Month: March 2016

 

Jim Campbell was in in 1956 in Chicago. When he was 22 he graduated M.I.T. with a bachelors in both Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. These degrees would become the basis for his brand of art. He currently lives in San Francisco.

Campbell’s style stems from his love of ultra low resolution. Whereas most high definition displays have around 2 million pixels, his art installations have around 200 to 2000 pixels. Sometimes he uses RGB pixels to give some color to his work, other times he simply uses single color pixels to break down his work. The point of his ultra low resolution is to break down and discard the details of a scene and leave it with just the large brushes of outlines and colors.

 

The technology he uses is simple in it’s function but complex in it’s use and design. It consists of LED’s arrayed in matrices spanning whatever size he is using for that installation. To control those lights, he designs his own PCBs and combines them with embedded chips to control their function. All this is designed and created by him with the assistance of his helpers. His knowledge of Electrical Engineering comes into play here.

The first Art Piece is called Home Videos (David). This shows the home videos of the family of David, who is a boy born around the same time as Campbell. The installation shows in characteristic ultra low resolution, the aging of David and his early life. Campbell has other “Home Video” sequences, including many he shot, but he most likes David as it is similar to his own life.
The next Art Piece is called Journey. This is a 750 foot installation that hangs in the San Diego Airport. This follows the people going on their own journey with the journey of a swimmer moving their way along the installation. Campbell got the video base by filming people from underwater.

Finally, there is the installation Scattered Light. This is an array of incandescent bulbs that are stuffed with LEDs that hang in a seemingly irregular and chaotic arrangement. Viewed from all angles but one, the lights seem to twinkle with irregular timing and be completely independent. However, if you view the installation from head on, you will see ethereal people walking across the lights. These people were recorded in Grand Central Terminal, for their chaotic and crazy movement. 

Chris Wood studied furniture design at Middlesex University and has an interest in light that led to her exploring the visual qualities of glass. Her works usually involve pieces of glass in various arrangements that interact with the light to change depending on the position and angle of the viewer, as well as the light source.

The materials that Wood uses range from common wine glasses to dichroic (two-color) glass, to specially shaped crystals. She creates minimal structures that support simple arrangements that interact with the light to form complex patterns. Some of her works are situated in an outside environment, some are wall installations, and others are a standalone indoor work.

One of Wood’s pieces is called Corona: A series of dichroic glass panels are arranged in a circular shape over a reflecting pool. Each piece will appear different to the viewer depending on the angle that the viewer looks at it.

Source: Chris Wood’s website

Another outdoor installation that Chris Wood created is called Mirror in the Fens; this piece uses mirrors placed at different angles to rows of crops in order to visually reposition the land. These reflections also change with the viewer’s position, and creates an effect similar to cutting and pasting a section of land from one picture into another.

Source: Chris Wood’s Website

Another piece that Wood exhibited was an indoor installation for the 2015 Festival of Islamic Arts, called Light Rain. This piece was created with water bottles, sand, light, and the sound of rain. The lighting from the inside of the water bottles creates a unique pattern as the light refracts off of the ridges on the bottom of the bottles- these patterns are then arranged to form a new, unique pattern.

Source: Chris Wood’s Website

More examples of Wood’s works can be found on her website, at http://www.chriswoodglass.co.uk/index.php

My light artist is Dan Flavin. He was born in April 1933 and died November 1996. Although classified as a Minimalist, he saw himself as a “Maximalist” because he would make the most of materials typically considered harsh. Throughout his career Dan’s main medium was fluorescent light bulbs. This temporary material also separated him from typical minimalist artists who used materials like stone or metal. Unlike those materials, the light bulbs would eventually burn out. One of his main inspirations was Marcel Dunchamp’s “Readymades”, which were found manufactured objects that had been manipulated slightly in some way.
On his artwork Dan Flavin once said, “It is what it is and it ain’t nothing else.” It is lighting responding to different architectural settings.
His works:
The Diagonal of May 25, 1963 (to Constantin Brancusi)

icon V (Coran’s Broadway Flesh)

greens crossing greens (to Piet Mondrian who lacked green)

All images taken from www.nga.gov/

Janne Parviainen was born in 1980 in Finland. For the past fifteen years he has been a very popular photographer, and for the last three years he has been dealing with light painting. He also is a painter mostly using oil colors on glass as his medium. The reason he started light painting was by accident. Once when he was taking a photo a night of a street he bumped into his camera causing it to take a picture. The street light caused a streak across the photo thus leading Janne to discover light art. Janne uses a DSLR camera for his photos as well as a tripod, he says this is necessary in order to keep the camera steady or that sometimes its easy to just set the camera on the ground. For the light source he uses LEDs or simply a flashlight. For the most part besides his personal website he says that he prefers to post his photos on flickr and that is where he gets the most online “traffic”. The way his light painting is done is by using a DSLR camera and making it so it takes long exposure pictures. He then moves his light source through the “frame” of the picture leaving behind a drawing. Sometimes Janne involves physical drawings such a chalk or permanent marker as well as the light drawings in a photograph. A must for Janne he says is that after taking the long exposure picture that photo is never run through a program such as photo shop. When asked by an interview why he does light painting he simply said: “Light painting is the most liberating form of art I have encountered; it sums up so many good things in one package that I could never let go of it anymore!”.

