalmirage.com

Editing bad images

Before:

After:


I brightened up the image more so that all of the colors pop out and look more defined.  Before the colors seemed a little bit dull and faded.  The added brightness brings everyone forward from the background a little more than before.

Monday, February 2, 2015

collage




Here's my image collage.  It was hard to get all of the images to  match up together so I made a random collage with a lot of the distorted scanned images.  I used the gradient map a lot to match some of the colors together and messed with the lasso and image transform option to make everything fit together.  I like the piece and it was good practice on how to mess around with photoshop.