Art and Culture, The Digital Way

dre headphones are fcking SWEEET.. go to TUMBLRSTAFF(.)COM right NOW. fcking right NOW!

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 11:20:35 +0200

The last post. (It's secretly a big, awesome party)

improbablenormality — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:03:13 +0200

A few weeks ago we were shown the use and the effects of Youtube. It changed the way the ‘normal person’ could have an impact on our culture. The man behind the screen is no longer watching, but sharing, editing and most important of all, uploading.

Since it would take too much time/effort/attention span I am not discussing every theory that popped up during that class. Instead, I am giving you this playlist, that I put together of some really great and enjoyable videos that are displaying certain interesting forms of editing, prosumerism, new technology, and how this new culture fits in a larger perspective.

Okay so here is the link to start the playlist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-pF56-ZYkY&list=PL2C01C4D6901B655F&feature=plpp_play_all

You don’t have to watch all of the video’s, there are multiple video’s that fit a topic. Just pick the ones you like and watch them. The whole playlist is 1 hour and 10 minutes long. (good for a rainy day)

The playlist starts off with the video ‘Kara’ by Quantic Dream. It is a professional company who made this and it’s made to underline the power of the playstation 3. It is said in the video, they played this in real time on a playstation 3. You can’t play this on a nintendo 64, nor on a Wii. This tells us with consumer technology, you can reach higher than a consumer level art object. (side note: watch it, it’s beautiful and heart wrenching.)

The playlist continues on with short films. The second video is a film called: My Name is Lisa. Not only comments this video on the subject of video blogging, vlogging it also shows that everyone can make these kinds of films, even without a producer or a film festival. (again…soulcrushingly emotional.) Two other short films come after, one really funny and dynamic and a dark science fiction one (Dutch and I think it’s shot in Nijmegen!) It really shows how much you can do with a reasonable camera and an editing software.

The next batch of videos are about remixing. The first four focus on the mixing between words, sounds and images. Forming words to make them different, moving, making them detached from the traditional forms of words and into the realm of animated images. Words are so important that they are becoming more and more intergrated in video in ways we could never imagine. It can be not that radical as in Stephen Fry’s statement, but it can stand on it’s own like in the word as image video. I think the changing from image to words is something very new and very interesting to happen nowadays.

The next two show the mixing between sound, music and video. In both cases, there is sound mixed in with the video which is not of the original video. The first video is an excerpt from the movie the great dictator. You’ll hear a track from the inception soundtrack playing with it. Both of these bits are very far apart in time although now they are fused together like it always was meant to be this way, this is mixing at its best. The second video is a music video but not quite. The guy in the video is not actually singing the music, that has been done by a very different youtube user. This man simply puts a video to it. This happens quite a lot and therefore I deem it a big and important element in the remix culture.

The last theme: Art through the ages. These two videos show that although video clips and amateurism on the internet are very new and very different media than painting or sculpture, there is and always will be a link between the old and the new. This new culture is self aware.

The very last video simply shows that being somewhere in the right place on the right time with a camcorder pointed the right way can be the cause of something oh, so beautiful.

Watch, enjoy and experience life. (I’m sure that that’s a slogan of some stupid company but who cares.)

-Sjoerd.

Artist turns his dead cat into a helicopter after it's killed by a car. CATCOPTER

improbablenormality — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:21:47 +0200

iheartchaos:

Losing a pet can be very sad, but it happens. And when life (some idiot not paying attention to where he’s driving) hits your cat and kills it, the best thing you can do at that point is turn your dead cat into a helicopter. At least that’s what artist Bart Jansen did with his cat, Orville.

Read More

Now THAT’s a Cyborg! Okay, the…organic…part is dead but it’s very much technology merged with organics.

It is what you make of it.

artismadebyartt — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 23:08:39 +0200

Last Tuesday we discussed surveillance and privacy. We learned that surveillance isn’t actually coming from above (government practices etc.), but from every angle. We watch each other, but also the system by our camera’s we have on us 24/7. You could say there is no more hierarchy when it comes to surveillance, but in the strange world we call internet we don’t really know who and what is watching us.

