Final: Fibonacci Mirror

Title: Fibonacci Mirror

Artist: Siyi Ye

Completion Date: March 17, 2015

Place of Creation: home

Style: computer art, interactive art

Technique: coding, performance

Material: computer

Link to the video demo: http://youtu.be/E0XSTOJ_AmA

Description:

My project is an interactive computer mirror that displays the frames captured by the webcam in the real time. The display is consisted of eight mirror squares that have the sizes similar to the famous Fibonacci Sequence. I wrote the code in the Processing software. I calculated the size and position of each square and flipped and rotated each of them in accordance with the Fibonacci Spiral. The program has a normal mode and a colorful mode. The color mode has different color layers on squares. By pressing the “f” button on the keyboard, you can switch between different modes. You can also save the image by pressing the “s” button.

My project is a combination of processing art and mathematics. It is inspired by the math topics as well as the computer algorithms topic we discussed in the class. It reflects the viewer himself in the Fibonacci Squares, having different sizes and colors. The concept behind is to represent a person’s various different inner selves. It is also a project that recognizes the beauty of mathematics.

I would like to have my project installed in a gallery or a museum, such as the Museum of Mathematics in New York. When people come near to the “mirror”, they will see themselves in the colorful Fibonacci patterns. They can make different gestures before the “mirror” and see how the Fibonacci Mirror performs interesting animations.

In the demo video, I fast forward the recorded process of myself playing with the Fibonacci Mirror on the computer in my living room with a real mirror wall.

Week 9/ Primate Cinema/social science intersects with art

The lecture last week by three guest speakers was very engaging and interesting. I would like to talk  a little bit about my responses to each of them but first emphasize on the chimps project. The first speaker, filmmaker Rachel Mayeri, showed us her series of work Primate Cinema. The topic of primate behaviors for chimpanzee watching television is very interesting, and the artistic ways she chose are communicating very well. The two channel videos installation reinforces the TV in TV scenario. In the video we watched in the second half of the class Baboons as Friends, the juxtaposition of baboons in the wild with an act out by human beings in a bar was very dramatic and successful.

The other film Apes as Family shocks me a little bit. The film chimps in the zoo are watching is about a female chimp living in the human house with a group of guest chimps acted by human actors. I understand how the artist is expressing the idea of creating a prism for human beings to learn about the inner world of chimpanzees. Although it is kind of fun to watch this film, I feel a little bit sad thinking about how the chimps are fooled by human beings in the process of making this art. If this project aims to reveal how “close” chimps are with human beings, how complex their social, cognitive and emotional lives are, they should also consider their nature and their own life rather than taming them under human activities and say that they “share with us a fascination with cinema”. Besides this kind of ethical issue side, I appreciate how Rachel Mayeri makes her filmmaking art in the science world without becoming just a science documentary. She said that she did not have controlled variables in the lab of chimps but that’s why she was making this project as art. Artists use their own ways and perspectives to give us new ideas about different things in the world. This is challenging but the visualization is usually more appealing to the public than pure scientific data and analysis.

Our second speaker Adam Burgasser talked about the movement/gesture approach to learning physics. In just a few seconds, we experienced how quickly a gesture was being sent to everyone in the classroom, your own gesture was also popularizing around, and we even created two sculptures themed subjugation with colorful pipe cleaners. I love this hands-on learning experience. It is important not to separate ourselves in the study of theoretical physics. Professor Burgasser’s activity also reminds me of another professor James Fowler. He is a medical genetics professor as well as a social science professor. His research on social networks intersects with his studies on genes. One quote from his book Connected:” Social networks are intricate things of beauty. They are so elaborate and complex that one has to wonder what purpose they serve. Why are we embedded in them? How do they form? How do they work? How do they affect us?”

After learning Professor Burgasser’s work, I believe Professor James Fowler can also collaborate with some artists to foster the creativity and artistic aspects of his studies. For example, LinkedIn created network maps for users and users can read things from the visualization.

In addition to studying animals, there’s still a lot more things to explore regarding human beings in social science that artists can involve in.  I’m very interested in this aspect and I might do more research and work my final project with this!

