Chapter 2 Response

As the chapter said digital technologies as a medium can mean a variety of things, an interactive installation, software, internet art, or any combination. Digital art is described as participatory, dynamic, and customizable.

The beginning of the chapter talks about creating environments and immersion. The author connects these ideas with architecture, something that has always been of interest to me. Reading about digital architecture was intriguing. Architecture is a combination of art and function and all about immersion. Digital architecture can be create in many different ways, it about the relationship between physical space and virtual space.

One project that really interested me was The Legible City. There were several components that I really liked. First the interactivity of the project, having the viewer ride the bike to move around in the digital environment. Second, the way the artist created the cities with text using historical events and monologs. As the book says the artist created “an informational architecture.” He is literally creating a link between the physical and virtual world through hypertext and hypermedia.

The project Displaced Emperors also uses architecture to create an environment. It was also an interactive project. The artist projected the Habsburg Castle and when the audience points to places on the façade of the castle a large hand appears and reveals the interior however you do not see the interior of the Habsburg Castle but the Chapultepe Castel the Habsburg residence in Mexico City. The artist is connecting strands of colonial history. Using art to tell history is not a new thing but using an interactive installation helps people to connect to the history creates a new interface for studying history.

The architect Marcos Novak has described cyberspace as liquid architecture, where all structures are programmable and thus fluid, capable of transcending the laws of the physical world. This is an appealing idea. In physical architecture the designers are always looking for the fluidity, how to make the space flow. With digital architecture you are able to create whatever flow you would want and if need be change the program.

The other part of the chapter that intrigued me was the impact of digital technology on sound and music. I particularly like the project by Toshio Iwai who created an audio-visual installation called Piano-as image media. He created an experience that incorporated audio, visual, physical and virtual. You don’t get a much richer experience.

There is a lot more information discussed in this chapter but the above are a few of the things that really stood out to me.

Project 2: Anti-AntiAging

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4soEvvuHrG0

When we first started talking about this project I was thinking about what we fabricate in life. One of the first things that came to my mind was Joan Rivers and plastic surgery. As I was researching plastic surgery I kept coming across ads for anti-aging products. There were a couple of articles discussing how these ads are being aimed at younger and younger women and some even at children. (http://stilettorevolt.com/2009/11/anti-aging/ ) So I thought it would be interesting to make a commercial spoofing the 20 billion dollar anti-aging industry and their aim at younger women. This project is a small extension of my first project. My first project focused on the fabricating of women's bodies using photo-shop. This project is commenting on women trying to use anything they can to fabricate or alter their own bodies to look younger.

First I found a commercial for Olay Total Effects (an anti-aging product) to use as a model for my project. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDt4OCVwEzE I then found a YouTube video of a baby babbling/talking to use as my spokes person in the commercial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-J6Gqzq2CE Using this video was harder than I thought because I wasn't sure how to download it to my computer. Because of the difficulty of downloading the videos I tried using the programs Crazy Talk and Natural Reader to make my own video. Which did not work because you have to buy the full version to save the video that you create. However, I eventually found a free program to download the YouTube videos. (http://download.cnet.com/YouTube-Downloader/3000-2071_4-10647340.html?tag=mncol ) After I downloaded the video of the baby talking and the Olay commercial I used Adobe Premier to combine and edit the baby and Olay videos. I recorded the audio with my iPhone and did my best to line up the video with the audio. I do think that matching the audio with the video was the most difficult part.

The following are the different scripts that I came up with for the audio:

How come my skin looks so young? I started caring for it before the signs of aging appeared. Only Total Effects from Olay fights lines, wrinkles and in fact all seven signs of aging. Start using Olay Total Effects today and stop the battle of aging.

How come my skin still looks so young? I started caring for it before the signs of aging appeared. Olay Total Effects offers 7 anti-aging skin benefits including fighting lines, wrinkles and dark spots. Start using Olay Total Effects today and stop the battle of aging.