Once in a while I receive a message on Facebook saying: ”Facebook is changing it’s privacy policies again. Be aware and change your privacy settings”. This comes along once in every three months and it never really sticks. Maybe it’s just me, but I just don’t really see the problem in the privacy issues on Facebook, nor do thousands of other (maybe ignorant) people. I actually think these messages about how Mark Zuckerberg exactly can see if I like cheese or not are complete nonsense. They make people panic about something they already control.

In my head (and correct me if I’m wrong) the game is played like this. You type something you like in on Google (shoes!) and go online shopping. Then you, as we all do every two minutes, want to check Facebook for new messages. Suddenly you see an advertisement which shows pink shoes. You click the link and the circle is round. Apparently there are secret conversations between Google and Facebook about how I love pink shoes, and Facebook is just following my needs to shop. If Facebook didn’t show this advertisement and didn’t know about my love for shoes (great example by the way), I would not have had sparkly, pink shoes in my closet. Of course these kinds of personal information swapping can be doubtful, but I don’t really see the problem. People are treating as if it is a type of surveillance, when it’s really multi directional. If you don’t want the internet to see things, don’t use it. Go shopping in your hometown! If you don’t want to see pictures of you drunk on the internet forever, simply do not post them.

The internet still is a weird, almost foreign world for some of us. But the beauty is that we have the power and the choice in how we use it. Google and Facebook are two of the most powerful companies in the world, but ultimately, they exist in the digital world. And that is a world we can turn away from when we want to. I thought of this subject during class and I think it is a good example on how dependent on the internet we feel and how we need it. More and more people are realizing that it is not necessary, and just that what you make of it. Like real life!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMg5IfL4ijk

digitalart12: Do you think pop songs are original? Think again...

improbablenormality — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 15:56:33 +0200

digitalart12:

Do you think pop songs are original? Think again and have a look at this video: The Axis of Awesome shows that our culture today is a culture of remixing! All the greatest hits from the past 40 years just use 4 chords.

- Lori

Our culture of today? I think culture, just as a whole, across the whole of time is about remixing. Nothing is ever original. It is based on something. Take the first cave paintings for example. You have several mixes here. You have the mixing of the image of the cow, or horse or whatever, with the cave wall, paint and the things used for painting. Middle Ages? Mixing of images from the bible or even other religious works with the artist’s own vision. Remixing has always existed so to label it as ‘something of today’ or ‘omglookatthishaveyouseenthisnothingisoriginal’ is just pointing out that the sky is blue.

-Sjoerd.

10 Films That Revolutionized Computer Graphics

improbablenormality — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:08:23 +0200

kitchen92:

This is an article about the movies that revolutionazed the computer graphics in these years. There were really important changes in the film industry, we passed from a pencils and plastic to 3D computer graphics.

http://3d.about.com/od/3d-at-the-Movies/tp/10-Films-That-Revolutionized-Computer-Graphics-Part-1.htm

-Claudia-

Big shoutout to my sci fi friends there. People aren’t watching enough sci fi these days.

The meat machine

improbablenormality — Mon, 28 May 2012 19:06:14 +0200

knoma:

In Tuesday’s class we talked about artificiality and discussed things like bio-art, cyborg and the way we create human beings. I like to write about the first item the bio-art. Bio-art is art made by biological processes or biological objects. In class we talked about apples with a figure. That was a totally biological process, the only thing they changed was the way the apple got his light. The human action was only cover the apple from the light. There are also bio-art process were the artist put some bacteria’s in a rabbit to get a glow in the dark rabbit, for example. But what if the human create a machine to make some biological stuff, like meet.
On Wednesday we went to de DEAF festival in Rotterdam and there was a fridge with meat from blood and some cells. Our guide told us that it was a totally natural process when the cells en blood were in the fridge. The professors who are busy with this project thinks that this is the new meat. It shall be exactly the same as the meat from animals, but is that a good thing that we create meat by our own techniques? Is the meat exactly the same, or are there little difference in the structure? And an important question, is the meat healthy for us? I am also wondering what will happen to the countryside, will that be existing any longer if we eat meat from the meat laboratories? And how far will we go with manipulating the process of food? Will there be other food that we can make in another way? Or shouldn’t that be accepted? Wouldn’t it be easy to make fruit for example in another way?
I am a little sceptial about the whole new meat thing and I really wonder if we will eat this meat in twenty years. I am really wondering what it will do to our world and I think it is a little scary. But that is what technologies do to us isn’t it? I think that it is something like cyborg it is something were most of the human beings are fascinated by and also scared. Like most new technical inventions we have to go through the aria before we can really accept this kind of new things.