Week 8 Response/ the Beauty of Mathematics, Mo-Math

One of the topics we discovered this week was the math world in the art. The images and videos we saw in the lecture about the algorithm and fractals are amazingly beautiful. Math is everywhere. We find fractals in human bodies, in the nature, in architecture, in Africa, etc. How important math is in the world and how beautiful it is! I still remember a paper I wrote in middle school titled “Beautiful 0.618”. The excitement of finding so many natural and artificial things utilize the golden ratio is the same as now when I found the art in math world so amazing. In this blog, I want to introduce Mo-Math, the National Museum of Mathematics, which I happened to find online, with some interesting projects and photos of it.

Mo-Math opened in 2012 and is located in Manhattan, New York City. Most exhibits it features are interactive pieces. Kids love the place because there is so much fun.

One of the most famous exhibit is the Math Midway. It has traveled around the country. Watch this video if you are interested.

Another fun project that involves fractals is called “Human Tree”. It maps your body to the screen and replace your arm with your own body. When your arms move the tree will grow like fractals and move with you.

Clearer images can be found in this video.

Photo gallery of Mo-Math.

 

    

The coolest thing I find about this museum is that the successful intersections of art, math and technology. The design and display, the high tech programmings, as well as the educational aspects are working together very well. After learning all these about the Mo-Math, I really wish I could go visit that place one day. This is so inspiring. Hopefully I might even create a piece of math artwork which suits the museum that kids would love in the future.

–Siyi Ye

GPS drawing

This week in the lecture we discussed the topic of GPS and remote sensing from history to contemporary practices. The notion of “seeing without being seen or touching” brought up the underlying issue of surveillance somehow. With the modern global mapping services, such as Google Maps, people can see images of any place without going anywhere. Problems such as individual being tracked and loss of privacy occur, because authorities or hackers may use the system to control over people and do things you never expect.

Despite the downside, GPS gives artists great space to explore and experiment. From the Wilson reading, I found one piece by the artist Andrea Di Castro very interesting. He organized a project called “Drawing with Global Technologies” over the world. Basically, artists are using GPS to draw lines and shapes by tracing their movements. The idea of drawing with one’s own movement and plotting the path on the natural canvas by using GPS technology is very creative and can be largely extended. Here are some maps made by Andrea Di Castro:

I found a Japanese artist Yassan Takahash who is continuously working on his giant GPS drawing project. (http://gpsdrawing.info/#artist) The first step of each project he is making is planning the routes on the map. Then he goes around the real site (by means of walking, bicycle, car, ferry and even train) following the map and with the GPS logger turned on to draw the liens. Along his way, datas such as atmosphere, culture, people and condition of the road are recorded as well. The last step for his project is to import all the data to a mapping software Google Earth, as well as keep his documentation on his blog. Some of his work takes one day and some takes up to years. Here are some images of his finished work:

This is a project in progress:

Nowadays, we can access the GPS easily by just using the mobile phone. This portable device is able to track your everyday routine. Everyone can be an artist by drawing with some of the GPS apps on mobile device, for example “Nike+running”, “Run with Map”, “Map My Rides”, etc. People can have fun drawing graphics and share with friends while walking or running.

I love this aspect of GPS technology as in the art. This is very interesting and even make life more entertaining. There seems to be more to explore with GPS and I can foresee augmented reality that based on GPS being applied to the world in the near future.

–Siyi Ye

Midterm: Pepper Canyon Meditations

Title: Pepper Canyon Meditations

Artist: Siyi Ye

Completion Date: February 17, 2015

Place of Creation: Pepper Canyon, Sixth College

Style: Graffiti, Video

Duration: Graffiti displayed for three days, video 9:53

Technique: basic drawing/writing, video shooting, video editing

Material: Chalk, video camera, computer

Link to the piece: 

Descriptive paragraph:

