Generative Topic

I wanted to narrow down my ideas about surveillance to ask this question:

How far is it appropriate to peer into people's private lives?

This includes groups such as:
Governments
Artists
School
Work environment
Friends/family members

Surveillance

North-South over East-West
London Bridge, London

Jason Bruges

"On the pavement where people usually leave only footprints, for the duration of the festival they left coloured light ‘shadows’ as evidence of their passing. The intent was to reawaken commuters, encouraging them to be aware once more of the joys of crossing the Thames on their way to work." (www.jasonbruges.com)

This Temporary piece used motion sensors to record all the pedestrians on the bridge and played it back as a matrix of colors on top of Tower Bridge a block away. Furthermore the sensors record individual bluetooth phones and assign each one a different color.

Surveillance/privacy

I think one of the most interesting things pertaining to the idea of Surveillance and privacy is how much the average person is watched everyday. For example in London, there are 1.5 million surveillance cameras watching the general public. That's one for every 14 people. Government officials say that the cameras exist to reduce crime rates and terrorist attacks, however, only 3% of crimes are ever solved using the government surveillance cameras.

Camille Utterback's piece, Abundance, uses cameras and animations to tackle the idea of surveillance. Utterback transforms a city block into a virtually animated map. Cameras track city pedestrians and their path is animated an then projected on to a building. Individuals were portrayed in cool colors and when a group of two or more formed the paths would become warm colored.Also, indiviual paths would erase the animation's background where as the path of a group would fill it in. Furthermore, over time, Utterback started to add graphic elements to the animation that would effect the path of the pedistrans. "white lines were added to the projection which align with slats in the building facade. As participants cross these lines, moon-shaped graphics are released and travel in a trajectory opposite the person’s movement. These flickering nodes become active elements of the composition – releasing further bursts of color when another person moves across them" (www.camilleutterback.com).

Video at http://www.camilleutterback.com/abundance.html

There is a hue difference between the surveillance camera in London and Utterback's Abundance. The cameras in London act as an eye for the government and for the apparent safety of the people, while abundance helps the give the people of San Jose a feeling of "ownership of a public space" (camilleutterback.com).

Farm Fountain

Full view of Farm Fountain created by Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo

KEN RINALDO

Hydroponic Herb Garden (2005)


In collaboration with Amy Youngs, Rinaldo created the Hydroponic Herb Garden. This is a solar powered hanging sculpture that grows edible herbs with the calming sounds of a waterfall. A solar powered pump that only raises the water when it comes in contact with sunlight fuels the structure. This is allows the nutrients that the plants require to circulate throughout the system.

The individual containers are created so that light is able to pass through, and so the viewer is able to see the roots of the plants.

Each of the glass containers is connected to another container using plastic tubes, so that when the water rises too high it flows to the next glass bulbs.

Rinaldo states that his work focuses on the intersection and co-evolution between nature and technology. Source

AMY YOUNGS

FARM FOUNTAIN

Another Artist that caught my attention was Amy Youngs. When I visted her website the first piece that caught my eye was Farm Fountain, a project Young did in collaboration with Ken Rinaldo. I thought that it was incredible that they were able to create an indoor ecosystem that is not only an efficient way to grow and raise food but that also looks spectacular. The system uses 2-liter plastic bottles to grow plants and to recycle air and water throughout the system and into the fish tank.

So far, the plants and fish Youngs has grown “include lettuces, cilantro, mint, basil, tomatoes, chives, parsley, mizuna, watercress and tatsoi. The Tilapia fish in this work are also edible and are a variety that have been farmed for thousands of years in the Nile delta.” Source

What I think I most appreciated about Young’s ecosystem was the fact that even though it was art, it was still a very useful product. When people think of art they often think of a traditional sculpture or painting that is really for viewing only and isn’t interacted with. However, Youngs’ piece is not only interactive but alive and growing. Everyday the piece changes and helps to feed the people that use it.

I feel as though an important element in this piece that I am especially drawn to is the use of light. Although the use light serves a practical purpose, growing the plants, it also serves as a connection from the plants to the fish. Because all the plants are illuminated, they are visually connected. This helps to emphasize the important idea that nature is connected, an idea that is already strongly represented in the fountain’s ability to thrive as a self-contained ecosystem.

Young states that her work is created to reflect how technology changes and effects both nature and humans. Also she explores how we shape and idealize nature as humans by using technology. Source

Out of the three artists I found, I feel as though I connect and enjoy Youngs' work the most. Therefore I plan on doing my presientation about her work, specifically this FarmFoutain piece.

FarmFountain

Guto Nobrega

While browsing through the list of artists, I struggled to find an artist in which I felt that I could truly relate. I found it hard to find a new media that truly help an organic element. Eventually I found Guto Nobrega, an artist working out of the UK. What really resonated with me as an artist was the way Nobrega was able to seamlessly combine technology, nature and a human element in his work.

To me, Nobrega’s newest work seems to be his most successful. His pieces, Happiness (2007) and Ephemera (2008) utilize time-lapse movies played over human bodies to show connections between humans and nature.

Happiness was created in 2007. Nobrega used time-lapsed movies of plants, created by Roger P. Hangarter and his own animations of imaginary creatures and projected them over various human bodies. This allowed for the movies to interact with the bodies. For example a pair of wings was projected over a woman’s body, making it seem as though the wings were connected to her body. Similarly the images of plants played over a woman’s back helped to illustrate the connection between humans and nature.

Happiness

Happiness from Guto Nobrega on Vimeo.

The next year, in 2008, Nobrega created a similar piece, Ephemera. Ephemera is similar to Happiness in that they both project time-lapse videos over human bodies. But whereas Happiness used both Hangarter’s plant video and Noberga’s own animations, Ephemera uses only videos of plants. Ephemera also utilizes light better, which helps to connect the human element with nature, showing a path between the human creative process and the physical need of light by plants. Light is used almost a medium to paint ideas over the human’s skin, suggesting that the energy found in nature can also be found in humans.

Ephemeron

Ephemera from Guto Nobrega on Vimeo.

Ephemeron is more success than Happiness because it is more focused. Happiness almost feel like an experiment in using a human body as a screen, testing the limits of what different kinds of drawings and videos work with the body and what does not. Meanwhile Ephemera not only uses a stronger sense of light and color to really emphasize the videos themselves but also focuses on how plants and humans are connected.