-J-

I don’t think it will TAKE OVER THE ~~WORLD~~ MEAT INDUSTRY. I think it will have the same, maybe a bit stronger, effect as soy milk. It’s a replacement for milk, it doesn’t require a cow. Oh look! The countryside is still there! Wonderful! Let’s all hop around in grass skirts hugging trees! (No offence to people who actually do that, I sing in the shower sometime.) But the point is, we’re so attached to traditional systems that they won’t just disappear. And we won’t just turn into cyborgs overnight, it goes slowly and gradually and it’s never all-encompassing. I mean look at the cd, yup, it replaced records, but look at what’s happening now: people are buying records again and recordplayers! Most things never go away. Or machines gain consciouness and a sense of murder and world domination overnight and we all die fighting our laptops, who knows?!

-Sjoerd.

iheartchaos: Amateur film trailer of the day: ‘True Skin’ And...

improbablenormality — Mon, 28 May 2012 18:50:02 +0200

iheartchaos:

Amateur film trailer of the day: ‘True Skin’

And by amateur, I mean indie, not that this in any way looks like an amateur effort. According to the filmmakers, they’re looking to turn the teaser into a feature-length film that would “explore how robotic augmentations will affect a future society and ultimately ask the question of what it means to exist.” Until that happens, though, expect a short film based off the teaser by Summer 2012. The whole thing was shot in Bangkok by director Stephan Zlotescu.

Submitted by h1chung

CYBORGS! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CT2T26GSmik

With me being a fan of science fiction, cyborgs are things, I KNOW about. Well, technically they aren’t things but living…things. Okay forget the things. In the most popular examples in pop culture, namely the Borg Lovely, assimilating and destroying things and making tech versions of Patrick Stewart ( I’ll explain later).

Next are the Cybermen:

Assimilating, destroying things, and making tech versions of random british actors.

Both of these not so happy robot people are very good examples of cyborgs, originating from the 1970ties. The Borg feature as villains in the Star Trek spin off: Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Cybermen in the longest running (and most popular) science fiction show: Doctor Who. Fun fact: if you mash their names together, you get the word CyBorg.

Now, the thing that sets cyborgs apart from robots, droids or androids is that they are made out of organic (mostly human and mostly screaming) components. A Borg is made from, I think, 80 % of human, by the looks of them. (also sometimes Patrick Stewart. I’ll explain later) A cybermen is a bit more complex. The cybermen cut out your brain and put it in a cyber suit. So that’s about 10% human in them. In both cases, the emotions of the unhappy subject are removed and controlled by a higher commander to destroy or assimilate everyone that isn’t a cybermen or a borg.

The point I’m trying to make here by mention these pains in the asses for the make up teams is that until not so long ago, Cyborgs were seen as negative.

Until not so long that is. Somehow, the culture of today (I know that’s a generalisation, but ignore that for now. please) is much more comfortable with technology which is closely intertwined with our lives and often our bodies. A very simple example is the mobile phone which has come of the wall and out of the car, into our bags, into our pockets and for a lot businesspeople, in our ears.

Back to popular culture, the cyborg has also changed a bit from mindless, emotionless husk of a human being, into more humans, augmented, and those augmentations are mostly beneficial. That’s why I reblogged this example, it shows very clearly that a cyborg culture, humans and technology living together, is no longer mainly something that is feared.

