Media Arts for me is like an interactive theater. A lot of fun setting up scripts that take on their own life and interact with people.
For my senior show, I had an opportunity of exhibiting to a lot of people, in a perfectly dim space with a huge wall all to myself. It quite tiring climbing 20ft ladders running up all the wires, but in the end it worked nicely.
I wanted to see how people would respond if they saw a wall of faces looking at them and each other. Their response would then be put on the wall for the next person to ponder.
Senior Project 2009
What resulted from this effort is a system of dynamic video manipulation that can be modified for abstract projections in any gallery exhibit or filled with custom content for any ad campaign.
Senior Project Test
I’ve created these projects in the program “Pure Data”. Pure Data or PD, is a very simple graphical interface for simple “C” scripts. While its nice to be able to manipulate audio and video visually, there are a lot of things the program doesnt do. For example, It motion-tracked a person walking by a camera. But, its results were extremely jumpy x, y coordinates. I then took the raw data, averaged, smoothed, it using math functions, and used the output to control audio and video triggers.
The Hipsters are judging you from above
This was a fun piece. Like in the "study of movement", the animation follows the passing person. My Media Arts Department was located on the second floor overlooking a large atrium from above. So I thought it would be funny if I put the projection up that high with the faces and expressions of the Media Arts majors. It was very entertaining!
A study of movement
A simple interaction between a person and animated object. A videoclip plays when the viewer moves in one direction. Another plays when he/she moves in another, and another plays when the viewer is standing still.
World View
This is an interactive documentary. A journey around the world in the time it takes to cross two projector screens.
The viewer comes in, a video starts playing. If the viewer moves right, the video adjusts its position and plays a scene from a country to the east. If the viewer moves left, the video moves west.
The videos are home-made movies from people all around the world. Some are made by tourists. Some by locals, but they all seem to capture average lives of everyday middle-class people.
The audio is from internet radio stations that the people in that region of the world listen to. Its funny to me how many of the clips turned out to be really cheesy American Pop, but they are chosen at random. So are the videos.
Deep water exploration
This is a project made with Adobe Flash and Pure-data with a local webserver connecting the two programs.
Strange deep-water fish, garbage, a mermaid, and ruins of our civilization are floating and swimming randomly in a cityscape, following their own course of events.
When a person walks up, a window is opened, like a flashlight shining into the darkness, allowing him/her to see whats inside. The window follows the person, creating the impression that the viewer is holding the flashlight, actively peering into the deep.
Behind the Scenes
This is a sort of "behind the scenes" look at my senior year of media arts. See me install, test, and explain the setup. Also, see the equipment it takes to create an interactive installation.