My project combines art with the science of Ecology. The project shows concerns about the environment and lives in the Pepper Canyon, located in Sixth College at UCSD. I did some research and took several field trips prior to my planning. I observed that the canyon has been somehow over-exploited by human beings, and the construction of a San Diego public transportation trolley(light rail) through the canyon is starting very soon (The trolley project is called Mid-Coast Corridor Transit Project: http://www.sandag.org/index.asp?projectid=250&fuseaction=projects.detail). I used the medium of video camera to record the situations that people might never get a chance to see because of the particular location of the canyon, beneath the surface of the ground, and to make the invisible visible. The film demonstrates situations including loss of trees and grasslands, abandoned “agriculture”, human and mechanical invasion, a preview of trolley construction, etc. Along with the filming, I did several chalk graffiti inside and outside the canyon. I wrote on the bare lands in the canyon, on tree strums, on sidewalks next to edges of the canyon, and on logs I collected from the canyon. Graffiti included words such as “SAVE THE CANYON”, “Don’t let construction DESTROY canyon”, “Someone’s crazy, they are chopping down trees to make way for trolley”, and also graphics of a trolley on the position of the future trolley platform, according to SANDAG (http://www.sandag.org/uploads/projectid/projectid_434_16072.pdf). I also placed the logs from the canyon next to the graffiti on the sidewalk. Pictures and videos of the graffiti can be found at the end of the film. This eco-art project is intended to raise the awareness of the crisis Pepper Canyon is confronting, such as the loss of bio-diversity, industrialization and human invasion. The background music in the film expresses a shift in mood and guides the viewer through the meditations. Human should respect the lives in the canyon, as well as preserve the natural environment while developing. My work is influenced by an art project named “Sacramento Meditations” produced by Environmental and Ecological Artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison (http://theharrisonstudio.net/?page_id=273).

Week 5 Response/ Nanotechnology and NanoArt

This week we dig into the physics world and saw some art projects, installations, paintings and dances that involve physics concepts and phenomena. During the lecture, I was very impressed by the video of DanceRoom Spectroscopy. The dance uses human body as a manifestation of the movement of physical particles, which are usually too small for our eyes to see. This makes me think of the burgeoning field of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology deals with the synthesis, manipulation and characterization of matter at the sub-100 nanometers level (1 nanometer = 1 billionth of a meter) (http://nanoart.org). Artists working with nanotech have been making great contribution to new ideas and directions. Through the Wilson web links, I find many interesting aspects of NanoArt.

“NanoArt is a new art discipline at the art-science-technology intersections. It features nanolandscapes (molecular and atomic landscapes which are natural structures of matter at molecular and atomic scales) and nanosculptures (structures created by scientists and artists by manipulating matter at molecular and atomic scales using chemical and physical processes). These structures are visualized with powerful research tools like scanning electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes and their scientific images are captured and further processed by using different artistic techniques to convert them into artworks showcased for large audiences.”

This quote by Cris Orfescu adapted from the NanoArt website clearly defines the functionality of NanoArt in this technology age. It’s not only an artistic manifestation of nano scale reality, but also the process of making things in nano scale. “Every science begin as philosophy and ends as art,” said by Will Durant, Nanotechnology and NanoArt is making new things everyday.

The 2014 Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) Biennial featured many nanotechnology (http://cca.cornell.edu/?p=focus). The theme was “Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology”.

I would like to introduce one NanoArt research project, which was also presented in the 2014 CCA Biennial, named Nanoessence, by Paul Thomas and Kevin Raxworthy. The main idea for Nanoessence is to explore the difference between death and life at a nano level, by investigating atomic structures and vibrations between living and dead skin cells. They use data from AFM (Atomic Force Microscope) skin cell scans to make the topographical visualizations of life and death. Part of their installation involves visual and sonic presentation through viewer interface, in which the display dynamically changes according to viewer’s own breath. The video demonstrates this installation as it’s in the gallery.

I am very amazed to see the artistic practices across all disciplines. The nanotech is definitely a massive world for scientists and artists to explore in the 21st century. There are many cases where nanotech has made benefits such as nano scale devices, nano computers in the fields of manufacuturing, medicine, environment and so on. Meanwhile, ethical issues raise as well. Like the project Nanoessence discussed above, its interactive installation of human breath has a strong conceptual and metaphorical link to a Biblical inception of life. The manipulation of nano scope things featured by nanotechnology is giving us more and more god-like powers, creating potential danger to our society, such as weapons. I believe if the researchers in this field can put together ethical guidelines, we should be able to see the promised benefits under the safe developments of Nanotech and NanoArt.

