First Week in Electronic Media

My first week of Interactive Art II: Electronic Objects has ended.

Here is a recap of all the things that happened during the week.

On the first day, we covered the syllabus which had most of the things that would normally be outlined for every class including University Honor Policy, Attendance, etc. One of the only things that were new for this class would be how its course grading was divided which involved the following:

  • 49 total possible points
    • 1.4 for every Weekly Blog Posts (16 total)
    • 4.7 for every Major Project Critiques (2 total)
    • 9.7 for participation
    • 2.7 for Presentation/Demonstration
    • 4.8 for Contributions to Reading Discussions

The other stand out thing also included some of the programs that we were going to be involved with:

  • Arduino - coding program that we will be using to code devices for some of our artworks.
  • Ossia Score - interactive sequencer for audio-visual artists 
  • Discord - the application that will be used for online discussions
  • Blogger - a website used to create blogs
I was honestly surprised by the idea of creating blogs for class assignments as well as using Discord for class as well. I was already familiar with using Discord for friend hangouts or video, it was just really weird to be use the application for class. And I never created blogs before so this entire post was a vert awkward experience for me. Besides that, nothing else major happened for the first day. 

On the second day we started to cover our first sort of lesson on Electronics in art, and it began with a sort of overview of all the significant examples of artists who used technology. Some of the artist remembered from the presentation included:
  • John Cage, Robert Rauschenburg - Already familiar with some of their theatrical/music focused works
  • Billy Kluver - Book story when he visited University was funny
  • Fujiko Nakaya - Developed the Pepsi Dome with Thomas Lee
    • Pepsi Dome -  a triangular-faced shaped dome which would be covered by a fog cloud who is shaped depending on the weather conditions
Afterwards we discussed the fundamentals of Electronic Art going on to cover ideas like:
  • What makes Art Interactive?
    • It invokes conversation in the target audience
  • What makes Art Reactive?
    • It responds to an input by exhibiting an output 
  • Examples of Input:
    • Body Senses:
      • Breathing
      • Blinking
      • Voice
      • Gestures
    • Peripheries
      • Mouse
      • Keyboard
      • HID Buttons
      • Pen
    • Computer Vision
    • Color/Light
    • Sound
    • Pressure/Weight
    • Distance
    • Temperature
  • Examples of Output:
    • Screen/Project
    • Lasers
    • Water Fountain
    • Anything Electrical
    • Sound
    • Motors
We finished the day off with playing around in Arduino and it was surprising to know my C++ knowledge had some uses as this program uses C++. We got to play around with downloading some of the playground programs and we were able get the microchip to display lights of different colors as well as getting it to read the speed of the microchip shaking. 


This week was alright and I am looking forward to what this class will have next.

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