Everyone Can Be Web-Native
Last semester I taught a web projects class in Hunter College’s Integrated Media Arts MFA program that, in addition to covering some CSS/HTML and web design production basics, focused on web native storytelling. The students in the program are mostly already kick-ass non-fiction media makers and so I was excited to see what they would do when confronted with a web-based platform. Two of the newest and most user friendly tools we looked at that allow for nearly instant web-native gratification are Zeega (still in alpha) and Mozilla’s Popcorn Maker (a GUI for working with their popcorn.js library). A few folks tried out Zeega. Here are just three of the great projects that came together in class (best viewed in Chrome or Safari):
Camilla: An Interactive Fairytale by Ryan Daniels
An observational, interactive story about a girl who grew up in an upper class household in Brasil and is confronted with her complex identity.
The Egg Trade by Laura Hadden
Audio interviews reflecting different perspectives on the egg donor industry.
The Haitian Situation by Tennessee Watson
A painting made as a gift is an animated interface for an interview with an American Colonel who was responsible for Haitian refugees at Guantánamo Bay in the early 90s. The non-interactive version can be seen at the Guantánamo Public Memory Project.
Oyster City in Residence on Governors Island
Building 110, Governors Island
Oyster City (Meredith Drum and Rachel Stevens) will be in residence in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Building 110 on Governors Island from March through July as a participant in the 2013 Swing Space Residency. We’ll be developing Oyster City, our AR walking tour and game about oysters in NYC, in situ, as one of our sites is on Governors Island, just a minutes long boat ride from Manhattan. The nearby NY Harbor School has been cultivating oyster beds there, reflecting a recent trend in exploring oyster cultivation as a counter to environmental ills such as polluted water and eroding coastlines (and hurricanes). Some recent articles in the NYTimes are here in my Oysters, Cities and Systems Storify stream.
JODI: Street Digital
The latest issue of the Millennium Film Journal, MFJ No. 56, with a focus on “material practice” came out during Superstorm Sandy. It includes my review of JODI’s show at the Museum of the Moving Image, Street Digital, curated by Michael Connor. JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmansare) have been heroes of mine since I first encountered their net.art in the 1990s and I was so excited to experience a full museum show of their recent work in NYC. Here is a favorite recent project of theirs: Folksomy – a crowd-sourced collection of videos of “people doing strange things with computers.” “Folksomy” is a misspelling of the term “folksonomy” (which is a term that refers to a the process of tagging things on the Internet by a large cross section of people thereby creating a common denominator of semantic order). If you feel lost, CLICK HERE.
Color Studies / Body Radio
A couple weeks ago I visited Parson’s Hall Project Space in Holyoke, MA, a gallery in an old industrial building owned, renovated and occupied by Torsten Burns and Kari Gatske. The renovations are beautiful and there was a great turnout for the opening in the project space. I finally had an excuse to make a piece I’ve been mulling over for months: Color Studies (After Albers) for the show, Body Radio, which shares the space with the launch of the Strange Attractors compilation.
A few years ago a friend found a 40+ snapshots “in a dumpster” of a bunch of business men in a hotel suite, with a stripper in the 80s or early 90s. Following the logic of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square color studies I made formal paintings from the shapes in these images using gouache. I was attempting to organize a dual way of perceiving these images – the perceptual and formal color relationships (“chromatic interactions”) should merge with the curious social dynamics and power relations of the scene.
Machine Wilderness
How did I get here? This week Meredith Drum and I will be at ISEA 2012: Machine Wilderness. We’ll be giving an artist talk on Friday and have made an AR piece for the Block Party on Sunday – a satellite object related to Oyster City. Responding to the theme of transportation, our AR bubble addresses how oysters get to the desert. You can “go inside” and touch four objects to reveal their secrets.