The last example that I’m going to talk about is the game (please if you could, try to say game, video game sounds bad and the Dutch computerspel sounds just…horrifying….) Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The game is set in a (near) future when mechanical augmentations to the body such as cybernetic arms, muscles, eyes, and even brain augmentations are more or less common. The playable character benefits from these augmentations and the game encourages you to increase or upgrade these augments. But there is another side to augmentations, shown heavily in the optional dialogue and the story: Is augmentation a good thing? In the characters, the political groups and the events in the story there is a clear ethical debate going on about augments. It shows the dangers when all augments suddenly get hacked, but also the benefits, because the augments save the main characters life.

So what do you think: are cyborgs and cybernetic alterations depicted bad or good in media? Is the cyborg still the villain he/she/it used to be?

And what about music? Is the rise of electronic music and electronic elements in more traditional music another sign of the familiarisation with technology and another step toward a cyborg culture?

Food for thought.

Also: “Hasta la vista baby.”

-Sjoerd.

Experience baby.

artismadebyartt — Mon, 21 May 2012 22:01:13 +0200

Last week we discussed the body experience and haptic visuality in the digital era. In a lot of ways television and the internet are used to simulate an experience through the human senses. Advertisements are making big business selling ”experiences”, instead of a product. It is my believe that the importance of a (body)experience increased over the last decade and is part of a new sensibility in everyday life. I’m not trying to promote the term metamodernism because this is mainly focussed on the creation of art as a response to a new sensibility.

This new hunger for physical experiences is very interestingly shown through commercials. I picked one commercial as an example of how important the senses are in an almost naturalistic and earthly kind of way. The tourism commercial for Greece is all about the senses and true experience of all Greece has to offer. We see mountains, people rubbing the sand (kind of erotically) and really discovering the country with their bodies. Message: In Greece you come as close to yourself and your senses as you can get. The importance of a physical presence in a particular space is something I also noticed in youth culture and the need to discover the world ourselves. We’ve learned that in the postmodern era representation was an important aspect of how people saw the world. People made a construction of a place they’ve never been before using representations of that place in the media.

These representations are still around us, like the commercial in Greece. This is also an image of a place they are trying to sell. But our new generation, at least I think, are curious to find out the places themselves and physically experience the country. We get overwhelmed with images in our digital era (right now I’m typing on tumblr, watching TV and checking Facebook). When it comes to products and, in my example countries, we want something bigger then just ice cream or a beach holiday in Greece. We want to experience the product, feel the country in its origin and make the image, the construction ourselves.

Clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ZeMwI2pL4

- Gracia Visscher

The art of Fame.

artismadebyartt — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:09:00 +0200

When celebrity culture is the theme of a class, you all know I’m going to write about Lady Gaga. Our Mother Monster has made quite a journey when it comes to fame, talking about fame and keeping that fame (No 15 minutes of fame for her!). I have put Lady Gaga in my spotlight as the subject of other posts before. In this post I will try to describe her journey and relationship with fame and how she presents herself in contemporary celebrity culture (being a celebrity is of course a whole different thing).

In the show 60 minutes Lady Gaga was interviewed about all parts of her life. She also spoke about her skills as an artist and her study in mastering ”The Fame”. The performer stated that she mastered the fame by studying her predecessors and their journey through fame. With that information in mind, Gaga went a new and fresh direction in gaining fame, doing it the old school way: Standing out, working hard and playing a whole lot of shows. In her rise, the most important key to fame have been her fans, and they still are. Gaga has a special and very ”close” relationship with her fans, a base she created by making two very successful albums (The Fame and The Fame Monster).

After a couple years in the spotlight, we now can see a shift in media attention and the fame Gaga has. Her new album Born This Way didn’t catch the masses eye as it should have. In the last year I noticed that the big mass has grown a little tired of all the costumes and weird videos of Miss Gaga. The media isn’t as interested as they once were. You could say that her 15 minutes of fame are officially over and she is almost ready to make a comeback! However, the Little Monsters base is still going strong and standing behind their beloved Mother Monster. The Born This Way Ball, her world tour, is sold out everywhere and also has the biggest stage ever build for a tour. It looks like Gaga has found a way around the ”15 minute fame curse”, wich happens so often to our popstars. Her fan base is so big she doesn’t have to worry about what the media is writing and if she is being covered by the media all together. The power of social media is a important aspect of this, because she still stays ”in contact” with her fans trough Twitter and Facebook.

