Contextualising Digital Arts

Research on Laurent Terras

Laurent Terras

Terras is a digital artist, currently living and working in Serilhac. He bases his work on the world around him; questioning it in different ways.

 “Elementary Rover Mission”, 2004

 He never over complicates his work and I particularly like the way he films things – “Elementary Rover Mission”, 2004 was a series of videos recorded with a camera on a “vehicle”. He got footage using four differently designed vehicles: “Rotorover” (2006), “Transporteur” (2006), "Drone" (2008), and “MotoConfort” (2011). Terras has used these designs to capture the happenings of everyday life from different viewpoints.

“ERM, Freefall”, 2006

The video makes me think of chaos and destruction because of the way the camera is rolling around within the "Rotorover vehicle" I like the way that it has been edited with the static sounds and disrupted picture. 

“ERM, Circulars, Sunset”, 2006

This is my favourite of the ERM videos. I like the way the whole world is flipped upside-down as the camera turns in a circular motion and the way that the effects used add a certain ambiguity to the piece.

 

 “Free Range”, 2005

An appropriate title for this video! Terras has put a fake bird in a nest on top of a remote controlled vehicle and videoed it being driven towards and then past the camera. It's such a strange thing to watch, which is what I think makes it so interesting. It’s possible that he wanted to use humour to bring a viewers attention to his work. I dislike that he hasn’t used many editing techniques in this video because I think they could have made it even better but I do like the environmental sounds of the wheels going down the road.

“Untitled (Fried Chicken)”, 2008

This is a video installation of sculpted chicken feet attached to a machine that makes them move as thought they were walking. I am fascinated by this video because I believe that Terras is trying to show the cruelty of humanity and the way that we take life away from animals like chickens- born to die. However, this is just my own opinion, what the artist is actually trying to express is unknown.

Research on Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel

Arcangel is a new media artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He “recycles”,    “re-uses” and “steals” code from other sources to create his own artwork – he mainly uses video games to do this. Some examples of his work are his famous Nintendo mods: “Super Mario Clouds” and “I Shot Andy Warhol”.

At the beginning of his career he and Paul Davis created their own record label called BEIGE records – which was when he first started to learn about programming as they began working on an ATARI 8 bit construction set. As Arcangel learned more about computer operating systems and ways of manipulating simple technology to prank people at school, he began to explore digital art or “new media art”. A big influence on his work was cracking – a way of editing the software to rid of unwanted features- and was particularly important to him when he was first getting into computer art.

The Nintendo Game Mod, "I shot Andy Warhol" - hack of "Hogan's Alley"

His first Nintendo modification was “I Shot Andy Warhol” where he changed the graphics in the game but left the actual running of the game as it was. The cartridge has two chips: the Program chip and the graphics chip. All that Arcangel had to do to create this was change the graphics, in this game he changed the people in the game to look like Andy Warhol – there were pixel limitations which meant he could only use people that were able to be created in the restricted amount of pixels enabled.

"Super Mario Clouds"

To create ‘Super Mario Clouds’ all Arcangel had to do was erase the program code of the game which left him with the graphics of the game which he made into a video, GIF and still. A lot of his work is as simple as this as he likes creating things that are easy yet effective. This piece interests me because I like classic games and although it no longer has a purpose or function as a video game, it is still cool to look at as he draws out something from the game that people generally overlook or don’t pay much attention to. The video is essentially just the clouds from the game moving as they do in the game, and this is repeated until the end of the video.

I am not always sure why I like Arcangel’s work, I am just drawn to it; perhaps it’s the processes he took trying to make it or the themes he bases his work on but all I know is that I like it and I think it shows how much digital art has developed since it first began.

"Data Diaries"

 Arcangel used a "RAM Fishing" technique to create some of his art and made a quicktime video out of RAM that was left over. He did this everyday, for a whole month.

Research on Brian Knep

Brian Knep

Knep is a media artist who currently works with both science and technology. He is an artist in residence at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, using his studies of science to create video installations. Much of his work reacts to changes in environment, some is interactive- and changes in response to people- other pieces of his work just change as time passes by. He likes to explore physical and spiritual relationships and combines art, architecture and science to look at the themes of change, healing, struggle and acceptance. Knep’s work has featured in several solo exhibitions internationally.

 

“Frog Triplets” and “Frog Time”

Knep created a video of silhouetted frogs called, “Frog Triplets”, the video shows three frogs lined up as if for a race, a horizontal line streaks over the picture and blurs it as the frogs begin to “sprout tails”. Every so often one of the frogs reverts back into a limbless tadpole after jumping forward and then changes back into a frog as it falls.“Frog Time”, another of his studies for part of a larger project, similar to “Frog Triplets” shows a single frog struggling against a line wiping across the screen and changes from frog to tadpole and back again.

These installations offer a conveyed metaphor to describe the ongoing process of aging – and our constant struggle for youthfulness. It is a possibility that these project could be made into interactive pieces.

“Drift”

In 2004 Knep used a computer, video projector and customised software to allow him to create “Drift” a non-repeated video installation, which was 7’6” x 1’6”. He focused on the way “organic shapes” and cells move and studied the way that they change across a projection of five separate panels. The shapes move and as they reach the end of one panel they move onto the next, but in a different form. The projection is very slow and you almost enter a trance like state as you watch it. 

This Article was very informative and helped me with alot of my research

Digital Experimentals

I made this stop-motion video based on my themes of colour, water and light. To take the pictures I set up my shot and used my digital SLR camera. I really like the way the ink flows through the water. I edited the colours to make it more dramatic and like the stark contrast between the blue-purples and reds.

I took these photographs in Spain when I was on a boat and i liked the way the water looked so i created another stop-motion video and made the water more blue and added the sound of busy people, I like that the image is calming with a hectic audio. I'd like to do more experimentation with this.

My third experimental piece was created using images of candles taken from two different angles and edited in photoshop. I changed the colours by going to the image adjustments and moving the sliders until I found what I liked. On the blue candle I changed the fire to bubbling water which i cut and feathered from the picture i used to create the ocean stop-motion. I also used a lens flare to create light and a glass effect on the water.