Tying up loose ends
I just got back from a week long trip to NYC Sunday night. It was an amazing week filled with interviews and the assorted cultural activities that go along with being in New York. It was great to see some of the people at Rokkan again! I also visited R/GA, Firstborn and Big Spaceship….all amazing companies. I should also mention that while I was there I went to go see Cai Guo-Qiang I Want to Believe exhibit at the Guggenheim, the New Museum and the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA curated by the always amazing Paola Antonelli. All in all it was a much needed break from Rochester to see some friends that I really have missed and a city that I absolutely adore.
Me in the midst of a sake bombing outing Saturday night with some of my best buddies and fellow New Mediaites.
I should also mention that I am currently beginning the last 10 weeks of my college studies…and it sure did creep up. I’m really excited to graduate, but at the same time I know that no company will ever give me the creative freedom and time to explore RIT has. Many of the projects I have been working are gravitating towards a more experimental, harboring on the fringe of the art realm influence. In many ways these projects are much more fun and leave me feeling very satisfied at the end. I thought that I should mention a few of my most recent projects.
Untitled Looks (aka: the Vag Cam)
Untitled Looks is an interactive installation art piece that focuses on human voyeuristic tenancies in order to examine the relationship between exploring and being explored. The piece is a 5’9″ mannequin wearing a short skirt and standing on two 44″ pedestals. Two cameras are used (one positioned to record footage of the spectators experience in the space (voyeur cam), the other positioned in the vagina of the mannequin (vag cam) taking a snapshot of the spectator as they look up her skirt). The spectators experience is then projected into a golden frame in a near by location for all to see. I am working on this project with Nathanael Wolfe (who sparked this idea) has been in charge of managing the physical aspects of the installation thus far and Graeme Reed who has been working on getting the Flash Media Server to sync up 3 separate SWFs (one for each camera and one for the projector). The project is still in progress but we expect the installation to be polished up by May 3rd for the Imagine RIT Innovation + Creativity Festival on campus where we will be exhibiting our creation.
myWeathertower
MyWeathertower is a flash site I made essentially because I got really sick of all the banner adds on weather.com. MyWeathertower visualizes the weather (accurate up to the hour) and time of day (accurate up to the minute) using the Yahoo! Weather API. The hardest part to implement was getting the sunset to be at the right time and look good for all the US time zones. The site includes deep-linking so you can bookmark your zip code and also includes dynamic snow and rain, information on the high and low temperature, the current temperature, wind speed and direction as well as the ability to scroll 360 degrees through the cityscape.
Emotipaper
I did in fact finish up my Emotipaper experiment I posted about earlier that I was doing with the We Feel Fine API and the Kuler API. You can see the final result and my documentation HERE.
Since this is the last quarter I wanted to do an independent study really examining what new media is and how it effects culture, ethics, marketing, etc. I’m doing my independent study with Therese Hannigan and Nate will be researching along side me writing parallel papers. I’m really excited about this series of papers I will be writing. I don’t think I’ve given myself enough time to analyze the industry, so it will be a refreshing break to do so.
Also I should mention, I added the Art + Experiments page to this blog so check it out to see case studies, experiments and research I’m doing and artworks I’m creating.
As a final note, I finally got my new portfolio site up and I will hopefully be redesigning my blog soon…but until then if you’re bored go to http://radiesel.com.