What’s also interesting is the way Gaga speaks about her image and how she plays with this image in the media. She explains that she directs her whole life in the spotlight so that some parts of her life remain kind of private. This is very interesting because it shows how she uses the attention of the media to present herself in a certain way. We don’t get to see pictures of her drunk or any other embarrasing and maybe human way. Instead we see Gaga in her avantgarde fashion outfits and let’s be honoust: There are enough outfits to write a book! The paparazzi are on the hunt for pictures, and she chooses to give it to them or not. She explains in the interview how stars who say they can’t outrun the paparazzi are full of crap. With the help of security she directs what people see of her in the tabloids and on the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suu47LOvCs4

The New Way To Look Fabulous (by adobé)

improbablenormality — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:04:46 +0200

saschasanne:

theyoungfisherman:

Because, let’s face it: You are not perfect. None of us are. Not even the people on the covers of magazines. But technology such as Photoshop offers us perfection. Celebrities are no longer real. They are made. Not just made by managers, money or ‘society’, no. By technology. They become, very literally, a product. The over use of photoshop doesn’t amuse a lot of people. The masses expect a ‘real’ celebrity, not some picture, edited for 5 hours by a man in an office. This frustration becomes clear in the final lines of the video: Maybe she’s born with it? No, I’m pretty sure it’s photoshop. We expect reality. Not virtuality.

-Sjoerd

So here’s my question: If you use photoshop to ‘brush up’ a picture of yourself: what happens to you? Are you the photoshopped person in the picture you just saved as: thisistherealme.JPG; or are you the real person, not perfect, sitting in front of the computer? Are you changing yourself?

While I was reading your piece, the well-known commercial of Dove popped into my head (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U). This advertising campaign is called Evolution and is part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. The advert challenges our concept of beauty by showing the transformation of a normal girl to a cover girl. It also illustrates how our perceptions of beauty are manipulated and distorted. Dove wants to show that those perceptions are based on something that isn’t real. You can maybe even call it the creation of a simulacrum (It’s maybe way too far-fetched but if we are manipulating our pictures, based on values of this simulacrum, aren’t we creating another simulacrum based on this first simulacrum?). What’s happening is that people spend way too much energy trying to look like fake creations, and it this way turning ourselves into things that we’re not. If our idea of beauty is based on an unreal world, and we are copying this world, what are we? Are we all representations based on concepts which aren’t real?

Sascha

Fascinating video! The idea that we, ourselves and how we look is based on nothing, something unreal is completely true! That is, if you agree with a thinker like Beaudrillard who says that everything is a simulation and simulacra are everywhere. This completely underlines the ideas of the postmodern society again by Beaudrillard, where everything is being reproduced so fast and so efficient that the symbol, the representation has the value.

Ok, that’s it for philosophical stuff (it’s way too late for that). I just wanted to say that Dove, in the last seconds of the video, made a very interesting statement. They’re promoting ‘real beauty’. Really? Is there even something called ‘real beauty’? Every image of beauty that we have even the ‘real beauty’ image is created. It is an ideal, something that cannot be obtained.

That sounds rather pessimistic. But I think that if we stop living by images and ideals directly, but if we are the ones creating our own images, regardless of having a connection to another image, then we can have real beauty. But it will be our own, personal beauty. This is a very intriguing and complex subject. A very nice discussion!

-Sjoerd.

Discovering tumblr.

improbablenormality — Sun, 13 May 2012 16:07:21 +0200

lianneandrubin:

It’s very funny, this weekend I started to look around on tumblr. I almost forgot that I had to post something for the course. It was so much fun and there is so much to see here. I’d say, take your time and discover your own interests, all represented here on tumblr. This is a really great medium and perfectly fit for the course.

For me, it is a good thing I have two blogs at tumblr., so I can keep my fun blog and my university blog separated.

In here (on tumblr.) it is no so much about originality, it’s about showing the things you like and have interest in, showing your ideas and opinions. Also you can see what other people think of the same thing or maybe even of things you didn’t even think about.

So to all, have fun and take your time, I think it is worth it.