The light artist Paul Friedlander was born in 1951 (http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/CV%20update%20November%202013.htm) and grew up in Manchester and Cambridge England. He was very interested in the sciences from a young age and studied mathematics and physics at Sussex University. He later studied Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and become the lighting director for a few theatre productions.

Friedlander’s artwork is inspired by movement and machinery, and a show called “Kinetics” that he saw at Hayward Gallery in 1970 inspired him to dedicate his life to kinetic art (http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/memyself.htm).

One of Friedlander’s early pieces were chromastrobic light sculptures. The sculptures were built using black and white designs and electric motors to spin them. The sculptures used the concept of chromastrobic light, which is Friedlander’s discovery that changing light faster than the eye records images can produce remarkable visual effects. The images below show these sculptures.

   

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/artbackgnd2.html

Later, Paul Friedlander started to use an original technique to produce 3D, changing visual effects. The technique was to vibrate string very quickly and project colors onto it. One of his pieces was called “Dark Matter”, which had the goal of showing what dark matter would look like if it were visible. The exhibition was 8 meters tall and was interactive. Below is an image of this project.

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/guardian.html

Another piece that Friedlander exhibited is called “Timeless Universe”. After obtaining content such as ancient scripts and mathematical formulas that describe the universe, he produced a 15 piece exhibit with changing imagery that shows many variations on the theme. Below is an image of this exhibit.

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/sala2006.htm

 

Below are some other images of Friedlander’s work.

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/singapore.htm

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/Canarias2004/installation-2.htm

Source: http://www.paulfriedlander.com/text/spain2004_0021.htm

Jen Lewin: Interactive Sculptor

Tools and Techniques

In the construction of her pieces she uses a lot of small microcontrollers, custom electronics, Arduinos, LED lights and different types of sensors. Along with her skills in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science. She is able to get the sculptures to react to specific stimuli in a way that she wants and she is able to build everything in house.

Inspiration

She was inspired by where she grew up in Maui, by this one spot where she could see the clouds and sunset and how the light changed and evolved in particular she liked how the light and clouds moved. Most of her work is to fabricate large-scale interactive sculptures that combine light, sound and motion to encourage community interaction. She thinks beyond the traditional art exhibition by focusing on sculptures made for public use in order to create an experience that brings vibrancy to neighborhoods, parks and public spaces. The high amount of interaction with the pieces essentially makes the visitors the artist because based off of everything they can transform the piece to become anything they want.

Art

The Pool

Her most known work, The Pool, which spans almost a quarter acre and consists of over 200 LED interactive, glowing, outdoor platforms. When stood upon, they interact with each other, change colors and emit sound according to pressure and speed changes brought upon by the viewers who are interacting with this exhibit. The idea came from a camping trip to Australia where they found a bunch of tidal pools lit up by the moonlight and they jumped around from tidal pool to tidal pool and she wanted to recreate that experience with these “pools of light”. It is constructed with plastic and  there is no centralized computer instead it has small computers (Arduino’s) in each base, which run a couple basic rules that then propagate through the system. The sensors can tell users weight distribution, which in turn makes the lights react a certain way based of the rules programmed into the system.

The Moths

3 large silken robotic moths that flap their wings when there are people touching the controllers. The controllers are these glowing orbs that measure capacitance and when people place their hands on it the capacitance changes and the sensors pick this up and wirelessly transmit a signal to the moths to start moving and have the lights on their bodies start slowly strobing, which gives the whole exhibit a very ethereal feel.

Edison Clouds

It is constructed with 1,200 LED’s that are placed inside old incandescent bulbs. The sculpture reacts to people moving in the space by sensing their motion with some sort of camera and creates a crude image or shadow effect on the clouds. The Edison cloud also has a standard cloud pattern the plays on it when you lie in the chair, which was inspired by Jen when she was a child and used to watch clouds in Maui.

Hello, my name is Jonella Esposito, I am a freshman IMGD major. Most of my artwork that I have done have been drawings. I started out with mostly pencil or charcoal drawings. This included basics such as still life drawings or even something as simplistic as gesture drawings. I also took some photos just around my hometown just for my own personal pleasure. 

After that I moved on to painting. This was a very recent development in my artistic career. It started off with a very simple drawing done in class during A term here at WPI. And eventually I ended up painting it.