–Siyi Ye

Case Study: “Fibre Reactive” by Donna Franklin

I was amazed at the project “Fibre Reactive”, living fungi on fabric, shown in the lecture as an example from the SymbioticA laboratory. I first had a mixed feeling about this piece as “clothing”. Could it be wet and uncomfortable when people wear it? Is this realistic? I went to search more details about this project and did extended readings on more wearable bioarts. I found this project and various debates on it very thought-provoking. The west-Australian artist Donna Franklin was once a resident at SymbioticA, an artistic laboratory engaged with the life sciences, in the University of Western Australia. Her work “Fibre Reactive”  (2004-2008) has been exhibited in several places, including:

BEAP 04 Bio Difference: The Political Ecology, at The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery;
Hatched 05 PICA, Spectrum Project Space;
“Second Skin” ENTRY 06, at Zeche Zollverein, Vitra Design Museum, Essen, Germany;
BEAPworks 06 at Curtin University.

From the picture, the piece looks like a fashionably designed evening dress. In fact it involves microbiology. The living garment is made of the fungi Pycnoporus coccineus, also known as orange bracket fungus. When I first saw the picture, I was questioning how all the fungi stick together on the dress. As I did more research, I realized that the organism was manipulated to grow in this way so that they are naturally tied together without any glue. It is the mycelium of fungus that has been grown to the woven surface. The orange surface of the dress is encrusted with growing fungi’s fruiting body. These results from the artificial manipulation within the laboratory. The relocation of the fungi into a new pseudo-environment subverts its function and expression. Since it’s a living dress, it is supplied with nutrients it needs as in the natural environment and relied on technology as well as human interventions. The pattern of the dress changes over time as the fungi grow and develop. I collected different images of this dress for your reference.

According to the artist, the main idea of this project is to raise questions about the commodification of living entities. In this age, technologies are extensions of human bodies. When thinking about wearable technology, most people will think about wearable gadgets and electronics. However, the things we have been wearing forever, like clothing, are all wearable tech, we are just so comfortable and familiar with them. This is our cultural constrain to our environment. Traditional clothing are mostly made of fibers from living organisms and animal skins or furs. Unlike these “daed” or lifeless tissues that people normally accept, the living clothing like a fungi dress challenges the ethical issue of wearing dead animals. Other concerns rises as well: could it do any harm to the human body, is it consuming human body or is human body consuming the dress? This work express the disassociation to the origin of natural material through the juxtaposition of the familiar fashionable dress with the innovative fungi composition. It is a complex act to wear this dress and experience through the relationship between the wearer and the fragile living clothing to question the commodification and disposability that we deal with nature.

More recently, Donna Franklin works collaboratively with an Australian research team Bioalloy and comes up with a process of making dresses from wine, utilizing fermented bacteria in the red wine. Apparently, more improvements and solutions need to be applied to the new product, such as dealing with the smell and challenging public perception. Meanwhile, the product itself and the eco-friendly concept behind it are amazing. Here’s a short video of the wine dress.

Donna Franklin’s new technologies through interdisciplinary research in the fields of culture, fashion and science, will potentially impact the construction of the culture. We should always realize the potential of the technology in the future, think critically and help the environment.

(Sources: http://bioalloy.org/artist-bios/10-information/7-donna-franklin
http://filter.org.au/issue-69/a-21st-century-revolution-in-art-fashion-and-design/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/11/red-wine-clothing_n_1586347.html)

-Siyi Ye

Art-Science Convergence in Ecology

This week’s material shifts our focus from microbiology to the macrocosm scope. The readings and what I learnt from the lecture gradually resolved a question that had been in my mind for a while: “is bioart art?”. Our professor defines the concept of bioart narrowly to practices involving living matters only. In the textbook, Wilson defines the term ecology as “stretching from studies of interdependencies of cells in a body to the relationship of humans to the environment” (Wilson, 129). The macro scope of biology involves the interaction between living organisms and their living environments. It is interesting that observations from this system thinking perspective usually give evidence to characteristics that are invisible when taking things apart.

Hans Haacke’s series of works embody the system thinking very well. His many works manifest his progressively changing visions behind over time. From his installment of Condensation Cube in 1965, Chicken Hatching and Grass Grows in 1969, to the Recording of Gallery’s Internal Climate in Exhibition in 1970 (shown in the above collage), he continuously expanded his perspective from physical phenomena, to living creatures, and to his concept of ecology in gallery setting. His works explore the concept of ecology in an aesthetic way. Meanwhile, like many other ecological arts, one of the purposes of those projects is to raise the public concerns about the environmental issues.

