Decelerator helmet - Lorenz Potthast

Introduction to Decelerator Helmet
- German Artist, Lorenz Potthast
- Publicized in Nov, 2012.
- Sliver, aluminium sphere




Detailed description

- Formed by Camera, netbook, accumulator, external display, head mounted display, bicycle helmet and aluminium sphere.
- The outside environment is took by camera and processed by network inside.
- Processed by the netbook to slow down the outside world and people inside the helmet can see through a head-mounted display, at the same time people outside the helmet can watch from the external display.
- The speed of the "processed" environment is controlled by a semi-spherical remote.
- Three modes of speed: 
Auto: the video is automatically slowed down, and brought up to regular speed after a time interval.
Press: the video is slowed down at specific moments when the button is pressed.
Scroll: the user can directly manipulate the video speed. [1]

Evaluation
- It is an interesting artwork. 
- It has content. 
It is talking about the “increasingly hectic, overstimulated and restless environment we are living in.” (Lorenz Potthast)
- It has the capacity to express ideas.
It is a reaction against busy city life in today's world, e.g. Fast Food Culture in Hong Kong
It expresses the slow motion life in experimental approach. Viewers (inside or outside the helmet) can get Lorenz’s idea through this interaction easily. Aware people to slow down their daily life and do not miss something important in your life.
- It makes people feel something.
It made a technological change in vision. (separates your personal perception from the natural timing.) It provides another perception of the environment for people. Make people watch things in another angle.
- It shows the concept of present in a constructed, artificial state.
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Quotation
- “ The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” Aristotle
- “Art must have content. This is why baseball and poker are not art: they have no content. Nothing is being expressed. Monopoly has almost no content: it has little houses and pieces that move around, but certainly not enough to be “art”. When we say, “There’s an art to playing poker”, what we really mean is that there is a craft to playing poker – there is a right way and wrong way to do it and that playing poker well requires a high degree of skill. But the act of playing poker is not an aesthetic act. It has no content. It is not expressive.” Ernest W. Adams
- “Art must have the capacity to express ideas. Film is an art form because it has an aesthetic, and it also has the capacity to make statements.” Ernest W. Adams
- “Life is just a quick succession of busy nothings.” Jane Austen
- “I’ve realized that busy is simply a state of mind. A state that often causes stress, unhappiness and waisted energy.” Scott Dinsmore

Reference
- Accessed Nov.26, 2012 http://www.dionarchibald.com/ArtQuotes/art.htm
- Ernest W. Adams. “Will computer games ever be a legitimate art form?” P.258-259
- Scott Dinsmore. “Find Peace in a Busy Life.” Accessed Nov. 26, 2012,
http://thinksimplenow.com/clarity/busy/

- Hudong wiki. “Decelerator Helmet.” Accessed Nov. 26, 2012 http://www.hudong.com/wiki/%E5%87%8F%E9%80%9F%E5%A4%B4%E7%9B%94

[1] “The Decelerator Helmet. Live Your Life In Slow Motion,” New Rising Media,
http://newrisingmedia.com/all/2012/11/16/the-decelerator-helmet-live-your-life-in-slow-motion.html
(accessed Nov. 26, 2012).

Lev Manovich [Mission to Earth]

Mission to Earth is reflecting an "immigrant"'s experience on the Earth. It is just a different way in telling story comparing with the traditional ways as it is a new digital cinema. It includes some new and different elements and relies on the use of database. Different from the traditional one, the digital media divides the screen into different parts with different purpose instead of using whole screen for telling a whole complete story. Bu using low saturation colours, it creates a low key mood for the audience. Besides, the feature of this cinema is there is no dialogue from the characters. It is telling a story by these voice-over and visual elements instead of narrating from characters traditionally. The audience need to construct meaning through multi-screens.

Moreover, there are many combinations of the video clips as the video clips will be played by the software randomly. It can deliver much more possible ideas to the audience in different time and provide a room for the audience to imagine. When the audience watches again, he will have a new experience.
"While the narrative stays the same and repeats every 23 minutes, all other elements can potentially change." [1]

As the digital cinema is different from the traditional cinema, the input of pro-production technique is much more important than the performance of the characters. With the use of database and software, the traditional ways of constructing a film seems to be replaced. It is such a unexpected experience of watching a movie for me. It just totally change my concept of watching a movie.

I think the concept of soft cinema will remind me the montage-style. This style is using many different photos together and reforms a new image. It is similar to soft cinema which is using different video clips to reform a new ending or deliver a new image. Furthermore, a photo is divided into several grids, like the interface of the soft cinema.

Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930

Besides, the appearance of this cinema also reminds me Piet Mondrian's work, with almost the some layout.

My opinion on this movie
The new medium makes the production of movie much more easier. Apart from traditional movie making, we can just use some basic technique to produce a movie as the software is very user friendly. We only need to know how to use the software and deal with the visual elements instead of putting huge of human resources. I think it makes the market-oriented movie to user-oriented. It provides a larger room for the director in producing a movie as the influence of market becomes lower. Added to it, the file size of soft cinema is much lower than the file size of traditional one. It is more convenient for people upload and download from the internet in order to enhance the information exchange.

[1] "Mission to Earth / Soft Cinema 2," Database of Virtual Art, http://www.virtualart.at/database/general/work/mission-to-earth-soft-cinema-2.html (accessed Nov. 7, 2012).