- Rubin

Excuse the game reference but: YOU HAVE DISCOVERED THE TRUE MEANING OF TUMBLR! + 30000 points! No but seriously tumblr is such an original ‘social medium’ it’s not based on your identity (like facebook) and not based on how many friends you have, it’s about what and how you post. It’s about material. A very good example that I have experienced is that when I reblog stuff that I like, it gets reblogged by my followers, at most 10 times. (you can see a number at the top of a post, this represents the number of times the post has been liked or reblogged) But when I post stuff that is original, made by me, like new cosplays for example, it gets reblogged and reblogged and then those posts get 30+ notes. Tumblr is about personal, original, fun stuff. It doesn’t matter who you are, it matters how much fun you have.

-Sjoerd.

The New Way To Look Fabulous (by adobé)

improbablenormality — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:19:40 +0200

In Thursday’s class the phrase ‘artificial beauty’ was discussed. An example was given where a visual artist made ‘the best face’ with a computer. This was as a completely computer-generated face. It showed that beauty as we know it, is no longer restricted to the ‘real world’. It showed that computer generated faces can be beautiful.

Now this was of course an artist who came up with the idea and made the face with software. Also, this was in 1993.

In 2012, this technology and these methods are no longer only used by artists or professional editors. Take a look at this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_vVUIYOmJM

The video hilariously underlines what a big part of society already knows: Celebrities are unrealistic good looking. So what started 19 years ago as a form of art and what amazed the world is now something very common and used as often as real make up.

Because, let’s face it: You are not perfect. None of us are. Not even the people on the covers of magazines. But technology such as Photoshop offers us perfection. Celebrities are no longer real. They are made. Not just made by managers, money or ‘society’, no. By technology. They become, very literally, a product. The over use of photoshop doesn’t amuse a lot of people. The masses expect a ‘real’ celebrity, not some picture, edited for 5 hours by a man in an office. This frustration becomes clear in the final lines of the video: Maybe she’s born with it? No, I’m pretty sure it’s photoshop. We expect reality. Not virtuality.

-Sjoerd

So here’s my question: If you use photoshop to ‘brush up’ a picture of yourself: what happens to you? Are you the photoshopped person in the picture you just saved as: thisistherealme.JPG; or are you the real person, not perfect, sitting in front of the computer? Are you changing yourself?

Digitalizing of toys :D:D:D

improbablenormality — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:03:07 +0200

Digitalizing of toys :D:D:D:

I’m having way too much fun with this. GOODBYE ATTENTION SPAN!

A Van Gogh on your Couch?

artismadebyartt — Mon, 07 May 2012 21:36:00 +0200

Way to late, but here it is! Before our break we discussed the digital presentation of museum collections and how some artworks exist and develop themselves in a digital space without the help of human control. I wanted to pay some attention to a site that is basically the queen of digital presentations of museum collections: The Google Art Project.

The Google Art Project is a dream come true for the poor art students who want to experience artworks on a detailed level and pay the least amount of money. Big surprise: We don’t have to travel around the world anymore to experience the biggest works in art history! Google combines their technology in a partnership with 151 art institutions to give the digital users an experience like we couldn’t barely get in an actual museum. Collections are shown in different categories like museum, artist and artworks. When you found your favorite artwork you can get as close as you want without a guard stopping you! You can also browse through the actual museum of your choice and the most interesting part: you can collect your favorite works for you personal collection online.

This last part is the most interesting in my opinion because it gives normal people the change to collect their favorite art and make an exhibition of their own. With the artwork also comes information about the work and the artist and also video’s of interpretations and more information. It’s kind of a big encyclopedia on art in which you can almost feel the work so close it’s touching your nose!

A logic question that comes with the exploration of this site is: Do we really need the physical museum at all? Do we still need to see a Van Gogh in person or is this virtual experience more then you can ever experience in a museum, where you have to stand behind a line in order not to get in trouble. My answer as hopefully a future employee in one of the museum participating in this project should be yes of course! I mean, we also can go to the streets of Rome on Google maps but that doesn’t make it real. Unfortunately, because of my position between art education and for example my family who are not that art educated, I’m not so sure about my answer on a marco scale. The fact is that most museums quite have a dusty image and just attract a small part of society. Lots of young kids who enter museum doors go a little forced by mostly their school. Maybe my personal dilemma isn’t so much about the digital experience being better and easier than the ”real life” experience, but more about the image of art in our contemporary life.