The art works in regard of ecological systems diverge a lot. Ecological art can be an exhibition, a performance, a scientific attempt, inside or outside a museum. One most common idea for artists working in this field is to propose paradigms in pursuit of a sustainable planet. They seek problems, come up with schemes, and aesthetically display their work. In the reading, an artist Mierle Landerman Ukeles’s works stood out for me. She manifests her research of waste management and recycling in the form that combines installation and performance. In her performance Flow City, she engaged viewers with recycling processes.

Flow City

Her art work Manifesto! Maintenance Art (http://www.feldmangallery.com/media/pdfs/Ukeles_MANIFESTO.pdf) in 1969 undertook a series of performance of her daily maintenance activities.

You can see more pictures in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38PjCYSaqM). Her Maintenance Art Works 1969-1980 become more radical and bigger, and deal with three aspects: personal, general and earth maintenance. She works with the Department of Sanitation in New York City. The first project is Touch Sanitation. In two and half years, she shook hands with all sanitation workers (more than eight thousand) in the New York City, to make them visible. The following video gives us a detailed demonstration of Mierle Landerman Ukele’s work.

(Picture of one of the series of maintenance
work in Menifesto! Maintenance Art)

http://vimeo.com/76872803

(Mierle Landerman Ukele shaking hands with a sanitation worker)

The Artists working with projects that relate to science usually have some scientific background, or they work collaboratively with scientists. The convergence in the art and science field successfully raises awareness of the society very often. As Wilson writes in his summary: “Some artists propose the arts as the place to integrate science and action, and undertake projects in which scientific research is part of the art” (Wilson, 146). Ecology is a great art-science filed that is so relevant to our society.

Source: http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/mierle-laderman-ukeles-maintenance-art-works-196920131980#9058717eb81e46d2a9a3253318b381c6

 

–Siyi Ye

Week 2 Response/ Microscopy and Genetics

This week’s topic of biological art is interesting and is something that I have never thought about that relates to the art world. During the lecture, I was amazed at the enormous progress in the science world that modern technology brought. Early people were trying very hard to explore the biology world with very few tools. We saw an example of old taxonomy book DIOSCORIDIS. The pictures in that book were very beautifully drawn by hand. Another example of early physiology is a drawing of a man looking at his own anatomized body. Besides, I was very shocked at the pictures of Gerald J. Posakon’s attempting experiment about ultrasound technology back in 1950’s. He was the pioneer in the field of medical ultrasound technology. The advancement in technology has now provided us with highly pictorial scans of inner body. We can now see tissues inside our body without hurts. Digital mapping is very helpful in the medical world.

Tools for observation and manipulation also develop a great deal in the microscopic level in the past several decades. The study of gene first by Mandel in 1880’s opened a door to the molecular world.  The Human Genome Project is “an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up human DNA, and of identifying and mapping all of the genes of the human genome”. Here’s a link to an interesting webpage that displayed the timeline of The Human Genome (https://unlockinglifescode.org/timeline). Our computational technology in data visualization creates many brilliant illustration of genetics and the world that we cannot see by our eyes. The video below is a 3D animation of the human genome.

There are opinions like seeing gene as “the essence of personhood” (Wilson 95) or considering the Human Genome Project as “the Bible or the Book of Man” (Wilson 96). According to sociologist Dorothy Nelkin, the interaction between genes and environment are important factor that should not be neglected. The controversy raised in the scientific world when human deliberately modify genes.

The movie GATTACA we watched during the lecture is an extreme example of Nelkin’s idea. The movie depicts a near future where genetically modified people have higher status than naturally born people. The male lead Vincent was genetically inferior but with the help of a superior one, he adopted his identity and deceived DNA and urine sampling tests. Finally, he succeeded in his lifelong pursuit of space travel. The issues raised in this movie such as eugenics and discrimination might cause severe problems to the society in the future. Is genetic modification ethical? To some extent, genetics seems to decide the contour and property of human being, however, science cannot control over everything. Human nature still has its beauty and miraculously soul power.

-Siyi Ye (I will be presenting on Week 4)