Graphiti

For the second project I initially wanted to try and play with audience participation which I thought the more successful earlier ones have. For example the project that caused a visceral reaction of someone wanted to stop or interfere with the process. One Idea was to make a mark and that actually be the start of the process and the audience reaction be the actual interesting bit, or "teh art."

One way I thought causing a reaction in the audience was to do something destructive in front of the entire class and vandalizing something. For example taking out spray paint and starting to tag something on the wall or the floor. What would have people done? Would they have stopped me or guessed that I knew what I was doing and let me continue.

What if I treid some less conventional form of Vandalism, like taking out kindling and trying to set fire to one of the pianos. Eventually someone would have stopped me, but how far would the class let me go in the name of art, or in the name of trust.


While I ended up taking the opposite direction to this, partially out of cowardice of authority, I still managed to put a majority of the class on edge and build up some stress before my piece began. While I was setting up my 10lb. wight pendumn suspended from the second floor balcony right next to a very large window, I shared my desire to destroy something in front of everyone with Dean Wilcox. He told me that it would really depend on what I chose to destroy, an I exclaimed that I wanted to vandalizes a significant part of the building. Immediately his mind jumped to the fact that I had a fairly heavy weight suspended right next to a large expensive looking pane of glass. He said "Like that window right there?" To which I responded "Mabye..."

By the time that I actually presented people where standing back and refusing to get close to my project. Once I started it, a lot of people made sounds of surprise as the brush slowly scraped across the canvas.

Life

I was unable to find the application that Will Wright was using in the video, but I found several others that do a similar thing. Conway's Game of Life is available free online and was written in 1970. It is a game of "cellular automaton" and has the same basic rules as the program that Wright was using.

http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/
Here is a link to an embedded applet that you can play online.


My preferred option for opening this application is playing in directly in Mac os X, as it is embedded in emacs a command line editor located in the terminal of Mac os X.

to do this:
1.go into Terminal- its in utilities in your applications folder (I just type it into spotlight).
2. Load emacs by typing "emacs" into the terminal window then pressing [En].
3. Select the command line by pressing [esc] then [x].
4. To load life type "life" then press [En].
Life will begin immediately.

Editing the cells in emacs is a bit trickier, and involves some knowledge of how it works. Here is are intermediate level instructions on how to edit in it.

Sound project

Last week I made a device that was intended to make a noise. It started with a weight being let go that was attached to a tripod. The weight had been spun around many times to that in order for it to reach the ground it had to spin around to unwind the tieline, while it unwound it scratched into a wiffle ball bat and make a fun noise. Once it reached the ground it fell into a mouse trap that released a coffee can filled with bottle caps that rolled down a ramp and set of another mouse trap loaded with ping pong balls which would fly everywhere.


With my first sound creating project I sort of set out to create a rube gold-berg device. What interested my was a series of events that triggered each other and where designed to create a specific outcome. Something else I was trying to achieve was a sense of anticipation as the weight slowly lowered to the ground. We all knew that it would eventually hit a mouse trap, and the rest of the machine would *snap* into action doing god knows what with the ping pong balls.

The weight ended up going down too quickly and the effect wasn't terribly successful as I would have wanted, however I was interested in how my machine interacted with gravity. Or was completely put into motion because of gravity.

I'm looking out to make a machine that makes a mark using roughly the same Idea. Using a tripod and a wight as a pendulum with some sort of marking device on the bottom. Either a marker or even a sharp implement that will scratch whatever in on the ground.

gravity

I could try the same thing but in the entrance way of the gym from the second floor. The weight would move for a lot longer. If I did this I would probably use a marker.

On The Brian Eno and Will Wright on Generative Systems video

I found it interesting how delicately balanced this program and pattern was. Since it was effectively an entire predetermined interaction then a simple change could destroy the symmetry in a matter of generations.

It also reminded me of the various "falling sand" flash games online these days. Not only will free falling particles (or sand) move down at a constant velocity, the different materials will intact with each-other differently. For example, fire will spread to a particle that it is touching of a material that burns. then the fire particle will go away and the other particle that is ignitable will be replaced with fire. This interaction continues over the next interval of time.

Here is one of the simpler ones out there:
http://chir.ag/stuff/sand/

On this particular game there is also a material called "???" which reacts in a chain reaction with itself and can form fascinating waves and patterns. This can be seen to the right.