Mark Napier [Shredder] (1998)

According to Wikipedia, the Shredder 1.0 reconstructs the website and makes it becomes an original abstract form. [1]

I found that this work is typical of much digital art because it is an artwork that places importance on

• formal instructions


"Posing as a browser, it prompts the user for a URL, then appropriates that web page to use as raw material for its own fragmented output." [2]


The audience need to follow the instructions in order to have an output through the interface

• the concept rather than the art object

“This is an object-less medium, yet much of the technology of the web works to re-create the familiar" [3]

It breaks the traditional layout of the website into a reconstruct form and this form is not fixed. Napier used this work to present a concept rather a real object. Napier states that his works are not only an objects but interfaces. [2] I think it is the interface for Napier to present his idea.

"My work explores the ideas of ownership, authority, territory, and communication in the virtual world." [2]

• the event and audience participation

The audience participation is high since the audience picks up the website he/she chose to "re-create" the form of the website and he/she can change the choice anytime. It draws an interaction between audience and the work.

"The users become collaborators in the artwork, upsetting the conventions of ownership and authority." [2]

• an interest in random events and/or chance

"I can allow for the coding process to create unforeseen possibilities that add another dimension to the work." [2]

The result of the interface output is different each time. It draws the interest from the audience to curious about the next composition of the "re-create" layout of the website.

• borrowing or appropriation

Discuss with whether the artwork is borrowing or appropriation. It depends on how you define because it can be either borrowing the content of website or appropriating. But according Napier's personal statement, maybe he agree that it is appropriation.

"I do this by creating software that talks directly to the Internet and appropriates the text, images and data that make up the web." [2]

[1] "Shredder 1.0," Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shredder_1.0 (accessed Nov. 6, 2012)
[2] "Artist's Statement," marknapier.com, http://marknapier.com/presskit/mn_statement.html (accessed Nov. 6, 2012)
[3] "About The Shredder," marknapier.com, http://marknapier.com/presskit/ars_aboutShredder.txt (accessed Nov. 6, 2012)

Discussion: Digital Art

What are some challenges digital art presents to the art world (ie galleries, exhibition goers, art critics and scholars)?

From the group

Galleries:

- the equipment is not enough to exhibit the art work

- hard to perform the art properly

- since the artist will not always stay in the gallery, if there is technological problem, no one can handle it.

- sometimes, the gallery cannot provide a proper environment for the art work.

Audiences:

- may not have enough knowledge to understand the work

- become hard to judge the art work

Dada Poem: This is BLUE !

A quite funny Dada poem!

Discussion: Gamer Revolution (CBC documentary, 2007)

"GAMER REVOLUTION explores how computer games are not only a new medium for the 21st century, they are a massive form of change in our world." says Rachel Low, President, Red Apple Entertainment. "The idea of living inside a computer-generated universe is happening right now. The line between the real world and the virtual world is disappearing. Millions of people feel that they have a life inside these games." [1]

According to the film, video games have several purposes, such as, educational and learning purposes for children, attracting and training new army and entertaining people. Furthermore, in South Korea, video-games provide a room for some good gamer to earn money by selling currency and instrument of the game.

However, the video games brings some negative impacts to individuals and societies. Individually, a good gamer needs to spend a long period of time on playing video games. It harms their social network as they are lack of communication with other people in the real world. Socially, a cruel game introduced to the US army would also introduced to market. It brings a huge negative effect to the teenagers as it will distort their psychological building through playing these violent game.

There are some research prove that there is direct impact to the brain which, when you play violent video games, your aggressive feeling will increase, like FMRI. It reflects that their brain activity is more active when the experimenters are playing violent games.

As I mentioned before, the cruel and violent video games would bring some negative impacts to the players. In US, it is common that the school shooting exist. Some reports that those suspects were affects by the violent thinking and some anti-social actions are very intense.

Although there is a large influence brought by the violent game, we cannot restrict the freedom of the citizens. Even though the government implement the law, it can't ban the games comprehensively. On the other hand, this type of games contains entertaining purpose. People can release their pressure through playing the games.

Sims City is my group-mates' favourite videogame. This game can interact with people, develop management skills and creativity. It is because we need to interact with people in order to update level to unlock some special items and we can decorate the house and the character. However, there is some bad real-life behaviour will be led to the teenagers. As people can get married and have sex in the game, it may provide some information to some immature teenagers or may commit crimes.

[1] The dialogue from the video, http://www.ovguide.com/tv_episode/doc-zone-season-1-episode-6-gamer-revolution-1-3044611# (accessed Oct. 17, 2012)

Cory Arcangel: Super-Mario Clouds, 2002

According to Cory Arcangel's website[1] , Super Mario Clouds, 2002 is an Nintendo's game (Super Mario Bros) which Cory removed all backgrounds and characters, expect the blue sky and the white clouds. The blue sky and the white clouds keep moving from right to left.

IS IT AN ART?

Federico Fellini said that:"All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography." In my opinion, the blue sky and the white clouds are the Super Mario Bros' autobiographical. They are the marks of this Nitendo game. You can recognize this game from the gif at the first sight. The moving clouds seem like I am playing Super Mario Bros. I think an artwork should arouse viewers' sympathy. That's how this work does!

However, some people argue that this gif is just a kind of scrolling background without any obvious modification. It just for the game. Therefore, it is not really an artwork.

For me, I agree with Ernest W. Adams's thought that, "Art makes you feel things."[1] Art should not be in a fixed form and an idea. Sometimes, the feeling does not come from the artwork itself but the idea behind. I think Super Mario Clouds, 2002 makes me feel the video games in the other way. It do include Cory's creative representation ideas inside. Therefore, I think it is an art just like Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans (1962).




And even, there is a re-production of this artwork. HaHa! :DD

[1] Ernest W. Adams. “Will computer games ever be a legitimate art form?” P.258-259
[2] "Super Mario Clouds (2002-)," The Official Cory Arcangel Website, http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/supermarioclouds/ (accessed Oct. 3, 2012).