I really would like to hear your opinion on this matter and maybe answer the question about if the digital experience of these artworks are better than a real life experience? To conclude my piece, I think the Google Art Project makes educating about art (and hopefully excite more people for it) easier and should be highly used in every level and grade of the education system. Also, for us future researchers, it gives us a change to get close and almost crawl into an artwork and make future research and interpretations even better. We now just wait, as cultural scientists, for a site that combines music, painting, literature, theatre and film! Maybe a tip for the Google team:)

- Gracia Visscher

Technology is changing our lives.

improbablenormality — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:29:00 +0200

factoryart:

anouk-demelza:

In class we saw a video from Marnix de Nijs. Marnix de Nijs is an artist who plays with our expectations of technology and danger. The concept of technology combined with danger is something that I find very interesting.

I think there is indeed a dangerous part about the developing technology. The generation that grows up at this time isn’t really able to live without technology. We can barely live a day without our smart-phones, no wait a minute, I think everyone is checking it at least 5 times a day. There is nothing gentle about technology. Technology is taking over our lives. We come to a part that we do not control the technology, the technology controls us. It’s a constant hunger that needs to be fed, checking our facebook, email and whatsapp. We expand our dimensions of real space, we know what everyone is doing without being with them at a particular time our place. We only have to check on twitter or facebook. I think this is indeed dangerous. Though I also think it isn’t stoppable anymore. Technology is something that is developing so fast, we have to except it. Though maybe we should spend a little bit less on our facebook and whatsapp and visit our friends instead.

The adds from cellphone company HI are only intensifying the idea of technology controlling our lives. Their slogan of ‘Who is still calling someone nowadays?’ lets us see we aren’t interested in hearing each others voices anymore. The contact is fading away, we are becoming some kind of social robots. Our smartphone is our voice.

- Anouk

I couldn’t agree less with you. You state that technology is something new and only nowadays. However, last generations couldn’t live without the phone, the radio and the television. The Vietnamwar wasn’t changed by some “real-life”-happening. It was decided by what people saw on television: the assault on My Lai for example.

And technology isn’t something of the last century either. People changed the way they look at the world when there was gunpowder, armor or swords. Technology is not only the development of digital and social media, but also the development of the shovel, the plow and the toilet. Technology therefore isn’t something that’s dangerous an sich. Technology gives possibilities for both “good” and “bad” (if you assume it exists). Nuclear energy was invented after nuclear missiles. The same technology and two different ways to use it.

So: technology isn’t something new and isn’t something dangerous an sich.

- Simon de Vette

I agree with you, Simon. Two interesting side notes: 1. Did you know that a lot of house hold devices, technology or other appliance were developed in wars? Take the plastic bag for example: it was first invented for soldiers landing on the Normandy shores to protect their guns. My point: Technology often changes into something harmless and useful, from their original ‘evil’ use.

2. During the rise of machines ( see what I did there?) in the early 20th century, there was a group of people called Luddites. These Luddites were afraid of the machines and the factory. As a wise man once said: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate (you’re awesome if you get this). So naturally, these Luddites sneaked into the factories and destroyed the machines. My point: Fear, confusion and even anger towards ‘new’ technology isn’t new, it’s even something common. But this will not last and decades from now we will all laugh at the facebook fear.

-Sjoerd.

a-small-history-of-nothing: Isn’t Habbohotel a social space and...

improbablenormality — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:59:33 +0200

a-small-history-of-nothing:

Isn’t Habbohotel a social space and a virtual world too?

OMG! I never saw that! Congratulations! No, but seriously, good example, I had almost forgotten about it. Is it a still a thing?

a-small-history-of-nothing: The library from iTunes, following...

improbablenormality — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:10:42 +0200

a-small-history-of-nothing:

The library from iTunes, following the ARIA-principle. It imitates the previous medium, the library as we know it but then digitally.
- Irene

Really? Imitates a library? It only uses the name, but so does the trashcan on your computer. Yes, it stores things but in content and more context it’s completely different, not really imitation.