As for tech I have very little knowledge about it. I have never programmed anything, I’m not even much of a builder never even made a sculpture. The closest I have come to doing anything technical combined with the arts is some work I did in Blender as well as the 3D Modeling I class offered here at WPI. Most of my work on Blender is very simple and was done by following other peoples steps and ideas since I had never used a program like it before and was teaching myself.

Other creative arts I practice is that back home I was part of the alto section in a Children’s Chorus that went to France and even sang at Notre Dame. I also in my spare time- mostly during break- play the drums. Most of my inspiration comes from nature I come from a very rural area in Maine so I got to be around the ocean and nature a lot. My artistic goals would probably be to increase my knowledge about 3D art, and also to be better at being more original. While I know there is never any original art everything is based off of something that has been done or seen, I would like to have the ability as an artist to be more free with my ideas.

Art Making Experience

I have had experience in drawing 3-D models using Zbrush, video production and editing, and digital painting. I also used to take water color painting classes when I was in high school.

 

Tech Experience

I am very familiar with Arduino and other electronics skills since I am now a ECE senior with concentration in both Analog and Digital electronics. I have also used Processing in conjunction with Arduino for graphical user interface purposes but I am not that familiar with Processing.

 

Creative Arts

I used to take classical and acoustic guitar lessons when I was back in my country. I also took a social dance class here at WPI and I found it to be very relaxing and interesting. Usually, in my free time, I just like to play the guitar.

 

Creative Inspirations

I think light and water are my sources of creative inspiration. I like how light can diffuse, reflect, and disperse through the use of a prism. Water also has the liquid effect which gives rise to ripples, reflections, droplets, and many other cool features. Also, mythology computer game characters along with their medieval weapons and armors inspire me a lot since I am interested in Middle Ages and legendary creatures.

 

Artistic Goals

One of my artistic goal is to become a good 3-D modeler for game character ‘skins’. Nowadays, most computer games have the ability of being able to change the clothing, weapon, and accessories of the game characters and skin designers can also make some decent money if their skins become popular.

 

Recent Project

The most recent creative project that I am really proud of is my final project in my 3-D modelling class. The goal of the project was to sculpt a replica of my whole self.

 

 

My experience with art making is fairly limited to assigned work from teachers. Most of what I’ve made has come from assignments in classes I have taken to complete my Humanities requirement. That being said, it has led me to complete some very cool things. I’ve made a puppet of a knight out of aluminium foil, I’ve made the literal representation of “Squeezing the money out of you” Thanks to some creative video processing. 

However, what I’ve done with programming, electronics and other tech is a lot more robust. I have created robots that can hunt down candles, I’ve created 3D printed versions of rotary aircraft engines. I have soldered together wires on everything from a battery tender to a light box that spelled out a name in tron style LEDs (Which I sadly don’t have a picture of).

 

Other creative outlets I have are few. I listen to a lot of music, I play a lot of pretty video games, but I don’t create much. However, these all help to inspire me. My favorite inspirations are Space and Sci Fi. Space has been a favorite for as long as my dad told me about the Apollo missions and various planes in the sky. Tron came about more recently with the remake. To that extent, it was the main source for the aforementioned light box nameplate.

My goals with this course are to create something that combines the aesthetics of Tron with the content of Space. Either the Space Shuttle, the Solar System, or else some combination of other spacecraft. As for the actual content, I am not so sure yet.

Recent projects I am proud of are shown after the first paragraph. The Knight was supposed to be a caricature of a knight, and I thought I was able to get the proportions just right. My only issue with that is the aluminum foil makes a very crinkly surface, I would have liked it smoother. The other drawing is a study in shades. We took a Vermeer painting shown in black and white and had to break it down into only 5 shades. It came as very blocky and very harsh, but it was wonderful in getting a better understanding of shades and their limits.

 

My experience with art making includes 7 years of photography and basic art intro classes in college and highschool. Also I know how to use photoshop, Maya, 3DS Max and Zbrush. My experience with tech is very limited I don’t know how to code, but I have done ECE 2010 so I know basic circuits. With Tech I usually buy completed products that say react to music instead of building it my self, but I do know how to strip wires and solder. I don’t do any other creative activities other than art. My inspirations usually are light related with photography I like to be able to show motion with a still image and that is why i usually do long exposures of lighted objects because not only are the conditions ideal for that sort of photography but i also love the way they come out. I also try to incorporate important family stories, traditions and objects into some of my drawing or painting. Another inspiration of mine is science so using different scientific concepts or phenomenon to create a picture or even shooting some interesting phenomenon by themselves. My artistic goals are to create cool pictures; stuff that wow’s the viewer. I like to make art that people will ask me how I did it. Above are some pictures I have taken that have to do with light. Then I have to screenshots from my Instagram because I couldn’t find the originals, but I made a Deadmau5 helmet and a chandelier made with coke cans. and the link below “Light reactive leds” is a video of what I did to my room last year.

light reactive leds