-Sjoerd.

The comics are better than the film.

improbablenormality — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:48:33 +0200

factoryart:

dac-marleen-anne:

theyoungfisherman:

Last week (I know, I’m a little bit late, been to the middle of nowhere known as Belgium) there was a lot of interesting stuff being discussed in class. One of the first things was the term ‘mediation’. Mediation means that the focus is no longer the message that is being sent through the medium, but the medium itself. It’s sort of like a poem. A poem makes you focus more on the rhyme and the structure of the words than on the message that it tries to convey.

I can’t help but notice that this mediation is something modern day films use a lot. A good example is the film ‘300’ by Zack Snyder. That movie has a unusual, unnatural color scheme. The whole movie is very stylised and is considered by some to be ‘over the top’.

It is obvious that the filmmaker wants the audience to look at the form of the film, to show them that the movie is ‘special’.

There was another interesting term that sparked something in my brain (I’ll explain why soon). The term remediation. It means that if a new medium comes into being, for example the digital arts like video games and photoshop art, other media adapt themselves to that medium. An example that was given to us in class was that impressionist artists painted differently because photography was invented. Another example in class was the graphic novel Watchmen, where the artist Dave Gibbons used elements like zoom in, zoom out. He used conventions of movies.

This fascinated me. Can it be the other way around? Actually, that wasn’t a question. I know of a very, very good example of this. The movie ‘Scott Pilgrim vs The World’ By Edgar Wright is an adaptation of the eponymous comic book series. Now the fun thing here is that the movie isn’t trying to be a movie. It’s trying to be a comic. (here’s the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_RrNCqCIPE )

You can clearly see that almost all the sound effects are captioned, just like in comics. There are even more fun things like impossible fight scene’s, people who burst into coins, notes coming out of instruments and so much more. And not only is this movie a good example of calling attention to the medium, but also a fantastic example of (reverse?) remediation!

-Sjoerd

Now for a good (discussion) question:

Are there any other examples of this so called reverse remediation? Or wouldn’t you call this reverse remediation at all?

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the film is trying to be a comic. I think it’s rather trying to appear comic-like, but it’s still very much a film. It seems a bit pointless to make a graphic novel into a film, if your only goal is to try and make it be a graphic novel.

A thing that catches my attention is the fact that you point out the people bursting into coins. I’ve never seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World (I’m planning to, though!), but after watching the trailer I’m getting the idea that the film doesn’t just try to appear comic-like: it also tries to add in some gaming elements (e.g. the coins, Scott “getting a life”, the fights). Are those game references also present in the comics? If they are, it’d be interesting, because that would also be a form of remediation (gaming conventions being used in graphic novels). If they’re not, I think it’s still a form of remediation: trying to blend cinema and gaming elements.

I hope this made sense, haha!

- Marleen

Well, Scott Pilgrim is an interesting example, because the comics themselves are a remediation of games. There are a lot of references to games within the comic and some of those are about cutscenes within games. A brilliant example is in the third comic: Scoot Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness. The fourth page of chapter 16 contains the caption “Dramatic music is playing right now”. In that way the comic tries to be a game (besides things like coins, level-ups, etc.). The movie however is primarily a remediation of comics, like the movie Batman from 1966, and secondary a remediation of games.

- Simon de Vette

This is so good! That means the Scott Pilgrim movie not only is a remediation of the comics, but also of the remediation of games, present in the comics! I wonder if this occurs often? Very interesting indeed…

-Sjoerd.

What does this graph imply? Does it show how important those...

improbablenormality — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:58:53 +0200

What does this graph imply? Does it show how important those functions are in conversations? To what people pay attention to? Please, enlighten me.

Art and Culture, The Digital Way

dre headphones are f*cking SWEEET.. go to TUMBLRSTAFF(.)COM right NOW. f*cking right NOW!

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dre headphones are fcking SWEEET.. go to TUMBLRSTAFF(.)COM right NOW. fcking right NOW!